So I've read what I wrote at least a dozen times and cannot find where I claim that the lowest tax brackets will "jump for joy and rush out and work harder when they're given the opportunity to pay taxes on what they earned."
perhaps you should read the Mayor's post, then, since the Mayor kindly quoted your statement which said that raising taxes on the poor will encourage them to work more.
It's right there. You said it, not the Mayor.
And yes, I frequently wonder why people don't work harder now... but not for the implied reason you're getting at. The answer seems obvious: because they don't have to in order to maintain their required lifestyle.
Well, that's true enough. Their preference for a particular lifestyle is limited by the fact that working 168 hours a week to sustain that lifestyle doesn't actually leave them with any time left to live it. And people working sixty hours a week certainly feel that their lifestyle is sufficient once all the taxes have been paid and they can afford a couple of Hershey bars to show they really know how to live the life.
Actually, people earning the bottom tier wages aren't living the lifestyle anyone wants. They're living in 'hoods that have hoods in them, their children are going to piss-poor public unionized schools, and they're on the edge of poverty without a large bank about to cushion blows from incompetents like Obama stalling the economy. They can't work all they want to, especially not with more than 10% unemployment and millions of jobs taken by illegal invaders secure in the knowledge the government won't send them home. There's no jobs to be had at their skill level.
Many of the lower middle class can't work harder because there's no work to be had. Obama is also driving the economy into it's long expected double-dip recession, that's going to make everything worse for them.
Work is reward based. If the work/reward ratio isn't worth it, then you won't work the extra 15 hours/week in order to have extra luxuries.
Really? You mean when the government taxes the higher earnings at a higher rate so you don't see a linear increase in take home wages with those extra hours there comes a point where the worker decides he's wasting his time?
But you do require a nominal amount of income to live on and if that's all you intend to work for, as many do, then a flat tax will in essence give you a pay cut to a point below your necessary standard of living, since they were already achieving the minimum necessary. And so they will not work more out of the fun of taxes, but out of necessity.
Oh, gee. You mean if the people who aren't paying taxes now are required to start paying their fair share they might have to turn in their cell phone, turn off their cable TV, buy K-mart sneakers instead of Converse (the Mayor is giving away his age here), and decide to fix the old car instead of buying or leasing another? They might have to find a place to live that's less expensive?
You people don't care about any of that.
What you care about is the following consequence of spreading the pain evenly:
People who pay taxes pay attention to what their money is spent on. Expanding the pool of taxpayers expands the number of people who will become seriously pissed off at the socialists and liberals in all political parties who can never find anything to cut from a budget.
The basis for my argument is that the person who never achieved a rank higher than burger-flipper at a fast-food chain was because of the extra effort vs extra reward wasn't worth it for them. Not that they weren't able. I'm not saying this was wrong of them; to each their own. I'm just saying that they ought to be paying taxes too.
Hello?
Your argument was that if they paid taxes they'd work harder. Which is arrant nonsense.
A burger flipper that never advances is an idiot living in his mother's basement or his car. He's taking in money from the government in the form of various unconstitutional assistence programs, and raking in that EITC scam when he files his taxes.
By being an under achiever, he deserves to be forced to pay a proportionate share of the cost of governmet, as all citizens should. But a useless turd like that never works harder.
But the lower middle class isn't exemplified by this fine example of the success of public education you've provided. No, most of the lower middle class are working hard trying to get ahead, and it's just the nature of human society, as imposed by laws of nature and economics, which are expressions of nature's law, that there's more people on the bottom than on the top.
If you want to debate me, please do so based on what I'm actually saying.
As was made perfectly clear, the Mayor was indeed responding to what you actually said.
Just in case you're unfamiliar with the concept, words mean things, and the people reading your words aren't to be faulted for assuming the meanin conveyed by the words you post are the meanings you understand them to be.
So put more effort into saying what you mean.