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Where do you land

Where do you land?

  • I am wealthy, and favor tax hikes for the wealthy

    Votes: 8 11.4%

  • I am not wealthy, and favor tax hikes for the wealthy

    Votes: 27 38.6%

  • I am wealthy, and against tax hikes for the wealthy

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I am not wealthy, and against tax hikes for the wealthy

    Votes: 23 32.9%

  • Other

    Votes: 12 17.1%

  • Unsure

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    70
BDBoop said:
So much talk about how the wealthy deserve this, and the rich need that. Where do you fall in all this?
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it's not a question of the rich need this or deserve that; that's a fundamental assumption fallacy - you are assuming that those who oppose you are opposing your central question rather than processing their own.


The question we are responding to is: do we want the (already anemic) recovery to strengthen, or further weaken? Will hiking taxes raise revenue without destroying growth? Or not? Have revenue increases historically been used by Congress to pay down debt? Or justify further expansions in spending?



If we want to talk about issues of "deserve", then I would ask what is fair. We have spent alot of money on the middle class, and reduced their share of paying for it significantly. the US now takes a larger share of it's tax burden from it's high-income-households than any other industrialized nation. we have a more progressive tax code than France.


Frankly, I would like to see effective tax rates remain unchanged while we strip out all the special deals, loopholes, shelters, and other complexities and pork in the Tax Code. The boost to our economy from such a policy would be ginormous.
 
DiAnna said:
On a federal level, you bet I think it's time the wealthiest 1% pony up their share.
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the wealthy in this country pay a larger share of the revenue burden than any other industrialized nation - and their share has only been increasing. 6 of 10 households now consume more in government than they pay in - meaning that the wealthy are now paying their share, our share, and then paying us a little extra off the top.

I agree. It is time we started letting them pay their fair share.

Tax_Table_Percentage_1b.jpg


we need to either lower top tax rates, or increase the middle and lower class ones. What's Fair Is Fair, after all.
 
cpwill said:
the US now takes a larger share of it's tax burden from it's high-income-households than any other industrialized nation. we have a more progressive tax code than France.
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The second part to this statement isn't true. The US takes in alot of tax income from it's highest income households because there are alot of very high income households. France's tax brackets range from 0% to 40%. 0% being much lower than the US's lowest bracket and 40% being a bit higher than the US's highest bracket.
 
cpwill said:
The question we are responding to is: do we want the (already anemic) recovery to strengthen, or further weaken? Will hiking taxes raise revenue without destroying growth? Or not?
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Hard to say. But I interpreted the poll question in a more general, long-term sense rather than whether or not we need to raise taxes right now. If we're specifically focusing on the impact it would have on the recovery...I'd probably still lean toward raising them somewhat, although less so than I would at any other time in the economic cycle.

Have revenue increases historically been used by Congress to pay down debt? Or justify further expansions in spending?
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Revenue increases helped to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio from 1945 to 1980, but debt has grown faster than GDP since 1980. So the answer is that BOTH of those have historical precedent.

If we want to talk about issues of "deserve", then I would ask what is fair. We have spent alot of money on the middle class, and reduced their share of paying for it significantly. the US now takes a larger share of it's tax burden from it's high-income-households than any other industrialized nation. we have a more progressive tax code than France.
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We also have a lot more poverty and wealth disparity, and a lot less social mobility.

Frankly, I would like to see effective tax rates remain unchanged while we strip out all the special deals, loopholes, shelters, and other complexities and pork in the Tax Code. The boost to our economy from such a policy would be ginormous.
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I would definitely support something along those lines.
 
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cpwill said:
the wealthy in this country pay a larger share of the revenue burden than any other industrialized nation - and their share has only been increasing.
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If you only look at the federal income tax, yes. But when you include all the regressive taxes that people pay (e.g. payroll, corporate, sales, and various state/local taxes) and take into account that much of the income tax is actually taxed at the lower capital gains rate, the overall tax structure in this country is essentially flat.
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2011.pdf
 
Bardo said:
The second part to this statement isn't true. The US takes in alot of tax income from it's highest income households because there are alot of very high income households. France's tax brackets range from 0% to 40%. 0% being much lower than the US's lowest bracket and 40% being a bit higher than the US's highest bracket.
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we also have a negative effective income tax rate. Gotta love those credits and deductions. In fact, six out of ten US Households receive more from the government than they pay in taxes. so yes. No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S.
 
Kandahar said:
If you only look at the federal income tax, yes. But when you include all the regressive taxes that people pay (e.g. payroll, corporate, sales, and various state/local taxes) and take into account that much of the income tax is actually taxed at the lower capital gains rate, the overall tax structure in this country is essentially flat.
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2011.pdf
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Capital Gains is overwhelmingly paid by the higher earners; so discussing their effect on effective rates hides the fact that they that population's share of the tax burden. Ditto for the other taxes you mentioned.
 
I am for either a flat tax, who's rate is identical across the board... with no deductions. I would, perhaps, be OK with no tax on those under the poverty line, but probably not. More likely, I am in favor of NO income tax and a national sales tax instead. That would eliminate all deductions, all loopholes, and make everyone responsible for managing their money.
 
Kandahar said:
Hard to say. But I interpreted the poll question in a more general, long-term sense rather than whether or not we need to raise taxes right now. If we're specifically focusing on the impact it would have on the recovery...I'd probably still lean toward raising them somewhat, although less so than I would at any other time in the economic cycle.
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my question at that point becomes - why raise effective tax rates at all when you can get the increased revenue through tax code simplification while keeping effective rates the same?

Revenue increases helped to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio from 1945 to 1980, but debt has grown faster than GDP since 1980. So the answer is that BOTH of those have historical precedent.
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given the rapid rise in the costs of our entitlement programs, this would entail significant cuts to discretionary spending. I find that exceedingly unlikely.

We also have a lot more poverty and wealth disparity, and a lot less social mobility.
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yeah, funny how that works, isn't it? we expand programs to aid the poor and middle class, but somehow being the target of government programs doesn't seem to help them that much...

I would definitely support something along those lines.
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hundreds of billions of dollars. we could put hundreds of billions of dollars back into the economy, creating jobs, making investments, opening new businesses, and all without raising taxes, reducing revenue, or otherwise costing the government a single red cent.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
I am for either a flat tax, who's rate is identical across the board... with no deductions. I would, perhaps, be OK with no tax on those under the poverty line, but probably not. More likely, I am in favor of NO income tax and a national sales tax instead. That would eliminate all deductions, all loopholes, and make everyone responsible for managing their money.
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as well as encouraging savings, investment, and work rather than debt-driven consumption.
 
I voted other.

I'm not in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy, I'm in favor of completely restructuring our tax system. I think a progressive income tax is necessary, but I don't like the way we currently do it. If things were changed the way I want them to be, and the end result was that the rich ended up paying more than they do now, I'm okay with it, as long as it isn't a ridiculous amount more.

As far as my personal situation goes, I am definitely not rich, but my wife and I are both engineers, so we're comfortable.
 
Interesting. 17/17 tie, with 8 'other'.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Other-

I'm not in favor of using the tax system and income of individuals, as a political tool to divide people.
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Are you saying that's what I'm doing.
 
cpwill said:
Capital Gains is overwhelmingly paid by the higher earners
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Exactly, and it's taxed at a much lower rate than regular income...which makes the income tax less progressive than it appears at a first glance.

so discussing their effect on effective rates hides the fact that they that population's share of the tax burden. Ditto for the other taxes you mentioned.
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I'm not sure what you mean. It's not just a matter of the effective rates being roughly the same (although they are). It's also a matter of the wealthy really not paying much more as a proportion of total taxes than the middle-class does, relative to the amount of income that they have. For example, the top 1% of earners take in 20.3% of the income in this country and pay 21.5% of total taxes. Whereas the middle quintile earns 11.6% of income and pays 10.3% in taxes. That doesn't look very progressive to me. In fact, it looks pretty flat.
 
cpwill said:
my question at that point becomes - why raise effective tax rates at all when you can get the increased revenue through tax code simplification while keeping effective rates the same?
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I wouldn't mind keeping the effective rates the same if some variant of the Wyden-Gregg tax reform became law. At least for a few years until we can see how much additional revenue it actually brings in.

given the rapid rise in the costs of our entitlement programs, this would entail significant cuts to discretionary spending. I find that exceedingly unlikely.
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Not necessarily, discretionary spending doesn't really need to be cut that much. As you pointed out, entitlements are rapidly rising...that's the real problem, not discretionary spending. We can tame the growth of social security with a few relatively small adjustments. Medicare/Medicaid are much more difficult to slow, but can be done with more cost control measures as has been the case in many other countries.

yeah, funny how that works, isn't it? we expand programs to aid the poor and middle class, but somehow being the target of government programs doesn't seem to help them that much...
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The US offers a much smaller social safety net than any other developed country, and is among the worst in terms of poverty, wealth disparity, and (lack of) social mobility.

hundreds of billions of dollars. we could put hundreds of billions of dollars back into the economy, creating jobs, making investments, opening new businesses, and all without raising taxes, reducing revenue, or otherwise costing the government a single red cent.
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I agree, simplifying the income tax code would be a great way to raise more revenue. Most of the deductions are pointless. I think the only ones I would keep would be charitable deductions and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and I would slowly phase out the mortgage interest deduction. Everything else should probably be taken out IMO. There is no reason that the income tax should take the average person more than 15 minutes to fill out, and even people with complex financial situations shouldn't need to spend more than a couple hours doing it.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I don't think you're trying to do that, but I do think that politicians do so, to create an "us vs. them" mentality in people.
It's a way to divide people, for arbitrary reasons.
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Is this an "always has been so" thing, or new in say the past 20-30 years? Or always has been so but has gotten worse.

Damn, I have poll brain. >.>
 
If governments generally put as much energy into snuffing out tax avoidance/tax evasion schemes as they do into welfare fraud, and scaled back military spending a couple of percentage points, and reined in government PR advertising spend, no tax rises would be necessary. And how about insisting that all the banking hand-outs were repaid within a 12-24 month time frame?

I have a feeling that some people believe that cutting government spending only really ought to apply to health, education and welfare, rather than all the governmental spending commitments equally.
 
ElijahGalt said:
What happens to the wealthy tax base when states implement a massive tax hike on the wealthy? It disappears. They move.
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This poll doesn't appear to be about a massive state tax hike on the wealthy, but we could use a poll on that. Please start one. thx
 
Goshin said:
I don't think you've thought this through.

I don't know where people get the idea that a man worth 400 million dollars, simply has a stack of money that he's sitting on, hoarding it, and it isn't doing anything. I know a number of wealthy people, though I'm working-poor myself, and none of them do that. They own businesses (that employ people!), they INVEST in businesses (that EMPLOY people!!), they buy stock in businesses (that EMPLOY people!!!), etc.
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The very wealthy have been moving their earnings overseas for some time. Here is a recent case. We live just a few miles from a Devos home. It’s close to the Amway factory in Ada on the Thornapple River. In fact Dan Devos was nailed in his 2006 run for governor of Michigan with and ad about how he was moving before tax money to sham post office box company in an island nation. He was one of the owners of that company. Do you understand now? No. I thought so.
 
OhIsee.Then said:
The very wealthy have been moving their earnings overseas for some time. Here is a recent case. We live just a few miles from a Devos home. It’s close to the Amway factory in Ada on the Thornapple River. In fact Dan Devos was nailed in his 2006 run for governor of Michigan with and ad about how he was moving before tax money to sham post office box company in an island nation. He was one of the owners of that company. Do you understand now? No. I thought so.
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No need to be rude, dude. Goshin is pretty damn intelligent. Your knowledge does not equal universal knowledge.

FTR, I think the truth lies somewhere between the perceptions of the both of you.
 
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