That’s the question.
If we were talking about this question in 1976, then a majority of voters might agree with you or at least fail to successfully rally in opposition.
After 30 years, it’s obviously out of favor, even with the GOP, partly because it resulted in so much inefficiency and inequality.
And even in 1976, it was bad, dumb and wrong policy that rewarded and apologized for idlers while penalizing too many working voters.
Uh, no, it doesn’t . Not at all.
But don’t expect me to pedantically explain why not.
Ooooooh, the deadly flaw of TAKING THINGS PERSONALLY!!!1!!
Especially FUN things!
Anathema! Back, demon! Back, I say!
Touche, sir. A palpable hit.
May I have my man offer you a brandy?
There is no such fiction. Government is created and maintained by society. Government isn’t an alien reptile invasion.
It’s simple. If you live in a country like the US, that shits all over the poor, and you earn make get a lot of money, and you reckon the status quo is just fine thanks, you’re a fucking arsehole.
That’s capital investment, which is only a subset of a much greater pool of investment money. Most investment is in financial instruments which have only a small-to-nonexistent connection to the actual workings of a company. You do know that buying stock, for example, unless it’s a IPO or such is not investing in a company, right?
It’s simple arithmetic you can do in your head to work out what percentage of your income it is when you buy something. So, yeah, I do make those calculations. I’d explain about how.its a fuckton harder to be economical when you’re poor enough to need to, but there’s no point. Small gubmint and less taxes will fix it all, amirite?
The “Boots” Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness is alway worth a repost though
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
The USA is unlike many countries (y’know, the ones with universal health care, for example) in that it allows individuals to deduct mortgage interest and taxes (wtf?!) from their taxable income.
This has a perverse effect: by making mortgages ‘cheaper’, it makes house prices higher. Any income-tax reduction or home-owners’ subsidy increases the price of the home by the same amount. All this does is transfer money from the taxpayers to the banks. This effect is well documented and punishes poor people.
As far as the rich paying more federal income tax, I’ll accept that. But is federal income tax the only tax that Americans pay? (Can you say ‘misleading statistic’ girls and boys? I knew you could.)
They pay more taxes because they take the biggest (by far) chunk of income. (I’ll leave alone the problem of not sufficiently taxing income from investments.)
The poor pay a larger proportion of their income to the municipal, state, and federal governments than the rich do. Maybe a little georgism would do everyone (well, maybe not the very rich) a lot of good. That, and a proper socialized medical care system.
I’m not sure if it’s relevant to the debate at play, but I have an anecdote from France that I feel is worth thinking about. Martin Hirsch, the guy who reformed the base welfare in France (as a one-time single-issue “high commissioner”, because he didn’t want to be a minister) told about how big businessmen, when the debate is up about moderating their astronomical incomes, often answer by stating the government should clean up its accounts first. He then told about how he met some factory workers who were puzzled and upset that they got partial welfare under the new regime. He explained to them that it was as intended, that they got an income complement because they didn’t earn enough. They then told him that their boss had the 14th income in France, and yet there hadn’t been a single global raise in their company in more than ten years. So really they weren’t happy with the arrangement, because he should be the one to pay them a decent wage.
My point was that it’s unfair for some to receive a tax break that others can’t because of poverty or in my case that I’ve paid off my mortgage, or any of a dozen reasons why people don’t have mortgages. In fact the mortgage interest deduction is just a subsidy to the real estate business.
What gets me about this whole discussion is that some of the commenters (not going to say who) seem to have this attitude of “If a person is poor, they don’t deserve to live”. I think that is what holds back any type of meaningful reform of the safety nets in the country. Until we get over the idea that only certain people deserve to live due to how much money they have, we’ll never get anywhere.
Be nice if the owners of the businesses thought that, but they seem to think they don’t have enough money so they need more.
Related to “boots”: although money is fungible in face value, it isn’t purely fungible in true value.
If you take $1,000 from a working class person, they’re quite likely to end up hungry and/or homeless. But if you take $1,000 from a millionaire, it has no significant impact on their quality of life.
Money in the pockets of the poor is worth more than money in the bank accounts of the rich.
pays less in taxes than most of us, I’d wager
That’s insane. He must be paying millions per year, even though the costs he imposes on government is much much smaller.
(at least percentage of his income)
Haha, “at least”. As though that didn’t completely negate your point.
it’s unfair for some to receive a tax break that others can’t because of poverty or in my case that I’ve paid off my mortgage,
That word “unfair” is so easy to say, and so hard to base on logic. Is it unfair that some people have a larger percentage of their income protected from taxation?
The point is that when he pays 15% of his income in taxes, that’s far less of a hit then it is to the rest of us, who pay a higher percentage. Even the working poor, who in theory pay no taxes, end up paying more in other forms of taxation. I really feel no pain for Mittens paying in his share of the tax burden, because he’s coming out at the other end with far more money than he or his family will ever need or can use in their lives. I’m sure he’s even aware that he has literally nothing to complain about, given how much he has socked away and how he can afford to avoid much of his tax burden. Very few things that come up in his life will impact him economically, cause he can afford to throw $$$ at it. When a family member becomes ill in Romney’s family, while it’s still hard, he can afford to focus on the important things, while the rest of us experience that, we also have to worry about how we’re going to pay for chemo, and worry about if we’re going to lose our house and be out on the street when it’s all over. For far too many families are less than a paycheck away from disaster. Romney’s literally isn’t.
So, I’m really not sure what your concern is for the richest among us and their “tax burden”, but I promise, they are going to be okay. maybe worry about the people who are hanging on by their fingernails?
And taxing the middle class, who are working to get by, at a higher rate, when they have far less income and minimal, if any investments (and those are generally in 401ks, which are meant to be retirement funds)? I’m sorry, how does that follow, that the people with less wealth who use their $$$ in the real economy should carry a heavier tax burden than someone who gambles in the stock market? They are not investing in the real world, they are investing in a fantasy land that has repeatedly throw the real economy into chaos when unregulated. If you want a chaotic economy, then you that is what you do… but if you want to have people who can take care of their needs and even put extra cash into the economy, then you tax those with a more assets more heavily.
