451–460 of 504 posts
I'm tired to read articles written inside "Opinions" sections.(not that I necessarily disagree with it, you guys are explaining how this article is right or wrong better than me). I would really like (not intended at HN, it's a general crisis in my life) to read more articles about politics that are neutral and factually oriented. It seems like 90% of the political content I read twists facts and build cheap, cherry-…
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- They are NOT speaking of the 1% (such as medical professional or high income technical professionals) - They are NOT speaking of the 0.1 %. - They are speaking of the 0.01%. One person out of 10000. Not multimillionaires. 100 millionaires and billionaires. There is a very good reason why the tax foundating speaks of the 1% and not of the 0.1% or 0.01% : it is usefull to protect billionaires.
>it is usefull to protect billionaires Income taxes aren't on wealth; they're on income. Billionaires usually own most value in stock (and usually in a company they own or founded). The majority of the Forbes 400 are there due to founding a company that was found so useful to others, that the owner is worth billions. When they sell ownership they get taxed at very high rates, and this is after their company being tax…
What about estate taxes?
Say a billionaire is holding 3,412,037 shares of SPY. 0 transactions buying or selling for the full fiscal year. Just dividends being paid out reinvesting. What taxes would this person pay?
I'm tired to read articles written inside "Opinions" sections.(not that I necessarily disagree with it, you guys are explaining how this article is right or wrong better than me). I would really like (not intended at HN, it's a general crisis in my life) to read more articles about politics that are neutral and factually oriented. It seems like 90% of the political content I read twists facts and build cheap, cherry-…
There is no canonical neutral in politics. “Neutral” is just code for “stuff I agree with”. You don’t really want neutral content, you just want content that validates your existing beliefs. The article lists a bunch of facts and numbers, why do you consider it “non-factual”?
You can't have a genuinely neutral political take, obviously, but you can have one which makes a best-effort to honestly understand, present and address the strongest opposing arguments.
The vast, vast majority of political ink spilled these days is just worthless cherry-picking bias-confirming ingroup-good-outgroup-bad let's-all-dunk-on-each-other dreck.
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All of this is true, but it's beside the point. The perception in America is that the rich pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income than the middle class do. The marginal tax rates imply that, with middle class people paying either the 22% or 24% marginal rate, and rich people paying at at 35%+ rate. Thus, people think that we have a progressive system. However, if you look at the data in this chart, you can…
The percent of all taxes paid by the bottom 50% has been going down for the last few decades.
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Widely known by whom? I'm not sure how that could be true even in theory; there is no universally agreed on definition of "progressive".
Yes, there is. If you are suggesting that literally no-one has ever thought: I will compare tax systems between countries...then yes...they have done that. And yes there are lots of objective measures of progressivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax#Measuring_prog... A good, brief, summary is - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/ameri... - and there is also this in the Economist whi…
Exactly. The US can certainly be considered particularly progressive on some measures, but not all of them. For example, see the linked article.
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A healthy democracy does require an engaged, educated voting populace to avoid being captured. I think the USA has been largely captured by the merchant kings who focus the populous not on their ability to change the nations trajectory, but instead on meaningless distractions. Did you hear about the anti-gun nuns who bought a significant piece of ownership in the gun manufacturers? They have voting rights in those co…
There's a very simple solution to making the government less susceptible to regulatory capture - make it as small as possible.
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Most of the bottom ~50% or so of households pay no (or negative) federal income tax, due to low income, EITC, various offsets for children, etc.
At the lower end, you need to factor in payroll taxes as well ( FICA )
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The rich spend a smaller share of their income, so a VAT scheme would in practice produce a regressive taxation scheme, with the lowest incomes paying relatively the most, because they have to spend all of their income.
What about a flat transactional tax that occurs any time money changes hands? I found this not too long ago and have been enamored with the idea: http://apttax.com/execsummary.php
Earned-income (labor) shouldn't be taxed at all. It seems very unjust to tax something that is not a profit, such as a job. We aren't taxed when we trade two pineapples for four pears, so why is trading our time/effort for money any different? It's a scam. Though property taxes are likely a bigger scam. With that we're already in a post-ownership society. You never escape rent, never own anything, which is truly unfa…
> We aren't taxed when we trade two pineapples for four pears, so why is trading our time/effort for money any different? Actually you are taxed on trades. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/four-things-you-should-know-if-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of this is true, but it's beside the point. The perception in America is that the rich pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income than the middle class do. The marginal tax rates imply that, with middle class people paying either the 22% or 24% marginal rate, and rich people paying at at 35%+ rate. Thus, people think that we have a progressive system. However, if you look at the data in this chart, you can…
The percent of all taxes paid by the bottom 50% has been going down for the last few decades.