bhupy

74 ms·

631.
by bhupy 6y ago
It’s “reliable” insofar as it tells us how the “average” person is doing, and by definition the lower bound for the top half of the population.
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by bhupy 6y ago
Do you have a citation for that? The median is generally the most reliable metric to use specifically for income, since it isn’t impacted by outliers.
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by bhupy 6y ago
A lot of anecdotes and conjecture here, so it’s worth analyzing the median trends across generations: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-23/median... https://twitter.com/erniet
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by bhupy 6y ago
> What actually happens is Amazon shops around for enormous public subsidies for its HQ, bankrupting local and state govnerments. I'll offer a different take: taxation (and budgets) are just the price we pay to society for a basket
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by bhupy 6y ago
If your argument is that there is variance within the EU, you can make the argument that there is just as much variance within the US -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... Pointing at Gr
636.
by bhupy 6y ago
> We discovered that focusing on highways and cars was ultimately not very good. But it achieved the goal it set out to do, so I don't get what your point is. That's exactly the thing we're arguing against — a monopoly&#
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by bhupy 6y ago
None of this is unique to the US — the EU is similarly "interconnected", as is Switzerland. Subsidiarity and decentralization aren't new ideas, and are generally the prescribed solution to unlock governance in a large & h
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by bhupy 6y ago
A very well articulated version of the neoliberal quip “why do you hate the global poor?” :)
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by bhupy 6y ago
The TCJA did not increase spending. We’ve just been spending more on Medicare and Social Security YoY.
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by bhupy 6y ago
It’s a problem because it raises less revenue, since the tax base is narrower. It’s also more precarious, because the tax base happens to be the most mobile. To give you a sense, New York State’s tax brackets are structured similarly to the
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by bhupy 6y ago
Except the median disposable income (aka middle class income) in the US is higher than most of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
642.
by bhupy 6y ago
To be fair, I'm not convinced that reducing taxes actually reduced revenue. Inflation-adjusted revenue has essentially been monotonically increasing: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-a...
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by bhupy 6y ago
The State tax is a (variable) price we pay for the benefit of living in the State and enjoying the services it offers (policing, fire departments, libraries, schools, utilities, roads, property rights, etc) A Spotify subscription is a price
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by bhupy 6y ago
> Equating smartphones with consoles diminishes their significance for the purpose of framing an argument in a certain way. It's just not helpful. And I just made the case for why it's acceptable to equate the two despite the
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by bhupy 6y ago
That's true within many countries also (see: Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Canada). Different States have different ways of running their shit — some better than others...just like nation-states.
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by bhupy 6y ago
> Doesn’t that support my point that the higher tax states actually subsidize poorer states? No, it doesn't, because your statement presupposes that Social Security payments disproportionately go to the poor. In practice, Social Sec
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by bhupy 6y ago
> Yep, they didn't even get it down to 0 and already increased our debt by 2 trillion (more than Obama) Just FYI, the debt didn't increase as a result of the tax cut, it increased as a result of spending. The Federal government
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by bhupy 6y ago
> First, the distribution of tax payers to different marginal tax rate brackets differ. That is, how many percent of US tax payers actually pay top marginal rate vs how many in Belgium do. By definition, the the metric takes into account
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by bhupy 6y ago
Except this is exactly how nation states work... The State Massachusetts has more people than the entire country of Norway. At the state level, scale is more than sufficient.
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by bhupy 6y ago
This is factually untrue: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-7-social-security-my... In fact, research shows that accounting for Social Security essentially cancels out the recent increase in inequality: https:&#
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by bhupy 6y ago
> The "party A" is criticizing that it was not a tax cut, but a wealth transfer from already poor people to rich ones. The tax cuts on middle class were made so they gradually are expiring. While the corporate tax cuts (which B
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by bhupy 6y ago
Yes: https://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-state-educati... The State that's the most reliant on Federal spending is New Mexico; 14% of its budget comes from the Federal government. In every State ex
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by bhupy 6y ago
I think the argument that you're trying to make is that the average wage is higher, and therefore you have to take that into account when doing this comparison. You're absolutely correct about that, and the linked article I showed
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by bhupy 6y ago
Keep in mind that part of the problem in the US is that the wealthy pay an outsized portion of the taxes (top 1% nearly half the income taxes at both State and Federal levels). Other OECD countries are able to fund more progressive spending
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by bhupy 6y ago
> but US services are strikingly low for US federal taxes That's because US federal tax-base is extremely narrow. Ironically the US has the most progressive tax system in the developed world; the top 1% pay ~45% of the Fed budget, b
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by bhupy 6y ago
> I suspect that the percentage is a bit higher when you look at low-income areas (either within states or even at the state level). Okay but how many standard deviations higher? In every single State and school district, Federal funding
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by bhupy 6y ago
Rent? variable? It's one of the most predictable expenditures. I'm not sure if that's more or less cut and dried than "hey I don't have this money anymore because I had to pay money to not be literally homeless&quot
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by bhupy 6y ago
I mean, that's largely the folly of having high Federal taxes. One of the political parties has made it is mission to reduce those, thereby blunting the supposed unfairness of this quirky structure.
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by bhupy 6y ago
> Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky , etc have more senior citizens? That...wasn't the argument. On average the pattern of "net-takers" and "net-contributors" is a proxy for where senior citizens live because Soci
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by bhupy 6y ago
Correct, and mortgage deductions are highly criticized for being a subsidy for the rich.. Pre-tax benefits for transportation are also not universal, and the State governments can deduct Federal taxes in their calculations if they want to f

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