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Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

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Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#141

Post by loumf »

megaman821 wrote: post #53

I think the best solution would be to get rid of income taxes and just have sales and property taxes. Taxing the rich a higher rate is always going to seem unfair to them because the only way those taxes can be lessened is by making less money. Taxing $2 million house at a special rate is a different story, it seems fair because if you don't want to pay the tax you live in a more modest house. Luxury cars, fur coats,…

One huge problem with this is for people that have already built up savings based on taxed income -- mostly those in or near retirement. If we move over to consumption based, they are now going to live in a far worse tax environment then they planned for or that is fair (it's a kind of double-taxation to tax your income higher while earning income and then your consumption when you are mostly consuming, but not earning)

Not insurmountable, but it needs to be addressed, because it's a large voting block.

Also, we'd need a much better way to enforce it than we currently have. Taxes like these are trivial to dodge and hard to prove.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#142

Post by motters »

The rich and their tax situation is really only part of the wider picture of how to govern an economy in a sustainable manner. It's my opinion that we need to take more of a systems approach, making use of lessons from cybernetics.

It's pretty obvious now that the economy is not like an ecosystem with multiple more or less autonomous agents acting independently, but is instead more like a machine where information flows are centralised and significant components of the system can act in concert.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#143

Post by mseebach »

te_platt wrote: post #55

Eliminate all federal taxes and print the money needed for government operations. Effectively this becomes an inflation tax. Automatically it affects the wealthy in direct proportion to their wealth as opposed to their most recent earnings. No loopholes, no games, no misallocation of resources for tax breaks.

> No loopholes, no games, no misallocation of resources for tax breaks.

Bonds, currency and commodities?

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#144

Post by philwelch »

forensic wrote: post #30

Scott Adams is just talking about moving towards a visible aristocracy. These are the first baby steps. Soon the rich will have special privileges just like the old days.

Aristocracy is different from this. Generally, aristocracy is both hereditary and disconnected from actual wealth.

In the UK, JK Rowling, even though she is richer than the Queen, is not an aristocrat. She is, in fact, upper middle class. Someone who's born into the aristocracy, even if they're not especially wealthy, is an aristocrat.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#145

Post by yummyfajitas »

jmulho wrote: post #118
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty disingenuous. I've held low-wage jobs, and so have most of the members of my immediate family, and taxes took a serious bite out our paychecks. You are referring to the federal income tax, as many people do in debates like this, but lower-middle class people pay a much greater percentage of their income in payroll taxes than do wealthy people; the "income tax" debate is misleading.

A person making $20,000 pays the same US federal payroll tax rate as a person making $100,000 (7.65% in 2010, 5.65% in 2011). This tax pays for Social Security and Medicare (retirement income and retirment healthcare). Federal income tax pays for most of everything else: national defense, public safety, infrastructure, education. In 2009, 47% of US households paid zero federal income tax. We are close to the point wh…

A person making $20,000 pays the same US federal payroll tax rate as a person making $100,000 (7.65% in 2010, 5.65% in 2011)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the federal payroll tax was about 15%. Your employer is only allowed to list 7.65% on your pay stub/W2, but that's a different thing.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#146

Post by jws »

pmiller2 wrote: post #123
jimmyjim wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I want to point out that it makes very much sense to have fines adjusted to one's wealth. When speeding, you're endangering people's lives. There has to be some measure that will make you think twice about speeding the next time around -- if you know that the ticket fine will be a paltry amount to you (relative to your total wealth), that is no deterrent.

Fines aren't the deterrent. The deterrent is that points on your license lead to higher insurance rates and eventual loss of driving privileges.

Except with wealth you can pay a local lawyer to plead it to a non-moving violation, a ludicrously inflated "court cost", and a "donation" to the local law enforcement retirement fund. (Kirksville Missouri, I'm looking at you.)

The wealthy can opt for a "pay X now" instead of "Y over time where Y>X" option. Wealth buys you a discount.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#147

Post by philwelch »

klbarry wrote: post #74
kanamekun wrote: post #32

The US Government could give out badges for every $1m in taxes you pay... then the rich could level up every April 15th.

This is not bad at all. I feel like the government should use game theory everywhere - for the poor they want to succeed and teach themselves, for the rich paying taxes, etc. It's proven to work in so many situations.

Quibble: "Game theory" refers to scenarios like prisoner's dilemma and so forth, not to gameplay mechanics.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#148

Post by megaman821 »

loumf wrote: post #141
megaman821 wrote: post #53

I think the best solution would be to get rid of income taxes and just have sales and property taxes. Taxing the rich a higher rate is always going to seem unfair to them because the only way those taxes can be lessened is by making less money. Taxing $2 million house at a special rate is a different story, it seems fair because if you don't want to pay the tax you live in a more modest house. Luxury cars, fur coats,…

One huge problem with this is for people that have already built up savings based on taxed income -- mostly those in or near retirement. If we move over to consumption based, they are now going to live in a far worse tax environment then they planned for or that is fair (it's a kind of double-taxation to tax your income higher while earning income and then your consumption when you are mostly consuming, but not earni…

Retirees are the people in the worst situation but it can be helped a little by not collecting taxes on the IRAs and refunding the tax on the Roth IRAs.

A sales tax my be slightly harder to collect but there will be a lot less people to collect it from. As the IRS, I'd rather deal with a few million merchants than hundreds of millions people.

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#149

Post by pzxc »

sambeau wrote: post #140

If I could, I would link tax paying to the National Lottery. The more tax you pay the bigger your chance of winning big. It would make a refreshing change to see people queueing up on a Saturday night, desperate to pay their tax.

I would have an emotional reaction from seeing that sight but I wouldn't call it "refreshing".

Re: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

#150

Post by yummyfajitas »

alsomike wrote: post #137
yummyfajitas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's hard to create a high status item. Say you invent the "US Govt. Certified Top 0.1% Badge" - do you really think Peter Thiel, John Paulson or Alex Rodriguez will really give a crap? Taxing existing luxury status symbols could work, and is very likely a good idea. Creating new status symbols is likely to fail horribly. Also, the tax on certain neighborhoods neglects the very large non-status re…

My tax plan is to eliminate income tax up to $90,000. After that, income is taxed at 100%. The government awards tax credits for everyone making less than that, so that everyone's salary + tax credits = $90,000. "But wait," you say "How will we incentivize entrepreneurs if they can't earn more money?" For everyone making over $90,000 (approx. 11% of the population), their pretax salary is used to assign them national…

Ok - if your system is ever enacted, I'm cutting my work hours back by 50% or more.

I'm also hoping that not everyone does this, because if everyone did, there would be far less than $90k/person floating around. But that won't happen, right?

It means that today, humans create enough wealth annually so that every two-parent household on the planet could live like the American middle class.

This assumes that the total cost of providing the same middle-class resources to everyone in the world is equal to the present marginal cost of doing so.

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