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Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

theguardian.com

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Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#11

Post by noahth »

ctdonath wrote: post #7

Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve. The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely puni…

Everyone deserves a say in the allocation of resources. The way we accomplish that is through government. Elon Musk is not improving the environment, he's launching cars into space for giggles while mistreating his workers.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#12

Post by rootusrootus »

skrowl wrote: post #4

It's probably different in the UK where The Guardian is, but in the USA the bottom 45% of wage earners pay $0 federal income tax while the top 20% pay 87% of it. I'm not sure how much more you should slap on the "evil" job-creating rich before it's "proper", but 87% already seems pretty high to me. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...

I think it's safe to say that the top 20% is almost entirely made up of people who are definitely not super-rich.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#13

Post by [deleted] »

ctdonath wrote: post #7

Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve. The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely puni…

[deleted]

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#14

Post by dwrowe »

falcolas wrote: post #3

Too many temporarily embarrassed billionaires in our population to push for this from the bottom, and too many billionaires using their version of lunch money on our politicians to get traction from the top. Great concept, won’t ever actually happen.

This is such a tired take. Is it not possible to just believe that a person shouldn’t HAVE to pay more (percentage-wise) in taxes because they’re successful - while at the same time, be fine with the credits / deductions available to the less fortunate? I can’t be the unicorn here.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#15

Post by geggam »

skrowl wrote: post #4

It's probably different in the UK where The Guardian is, but in the USA the bottom 45% of wage earners pay $0 federal income tax while the top 20% pay 87% of it. I'm not sure how much more you should slap on the "evil" job-creating rich before it's "proper", but 87% already seems pretty high to me. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fed...

You do realize it wasnt too long ago the rich in the US DID pay high taxes ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_Tax_R...

little note about how much the rich are actually paying here

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/08/first-tim...

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#16

Post by rayiner »

There are two major problems with this line of reasoning:

1) The bit about the 70% tax rate is wrong. The 70% was on wage income, but other sorts of income was taxed lower, and a lot of income wasn’t taxed at all. https://taxfoundation.org/70-tax-rate-entrepreneurial-income. Actual tax rates on the rich have been highly stable since the 1950s: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

2) The amount of tax the super rich pay is way down on the list of issues to be worried about. The top 0.01% (household income above $7.5 million per year, so not even “super rich”) make just 3.3% of all income. Tax them at 25% or 75%—it doesn’t make much of a difference to the Treasury. Taking all of their money would add maybe 3% to total government spending. That wouldn’t pay for Medicare for All. It won’t pay for the Green New Deal. It might just about pay for universal child care and pre-K.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#17

Post by roenxi »

At least everyone can agree that government taxing should be higher than government spending^.

This article is mainly baiting rich v poor division; on a close read it doesn't actually say much.

The real issue is that everything in general has become so complicated that nobody has a hope of understanding how it works. Unless we have accountants on deck today nobody really has a feel for how much the rich pay in taxes (including under the '70%' regime - I bet there was nobody actually paying anywhere near 70%) and nobody has a great feel for how those taxes are being spent. And nobody has a feel for what happens to the money that rich people control and what it actually goes into doing. They aren't hiding it under the mattress, that money is out there causing real outcomes in the real world that go far beyond the rich having nice houses.

The rich could pay 0% taxes if we had confidence that they believed they should invest it all into ordinary people. We could tax at 100% if we had confidence that an enlightened government would spend it with prudence and intelligence. We will do neither because we know both those assumptions are stupid.

Quoting GK Chesterton and observing that politicians are treacherous is not a powerful contribution.

^ EDIT: Thanks neogodless - I mean specific policy for literally right now, to pay down debt.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#18

Post by ColanR »

noahth wrote: post #11
ctdonath wrote: post #7

Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve. The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely puni…

Everyone deserves a say in the allocation of resources. The way we accomplish that is through government. Elon Musk is not improving the environment, he's launching cars into space for giggles while mistreating his workers.

> Everyone deserves a say in the allocation of resources.

How about we amend that to, 'Everyone deserves a say in the allocation of resources, in proportion to their demonstrated ability to amass and manage resources'.

Elon Musk figured out how to make a ton of money; he has more right to determine its use than some bureaucrat in an office. You say that government is our method of collective allocation, but it's really unelected officials doing what lobbyists recommend. I trust them a lot less than I trust a rich philanthropist.

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#19

Post by hnhg »

ctdonath wrote: post #7

Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve. The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely puni…

You raise an interesting point, and I'd like to follow it further with some numbers across job creation, charity, arts funding, etc, so I can follow things more closely?

Also, how do contributions to these differ across the rich? Are there a couple of 'whales' who keep the numbers high while the other freeload or are they all equally contributing in this efficient manner?

It's also somewhat implicit (correct me if I'm wrong) in your post that government spending and voluntary contributions from the super rich are almost mutually exclusive. To argue devil's advocate, if that's not the case, both can coexist and the overall amount goes up.

One last point, I would like the super rich to be taxed at the same proportion as the middle class. I know wealth isn't linearly distributed but I do expect the relative tax bill to be - would you say that's punitive?

Re: Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes

#20

Post by s9w »

ctdonath wrote: post #7

Why the notion that gov't should be the provider & arbiter of all? Why do none of the "they don't pay enough taxes" crowd not realize the rich do so much of, and more efficiently, what the gov't purports to with massive overhead? Job creation, charity, arts funding, lowering costs of necessities, etc - and at levels & locations which gov't would never achieve. The "tax/soak the rich" notion seems almost entirely puni…

In that case no one should pay taxes.
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