Re: Romney's tax rate is only half as high as the middle class pays
You don't want to hitch your cart to that horse.
I'm not replying to him because we've had that same debate like 500 times. Every time he is unable to come up with counter arguments to all the arguments people present on it and just goes off to another tread to claim the same thing over again... I suspect he's doing it intentionally to annoy people at this point.
I get a kick outta TD. He's clear in his thoughts and unapologetic. Sometimes he and I fall on the same side and sometimes not, but he usually at least gives me a smile.
No, the gains they draw from it are not nearly the same. For example, the stimulus spending appears to have boosted the stock market by approximately 25%. So Bill Gates drew roughly $10 billion in benefit from that. How much benefit did the average taxpayer get out of the stimulus? Maybe they got a new job a few weeks earlier because of it? Or maybe not even that?
The stimulus was a mistake and spent poorly. Considering a key point in my beliefs is that government spending is one of the worst-managed systems I can imagine, I won't get too much into that. I honestly have doubt that it did much for the stock market even.
Companies require a large, educated, prosperous, society to make money. They need customers that can afford to buy their product, employees that are educated enough to do the job, employees that are healthy enough to work, etc. You're right that they pay the employees, but that doesn't mean they don't benefit from them being educated and whatnot. The median productivity of an American worker is an outstanding $97k/year. That's how much value they bring to their employer. But the median compensation is only $44k/year. So, the employer is keeping more than half of the value employees generate. So, roughly, each person gets half the value of their education, but their employer is collecting the other half.
This is too vague. Do you have the link so I can analyze the methodology used to determine median productivity? Oftentimes it is not a net of all input. Last time I saw figures like this, it only showed what monetary value was produced minus the wage and raw material used by the employee. That does not account for a million other business costs. Your information could be different, but I would need to look at it.
As for the educated, prosperous society, that benefits everyone. The business owner already pays higher wages for someone with more education, as well as more of the taxes that funded the schools. They also pay taxes for every employee on top of what that employee is able to pay because the job was provided. Additionally, the more they pay the employee, the more they pay in taxes.
On top of that, you have things like defense, police, and fire. Those things benefit the super rich because they have more to protect. The homeless guy on the street would probably be better off if there were no police, where Bill Gates would be like $40 billion worse off. So, the value of police to Bill Gates is much greater.
That guy on the street would not be better off without police. He is protected as much as possible from assault and murder by them. If he tried to steal to get ahead because of the absence of police, he would meet Bill Gates' armed guards that he hired with his tax savings that have no need for due process without police. The billions in taxes Gates' pays would more than cover the man hours and bullets used.
Bill Gates has more to protect, but he paid more in taxes for those things.
Also, you have infrastructure. A company that runs heavy semi trucks all over the country is drawing way more benefit from the highways. An office in Nevada gets way more benefit out of the electricity of the Hoover Dam than an individual does. The internet has done a smidge more for amazon.com than it has done for my grandmother. And so on.
The internet, while invented by DARPA, is not provided by the government and is not a function of taxes.
The power used from that power plant is taxed on use, so the more they use, the more they pay.
The semi trucks pay more tolls, gas taxes, maintenance service taxes, sales taxes on the trucks, and taxes again to employ the driver.
"Regressive" means "a lower percentage of their income". At least that's the common usage of it. If you want to talk about what percentage of Romney's income he pays in taxes and compare that to the percentage the middle class pays, you can't really exclude those taxes that the middle class pays more of. That's just distorting the comparison.
Sales tax is a consumption tax, not an income tax. Income tax is progressive or regressive because it is a percentage of all money coming in. Consumption tax is based on what is used and is flat. Just because Romney makes more does not mean he consumes more.