5 ms·

In general I am a deficit owl, not hawk...but I don't believe the recent tax law, which barely does anything for middle class downwards, is a productive use of

In general I am a deficit owl, not hawk...but I don't believe the recent tax law, which barely does anything for middle class downwards, is a productive use of debt. Debt accumulated for productive means is usually okay, but not this upwards accumulation of wealth.

nerdsniper 11mo ago
I believe there's a slight typo in your statement, where you use a double-negative where perhaps you meant only one 'NOT'. > I don't believe the .. is not a ... Instead, just tell us what you do believe. It's generally clearer to use "positive" language rather than stacking negations.
- SubiculumCode 11mo ago
  I edited the typo. Thanks for your other opinion, nerdsniper
wppick 11mo ago
Also upwards accumulation of wealth can sometimes mean less tax revenue. Middle class salary workers pay a lot of tax, so with more upwards accumulation of wealth (maybe accelerating due to AI) then what will happen to tax revenue? People getting laid off don't pay tax, and shifting that money to corporate, tax havens, and cap gains types of taxes will probably end up lower overall
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  > Middle class salary workers pay a lot of tax No they don't. If we're talking about federal income tax, the vast majority of is paid by the wealthy.
  - wppick 11mo ago
    All tax. Income tax, payroll tax, consumption tax
    - kccoder 11mo ago
      Property tax, sales tax, tariffs, ...
      - fakedang 11mo ago
        Funny how you all rebelled in the good old days over a tax of 3 pence per pound of tea.
        wqaatwt 11mo ago
        IIRC it was mainly about the government giving the East India Company a monopoly on all tea imports sidelining local merchants in Boston. The tax was used to rile up the mobs by merchants/smugglers, because the monopoly tea was actually cheaper than what they could ship from Holland.
    - SideQuark 11mo ago
      Corp income tax (paid by shareholders from the rich to teacher pensions to anyone with a retirement account...), estate tax,... When all is accounted for ... The rich still pay a far larger share than the income they earn. It's why OECD rates the US as the most progressive tax system among member nations.
      - throwawayqqq11 11mo ago
        ... which implies these taxes get actually payed. At least in the same proportions as lower income taxes get payed. There is no effective taxation when avoidance is easy and risk-free.
        phil21 11mo ago
        They are talking about the final numbers at the end of the day. Effective tax rates. It’s the same no matter if you want to use effective vs nominal. The numbers change, but relatively speaking they are roughly the same.
      - 11mo ago
  - phil21 11mo ago
    You are correct. But you are commenting in a place where mid six figure engineers consider themselves middle class and not wealthy. Yes, the top 20% pay the vast majority of taxes and are taxed at the highest rate until you get into the ownership classes where income goes down and capital gains goes up. Plus that’s when all the tax deferral strategies come into play. And yes, by all reasonable definitions if you are in the top 20% either income or wealth you are categorically wealthy.
somenameforme 11mo ago
Do you not see this as inevitable? It may be the case that money does 'trickle down' but it most certainly gushes upward. And so when the government prints massive sums of money, that's effectively just indirect handouts that end up going to the wealthiest, enabling them to gobble up even more of the overall economy and, in turn, enabling them to grow even wealthier. The year that the US gained the ability to start 'printing' arbitrary amounts of money is 1971, prior to that we were externally constrained by Bretton Woods. This [1] site is nothing but a bunch of various graphs of all sorts of data. That point is a massive inflection point in just about everything awful that's happened to the country. [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- wqaatwt 11mo ago
  It’s complicated. The gold standard in general is an awful system outside of stagnant economies (you end up with deflation + endless boom and bust cycles). Banning everyone domestically from owning gold and then Bretton Woods massively propping up the US monetary system helped. But eventually West Europeans caught up with it and what happened was hardly avoidable.
  - somenameforme 11mo ago
    The Minneapolis Fed calculated CPI levels since 1800 here. [1] In the 150 years from 1800 to 1950, the CPI never shifted more than 25 points from the starting base of 51. From 1971 to current, it increased by more than 800 points. Keep in mind all the incredible events that 1800 to 1950 covers - World Wars 1 and 2, the Civil War, Great Depression, Spanish Flu, and more. And prices always stayed extremely stable. Then we give the government the ability to print money at their discretion and money just starts inflating endlessly to the point of having no real meaning all the while wealth inequality grows to unimaginably high levels, to the point that the richest American now has personal wealth greater than the entire GDP of America in the 50s. So you clearly don't just inevitably end up with deflation. Before 1971 the overall economic system was quite stable. Obviously there booms and busts, but it's not like the current system has changed that. Instead we now just have constant busts which are stabilized only by the government dumping obscene amounts of money into the economy which results makes all the economic and related problems we have even worse. And it's all obviously building up to a completely catastrophic bust that'll likely make the Great Depression look like the 'good ole days.' [1] - https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800- https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...

nerdsniper 11mo ago

I believe there's a slight typo in your statement, where you use a double-negative where perhaps you meant only one 'NOT'. > I don't believe the .. is not a ... Instead, just tell us what you do believe. It's generally clearer to use "positive" language rather than stacking negations.

SubiculumCode 11mo ago
I edited the typo. Thanks for your other opinion, nerdsniper

wppick 11mo ago

Also upwards accumulation of wealth can sometimes mean less tax revenue. Middle class salary workers pay a lot of tax, so with more upwards accumulation of wealth (maybe accelerating due to AI) then what will happen to tax revenue? People getting laid off don't pay tax, and shifting that money to corporate, tax havens, and cap gains types of taxes will probably end up lower overall

SoftTalker 11mo ago
> Middle class salary workers pay a lot of tax No they don't. If we're talking about federal income tax, the vast majority of is paid by the wealthy.
- wppick 11mo ago
  All tax. Income tax, payroll tax, consumption tax
  - kccoder 11mo ago
    Property tax, sales tax, tariffs, ...
    - fakedang 11mo ago
      Funny how you all rebelled in the good old days over a tax of 3 pence per pound of tea.
      - wqaatwt 11mo ago
        IIRC it was mainly about the government giving the East India Company a monopoly on all tea imports sidelining local merchants in Boston. The tax was used to rile up the mobs by merchants/smugglers, because the monopoly tea was actually cheaper than what they could ship from Holland.
  - SideQuark 11mo ago
    Corp income tax (paid by shareholders from the rich to teacher pensions to anyone with a retirement account...), estate tax,... When all is accounted for ... The rich still pay a far larger share than the income they earn. It's why OECD rates the US as the most progressive tax system among member nations.
    - throwawayqqq11 11mo ago
      ... which implies these taxes get actually payed. At least in the same proportions as lower income taxes get payed. There is no effective taxation when avoidance is easy and risk-free.
      - phil21 11mo ago
        They are talking about the final numbers at the end of the day. Effective tax rates. It’s the same no matter if you want to use effective vs nominal. The numbers change, but relatively speaking they are roughly the same.
    - 11mo ago
- phil21 11mo ago
  You are correct. But you are commenting in a place where mid six figure engineers consider themselves middle class and not wealthy. Yes, the top 20% pay the vast majority of taxes and are taxed at the highest rate until you get into the ownership classes where income goes down and capital gains goes up. Plus that’s when all the tax deferral strategies come into play. And yes, by all reasonable definitions if you are in the top 20% either income or wealth you are categorically wealthy.

somenameforme 11mo ago

Do you not see this as inevitable? It may be the case that money does 'trickle down' but it most certainly gushes upward. And so when the government prints massive sums of money, that's effectively just indirect handouts that end up going to the wealthiest, enabling them to gobble up even more of the overall economy and, in turn, enabling them to grow even wealthier. The year that the US gained the ability to start 'printing' arbitrary amounts of money is 1971, prior to that we were externally constrained by Bretton Woods. This [1] site is nothing but a bunch of various graphs of all sorts of data. That point is a massive inflection point in just about everything awful that's happened to the country. [1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

wqaatwt 11mo ago
It’s complicated. The gold standard in general is an awful system outside of stagnant economies (you end up with deflation + endless boom and bust cycles). Banning everyone domestically from owning gold and then Bretton Woods massively propping up the US monetary system helped. But eventually West Europeans caught up with it and what happened was hardly avoidable.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  The Minneapolis Fed calculated CPI levels since 1800 here. [1] In the 150 years from 1800 to 1950, the CPI never shifted more than 25 points from the starting base of 51. From 1971 to current, it increased by more than 800 points. Keep in mind all the incredible events that 1800 to 1950 covers - World Wars 1 and 2, the Civil War, Great Depression, Spanish Flu, and more. And prices always stayed extremely stable. Then we give the government the ability to print money at their discretion and money just starts inflating endlessly to the point of having no real meaning all the while wealth inequality grows to unimaginably high levels, to the point that the richest American now has personal wealth greater than the entire GDP of America in the 50s. So you clearly don't just inevitably end up with deflation. Before 1971 the overall economic system was quite stable. Obviously there booms and busts, but it's not like the current system has changed that. Instead we now just have constant busts which are stabilized only by the government dumping obscene amounts of money into the economy which results makes all the economic and related problems we have even worse. And it's all obviously building up to a completely catastrophic bust that'll likely make the Great Depression look like the 'good ole days.' [1] - https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800- https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...