Doctors, lawyers, and other paycheck people making $250k pay around the 35% rate. They get hit hard. Meanwhile, professional investors earning the same amount pay the capital gains rate of 15%, which is less than a paycheck family earning $80k. I don't want paycheck people to pay more taxes, I want the capital gains rate to go up.
People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
31–40 of 104 posts
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#32Of course they can "afford" it. But so what? Every single billionaire can "afford" to be taxed at a 99% rate. The bigger question: is it in any way fair, just, or moral to tax society's most successful more heavily just for being more successful? EDIT: The other salient question that I forgot to mention is: "why do we need more taxes?" Our government already can't manage what they have with any sort of reasonable eff…
You know what... I'd almost feel sorry for these top 1%'ers... Almost, if it wasn't these very people who OWN our gov't through their lobbyists and cash contributions.
These are the people who have orchestrated public policy in this country directly and indirectly for at least 30 years.
Now the suggestion comes up that the gov't that they bankrupted might actually expect them to pay for it, and a slew of people, none of whom are actually part of this top 1% group, start whining about what's fair and unfair.
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't the people who benefit the most from how society is structured be expected to pay the most for its maintenance?
Ok so let's say I have a billion dollars. I can live anywhere in the world I want to -- and with all kinds of luxuries. Seems to me like the "people who benefit most from how society is structured" would be those poor folks who through no fault of their own, perhaps mental retardation, chronic illness, or birth defect, cannot make a living and yet are provided for by the rest of us. These are the people who would die…
There might be an ethical argument, but the "rich people have lots of options, and might leave" argument isn't really convincing to me. Recall that to avoid U.S. income tax, you must move abroad and permanently renounce your citizenship. How many wealthy Americans do you think would really do that solely due to a tax hike? Especially one that was in the range that would actually likely be passed (i.e. not 99%)?
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#34In the words of Betty Draper, Daniel Gross should stop counting other people's money.
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#35Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#36Back-of-the-envelope-calculation.
Given:
- USA population: 300 million
- percentage of households that make 250k+ in a year (according to the article): 2.1%
If we assume that we have 2 people per household, that's 150 million * 0.021 = 3.15 million "households" making US$250k+.
Assuming that the average income of the US$ 250k+ group is much larger than the bottom, something close to US$ 1 million, and assuming that there is a tax increase will take 5% of your income from your pocket. In practice, we are saying that we are taking 50 thousand dollars of each household that makes more than US$250k.
Using these values, the government would get 3.15 million times US$ 50 thousand = 157.5 billion dollars from this tax increase.
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budg... : the net deficit for the 2009 budget was 407 billion dollars.
I know that are tons of other things in a serious model: flow of money and such. But even so, I wonder if there is any kind of tax increase that would actually be able to fix the deficit.
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't the people who benefit the most from how society is structured be expected to pay the most for its maintenance?
Aside from the larger question of why the government has the right to take people's income by force to begin with, I can think of four practical reasons off the top of my head: 1) It is a disincentive to others who might try to reach that level 2) It's hardly clear that the success of the wealthy is due to how society is structured, and not their own effort. Undoubtably some is, but is it 90/10 or 10/90? 3) It encour…
Do you truly believe there's anybody out there who wouldn't work to attain wealth merely because the gov't takes a higher percentage of it? I mean, seriously?
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't the people who benefit the most from how society is structured be expected to pay the most for its maintenance?
Aside from the larger question of why the government has the right to take people's income by force to begin with, I can think of four practical reasons off the top of my head: 1) It is a disincentive to others who might try to reach that level 2) It's hardly clear that the success of the wealthy is due to how society is structured, and not their own effort. Undoubtably some is, but is it 90/10 or 10/90? 3) It encour…
Originally to provide a justice and defense system, both of which are generally regarded as places where market forces would not provide a solution that would adequate protect the rights not ceded by the people to the gov't.
Of course, after retaining this right the gov't expanded it for all manner of other purposes.
You also have to remember that in most non-US countries rights flow from the crown/gov't to the people, not from the people to the gov't, so the legal justification would be much different and along the lines of "because we didn't cede that to the people"
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why shouldn't the people who benefit the most from how society is structured be expected to pay the most for its maintenance?
Ok so let's say I have a billion dollars. I can live anywhere in the world I want to -- and with all kinds of luxuries. Seems to me like the "people who benefit most from how society is structured" would be those poor folks who through no fault of their own, perhaps mental retardation, chronic illness, or birth defect, cannot make a living and yet are provided for by the rest of us. These are the people who would die…
@_delerium, please read again. That is NOT what Daniel said.
Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
#40Back-of-the-envelope-calculation. Given: - USA population: 300 million - percentage of households that make 250k+ in a year (according to the article): 2.1% If we assume that we have 2 people per household, that's 150 million * 0.021 = 3.15 million "households" making US$250k+. Assuming that the average income of the US$ 250k+ group is much larger than the bottom, something close to US$ 1 million, and assuming that t…
The 2009 deficit is an outlier, because it's being sampled immediately after a sharp fall in revenue. In fact the budget was (briefly, before tax cuts and two wars threw it out of whack again) balanced as recently as 2001. There's no reason to expect that it's an impossibility.
But no, you can't enact a sudden tax increase (or spending cut) in a down year and expect it to close the gap. Budget planning is done over decade-scale timeframes.
Also note that the deficit is bad not because its immediate cost is unbearable but because its current scale is unsustainable. The marginal cost of any extra borrowing is actually quite low; the US Federal Government pays very low interest rates on its debt (check the federal bond rates for current numbers), and no one is suggesting an inability to pay this year's debt -- it's a drop in the bucket. So the goal is a steady reduction of deficit spending to a sustainable level.