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#15224819
Drlee wrote:Always expect a Republican to be pro business.


Unless said business say's something Republicans don't like. See Disney in Florida. Which is interesting for people who claim free speech is sacrosanct.

In effect, Republicans today behave like the mafia as opposed to trying to take care of their constituents. It's about what you as an individual or company can do for them personally, and not what they can do for (collective) you.

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


Yea, this is something I've been thinking about since I was in college and first heard of the fair tax (which has limited support amongst mostly right wing types, I don't believe left wing types support this at all).

It seems like focusing taxation on consumption would in effect, create a progressive tax system (which is what the current income tax system tries to do). Naturally, people with more money, tend to spend more.

The other benefit of a consumption tax is that even people who earn money illegally (drugs, guns, prostitution, whatever) will also get taxed, since they have to at least occasionally buy stuff too.

I wonder if any economist have done deep analysis on this sort of setup. The fair tax if I recall right, also makes sending up to poverty line levels free (everyone gets tax credit/rebate equal to the poverty line income level, even unemployed).
Last edited by Rancid on 30 Apr 2022 14:57, edited 1 time in total.
#15224820
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?


The latter, of course.

More wealthy people are able to earn more, and their wealth function is probably of a higher degree of polynomial than less well-off people.

The fairest system is probably to tax people according to their "function of wealth".

I suspect the wealthiest people have their wealth expand in degree 2 (quadratic) or even 3 (cubic) now.
#15224822
The argument for progressive tax being fair is that not every dollar earned is equally important to people.

Basically, the first 10 thousand dollars you earn, are more important than any other money you earn after. Those first 10k will go into your housing, food, shelter, transport. The next 10k, will go after other things that are a little less important. As you move up and up with more money earned, each dollar becomes less important since it now goes into luxury goods for example. Shit you don't really need, but buy it because you have the cash. The argument is, it's ok to take a little more on the higher levels of income.

To steal from @Patrickov, this is basically a "function of income".
#15224825
Rancid wrote:The argument for progressive tax being fair is that not every dollar earned is equally important to people.

Basically, the first 10 thousand dollars you earn, are more important than any other money you earn after. Those first 10k will go into your housing, food, shelter, transport. The next 10k, will go after other things that are a little less important. As you move up and up with more money earned, each dollar becomes less important since it now goes into luxury goods for example. Shit you don't really need, but buy it because you have the cash. The argument is, it's ok to take a little more on the higher levels of income.

To steal from Patrickov, this is basically a "function of income".


And more importantly: Wealth has to be returned to the pool after the end of a person, a company or an organization, just like how our material return to the Earth after we die.

Actually the failure to properly tax non-human entities is where the problem starts.
#15224827
Drlee wrote:
So the employer or high income person is getting the benefit of the work while the government subsidizes the worker.



I think you just stumbled onto something here -- maybe, since we all have the common everyday needs of 'physiology', 'safety', etc., perhaps government *should* subsidize these basic material needs of all workers / people, across-the-board, so that there's no question as to their being appropriate for active roles in society.

It's *another* matter whether the private sector (private interests) should be able to *benefit* from this kind of 'baseline' of public providing / provisioning for basic individual humane requirements.


Image


I argue that economic exploitation (by the private sector) needs to *stop*, because workers are being robbed *every hour* of their surplus labor value.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



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Drlee wrote:
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 thought 'free enterprise' was supposed to be about maximizing value to the shareholders -- ?

The rich didn't get rich by 'paying [workers] more [for] their own support'.
#15224829
Rancid wrote:Unless said business say's something Republicans don't like. See Disney in Florida. Which is interesting for people who claim free speech is sacrosanct.

In effect, Republicans today behave like the mafia as opposed to trying to take care of their constituents. It's about what you as an individual or company can do for them personally, and not what they can do for (collective) you.



Yea, this is something I've been thinking about since I was in college and first heard of the fair tax (which has limited support amongst mostly right wing types, I don't believe left wing types support this at all).

It seems like focusing taxation on consumption would in effect, create a progressive tax system (which is what the current income tax system tries to do). Naturally, people with more money, tend to spend more.

The other benefit of a consumption tax is that even people who earn money illegally (drugs, guns, prostitution, whatever) will also get taxed, since they have to at least occasionally buy stuff too.

I wonder if any economist have done deep analysis on this sort of setup. The fair tax if I recall right, also makes sending up to poverty line levels free (everyone gets tax credit/rebate equal to the poverty line income level, even unemployed).


transactional taxes/vat/GST affect the poor more than the rich. The generally come with a raft of expensive and expensive to implement, your asking every business to collect taxes as well as sell stuff. They tend to popular with governments as they go up with inflation and creep up and often not itemized separately so are often less emotional than the government taking my money income taxes. Most include exception for "business expensive" which generally allow those with real money to largely avoid them (but that's not really different to income tax,) There are problems with all taxes. Income taxes really only work for those paid salary or by the hour once it;s serious money there are many ways out of it. consumption taxes have their strengths and weakness. Income and consumption taxes are two most popular (with Governments) relying on one with heighten those weaknesses and strengths. a blend to SOME extent achieves a mixture. The major drawback is the compliance costs of businesses. Generally governments have too different types of taxes and they should be reduced to a few., especially those that raise letter money and have =high costs (all taxes have costs in raising them) BUt to do that in revenuse neutral way would raise some taxes and that would be the headline.
#15224860
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?


What's the standard deduction for people filing singly or married?
#15224863
Unthinking Majority wrote:Not true.

It is most definitely true.
Wouldn't a poor person be accessing more government benefits?

Possibly. But to do so, he first has to pay a landowner full market value just for permission to do so. Everything a poor person gets from government he has to hand over to the rich.
A rich person should pay a higher % because they can afford it more than a poor person. There's no other reason.

No, the better reason is that the rich get more benefit -- far more benefit -- from government spending. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading. Here's a video that explains it pretty clearly and simply:

#15224864
Saeko wrote:An income tax is precisely the opposite of what it claims to be. It's not a tax on income at all. It's a tax on spending.

That claim is false and absurd.
Generally, people spend the first few thousand dollars they earn on basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, clothes, etc. Then the next few thousand on less important things. Finally, you get to a point where they're just pissing money away on luxuries.

Or they save and invest it. Among the 1%, in most cases, that just means bidding up the prices of each other's rent collection privileges.
#15224865
BlutoSays wrote:All three of you are wrong as can be.

No; and without reading further, I know with 100% certainty that you are about to just spew some fallacious, absurd and disingenuous filth:
We have a system now where 57% of households pay no income taxes (those are IRS numbers)*. They vote for free shit because they know they won't have to pay for it and don't have a stake in paying for it, but they'll gladly continue to be takers.

See? You are falsely, absurdly, and disingenuously pretending that federal income tax is the only tax anyone pays, and that the poor do not pay more of all the other taxes than the rich. You are also refusing to know the fact that whatever poor people get from government, they have to pay the rich -- especially landowners -- full market value for. I.e., the ones who actually get to pocket the money are the rich. Which might explain why no matter how much money we give the poor, they don't become any better off, while the rich get rapidly richer without lifting a productive finger.
That's why we need a flat-tax where everyone "feels" the effects of their voting choices.

No, that's just more fallacious, absurd and disingenuous filth from you, because the laws of economics are not anyone's voting choice.
Anything else is self-destructive.

What is really self-destructive is continuing to shovel money into the pockets of the richest, greediest, most privileged and parasitic segment of society in return for nothing.
Stores are less full of food than they used to be.

Evidence? I haven't noticed any such trend.
That trend will drop further, and we'll have shortages because people like you are running the government.

:lol: No, BS, it is people like you who are running the government.
See 1960's East Germany. We're headed that way.

More like 1930s Weimar Germany...
#15224866
BlutoSays wrote:You believe you are "owed" by virtue of your existence. You aren't, ya little marxist.

Aren't people owed their individual rights just by virtue of their existence? Isn't that what it means to have human rights? Or should they have to pay rich, greedy, privileged parasites full market value just for permission to work, shop, access public services and infrastructure and the opportunities and amenities the community provides, as well as the physical resources nature provides?
#15224870
BlutoSays wrote:We've been practicing class warfare every day against those that are successful for decades.

GARBAGE. Read and learn, from someone who self-evidently and indisputably knows incomparably more about it than you:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
― Warren Buffett

57% of households pay NO income tax.

So, you are advocating that households with no income should somehow have to pay income tax....?
#15224871
BlutoSays wrote:Keep more of her income? She's keeping it all, already.

No she isn't. In addition to other taxes like sales tax, she has to pay landowners full market value just for permission to work, to shop, to send her kids to public school, etc. ALL the value of government spending on desirable public services and infrastructure is taken by landowners. No one else gets any benefit at all. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading.
Last edited by Truth To Power on 30 Apr 2022 19:46, edited 1 time in total.
#15224872
Just because those households pay no income tax does not mean they have no income.

By the time they claim all the structural subsidies built into the tax code (EITC, student subsidies, or not even claiming income), they don't have to pay any income taxes or they even get a refund.
#15224874
Truth To Power wrote:No she isn't. She has to pay landowners full market value just for permission to work, to shop, to send her kids to public school, etc. ALL the value of government spending on desirable public services and infrastructure is taken by landowners. No one else gets any benefit at all. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading.


WTF are you taking about? I'm talking about INCOME taxes.

Fuck your theorums. We're living your "theorums" and things are just going so well! :roll:
#15224875
BlutoSays wrote:Just because those households pay no income tax does not mean they have no income.

You are trying to change the subject with an "affirming the consequent" fallacy. Some households have no taxable income. You say all households should have to pay some income tax even if they have no taxable income. But that is ridiculous because there is a good reason we don't ask households with very low incomes to pay income tax: it costs society more to keep them out of destitution than the tax they would pay.
By the time they claim all the structural subsidies built into the tax code (EITC, student subsidies, or not even claiming income), they don't have to pay any income taxes or they even get a refund.

That's not what I was talking about. You say every household should have to pay income tax whether they have any taxable income or not. That view is absurd.
#15224877
The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the richest 1%. This is not even up for debate.

Considering only Federal Income Tax and no other taxes is fallacious. It is a meaningless number.
#15224878
57% of households not paying any income tax is absurd and your moronic ideology only works day after day to boost that number in favor of "tax the rich".

At some point, you "kill the golden goose", which in today's terms means production moves overseas, underground economies and black markets form, the dollar turns to shit as you continue to debase it and you have class warfare between the classes due to the animosity created by fewer and fewer pulling their weight and the burden falling on a shrinking number of people who actually WORK for a living.
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