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We act as if most of our tax money goes to poor people. That just isn't the case. This entire argument is a lie on it's face. I don't think anyone seriously

We act as if most of our tax money goes to poor people. That just isn't the case. This entire argument is a lie on it's face. I don't think anyone seriously thinks we should all be equal financially, only that people deserve health care, food and shelter, even if they are "lazy" or "stupid". Guaranteeing these basic human needs wouldn't cost as much as people think. Even reducing the taxes that poor people pay would help immensely. It's a fallacy that the poor don't pay taxes, they do. There are other taxes besides income taxes, some of them even go into the same exact pool of money. Many rich end up paying _less_ taxes then poor people do, as a percentage of their income.

doki_pen 18y ago
I should also say I believe everyone should have equal access to education, but anyone who can't see how this benefits society as a whole isn't worth arguing with. The only valid argument for non-equal access is pure selfishness and competitive advantage for the offspring of the wealthy.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  you can't create equal access to education without a police state. what are you going to do? make laws that the rich aren't allowed to hire private tutors for their kids? what you're actually saying is that a certain minimum level of education should be publicly funded. Who decides what metrics we use to judge education? It would seem that we're currently doing a terrible job at this.
  - gnaritas 18y ago
    No we're not, most kids get out of high school with the ability to read and write. Before public education, you could not say that about most people. Public education is that minimal level of education and it accomplishes that job quite well. Could it be better, sure, but without it things would be much worse.
    - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
      what are you talking about? illiteracy rates were lower before public education started. You can make claims about differences in population if you want, but purely on a percent basis you're wrong.
      - gnaritas 18y ago
        I'd happily change my opinion on the matter if you can cite a source that counts more than just white people.
chops 18y ago
only that people deserve health care, food and shelter Why? These aren't automatically available in nature. They require work, and the application of the mind, to acquire. Health Care is a service provided by individuals. People have a "right" to health care only inasmuch as those who are capable of delivering said health care are willing to do so (that is, voluntarily). The same goes with food gathering/storing/preparation and building manufacturing. Someone has to provide these services, and to state that because someone "deserves it" that those services must be rendered (without concern for rendering individual's agreement), well, that's the master-slave relationship.
- billybob 18y ago
  Your point is valid, but I think it's a bit extreme to say that guaranteeing basic care makes everyone else a slave. A slave works for nothing to enrich others; a doctor loses some money caring for indigent patients but doesn't become poor while the patients become rich. There is a natural limit there.
  - chops 18y ago
    The financial differences are irrelevant. A slave is one who works for another without choice, under threat of force. The (American) slaves were given basic provisions for life, even some leisure time. Their fundamental problem wasn't the money or their lifestyle, it was the lack of choice. They didn't have the right to say "no, I refuse to serve you."
    - msluyter 18y ago
      False dichotomy: you're either 100% free to do anything you want, or you're a slave. There's lots of middle ground, namely that making certain choices implies accepting certain constraints. Universal health care, for example, needn't _force_ doctors into providing care for certain people at gunpoint. It may imply, however, that if you choose to enter medicine that you may have to accept certain conditions. This is already the case, actually. Working at certain emergency rooms obligates one to care for those that come through the door, regardless of whether they can pay. This hardly makes the doctors & nurses who work there slaves. Similarly, in the US we citizens have a right to council, and if you can't afford an attorney, one is provided by the state. Does that make court appointed attorneys slaves?
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
Please do at least a cursory review of the US Budget if you're going to make claims like this. There is a ton of freely available information from places like the tax foundation and many many other sources with which to corroborate. Knee jerk morality is not economic analysis. It isn't a fallacy that the poor don't pay taxes. If a poor person pays X to the government and gets Y in social services and Y>X then they are a net tax eater. Your assertion that the poor pay more taxes as a percentage of income is so ludicrous that I don't even know how to respond.
- akeefer 18y ago
  Um, perhaps actually enumerating what X and Y are would be a start? Or defining what "poor" means? A lot of people conveniently forget about sales tax (and potentially other sorts of government fees, like vehicle registration fees) when saying "poor people don't pay taxes." Sales tax is an incredibly regressive form of taxation, as are gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, etc.
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    sigh okay let's say we have a consumption tax of 10%. By definition your tax rate can not exceed 10% (it will be 10% if you spend all your money). this is peanuts. the tax rates for the top 2 quintiles range from 25% to 32%, and that's straight income before paying all those same consumption taxes. frankly, your argument is flawed from the get go. if we're going to assume a decreasing marginal utility of money (which is what theft from the highly productive is usually justified with) we can't use straight up percentages of income as our metric since the whole thing relies on the idea that taking 10% from a poor person is worse than taking 10% from a rich person. But if we do that we have a whole new problem on our hands. How do we determine the rate at which the utility of money decreases?
    - emmett 18y ago
      Making $30k/year, you are taxed at 15% for social security, another 6% for medicare, 13% federal income taxes, and then depending where you live you pay state income taxes and city income taxes as well. Then you pay 10% sales tax. You get no write offs for a mortgage, because you can't afford a house. The total easily comes to 40% (15% + 6% + 13% + 10% sales tax, not even including state taxes), well exceeding the 25-32% paid at the top. Because the top earners spend a much lower percentage of their income, they are far less effected by sales tax proportionally. Medicare and social security top out at 100k income. So the top earners pay 32%, and that's it (actually less when you include the tax breaks a good accountant can find you). And that's how you can say that the poor pay more taxes than the rich.

doki_pen 18y ago

I should also say I believe everyone should have equal access to education, but anyone who can't see how this benefits society as a whole isn't worth arguing with. The only valid argument for non-equal access is pure selfishness and competitive advantage for the offspring of the wealthy.

nazgulnarsil 18y ago
you can't create equal access to education without a police state. what are you going to do? make laws that the rich aren't allowed to hire private tutors for their kids? what you're actually saying is that a certain minimum level of education should be publicly funded. Who decides what metrics we use to judge education? It would seem that we're currently doing a terrible job at this.
- gnaritas 18y ago
  No we're not, most kids get out of high school with the ability to read and write. Before public education, you could not say that about most people. Public education is that minimal level of education and it accomplishes that job quite well. Could it be better, sure, but without it things would be much worse.
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    what are you talking about? illiteracy rates were lower before public education started. You can make claims about differences in population if you want, but purely on a percent basis you're wrong.
    - gnaritas 18y ago
      I'd happily change my opinion on the matter if you can cite a source that counts more than just white people.

chops 18y ago

only that people deserve health care, food and shelter Why? These aren't automatically available in nature. They require work, and the application of the mind, to acquire. Health Care is a service provided by individuals. People have a "right" to health care only inasmuch as those who are capable of delivering said health care are willing to do so (that is, voluntarily). The same goes with food gathering/storing/preparation and building manufacturing. Someone has to provide these services, and to state that because someone "deserves it" that those services must be rendered (without concern for rendering individual's agreement), well, that's the master-slave relationship.

billybob 18y ago
Your point is valid, but I think it's a bit extreme to say that guaranteeing basic care makes everyone else a slave. A slave works for nothing to enrich others; a doctor loses some money caring for indigent patients but doesn't become poor while the patients become rich. There is a natural limit there.
- chops 18y ago
  The financial differences are irrelevant. A slave is one who works for another without choice, under threat of force. The (American) slaves were given basic provisions for life, even some leisure time. Their fundamental problem wasn't the money or their lifestyle, it was the lack of choice. They didn't have the right to say "no, I refuse to serve you."
  - msluyter 18y ago
    False dichotomy: you're either 100% free to do anything you want, or you're a slave. There's lots of middle ground, namely that making certain choices implies accepting certain constraints. Universal health care, for example, needn't _force_ doctors into providing care for certain people at gunpoint. It may imply, however, that if you choose to enter medicine that you may have to accept certain conditions. This is already the case, actually. Working at certain emergency rooms obligates one to care for those that come through the door, regardless of whether they can pay. This hardly makes the doctors & nurses who work there slaves. Similarly, in the US we citizens have a right to council, and if you can't afford an attorney, one is provided by the state. Does that make court appointed attorneys slaves?

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

Please do at least a cursory review of the US Budget if you're going to make claims like this. There is a ton of freely available information from places like the tax foundation and many many other sources with which to corroborate. Knee jerk morality is not economic analysis. It isn't a fallacy that the poor don't pay taxes. If a poor person pays X to the government and gets Y in social services and Y>X then they are a net tax eater. Your assertion that the poor pay more taxes as a percentage of income is so ludicrous that I don't even know how to respond.

akeefer 18y ago
Um, perhaps actually enumerating what X and Y are would be a start? Or defining what "poor" means? A lot of people conveniently forget about sales tax (and potentially other sorts of government fees, like vehicle registration fees) when saying "poor people don't pay taxes." Sales tax is an incredibly regressive form of taxation, as are gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, etc.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  sigh okay let's say we have a consumption tax of 10%. By definition your tax rate can not exceed 10% (it will be 10% if you spend all your money). this is peanuts. the tax rates for the top 2 quintiles range from 25% to 32%, and that's straight income before paying all those same consumption taxes. frankly, your argument is flawed from the get go. if we're going to assume a decreasing marginal utility of money (which is what theft from the highly productive is usually justified with) we can't use straight up percentages of income as our metric since the whole thing relies on the idea that taking 10% from a poor person is worse than taking 10% from a rich person. But if we do that we have a whole new problem on our hands. How do we determine the rate at which the utility of money decreases?
  - emmett 18y ago
    Making $30k/year, you are taxed at 15% for social security, another 6% for medicare, 13% federal income taxes, and then depending where you live you pay state income taxes and city income taxes as well. Then you pay 10% sales tax. You get no write offs for a mortgage, because you can't afford a house. The total easily comes to 40% (15% + 6% + 13% + 10% sales tax, not even including state taxes), well exceeding the 25-32% paid at the top. Because the top earners spend a much lower percentage of their income, they are far less effected by sales tax proportionally. Medicare and social security top out at 100k income. So the top earners pay 32%, and that's it (actually less when you include the tax breaks a good accountant can find you). And that's how you can say that the poor pay more taxes than the rich.