Some kind of incentive like, say, the profit? Why should people need more of an incentive than that?
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The joke is that the people making that pledge all make a lot less than $10-million/annum. It’s a shot at the Libertarians who whinge “if you like taxes so much there’s nothing stopping you from volunteering to give as much as you want to the government. Gotcha!”, and also highlights how few people would be affected by this change.
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There was a relevant point in a reply to @Lollarfish’s tweet above:
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Not on your list is “buying a stock, holding it for a year and selling it”. That’s also investing, but it looks much more like gambling than any of the investment activities you listed. Buying a bond to loan a company money, and they pay you back or not, that’s clearly investing. Even buying and selling of that bond could be seen as investing, since it eventually comes due.
At the IPO, or any new stock offering, the buyer injects money into the company investing in it. But, by the time we’re 100 trades and years later, it’s hard to see how any of the stock trading is investing in the company at all. It’s not like they get any of that money.
That sounds fine. Or, redefine what we mean by capital gains. Investments in actual work, build something, pay for R&D, whatever that is spent and then paid back. But, buying and selling a stock or other financial thing trading that’s not injecting capital into a company, treat as ordinary income.
If you go to Vegas and will ten grand gambling, it’s regular income. If you buy a stock and it goes up in value giving you ten grand profit, it’s no less gambling and should be treated the same.
The nuance differences between the two problems, and my greatly simplified statement are where all the differences occur. Saying “Only the programers need to understand it.” is a simplification from “everybody needs to understand it”. Clearly, something that’s published, reviewable, auditable, and can be explained and documented is important. Programmers, auditors, accountants, IRS specialists, anyone interested in investing the time should be able to understand it. That doesn’t mean it needs to be “easy” or fit on a postcard. There’s nothing wrong with something being hard. It’s also not anonymous, but is completely traceable and auditable. The entire banking system behind when you use and ATM to get some cash is complicated. What it has going for it is that it’s completely auditable for every single thing it does for every dollar. It’s also able to be corrected if an audit finds a problem. This simple difference is where all of the comic lives, and it’s totally correct too.
Yes, that’s the entire point of marginal, obviously.
The value of dollar then vs today based on inflation that’s across the entire economy is deceiving. Even more so at the regional level. It’s easy to point out many instances where it completely breaks down.
For instance, the median price of a house in 1946 was $5,150 which is $66,318 today.
But today, I couldn’t find an example of median housing prices near that. In CA $547,900, MA $404,500, MD $287,800, FL $230,000, TX $191,900, KS $138,500. So, even if we all move to KS, the median house price is still double what it was in 1946.
Or, the median new car price in 1946 was $1,125 which is worth $14,486 today, but a search shows today’s price is really $35,285.
The point of picking a high enough number is to look at the point where the marginal value of dollar really is much smaller. One could think of it as a perceived marginal value that’s actually smaller (or as small as) what’s left after the tax is paid. At that level, paying the tax doesn’t feel like anything then.
If you take the top 1% and break it up, the top 1% of that is vastly different from the bottom.
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Rand Paul isn’t flying to Canada to get a procedure for nothing. (ETA: That is, it’s not just the regular checkups part of it, it’s also just that the services are equal or better quality)
The problem with looking at the numbers is that they are skewed by the policy. If the price of a house in California has gone up to 8 times what it would have been with inflation alone, that is because our taxation policies allowed people to be rich enough to buy those houses. The top 1% most expensive houses will cost what the 1% richest people can pay for them. The top 10% most expensive houses will cost what the 10% richest people can pay for them. If taxes were higher, they would just be cheaper.
I think in democracy it’s about asking ourselves at what point we can really collectively say, “No one really needs that much money.” It’s a point of philosophy, not of math. But I also think that it needs to be approached incrementally, because culture doesn’t change over night.
Totally off-topic Apparently I wrote "our taxation policies", briefly forgetting I wasn't American. "Depersonalization" is my word of the week.
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It’s both.
Modern republicans both don’t understand how their own government is supposed to function (their whole platform is based on breaking the government in order to prove the necessity of paying their own personally owned/involved corporations to take over the jobs the government had been originally setup to do)
And are willing to lie about anything to get their way.
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Sorry, today’s research topic is digital phase lock loop IC’s. Got any advice? It’s for, uh, a friend.
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And more to the point of how Marginal Tax rates actually work…The years in which they were highest (regardless of political party control) are the years in which the US had the highest economic booms for middle and lower class households as well as for the public infrastructure itself.
Basically what it tells you is that higher marginal taxes actually help all of us with better infrastructure, help the lower and middle class elevate their economic status and the rich remain…well, the rich! EVERYONE WINS.
Which is why the GOP and 1% have fought and railed against it…because heaven forbid we ALL win. That’s just un-American.
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that’s a lot more succinct than i was. 
oh, i know. but when those people are saying “donate” they’re using the deliberately incorrect language of neoliberalism, and spreading that harmful concept even further.
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