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Is This Statement True Of Federal Income Taxes?

Is This Statement True Of Federal Income Taxes?

  • Total voters
    28
Crossroads said:
If you consider the fact they own 75 percent of all "wealth" in the country, then no, the statement might not hold. But since this is about "income", of which they constitute about 48 percent of, then yes, the statement could be considered true.

I still voted "no" however. There are plenty of other factors to consider. There is a reason we have a "progressive" tax system, it helps compensate for the inherent inequalities in a system such as ours. Yes, that would be the "redistribute the wealth" thing.
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Actually the progressive tax system is a stimulant for our consumer economy since it taxes money not spent at a higher rate. Taxing everybody at equal rates would deprive the economy of billions in retail sales crippling our economy and our GDP which is 75% consumer spending.
The sad thing is that as our tax system grows less and less progressive, less and less people pay any income taxes which is opposite of what you might think would happen. It is another "unintended consequence" of the supply side nonsense of Reaganomics.
 
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Zyphlin said:
Neither. "Fair Share" is a poor and arbitrary notion that shouldn't factor into income tax levels. "Fairness" is not a good measurement for law as it's a completely subjective notion that has no definitive answer. Additionally, to often action that could be viewed as "unfair" can be attempted to "recitfy" something entirely seperate that they deem to also be "unfair".

IE...it's "unfair" that certain people have so much money, so we'll "unfairly" take a substantially amount away from them.

Fairness isn't the basis for which our tax code should be decided.
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I agree that fairness is subjective, but that's no reason to abandon fairness completely.
 
polgara said:
:agree: With so many businesses leaving California and taking their "richness" with them, who is going to pay the bills for those that count on other people to keep them alive? Sanctuary cities need constant funding in order to take care of those who can't or won't do so on their own, so we seem to be reaching some sort of tipping point, IMO. *shudders*

Greetings, ocean515. :2wave:
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Hi Polgara. I hope you had a good weekend.

There is a real problem with business leaving California, and with people of means leaving California. As I indicated, California has created a problem for itself by putting so much burden for revenue generation on the very top income earners. It's rates are pretty stiff on lower incomes as well, but the bulk of revenue generation is on the top tiers. Recent votes added to this burden, so the trend remains.

The problem is the rich may get big bucks one year, and pay a lot in taxes for that year, but might get nothing the next year, and find their tax burden close to zero. While they remain rich, the revenue the state counts on is not to be found.

This is where California and many other liberal states find themselves. If they want to count on the rich, they should be doing everything they can to keep the rich in money, and help them obtain more.
 
ocean515 said:
Hi Polgara. I hope you had a good weekend.

There is a real problem with business leaving California, and with people of means leaving California. As I indicated, California has created a problem for itself by putting so much burden for revenue generation on the very top income earners. It's rates are pretty stiff on lower incomes as well, but the bulk of revenue generation is on the top tiers. Recent votes added to this burden, so the trend remains.

The problem is the rich may get big bucks one year, and pay a lot in taxes for that year, but might get nothing the next year, and find their tax burden close to zero. While they remain rich, the revenue the state counts on is not to be found.

This is where California and many other liberal states find themselves. If they want to count on the rich, they should be doing everything they can to keep the rich in money, and help them obtain more.
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The liberal states apparently haven't been able to go from point A to point B yet in their thinking, which I find curious. They demonize the very people they need to keep providing the money that is needed! :confused:
 
iguanaman said:
Actually the progressive tax system is a stimulant for our consumer economy since it taxes money not spent at a higher rate. Taxing everybody at equal rates would deprive the economy of billions in retail sales crippling our economy and our GDP which is 75% consumer spending.
The sad thing is that as our tax system grows less and less progressive, less and less people pay any income taxes which is opposite of what you might think would happen. It is another "unintended consequence" of the supply side nonsense of Reaganomics.
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Also very true.
 
CalGun said:
Thanks for making anything else you said irrelevant - ignored.
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Saying that half of your fellow country men are abject "failures" deserves FAR MORE derision than what I said. Nice excuse for you to turn tail and run, though I guess I can't blame you, as my point is completely unassailable anyway.

Wouldn't want to tough through what is literally the most simplest and cheesiest of name calling bits and thus risk fragmenting one's fragile world view...
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Fair enough but not only managers at Walmart now make $12/hour or more. My point is that raising the pay of only those at the bottom is unrealistic. The likely impact of a much higher MW is the further reduction in schedualed hours for part-timers and concentrating staff only during peak sales periods. Not only retail sales are affected by MW increases and many businesses (e.g. landscaping and janitorial services) have much higher labor costs to total sales ratios.
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The ability to respond to such a circumstance by merely reducing hours implies a built in level of inefficiency. You are assuming there a a bunch of workers standing around doing little but drawing a paycheck. I think that is probably a bad assumption, as most businesses do not keep on a bunch of extra people... they have enough to divide the work evenly.

While there could be some reduction of hours (having a little extra capacity at $7.50/hr is more tolerable than extra capacity at $10/hr) its unlikely that an employer responds to a min wage increase by just reducing hours.... Its more likely that it just increases cost. Some of this cost can be recovered in price increases and some of which will simply come out of management bonuses.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Fair enough but not only managers at Walmart now make $12/hour or more. My point is that raising the pay of only those at the bottom is unrealistic. The likely impact of a much higher MW is the further reduction in schedualed hours for part-timers and concentrating staff only during peak sales periods. Not only retail sales are affected by MW increases and many businesses (e.g. landscaping and janitorial services) have much higher labor costs to total sales ratios.
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Okay, so let's double the impact of those price increases. Instead of 1.1% higher prices, it's 2.2% higher prices...

...and at the same time ALL the workers have more money to spend and are less of a burden upon the taxpayer.

Sounds like a good deal to me...even at twice the price.
 
Crossroads said:
Also very true.
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its statist horsecrap. the biggest problem is those who want more and more spending don't get hit with tax increases to remind them how expensive the government they want.
 
pbrauer said:
I certainly believe fairness is important when discussing taxes, however the term fairness has a different meaning depending on who is defining it. I don't believe in soaking the rich as so many people on the right like to fame it, but as I understand it, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776 believed in what we call today as a progressive tax or the more affluent pays at a higher rate than those at the lower end of the income scale. Also, many people on the right like to frame the argument that those at the lower end use more of the government services than the more affluent. IMHO, that is pure bunk. Where would Jeff Bezos be today, if the infrastructure provided by the Federal, state did not exist.
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So basically your were pissy that someone on the right uses the same bs "fairness" argument that some on the left use, but from a different angle. And while you have no issues with the left doing that, you got mad someone on thhe right did because you disagreed with their definition of fairness. And instead of debating their point, you wanted to hypocritically bitch about people using "fairness" as an argument since you didn't like how they termed it. Gotcha.
 
ocean515 said:
However, if you review the revenue stream generated by the rich, you'll discover, as they have in California, governments can't count on the same levels of tax income each year to cover their commitments. Consider California at one time had a $42 billion deficit, representing over 60% of the nations state budget deficits, and this was in 2004, long before the recession in 2007-08.

This is why the Progressive plan to soak the rich will fail every time. Tax revenue must be generated across a broad footprint, not just from the rich.
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Wait - let me get this straight - you're blaming the progressives for California's deficit in 2004? Who was the governator then? And yes, both houses of the legislature were majority-Democrat.

HOWEVER, this may come as a shock to you, but just because almost all Republicans today are conservatives, you should NOT assume that all Democrats are liberal, much less progressive (there's a difference, you know). Even today, there's still several conservative Democrats in the U.S. Congress (read this on "Blue Dog Democrats")...and a lot more in state legislatures.

In other words, the Democratic party is simply not nearly so dogmatically monolithic as the Republican party has become.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
But how much of the nation's taxes go towards paying for what the rich require in order to run their businesses? For instance, Joe Everyman doesn't always have to depend on having a good roads and orderly traffic in order to get to work...but his boss at, say, UPS sure as heck does need good roads and orderly traffic in order to make his business work.

Come to think of it, maybe a better way to ask that 70% question above is...were all the tax breaks and subsidies that were given to Corporate America - and, by extension, to the rich - included in that 70%? Probably not...so that's what we're not seeing in that question.
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Considering joe Everyman would need to use those roads to get to work, and needs those roads just as much as his boss does for his job to function and have a need for him, I don't exactly get how somehow you're acting like their just kind of useful to joe but essential to his boss.

Your hypothetical seems to suggest joes bosses business wouldn't exist without the roads...but I'd Joe's boss's business didn't exist, them joe's job and this income wouldn't exist
 
Crossroads said:
If you consider the fact they own 75 percent of all "wealth" in the country, then no, the statement might not hold. But since this is about "income", of which they constitute about 48 percent of, then yes, the statement could be considered true.

I still voted "no" however. There are plenty of other factors to consider. There is a reason we have a "progressive" tax system, it helps compensate for the inherent inequalities in a system such as ours. Yes, that would be the "redistribute the wealth" thing.
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We dont have a progressive tax. We have a regressive tax. In fact mitt romney pays less of his income taxes than a truck driver making 50k a year and lives by himself. We have have corporations like GE that not only not pay any taxes but get money back from the govt.
 
Zyphlin said:
Considering joe Everyman would need to use those roads to get to work, and needs those roads just as much as his boss does for his job to function and have a need for him, I don't exactly get how somehow you're acting like their just kind of useful to joe but essential to his boss.

Your hypothetical seems to suggest joes bosses business wouldn't exist without the roads...but I'd Joe's boss's business didn't exist, them joe's job and this income wouldn't exist
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truth or logic tend to provide no obstacles to those who try to justify making a group that uses 5% of the government services pay 60-65-70-75-80-85% of the FIT
 
99percenter said:
We dont have a progressive tax. We have a regressive tax. In fact mitt romney pays less of his income taxes than a truck driver making 50k a year and lives by himself. We have have corporations like GE that not only not pay any taxes but get money back from the govt.
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what utter moronic nonsense. you are lying completely What sort of gross income does it take a truck driver to actually pay an effective rate on EARNED income of 15%. What does ROMNEY pay on EARNED INCOME
 
Jeez...thread after thread about taxes...must be April.
 
TurtleDude said:
what utter moronic nonsense. you are lying completely What sort of gross income does it take a truck driver to actually pay an effective rate on EARNED income of 15%. What does ROMNEY pay on EARNED INCOME
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Why should the source of the income matter? It should all be taxed the same. Im sorry but i just don't think a tax code where warren buffet pays a lower rate than his secretary is progressive.
 
DA60 said:
Jeez...thread after thread about taxes...must be April.
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Lots of butt hurt losers apparently mad someone else is wealthier than they are
 
99percenter said:
Why should the source of the income matter? It should all be taxed the same. Im sorry but i just don't think a tax code where warren buffet pays a lower rate than his secretary is progressive.
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Because different people have differerent impacts on the economy.
 
99percenter said:
Why should the source of the income matter? It should all be taxed the same. Im sorry but i just don't think a tax code where warren buffet pays a lower rate than his secretary is progressive.
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you don't believe that at all

you are happy if Romney's income is taxed higher than a truck driver. I am glad you mentioned buffett-its a trap for those who are clueless about this. Buffett structures his compensation so his marginal rate is lower than his extremely well compensate (300K salary from what I heard) secretary because his SALARY is an artificially minuscule 100K

but you also probably are happy when dividend income is taxed twice-once at the corporate level (35%) and another time at the individual level (15%)

why don't you support all income being taxed at the same flat rate.

If you don't then you are a hypocrite
 
TurtleDude said:
you don't believe that at all

you are happy if Romney's income is taxed higher than a truck driver. I am glad you mentioned buffett-its a trap for those who are clueless about this. Buffett structures his compensation so his marginal rate is lower than his extremely well compensate (300K salary from what I heard) secretary because his SALARY is an artificially minuscule 100K

but you also probably are happy when dividend income is taxed twice-once at the corporate level (35%) and another time at the individual level (15%)

why don't you support all income being taxed at the same flat rate.

If you don't then you are a hypocrite
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I support all income being taxes at the same progressive rate. No deductions. No loopholes.
 
99percenter said:
I support all income being taxes at the same progressive rate. No deductions. No loopholes.
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so you do want people taxed at different rates. no deductions-charities are going to love you for that. So dividends should to be doubly taxed then?

I want to get rid of income taxes to get rid of a power congress has to play us winners against the losers and to pander to the envious who are mad they aren't rich so they want those of us who are punished to salve their butt hurt from being failures
 
TurtleDude said:
so you do want people taxed at different rates. no deductions-charities are going to love you for that. So dividends should to be doubly taxed then?

I want to get rid of income taxes to get rid of a power congress has to play us winners against the losers and to pander to the envious who are mad they aren't rich so they want those of us who are punished to salve their butt hurt from being failures
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Yep no deductions. Not for charity, mortgage, healthcare or whatever. Shouldn't you be for that? Govt shouldnt pick winners and losers.
 
99percenter said:
Yep no deductions. Not for charity, mortgage, healthcare or whatever. Shouldn't you be for that? Govt shouldnt pick winners and losers.
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no income tax-then we have no picking winners or losers. everyone pays for what they use. You are a citizen, you pay the same for your citizenship benefits as I do

just like everything else in life

I suspect if you got your way colleges and other charities would hire a cleaner for you:mrgreen:
 
99percenter said:
Yep no deductions. Not for charity, mortgage, healthcare or whatever. Shouldn't you be for that? Govt shouldnt pick winners and losers.
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And you honestly think that charities will receive the same amount of money if all their contributions are non deductible?
 
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