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#15224724
BlutoSays wrote:Two scenarios...

A population that pays twenty percent of their earnings to the government, regardless of how much they earn. A flat 20% of whatever they earn, regardless of how much they earn.

That is similar to the actual incidence of the current aggregate US tax system at all levels of government (differs significantly by state).
A population that pays a certain percentage of their earnings to the government based on how much they earn (graduated tax AKA a progressive tax). The more you earn, the higher percentage you pay.

That more or less describes the current personal income tax system (in fact, those at the very top of the income distribution -- the top 0.001% -- pay a lower rate than those just below them).
Which is "fair" and why?

Neither is fair because they do not relate tax burden to either ability to pay or benefits received.
#15224729
BlutoSays wrote:Two scenarios...

A population that pays twenty percent of their earnings to the government, regardless of how much they earn. A flat 20% of whatever they earn, regardless of how much they earn.

OR

A population that pays a certain percentage of their earnings to the government based on how much they earn (graduated tax AKA a progressive tax). The more you earn, the higher percentage you pay.

Which is "fair" and why?


A person making 30k should keep more of their income because they're already near poverty. A person making 200k can afford to pay a higher % of tax than a person making 30k.
#15224732
BlutoSays wrote:A
You have this idea that we're the richest nation, but then again, you couldn't find your butt with 10 mirrors, a flashlight and ten hands.

WE ARE A DEBTOR NATION. Get that thru your thick head. We are NOT a rich nation. We have a debt of $91K per person. ( http://www.usdebtclock.org )


Huh? That's government debt. Jeff Bezos is not in debt. The wealth in America is funneled straight to the top. Jeff Bezoz doesn't need any more money. A single mom making 35k definitely could do well to keep more of her income.
#15224736
Unthinking Majority wrote:Not true. Wouldn't a poor person be accessing more government benefits?

A rich person should pay a higher % because they can afford it more than a poor person. There's no other reason.


Poor people access more of some benefits, like food stamps or welfare. Other benefits, such as healthcare, are accessed by all roughly at similar levels. And still others are used mainly or solely by people with money. Like land deeds and whatever offices deal with that: the benefits associated with those government services are only available to those who own land. Or corporate subsidies.

It does not seem self evident that poor people receive more government benefits.

On a tangent more directly related to the topic, I can think of one other reason why income tax should to be progressive if we want things to be “fair” (lol, this is capitalism):

Rich people may pay a disproportionately higher percentage of income tax, but poor people pay a disproportionately higher percentage of sales tax, and middle class people pay a disproportionately higher percentage of property taxes.

To shift the tax burden off one of these three taxes and onto one or two of the others is basically class warfare.
#15224741
Unthinking Majority wrote:Not true. Wouldn't a poor person be accessing more government benefits?

A rich person should pay a higher % because they can afford it more than a poor person. There's no other reason.


Whose Property are the Police , Prisons and Court protecting? Not homeless people. So who gets the biggest benefits form all that poor people or rich people?
#15224748
Pants-of-dog wrote:Poor people access more of some benefits, like food stamps or welfare. Other benefits, such as healthcare, are accessed by all roughly at similar levels. And still others are used mainly or solely by people with money. Like land deeds and whatever offices deal with that: the benefits associated with those government services are only available to those who own land. Or corporate subsidies.

It does not seem self evident that poor people receive more government benefits.

On a tangent more directly related to the topic, I can think of one other reason why income tax should to be progressive if we want things to be “fair” (lol, this is capitalism):

Rich people may pay a disproportionately higher percentage of income tax, but poor people pay a disproportionately higher percentage of sales tax, and middle class people pay a disproportionately higher percentage of property taxes.

To shift the tax burden off one of these three taxes and onto one or two of the others is basically class warfare.


This is not capitalism. This is cronyism. We've been practicing class warfare every day against those that are successful for decades. We're reaching a point where things are starting to tip over and you keep saying more!

57% of households pay NO income tax.




Additionally, I pasted this earlier. Once again:



Image
#15224749
Unthinking Majority wrote:Huh? That's government debt. Jeff Bezos is not in debt. The wealth in America is funneled straight to the top. Jeff Bezoz doesn't need any more money. A single mom making 35k definitely could do well to keep more of her income.


Keep more of her income? She's keeping it all, already.
#15224752
BlutoSays wrote:This is not capitalism. This is cronyism.


This is not a rebuttal. This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

We've been practicing class warfare every day against those that are successful for decades. We're reaching a point where things are starting to tip over and you keep saying more!

57% of households pay NO income tax.


If 57% of households are too poor to pay income tax, then your country has bigger problems than a progressive tax system.

This is one of the reasons why the USA should not be considered a developed country.
Last edited by Pants-of-dog on 30 Apr 2022 02:32, edited 1 time in total.
#15224754
OK, I have added my new thoughts.

Steve_American wrote the parts in normal font and Bluto replied with the parts in bold. I've add the Capital letters to his parts for clarity.
1] Mark Twain said that lie travels around the world in the time it takes for the victim to put his pants on to reply" Or something like that. By this I mean that it always takes longer to refute a false assertion than it takes to make it in the 1st place. So, I have to write books.

2] This is often not true. Corps should raise their prices to the max. that the market will bear. If the market is competitive, then if the Gov. reduces its giveaways to that corp or raises its taxes, then the corp can't raise its prices without reducing its sales more. This is basic economic theory. Of course, the US market is not competitive, so corps can try to raise prices some. But, who knows if they can raise them enough.
. . . Besides which, the samething can be said about the rich. If the Gov. raises their taxes they can try to have the corps they own pay them more to cover their increased tax bill. But, can they cover it all?

A] No, that simply causes black markets & underground economies and in a global economy, it drives business overseas and causes greater unemployment.

3] There have been studies on this. They have found that what the bottom 80% want or need is rarely delivered in the US. Examples are many. They include just in the last year => Medicare for all, lower drug prices, higher taxes on the rich, forgiving student loan debt, the child care payments, the anti-trust laws enforced, the Union rights laws enforced and strengthened, etc. etc.
. . . The Dems gave the people none of these things. This refutes your claim that the Dems give them what they want so they vote for Dems.

B] You don't "forgive" student debt. Debt doesn't get cancelled ot any of these other euphamisms you have. It gets added to bill of the tax payer, with interest. Once again, you live in a fanstasy world. TANFL [=there ain't no free lunch]

4] How in the world can food shortages be caused by too much money in the economy? Really, this is silly.
. . . You are predicting the future here not describing the last 3 years.

C] No, YOU are silly.... as are your economic views.

5] You may know all that, but your posts don't seem consistent with that knowledge.

6] Here you are just making an assertion that someday the sh!t will hit the fan. Japan has been deficit spending for over 30 years now and tshtf has not happened yet. A lot of people will die needless deaths in the US over the longer than 30 years that history shows can be necessary before tshtf happens. If it happens.
. . . Your assertion is not proof, it isn't even evidence. I and others have explained how it is just not true that inflation in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Weimar Germany and other nations was caused by money printing. I'll ay it again, the Koch brother's Cato Institute put out a report that looked for every case of hyperinflation in history that they could find. All 57 of them happened after 1900 and all 57 were caused by shortages before the money printing started. Not after.
. . . Weimar Germany had to pay WWI reparations in gold, Pounds, dollars, or Francs. So, they had a shortage of gold. They set out to buy it by printing Marks. The shortage came 1st. France was also occupying the Ruhr industrial region so there were shortages of products. Also, it was after WWI so there were likely food shortages because Germany lost grain growing regions in Poland, etc.
. . . Shortages cause inflation because the market is doing its job of using price increases to keep the poor from buying what they need before the rich get to buy what they just want.

I don't think that I or we or the US can escape the "laws of economics". No, I just have asserted and sort of proven that the "laws of economics" that you believe in are not real. I assert that they are claimed to have been proven using deductive logic, not proven by looking at history.
. . . I have asserted that the 1st "Law of deductive logic" is that one can't prove any conclusion if any of the premises that were assumed true are actually false. I have asserted that about 6 of the premises of mainstream economics are obviously false. I have listed examples.
. . . Lurkers, note that Bluto has never replied to refute any of those assertions that I have made in the past. He just ignores them. Just like he ignores my thread about what Ray Dalio said about hard money paying off the national debt.

D] What's are not real are your economic views. You're part of the Free Shit Army, so you'll say anything to get more free shit. I get that! Do you?

So, my reply is =>
A] It can be a problem that corps and the rich just flee the nation. However, problems can have solutions. The fact that Bluto can't think of any doesn't mean there are no solutions. Some examples are =>
. . 1] If they take their dollars and flee, then we can have laws from them using their dollars in the US for any purpose. For example we have laws to keep foreign gov. from making campaign contributions in the US. These laws can be made close to air tight. Many nations don't let foreigners own land and buildings in their nation. The US can do the same.
. . 2] The, the US Gov. can replace the money that left with new dollars that are just created.
. . 3] The US Gov. can invest directly and own factories to make the stuff in the US to provide jobs.
. . 4] The US can tax the revenue of corps that is collected in the US, instead of the "profits". Revenue can't be hidden. [Well cash can be, maybe; but can a huge corp operate with cash sales. I do not think so.]

B] Actually there are 3 free lunches that we all depend on.
. . 1] Plants get sunlight for free.
. . 2] Animals and plants breath the air (or O2 and Co2 in the water) for free.
. . 3] Banks create dollars with every loan and are charged by the Fed a much lower rate of interest than what the bank charges the borrower. It may not be free (maybe the bank's interest is really zero), but who cares if the loan pays 4 to 10 times higher interest rate back to the bank?

So, it might be possible that the US Gov. (and most nations) can create their currency in moderation for free. That is, it is possible that the nation's money supply must grow to replace money that is saved or is used to buy goods from overseas. It is possible/likely that just growing the money supply by relying on banks to make loans (that are in fact made with cash created out of thin air) is not a good way to grow the money supply, because in a slow down the market forces make the downturn much worse and banks stop lending which reduces spending more and GDP is just total spending, so reduced spending = reduced GDP.
. . .When this happens Keynesians say the only response is for the Gov. to deficit spend money into the economy to replaces the incomes being lost as banks stop lending.

C] What can I say? I asked Bluto to explain how too much money can cause food shortages in the stores. His reply is to say I'm silly. IMHO this is exactly like us seeing 2 grade school kids arguing like this. =>
. . . NO, you are wrong and I'm right.
. . .No, I'm right and you are wrong.

. . . NO, you are wrong and I'm right.
. . .No, I'm right and you are wrong.

. . . NO, you are wrong and I'm right.
. . .No, I'm right and you are wrong.
Etc. for 10 minutes.

This is not a convincing way to reply.

D] What can I say? This is much like his reply in C above.
I explained why mainstream economics is wrong. I said that the 1st law of deductive logic is that one can't prove a conclusion with premises that include false premises that you assumed are true. He ignored this.

Look people, I am well aware that a big majority of you accept on authority that mainstream economics is true. So, Bluto is one of those people. I see very few people supporting my views here on this site. I suppose many of you have decided that I'm a crank and just ignore me.

With all due respect people, unless you are in the top 1% you are just hurting yourself when you don't look into MMT.

Do you disagree that the 1st law of deductive logic is the 1st law of deductive logic is that one can't prove a conclusion with premises that include false premises that you assumed are true? I hope that none of you can honestly say yes to this question.
. . . So, if you said yes, then you need to look into my assertion that many of the premises in mainstream economic theory are obviously false. I'm going to admit that if you google it, you will not easily find examples. I have asked Bill Mitchell to provide a list and he ignored me. OTOH, he has asserted some of them one by one here and there in his blog.

I have tried to give you examples. ITT, I pointed to the premise that banks loan their depositors' money. Now it has been proven in 2014 with an experiment with 200K euros and a German bank. OK, it's proven. So how does mainstream use this false assumption? I'm asserting that when is asserts that savings is equal to investment, that it is saying the above claim in another way. Mainstream economics is hiding the fact that it is using a false premise in its proofs.

Another false premise is that the US Gov. is like a household and must pay-off its national debt someday.
This is false for a few reasons =>
. . 1] The US can "live" far longer than any person can. It is 220 years old now. The UK is about 1000 years old now (1066 2022).
. . 2] Households can't print dollars. The US Gov. can create dollars, and does so in every year it had had a deficit.
. . 3] Ray Dalio said as much as 'The US can't pay off the national debt with hard dollars, that is with tax revenue dollars. That every time it has had a surplus (having a surplus means a surplus of tax revenue over spending, which by definition reduce the national debt toward zero if it is continued long enough), so every time the US has had a surplus there was soon a Depression (aka Bank Panic). It can only pay off the debt with "soft dollars" (meaning newly created dollars).' ITT, I have provided a link to where you can him say it with different words.
. . . Ray Dalio is a famous billionaire who is thought of as an expert economist. He has zero reasons to lie to you and say that, and many reasons to lie to you and say the opposite.

.
Last edited by Steve_American on 30 Apr 2022 03:52, edited 1 time in total.
#15224758
BlutoSays wrote:This is not capitalism. This is cronyism. We've been practicing class warfare every day against those that are successful for decades. We're reaching a point where things are starting to tip over and you keep saying more!

There is is not and there never has been another form of capitalism other than cronyism. Rich people and cope orations have class interests and they are going to work together occasionally often enough to get results. The Idea that Capitalists and corporations are going to adhere to the impossible philosophical abstraction of competition and free market is a delusional position that flies in the face of human nature and history.
#15224766
BlutoSays wrote:This is not capitalism. This is cronyism. We've been practicing class warfare every day against those that are successful for decades. We're reaching a point where things are starting to tip over and you keep saying more!

57% of households pay NO income tax.


Additionally, I pasted this earlier. Once again:


Image


People, look close at the bar graph.
It has a major error.
It somehow left off the people who earned between the top 1% and the top 5%.
This does not increase my willingness to accept this as true. This not the sort of error I expect from a good source of true info.
.
#15224815
Always expect a Republican to be pro business. In bright red states, more than any other, the Republicans look to the government to subsidize business directly. How? Take Alabama for example. The minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25 per hour because the R's refuse to raise it. Then they complain when someone making less than $10.00 per hour can't afford to pay his/her hospital bill. So their solution? Use tax money to pay the hospital bill. And who got the benefit from this person's work? The employer who paid them less than a living wage did. MacDonald's actually had, on their website, instructions on how their employees could apply for food stamps.

So the employer or high income person is getting the benefit of the work while the government subsidizes the worker. Therefor, the person who gets the services should pay for them. I vote for a graduated tax, with very limited deductions, as most fair. (And I am one who will pay more.) If the wealthy want the poor to pay more of their own support they can pay them more. That is how free enterprise is supposed to work.

I am all about a vat. A tax on spending makes far more sense than a tax on income.
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