Taxes on Rich People?
- Started
- Last post
- 102 Responses
- utopian0
This is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. "God Bless America"
- threadpost0
I know there are some nuances I'm not understanding, but I too agree with a flat tax system.
Why can't we all pay (some arbitrary number) like personal taxes of 30% and business pay 35%?
Can someone explain to me why such a simple system wont work?
Of course the more you make, the more you pay. 30% of 500k/year is a lot more than 30% of 35k/yr. and its just straight fair across the board me thinks.- also reorg the estate taxes and capitol gains system too.threadpost
- CAUSE ITS HARD TO LIVE ON 35K. AND NOT 500K.akrokdesign
- HOW ABOUT THE 500K ONE LOWER HIS SALARY AND PAY THE WORKERS BETTER.akrokdesign
- 4/5 of Americans fall into the middle class, thus paying a heavier tax load to support the wealthy elite and ignorant poor. Is this fair?utopian
- yeah, middle class pay most TAX>.akrokdesign
- none of that has anything to do with the idea of everyone paying a flat tax of say 30%.threadpost
- KwesiJ0
an 'equal amount' can't be an equal amount. example: if you make 10 bucks an hour but pay 1 buck for taxes you'll miss that 1 buck more than the guy who has to pay 10$ for his 100$ an hour. 1 more an hour means that possibly he can pay for his kids lunch or something, minus that one buck, plus all the other costs that can't be afforded on 10$ an hour, and you have a recipe for someone's family to go starving. meanwhile the guy who makes 90$ an hour after taxes is extremely comfortable and just living within his cozy budget. theirs a certain burden that the poor must bare while the rich coast through these costs unaccounted for. the rich can then buy their way out of responsibility from the same society the poor live in.
- yeah, how's that going to work when equal healthcare freak out the rich. lol.akrokdesign
- you're missing the point. The guy earning $90 out of the 100 is probably worth it.Not_Just_Another
- just because he made it, shouldn't mean he has to suffer. The guy on $10ph should look for ways of increasing his earning potential, not whinging that he's being taxed too muchNot_Just_Another
- earning potential instead of complaining that he's getting a bum deal. If you work hard, I think you should get the benefits!Not_Just_Another
- utopian0
Some charts of wealth distribution in the USA
- KwesiJ0
makes no sense to beat someone down even farther into the poor house based on some abstracted sense of 'equality' or 'fairness' with taxes when the other guy should probably be taking the burden of giving back to the world that made thier lives so comfortable
- utopian0
Here is the latest Gallup Poll on how Americans feel about the current wealth distribution.
- airey0
the thing that makes me laugh is that if any one of you got in that top bracket and had the ability to change things so that you had to pay more tax, you wouldn't. that's where it all falls down. human nature is what it is.
- i would. can't wait till i can give back.KwesiJ
- i would. there is more in life then GREED.akrokdesign
- That is capitalism for you in a nut shell!utopian
- ninjasavant0
Abolish income tax and institute a national sales tax. That way we only tax spending wealth, not creating it. Plus this system would solve part of the illegal immigrant issue in the us.
- airey0
no fucking way man. sales tax is a nightmare. they had that here before gst was implemented and anyone who actually ran a business then would tell you how shit sales tax was. just trying to work out what has it, what doesn't and what percentages and amount it should be made a lot of people insane.
a good start would be for you poor bastards in the US to have one tax return like we do. that whole local / state / federal tax returns thing must be a nightmare!
- airey0
call me crazy, but if the best economists in whatever country you live in can't solve a perfect system for you then how exactly will a design forum full of morons come up with the answer? i'm not excluding myself from the 'moron' tag btw.
here's a start if you're in the US. get involved and get people to vote in your country. get them to vote and place pressure on the people at the top to do what you consider right. that would include a tax system. considering it's mainly those at the top of the economic food chain that bother voting it's no surprise that it comes out the way it does.
i could be wrong.
- <<<Jnr_Madison
- Taxation isn't set up by economists. It's set up by legislators.boobs
- KwesiJ0
tax only the top 40% of income makers
- airey0
to the above simplistic approach.
it's an impossibility. do you wait until after tax writeoffs to work out who is in the cut-off percentage? if you do then everyone would need to withold a percentage incase it turned out they were in that taxable range.
apart from the already pointed out factoid in the note that people in the lower 10% (approx) or so of the taxable group would be taxed and then be earning less than the top 25% (approx) of the untaxed group. that would be cause to get upset no?
it's difficult to accept but unless you've got a masters in economics there's absolutely no chance you can understand the complex systems at play when it comes to the tax system. every decision you think of has incredibly deep and far reaching effect.
i struggle with the figures in sudoku so it's way beyond me. maybe i'm wrong and you're simplistic solutions would solve the world's woes. maybe you could have a crack at cold fusion next?
- ukit0
Abso fucking lutely.
Do you know what the top tax rate was in 1980? 70%. Today, it is 36%. And that's before you get into the issue of tax havens. There is no way you can say the rich pay high taxes.
The moment that Reagan came into office and started slashing taxes for the rich was the exact moment our government began to get deeply in debt. Did you know that Carter left office with the same amount of debt there was when he came in? Under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama we have racked up huge deficits, and become massively in debt to the Chinese, Japanese and Arab countries.
And no one since then has had the balls to do the simple thing needed to get out of debt, namely, increase taxes. It's like if your credit card company let you continue running up debt and never paying it off.
- just keep making the simpsons and you can do whatever you like with your country.airey
- zarkonite0
I think you need to strike a balance where you can encourage those who take risks and create wealth while still not oppressing the middle class.
If you define which amount of wealth creates a comfortable lifestyle that enables one to benefit from the freedoms of a market economy and incrementally tax the higher tiers without making people feel that doing more is not worth it (a biiiiiiiig problem where I come from) then you'll have a nice sustained economic growth...
what I don't get is how to get the bottom tiers to get out and do something.
I also don't know what do to about those who are born into wealth and just use their cash as a leverage to ass-fuck the rest of the populace through hedge funds... I guess the estate tax was good for that but hey, the republicans felt like people Paris Hilton and George Bush should get what their daddy (or grand daddy actually) earned...
- airey0
there's a few other reason for the economic freefall the USA (and all of us) has seen that aren't related to tax breaks for the rich. a few you might have heard of are: the cold war (especially the part that featured nuclear weapons and the star wars programme (i prefer to spell it with 2 'm's and and 'e') quite heavily - again thanks cowboy ronald raygun), 2 iraq wars, 2 afghan conflicts, a bunch of minor conflicts. also, the allowance of unsecured loans to the lower income peeps with no equity that kinda buggered us a tad.
- we've all gotta shoulder the bad calls. not just the rich bastards although if you're up for a smiting i'm in.airey
- those wars and military build ups were VERY profitable to private industry, had there been heavier taxes...zarkonite
- that's the scam the neo-cons ran on the american people, use their patriotism to go to war and profit from public funds.zarkonite
- yep, shame it was paid for by public monies that had to be borrowed and borrowed.airey
- akrokdesign0
- most of the designers...
BOTTOM 90%akrokdesign - in both money and personality. and judging by this thread, education and lateral thought.airey
- most of the designers...
- airey0
i guess one question that's worth the ask:
at what stage would you call someone 'rich'? what measure and amount equals this 'evil-doing' subgroup exactly?
- is my 30k debt to the tax office count me in or out?airey
- what do you think?akrokdesign
- your making 100k?akrokdesign
- nah, 3 years tax return. late. no cash. buggered with a large wooden device.airey
- good luck with that.akrokdesign
- yep.airey
- lowimpakt0
get rid of tax havens.
and then review the Tobin Tax...
- vaxorcist0
increasing tax on the rich always presents the problem of rich people being able to pay accountants and lawyers a bit of money to avoid paying the feds alot of money, unless we have a simpler tax system, not neccesarily a flat tax, but something without so much wiggle room as we have now. Good luck getting that passed, as tax bills are full employment acts for the lobbyist-industrial complex.