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I was disagreeing with your statement "It isn't a fallacy that the poor don't pay taxes." It very much is a fallacy; they pay all kinds of taxes (as pointed ou

by akeefer 17y ago

I was disagreeing with your statement "It isn't a fallacy that the poor don't pay taxes." It very much is a fallacy; they pay all kinds of taxes (as pointed out by the other commenter they pay medicare tax and social security tax as well as sales taxes, gas taxes, etc.). I wasn't making the argument that they pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income, or any argument around utility. There are arguments to be made around that, but I wasn't making them. I was also basically saying that the whole "your argument is so ludicrous I won't dignify it with a response" thing was a cop-out. Just assuming they must receive more in social services than they pay in taxes, without any attempt to quantify either number, doesn't make for a compelling argument.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago
if the poor paid more in taxes than they receive in benefits why wouldn't social programs be net profitable? the argument makes no sense.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  I don't know exactly what effective tax rates are for the poor (but when I was poorer I was much more concerned about how much I was paying in taxes, for whatever that's worth, and this was just two years ago), but it could easily be the case that such services mostly would be profitable were they not run by an organization with an interest in justifying a higher budget, instead of making a profit. My own feeling is that many things the government now does at a loss could be done profitably in a competitive market, and lots of services for the poor fall into this category.
  - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
    I agree. the poor in our country live like kings not because of social programs but because the market forces prices down to a level where everyone can afford more luxuries.
- akeefer 17y ago
  That entirely depends on how you define "the poor" and how you quantify benefits. Is the military a social program? Police? National defense? How do you quantify one person's portion of that? If we're talking purely about direct social programs like welfare or housing vouchers or medicaid, then homeless people will definitely receive more benefits than they pay in taxes, and people earning $30k year will almost certainly not. If instead you include all that other stuff like defense and highway spending and assume everyone receives a roughly equal share of those benefits then the argument becomes pointless; the average person pays less than 1/300 millionth of the overall tax revenue but receives 1/300 millionth of the benefits.

by akeefer 17y ago

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

if the poor paid more in taxes than they receive in benefits why wouldn't social programs be net profitable? the argument makes no sense.

randallsquared 17y ago
I don't know exactly what effective tax rates are for the poor (but when I was poorer I was much more concerned about how much I was paying in taxes, for whatever that's worth, and this was just two years ago), but it could easily be the case that such services mostly would be profitable were they not run by an organization with an interest in justifying a higher budget, instead of making a profit. My own feeling is that many things the government now does at a loss could be done profitably in a competitive market, and lots of services for the poor fall into this category.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  I agree. the poor in our country live like kings not because of social programs but because the market forces prices down to a level where everyone can afford more luxuries.
akeefer 17y ago
That entirely depends on how you define "the poor" and how you quantify benefits. Is the military a social program? Police? National defense? How do you quantify one person's portion of that? If we're talking purely about direct social programs like welfare or housing vouchers or medicaid, then homeless people will definitely receive more benefits than they pay in taxes, and people earning $30k year will almost certainly not. If instead you include all that other stuff like defense and highway spending and assume everyone receives a roughly equal share of those benefits then the argument becomes pointless; the average person pays less than 1/300 millionth of the overall tax revenue but receives 1/300 millionth of the benefits.