• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

What is the "Fair Share" that democrats talk about?

You do understand that a basic flaw of capitalism is if left unchecked it can encourage wealth disparity and there are limits to how much of it can be tolerated without a financial collapse. When so much of the total income goes unspent it slows growth too. That was the reason for the punitive tax rates of the postwar period. They were meant to discourage hoarding of wealth. When they were eliminated the hoarding began again. It is unsustainable. The middle class thrived like no other time when the punitive rates were still in effect so your claim that high top rates hurt the middle class is dead wrong. The opposite is what happened.

So we have things like minimum wage and reinvestment incentives. The trick is finding a workable number for the wealthy who control the job creation and the workers who need a living wage. If you force the wealthy to give too much and sacrifice working capital they just cut back on jobs and benefits, raises and so on.
 
"Write-offs" and "tax breaks" are loony left urban legends.
Really? So Amazon's effective tax rate of negative 1% despite over $10 billion in profits had nothing to do with write-offs? Interesting theory.
 
Democrats talk about the Fair Share that the wealthy should pay. Since the politicians seem never to define the "Fair Share" amount, how much should the fair share be"

_ 90%

_80%

_70%

_60%

_50%

_40%

_30%

_less than 30%

Would 90% shut up our leftist friends, would that make them happy. Probably not...If you cant make it in this country, if you cannot see any path for upward mobility with how things currently are...you never will be...cased closed...
 
Really? So Amazon's effective tax rate of negative 1% despite over $10 billion in profits had nothing to do with write-offs? Interesting theory.
The discussion was about PERSONAL INCOME TAX.
 
Democrats talk about the Fair Share that the wealthy should pay. Since the politicians seem never to define the "Fair Share" amount, how much should the fair share be"

_ 90%

_80%

_70%

_60%

_50%

_40%

_30%

_less than 30%

Government should treat everyone equally, so until they start cutting government spending about $12,000 per person would be a fair share.
 
So we have things like minimum wage and reinvestment incentives. The trick is finding a workable number for the wealthy who control the job creation and the workers who need a living wage. If you force the wealthy to give too much and sacrifice working capital they just cut back on jobs and benefits, raises and so on.

Yes minimum wage is another way to limit hoarding but even that has not kept up with inflation. The workable number is where it is high enough to discourage hoarding of capital and encourage sharing profits with employees. Like reinvesting, salaries are a deductible expense. It's a matter if we value greed or prosperity for all more.
 
The discussion was about PERSONAL INCOME TAX.
Why are you limiting the conversation about "fair share" to personal income taxes? When people say "fair share" they aren't just talking about personal income taxes in isolation. Many wealthy Americans build their wealth through corporations, so corporate taxes are completely relevant to the question of this thread.

Do you think the government paying Amazon money is Amazon's "fair share" when Amazon is worth nearly $1 trillion and made over $10 billion in profits? Why is welfare for the poor bad but welfare for Amazon "fair"?
 
Why are you limiting the conversation about "fair share" to personal income taxes? When people say "fair share" they aren't just talking about personal income taxes in isolation. Many wealthy Americans build their wealth through corporations, so corporate taxes are completely relevant to the question of this thread. Do you think the government paying Amazon money (for a negative effective tax rate) is Amazon's "fair share" when Amazon is worth nearly $1 trillion and made over $10 billion in profits?

so you believe in taxation without representation as well as representation without taxation?
 
Why are you limiting the conversation about "fair share" to personal income taxes? When people say "fair share" they aren't just talking about personal income taxes in isolation. Many wealthy Americans build their wealth through corporations, so corporate taxes are completely relevant to the question of this thread. Do you think the government paying Amazon money (for a negative effective tax rate) is Amazon's "fair share" when Amazon is worth nearly $1 trillion and made over $10 billion in profits?
There's a separate thread for discussing Amazon's tax situation. Go there if you want to spew on that topic.
We're discussing personal income taxes because the "fair share" blather usually is applied to rich INDIVIDUALS.
 
so you believe in taxation without representation as well as representation without taxation?
I do not believe corporations should be allowed to vote in Congressional elections (and besides, they have plenty representation with the influence of money). Nor do I believe the right to vote depends on owing money to the IRS. Do you believe in those things?

As to my question, do you believe that Amazon paying -1% in taxes is Amazon's fair share?
 
There's a separate thread for discussing Amazon's tax situation. Go there if you want to spew on that topic.
We're discussing personal income taxes because the "fair share" blather usually is applied to rich INDIVIDUALS.
The fair share argument comes up with corporations too. And considering INDIVIDUALS own and run corporations at the end of the day, and build wealth through corporate accumulation of resources, corporate taxes are very relevant to individuals.
 
I do not believe corporations should be allowed to vote in Congressional elections (and besides, they have plenty representation with the influence of money). Nor do I believe the right to vote depends on owing money to the IRS. Do you believe in those things?

As to my question, do you believe that Amazon paying -1% in taxes is Amazon's fair share?

are employees of Amazon paying income taxes on their salaries

are customers of Amazon paying taxes on their purchases
 
Since 2000 Amazon has donated 2 to 4 times more money to democrats than republicans. As much as several million in a year.
 
The fair share argument comes up with corporations too.]/quote]Fine, as I said there's a thread to discuss that.

Lakyte said:
And considering INDIVIDUALS own and run corporations at the end of the day, and build wealth through corporate accumulation of resources, corporate taxes are very relevant to individuals.
LOL, but corporations pay takes as corporations, and the owners pay as individuals.
 
are employees of Amazon paying income taxes on their salaries

are customers of Amazon paying taxes on their purchases
Answer my question. Do you believe Amazon paying -1% in taxes on over $10 billion in profits is Amazon's "fair share"?
 
Answer my question. Do you believe Amazon paying -1% in taxes on over $10 billion in profits is Amazon's "fair share"?

I am not well versed in all the facts so I am not going to render a decision
 
LOL, but corporations pay takes as corporations, and the owners pay as individuals.
That is true but completely irrelevant to my point that the corporate tax rate effects individual wealth accumulation.

And you don't get to control what this thread is about. The thread is asking what "fair share" means. I'm responding that Amazon getting subsidized by the federal government is patently not its fair share of taxes. Unless you think a mom and pop shop on the corner should have a higher effective tax rate than Amazon.
 
That is true but completely irrelevant to my point that the corporate tax rate effects individual wealth accumulation.
Which is completely irrelevant to the conversation you barged into. Corporate tax rate MAY effect stock dividend or share price which would possible effect individual wealth and would be taxed as such.
Lakryte said:
And you don't get to control what this thread is about. The thread is asking what "fair share" means. I'm responding that Amazon getting subsidized by the federal government is patently not its fair share of taxes. Unless you think a mom and pop shop on the corner should have a higher effective tax rate than Amazon.
Yeah, whatever. :roll:
 
Yes minimum wage is another way to limit hoarding but even that has not kept up with inflation. The workable number is where it is high enough to discourage hoarding of capital and encourage sharing profits with employees. Like reinvesting, salaries are a deductible expense. It's a matter if we value greed or prosperity for all more.

The minimum wage created in 1938 was $0.25/hr. which would be equal to $4.46/hr. in 2019.
But aren't we talking about a fair share of tax?
 
Republicans want to make America great again, so let's return to 1960 when the top marginal tax rate was 91%.

Unless, that is, there's something entirely different about that time period Republicans want to return to.

I can't believe there are still people trotting this debunked narrative still. It's already been proven, time and again, that no one paid that level. There were significant tax loopholes that existed then that do not exist today. The effective tax rate, the one that actually matters, is higher today then it was then.
 
Re: What is the "Fair Share" that democrats talk about?

You do understand that a basic flaw of capitalism is if left unchecked it can encourage wealth disparity and there are limits to how much of it can be tolerated without a financial collapse.

Nope. I have never seen a credible causal argument for this. It appears to be a matter of faith among many other the left, but not one they have spent much time testing.

When so much of the total income goes unspent it slows growth too.

Good point. Investment is dumb, and for nerds. When has it ever helped an economy? [emoji14]

That was the reason for the punitive tax rates of the postwar period. They were meant to discourage hoarding of wealth.

That would be interesting to see. Would you mind citing that justification from Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc?

When they were eliminated the hoarding began again.

You keep misspelling "creating".

It is unsustainable. The middle class thrived like no other time when the punitive rates were still in effect so your claim that high top rates hurt the middle class is dead wrong. The opposite is what happened.

OTC, the middle class lives far better (in material terms) now than we did in the 50s and 60s. Our houses are bigger, we own more and better cars, books, electronics, you name it.


And yes. Confiscation of wealth on a large scale will harm everyone across the economy. Punishing investment means you lose it; making yourself a bad place to do business means fewer people will.
 
Re: What is the "Fair Share" that democrats talk about?

Nope. I have never seen a credible causal argument for this. It appears to be a matter of faith among many other the left, but not one they have spent much time testing.



Good point. Investment is dumb, and for nerds. When has it ever helped an economy? [emoji14]



That would be interesting to see. Would you mind citing that justification from Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc?



You keep misspelling "creating".



OTC, the middle class lives far better (in material terms) now than we did in the 50s and 60s. Our houses are bigger, we own more and better cars, books, electronics, you name it.


And yes. Confiscation of wealth on a large scale will harm everyone across the economy. Punishing investment means you lose it; making yourself a bad place to do business means fewer people will.

Some on the left are merely supporting of thievery-they want others' wealth. Worse are the ones who are spiteful vandals-if they cannot be rich, they don't want anyone else to be rich and they want the government to confiscate the wealth of others. The most amusing thing is watching them trying to hide their spite with grandiose claims that the government confiscating wealth is actually good for society.
 
No one paid 91%. The 76,000 pages of the tax code gave every possible exception to the super rich and that is when such as the "depreciation allowance" racket began allowing people to deduct money they didn't spend or lost claiming lost value. For this, they played musical chairs with commercial property and equipment - selling it back and forth between each other - each on claiming the "depreciation" until that clocked out - then sold it to someone they were buying property from - both again claiming the same depreciation on the same property. The 91% claim was so people in lower brackets didn't complain as much.

The super rich don't pay taxes and NO ONE in either political parties ever proposes any legislation to close the special tax loopholes for the super rich. Any time the Democrats start ranting "tax the rich" they don't really mean the rich. They mean successful mom and pop businesses they built up over a lifetime of working 80 hours a week and probably going broke a couple times along the way. The super rich don't pay taxes. The government pays them.

Yeah, democrats are known for going after small mom and pop businesses.
 
Yeah, democrats are known for going after small mom and pop businesses.

many regulations Democrats have imposed on businesses or crap like the death tax, tend to have deleterious impact upon small family businesses
 
Re: What is the "Fair Share" that democrats talk about?

Nope. I have never seen a credible causal argument for this. It appears to be a matter of faith among many other the left, but not one they have spent much time testing.



Good point. Investment is dumb, and for nerds. When has it ever helped an economy? [emoji14]



That would be interesting to see. Would you mind citing that justification from Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc?



You keep misspelling "creating".



OTC, the middle class lives far better (in material terms) now than we did in the 50s and 60s. Our houses are bigger, we own more and better cars, books, electronics, you name it.


And yes. Confiscation of wealth on a large scale will harm everyone across the economy. Punishing investment means you lose it; making yourself a bad place to do business means fewer people will.

The world is awash in capital looking for returns. It was the major reason for the 2008 financial collapse. The search for returns get riskier and riskier as more and more money enters the pool. Yet another hazard of wealth disparity. We need the pendulum to swing back towards parity or we will be forced into it with disastrous consequences. You should know this trend cannot go on forever.

The wealthiest 1 percent of the world's population now owns more than half of the world's wealth, according to a new report.

The total wealth in the world grew by 6 percent over the past 12 months to $280 trillion, marking the fastest wealth creation since 2012, according to the Credit Suisse report. More than half of the $16.7 trillion in new wealth was in the U.S., which grew $8.5 trillion richer.

But that wealth around the world is increasingly concentrated among those at the top. The top 1 percent now owns 50.1 percent of the world's wealth, up from 45.5 percent in 2001.
[

Richest 1% now owns half the world's wealth
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom