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Tax the ultra-rich

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Here is an article I read in the New Yorker, suggesting a way to raise tax revenue without hurting small businesses:

 

Soak The Very, Very Rich

by James Surowiecki

 

 

The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? The Obama Administrations answer is that youre rich if you make more than two hundred thousand dollars a year as an individual or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year as a household, and therefore you should have your taxes raised. Conservatives suggest that this threshold is far too low, and argue that Obama would be taxing mostly small-business owners, or the people a Fox News host has referred to as the so-called rich, rather than fat plutocrats. You might think this isnt really much of a debate. An annual income of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars puts you in the top three per cent of American households, and is more than four times the national median. Youre rich, and a small tax increase isnt going to rock your world.

 

Good luck convincing people of this, though. Judging from surveys of how Americans describe themselves, most of the privileged dont feel all that privileged. Why is that? One reason is the American mythology of middle-classness. Another is geography: in a place like Manhattan, where the average apartment sells for nine hundred thousand dollars, your money doesnt go as far. And then theres a larger truth about how wealth is getting concentrated in this country. As the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have documented, people who earn a few hundred thousand dollars a year have done much worse than people at the very top of the ladder.

 

...

 

The current debate over taxes takes none of this into account. At the moment, we have a system of tax brackets well suited to nineteenth-century New Zealand. Our system sets the top bracket at three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, with a tax rate of thirty-five per cent. (People in the second-highest bracket, starting at a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars for individuals, pay thirty-three per cent.) This means that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates. LeBron James and LeBron Jamess dentist: same difference.

 

This makes no sensetheres a yawning chasm between the professional and the plutocratic classes, and the tax system should reflect that. A better tax system would have more brackets, so that the super-rich pay higher rates. (The most obvious bracket to add would be a higher rate at a million dollars a year, but theres no reason to stop there.) This would make the system fairer, since it would reflect the real stratification among high-income earners. A few extra brackets at the top could also bring in tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki

 

I'm curious what the conservative Geeks think of this. Is this something you would support?

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I'm curious what the conservative Geeks think of this. Is this something you would support?

No :banana:

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You could take every fukking dollar the "ultra-rich" have and you would't be able to pay off the debt.

 

But it sounds good to the wealth envy crowd like Worms. :overhead:

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I think it is best to punish people who are more successful. :thumbsup:

 

Do you really think that higher taxes would cause people to purposefully be less successful? I mean, I guess if taxes were high enough (like back when they were 70% or so for the highest bracket) then maybe, but otherwise I just don't see it.

 

Plus, one thing to keep in mind is that many of the ultra-rich probably just inherited their money. So by raising taxes the end result is that a trust-fund baby has one less Leer jet to fly around the world. :dunno:

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Do you really think that higher taxes would cause people to purposefully be less successful?

It would make the richest people slow down their investments here and seek more off shore tax shelters.

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It would make the richest people slow down their investments here and seek more off shore tax shelters.

:thumbsup: Just last night I was talking with a buddy who is working in Crapastan. He said he can't come home to the US because the taxes would eat up his money.

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Worms is part of the crowd that never gets it. It's like when they instituted the massive "Yacht Tax" to squeeze the uber-rich. The rich just went oversees to buy their yachts, and the "working families" who made a living biulding the yachts in the U.S. lost their jobs.

 

Typical result of a Liberal wealth envy program. :thumbsdown:

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It would make the richest people slow down their investments here and seek more off shore tax shelters.

 

Good point. :thumbsup: Sometimes I wonder if globalization has really been a good thing. I suppose it doesn't matter because it was inevitable one way or the other, but often times it looks more like a race to the bottom than anything else.

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Good point. :thumbsup: Sometimes I wonder if globalization has really been a good thing. I suppose it doesn't matter because it was inevitable one way or the other, but often times it looks more like a race to the bottom than anything else.

I made a good point????? :unsure:

 

Being that I'm not used to this, I'm gonna have to pause for a few minutes to reflect :ninja:

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So do you think we can reduce the deficit through spending cuts alone?

 

nope, it should be paired with big tax cuts as well.

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nope, it should be paired with big tax cuts as well.

 

I must be a little slow: how will big tax cuts reduce the deficit? :blink:

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I see the login here. I could go for that, put me down as: in favor.

 

The government is deep in debt and had better find some money to prevent it from going belly up.

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I must be a little slow: how will big tax cuts reduce the deficit? :blink:

 

Gettnhuge, like most almost all Republicans sadly, is more concerned with tax cuts than deficits.

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Gettnhuge, like most almost all Republicans sadly, is more concerned with tax cuts than deficits.

Because they increase revenue to the treasury.

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I must be a little slow: how will big tax cuts reduce the deficit? :blink:

 

By growing the economy and increasing to pool of taxpayers.....just like they did with the Kennedy tax cuts, the Reagan tax cuts, and the Bush tax cuts.

 

Hard to argue with history.

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I see the login here. I could go for that, put me down as: in favor.

 

The government is deep in debt and had better find some money to prevent it from going belly up.

says the poor guy. :rolleyes:

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Because they increase revenue to the treasury.

 

So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes? :blink:

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So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes? :blink:

POW!!

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I just don't see it.

 

Since you can't see it, why don't you go spend some time researching the origin of the 16th Amendment. You could also try and figure out ways the Federal government could cut their spending instead of continuously overspending so they need to tax people in the first place.

 

Prior to the 16th Amendment, people didn't pay any Federal income taxes because they were deemed indirect taxes and considered unconstitutional...see Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895).

 

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 under Powers Enumerated to Congress says:

 

The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

 

This referred to property taxes and required them to be uniformly imposed throughout the United States. Pollock ruled while income taxes on wages (as indirect taxes) were still not required to be apportioned by population, taxes on interest, dividends and rent income were required to be apportioned by population. The Pollock ruling made the source of the income (e.g., property versus labor, etc.) relevant in determining whether the tax imposed on that income was deemed to be "direct" (and thus required to be apportioned among the states according to population) or, alternatively, "indirect" (and thus required only to be imposed with geographical uniformity).

 

Ron Paul annually introduces legislation to amend the Constitution to remove the 16th Amendment. It amazes me this doesn't get more support since both parties constantly b1tch and moan about taxes.

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So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes? :blink:

 

 

Educate yourself on the results of the Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush tax cuts.

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Worms,

Let me ask you this. Do you think it's fair that 50% plus of the population pays ZERO or LESS THAN ZERO in income taxes? Don't you think, to be fair, that EVERYONE should pay SOMETHING to support the country? Or do you just want to take more and more from the successful people?

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Hey Worms, here is something that will really make you go :wacko:

 

The top 1% paid a higher percentage of the tax bill AFTER the Bush tax cuts as compared to what they paid BEFORE the Bush tax cuts.

 

Percentage before tax cuts: 37.10%

 

Percentage after tax cuts: 39.3%

 

 

The bottom 20% paid a lower percentage of the tax bill AFTER the Bush tax cuts as compared to what they paid BEFORE the Bush tax cuts:

 

Percentage before tax cuts: .50%

 

Percentage after tax cuts: .30%

 

So, when you hear the chattering idiots in the MSM parrot the Demwit line about Bush's "Tax cuts for the rich", don't believe it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/323.html

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So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes? :blink:

In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn't take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan's delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama's delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.

 

But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704113504575264513748386610.html

 

Common sense, unless we are dealing with progressives... :rolleyes:

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So do you think we can reduce the deficit through spending cuts alone?

 

 

Considering that just 10 years ago, the total Federal Revenue was 2.065 Trillion dollars and today it's 2.15 Trillion dollars, I'd say yes. You could easily stop the bullshit spending and balance the deficit.

Now if you want to attack the debt, then you have to cut even more.

 

I don't get to go in and ask my employer for a raise simply because I'm broke now do I?

The correct answer if you're broke is to STOP SPENDING SO MUCH. It's not rocket science and it's another example of why Liberals are fuckin retarded. Period.

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So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes?

Yes, EXACTLY!!!

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So let me get this straight: by decreasing the amount of money that people have to pay in taxes, you will be able to collect more taxes? :blink:

 

If you're an "ultra-rich" individual, you know how to hide your money from the government. When you raise the tax rate, "these people" simply dig a deeper hole to bury their money.

 

To get out of this mess, we need "these people" to start spending their money, not hide it.

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Worms,

Let me ask you this. Do you think it's fair that 50% plus of the population pays ZERO or LESS THAN ZERO in income taxes? Don't you think, to be fair, that EVERYONE should pay SOMETHING to support the country? Or do you just want to take more and more from the successful people?

 

Look at it this way: how much money do you think the bottom 50% of the country earns, on average? I bet it isn't much.

 

Also keep in mind that wages have risen very little since the 1980s, while the top 5% (especially the top 1% and especially, especially the top .1%) have seen exponential gains in their incomes.

 

With that as the backdrop, then yes, I do think it's fair that the everyday worker--who is being asked to work more and more while getting less and less in return--does not have to pay federal taxes. They still pay state taxes, they still pay property taxes (if lucky enough to own a home), and they still pay sales taxes. So it's not like they are getting off scott free. A bit of a break at the expense of those who have been so enriched by the economic policies of this country over the past 30 years is not out of line, IMO.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704113504575264513748386610.html

 

Common sense, unless we are dealing with progressives... :rolleyes:

 

I can buy that this sort of logic works to a degree, but it seems to me that there must be a point of diminishing returns, and that we have likely passed that point in the last 30 years. Cut taxes some, sure I can see spending increasing enough that you might actually end up with more money paid to the treasury, but cut taxes as deeply as they have been cut and then I think you are just losing out in the end.

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A bit of a break at the expense of those who have been so enriched by the economic policies of this country over the past 30 years is not out of line, IMO.

Wealth envy at its finest. yeah because those people didn't work hard to be successful. Progessives suck :thumbsdown:

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I can buy that this sort of logic works to a degree, but it seems to me that there must be a point of diminishing returns, and that we have likely passed that point in the last 30 years. Cut taxes some, sure I can see spending increasing enough that you might actually end up with more money paid to the treasury, but cut taxes as deeply as they have been cut and then I think you are just losing out in the end.

 

 

The Reagan and Bush tax cuts prove your opinion wrong about the last 30 years.

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If you're an "ultra-rich" individual, you know how to hide your money from the government. When you raise the tax rate, "these people" simply dig a deeper hole to bury their money.

 

To get out of this mess, we need "these people" to start spending their money, not hide it.

I already said that.. :mad:

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Wealth envy at its finest. yeah because those people didn't work hard to be successful. Progessives suck :thumbsdown:

 

Do you have anything more insightful to say?

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Do you have anything more insightful to say?

Ask him about how exciting it is to be a Seahawk fan.

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