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You know, I love these posts calling for high taxation by relatively young people who are just starting their careers. Wait until you have kids about to go to c

You know, I love these posts calling for high taxation by relatively young people who are just starting their careers. Wait until you have kids about to go to college or, if you are unlucky, alimony and child-support obligations. Or major medical not covered by insurance. We'll see what much higher taxation looks like to you then. It's not that more income equality isn't a good goal, but there are plenty of people with their backs against the wall. I'm a strong open source advocate, but when I saw Richard Stallman years ago talk about how all software should be free, my first thought was "Easy for him to say. He doesn't have any dependents." I do consulting work and my rates are high. Believe me, it's not because I'm greedy it's because I'm trying to get by.

tyw 14y ago
the article is calling for 91% marginal rate on the top income bracket. quite different than paying 91% of your income in taxes.
- rlanday 14y ago
  It’s not really, if nearly all of your income is in the top income bracket getting taxed at that rate. And if most of your income isn’t in the top bracket, why earn that income at all if at least 91% is going to be stolen from you and the marginal return is so low?
ori_b 14y ago
You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the costs of kids going to college, child support, and the elimination of major medical not covered by insurance? Edit: Sorry, child support should be removed from that list; I was thinking of the costs of raising a child, not what you pay after a divorce.
- largesse 14y ago
  If the cost of those and impact of taxation varied at the same time and the same degree that would be no problem. But that has never happened. Given the state of our governmental problem-solving ability in the US all those numbers can do is diverge.
- acchow 14y ago
  Pwned. Also, it's not a zero-sum game. Your taxes can drive up demand to make you even wealthier. Except, perhaps many wealthy people don't actually want more wealth. They just want to be better off then everyone else...
  - largesse 14y ago
    Pwned? You really think those problems are going to be solved in the near term? Given the state of our government?
    - saraid216 14y ago
      The state of our government is in no small part due to people refusing to be taxed.
      - dreamdu5t 14y ago
        American tax rates are not outliers and spending as a percentage of GDP is historically high.
        saraid216 14y ago
        Irrelevant. The point being made originally was about legislative deadlock.
        hnal943 14y ago
        It's not irrelevant - you claimed that the reason legislative deadlock occurs is that people refused to be taxed more. What about the people who refuse to cut automatic increases to spending? Are they to be absovled?
        saraid216 14y ago
        Considering the context of this thread, which is about reasons to increase spending and the fact that this would never happen in a deadlocked legislature, the idea that people who refuse to cut spending would be to blame is sort of contradictory.
- mynameishere 14y ago
  People are calling for high taxes to reduce child support? Do you just put random words in a blender and dump out the results?
  - socialist_coder 14y ago
    If more of the cost of raising a child is paid for by taxes then one might assume child support payments would go down.
    - largesse 14y ago
      In divorce, there is a settlement agreement. Once you are locked in no one is looking at the cost of living.
  - largesse 14y ago
    I know. I didn't know what to make of that one either.
- 001sky 14y ago
  You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the costs of kids going to college.... Huh? Gov't tax == subsidies == tuition inflation.
  - rattray 14y ago
    I don't believe that's how the math plays out in most socialist countries, where uni often costs a few grand a year iirc. The particulars of the current American system are a different story if we look at certain kinds of private colleges.
seanalltogether 14y ago
interestingly, all the costs you just described should in theory be written off in a sane tax system. People/families should be taxed on their net wealth gain, not gross income, and I don't understand why we only give corporations that affordance.
wwweston 14y ago
> Wait until you have kids about to go to college or, if you are unlucky, alimony and child-support obligations. From both my studies of the tax code and comparison with people who have between one to four dependents, it seems to me the US tax code mitigates these factors with exemptions (~$4k per dependent?) and various deductions/credits ($2k and up). It's also easy to see how the expenses of having a child could outstrip that, of course, but the point is that (a) it's not as if people making policy decisions have particularly decided to ignore this factor and (b) as if we couldn't visit this issue as long as we're dreaming about how we structure things. Heck, a guaranteed income might well apply to the kids we're talking about. > Or major medical not covered by insurance. Yeah, the US system kindof sucks. We've socialized the costs of most expensive phase of people's lives, we privatize the "market"* for the healthiest and most productive, and we pay from the public treasury more than any other civilized nation per capita for the privilege of having inadequate coverage for major and minor events. You can also deduct a lot of this from your tax burden, though.
olefoo 14y ago
So if you had fair universal taxation ( what a progressive tax plan is ) with universal education, universal health care and minimum standard housing you would be relieved of the burden of educating your kids and of housing them until their mid-30's ( which seems to be standard for the upper middle class locally ) and you think you would be worse off? Myself, I'd go a bit further than the author, and say that rather than require that taxes be paid only with money, everyone should contribute 30 to 60 days of their year to doing government work. This gets around the whining that some are non-contributing, and it fosters a sense of shared enterprise and social justice through equality of contribution that is sorely lacking in our culture at present. Now the details of how that labour gets applied to building infrastructure for the common good would need to be worked out, it would be a much fairer system than we have now, and much less subject to being gamed. It would also serve as mixing function, forcing people who would otherwise never come in contact to deal with each other as collaborators in the cause of the greater good. And if global climate change picks up the pace we will need such a work force. Imagine if we dealt with a hurricane Katrina every month, or three super-storm events equivalent to Sandy every winter. It's not too soon to start planning on contingencies like that.
- hndude 14y ago
  No offense but I think your second paragraph is much too idealistic. You're describing a sort of jury duty, but for doing government work. "Now the details of how that labour gets applied to building infrastructure for the common good would need to be worked out, it would be a much fairer system than we have now, and much less subject to being gamed." People already crack jokes about working in the government, doing a minimal amount of work. Imagine if people were actually mandated to work in government instead of paying taxes. Nothing would be achieved, because no one would seriously want to do the work. Or the people who had positions of power would abuse them to no end. You describe a nice system, but how would it ever be implemented in practice? What kind of media campaign/propaganda would be required to convince the entire country they should work hard at serving each other? Would this shift be characterized by a revolution? Perhaps it would start small, in communes? Would the shift happen nationally or on a state by state basis (in the US)?
ixacto 14y ago
I am not having children, I had a vasectomy. I don't live in CA, so no 50/50 divorce settlements or state income tax either. Guess what though, I would gladly pay 40% of my income as income tax if I could be assured that healthcare and education would be treated as a right rather than a campaign item. Scandinavia/Cananda/Japan are not ranked as highly as they are in the human development index for nothing.
- aianus 14y ago
  Most people I know (I study CS in Canada) are counting down the days until they graduate and leave for the US. There are few advantages to living in Canada over the US unless you're poor/disabled/unemployed.
Yhippa 14y ago
Do you have kids? What's your lifestyle? How much is your house worth? What kind of car do you drive?

tyw 14y ago

the article is calling for 91% marginal rate on the top income bracket. quite different than paying 91% of your income in taxes.

rlanday 14y ago
It’s not really, if nearly all of your income is in the top income bracket getting taxed at that rate. And if most of your income isn’t in the top bracket, why earn that income at all if at least 91% is going to be stolen from you and the marginal return is so low?

ori_b 14y ago

You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the costs of kids going to college, child support, and the elimination of major medical not covered by insurance? Edit: Sorry, child support should be removed from that list; I was thinking of the costs of raising a child, not what you pay after a divorce.

largesse 14y ago
If the cost of those and impact of taxation varied at the same time and the same degree that would be no problem. But that has never happened. Given the state of our governmental problem-solving ability in the US all those numbers can do is diverge.
acchow 14y ago
Pwned. Also, it's not a zero-sum game. Your taxes can drive up demand to make you even wealthier. Except, perhaps many wealthy people don't actually want more wealth. They just want to be better off then everyone else...
- largesse 14y ago
  Pwned? You really think those problems are going to be solved in the near term? Given the state of our government?
  - saraid216 14y ago
    The state of our government is in no small part due to people refusing to be taxed.
    - dreamdu5t 14y ago
      American tax rates are not outliers and spending as a percentage of GDP is historically high.
      - saraid216 14y ago
        Irrelevant. The point being made originally was about legislative deadlock.
        hnal943 14y ago
        It's not irrelevant - you claimed that the reason legislative deadlock occurs is that people refused to be taxed more. What about the people who refuse to cut automatic increases to spending? Are they to be absovled?
        saraid216 14y ago
        Considering the context of this thread, which is about reasons to increase spending and the fact that this would never happen in a deadlocked legislature, the idea that people who refuse to cut spending would be to blame is sort of contradictory.
mynameishere 14y ago
People are calling for high taxes to reduce child support? Do you just put random words in a blender and dump out the results?
- socialist_coder 14y ago
  If more of the cost of raising a child is paid for by taxes then one might assume child support payments would go down.
  - largesse 14y ago
    In divorce, there is a settlement agreement. Once you are locked in no one is looking at the cost of living.
- largesse 14y ago
  I know. I didn't know what to make of that one either.
001sky 14y ago
You do realize the reason they're calling for high taxation is to reduce the costs of kids going to college.... Huh? Gov't tax == subsidies == tuition inflation.
- rattray 14y ago
  I don't believe that's how the math plays out in most socialist countries, where uni often costs a few grand a year iirc. The particulars of the current American system are a different story if we look at certain kinds of private colleges.

seanalltogether 14y ago

interestingly, all the costs you just described should in theory be written off in a sane tax system. People/families should be taxed on their net wealth gain, not gross income, and I don't understand why we only give corporations that affordance.

wwweston 14y ago

> Wait until you have kids about to go to college or, if you are unlucky, alimony and child-support obligations. From both my studies of the tax code and comparison with people who have between one to four dependents, it seems to me the US tax code mitigates these factors with exemptions (~$4k per dependent?) and various deductions/credits ($2k and up). It's also easy to see how the expenses of having a child could outstrip that, of course, but the point is that (a) it's not as if people making policy decisions have particularly decided to ignore this factor and (b) as if we couldn't visit this issue as long as we're dreaming about how we structure things. Heck, a guaranteed income might well apply to the kids we're talking about. > Or major medical not covered by insurance. Yeah, the US system kindof sucks. We've socialized the costs of most expensive phase of people's lives, we privatize the "market"* for the healthiest and most productive, and we pay from the public treasury more than any other civilized nation per capita for the privilege of having inadequate coverage for major and minor events. You can also deduct a lot of this from your tax burden, though.

olefoo 14y ago

So if you had fair universal taxation ( what a progressive tax plan is ) with universal education, universal health care and minimum standard housing you would be relieved of the burden of educating your kids and of housing them until their mid-30's ( which seems to be standard for the upper middle class locally ) and you think you would be worse off? Myself, I'd go a bit further than the author, and say that rather than require that taxes be paid only with money, everyone should contribute 30 to 60 days of their year to doing government work. This gets around the whining that some are non-contributing, and it fosters a sense of shared enterprise and social justice through equality of contribution that is sorely lacking in our culture at present. Now the details of how that labour gets applied to building infrastructure for the common good would need to be worked out, it would be a much fairer system than we have now, and much less subject to being gamed. It would also serve as mixing function, forcing people who would otherwise never come in contact to deal with each other as collaborators in the cause of the greater good. And if global climate change picks up the pace we will need such a work force. Imagine if we dealt with a hurricane Katrina every month, or three super-storm events equivalent to Sandy every winter. It's not too soon to start planning on contingencies like that.

hndude 14y ago
No offense but I think your second paragraph is much too idealistic. You're describing a sort of jury duty, but for doing government work. "Now the details of how that labour gets applied to building infrastructure for the common good would need to be worked out, it would be a much fairer system than we have now, and much less subject to being gamed." People already crack jokes about working in the government, doing a minimal amount of work. Imagine if people were actually mandated to work in government instead of paying taxes. Nothing would be achieved, because no one would seriously want to do the work. Or the people who had positions of power would abuse them to no end. You describe a nice system, but how would it ever be implemented in practice? What kind of media campaign/propaganda would be required to convince the entire country they should work hard at serving each other? Would this shift be characterized by a revolution? Perhaps it would start small, in communes? Would the shift happen nationally or on a state by state basis (in the US)?

ixacto 14y ago

I am not having children, I had a vasectomy. I don't live in CA, so no 50/50 divorce settlements or state income tax either. Guess what though, I would gladly pay 40% of my income as income tax if I could be assured that healthcare and education would be treated as a right rather than a campaign item. Scandinavia/Cananda/Japan are not ranked as highly as they are in the human development index for nothing.

aianus 14y ago
Most people I know (I study CS in Canada) are counting down the days until they graduate and leave for the US. There are few advantages to living in Canada over the US unless you're poor/disabled/unemployed.

Yhippa 14y ago

Do you have kids? What's your lifestyle? How much is your house worth? What kind of car do you drive?