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In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

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Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#51

Post by refurb »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #31
sokoloff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US we tax the marginal middle class dollar of income about 3x higher than we do a marginal dollar of investment income. Marginal income middle class tax rate [0]: 22%, some at 24% Marginal capital gains rate for a fairly generous set of assumptions that benefit your argument: 15%. 24% is 60% higher, not 300% higher, than 15%. That's more or less taking the best-case for your argument. Add FICA contributions…

The parent has a fair point though: why would capital gains ever be taxes at a rate different from income?

An attempt incentivize desirable behavior - long-term investment.

If you invest short term it taxes like income.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#52

Post by sokoloff »

newacct583 wrote: post #38
sokoloff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US we tax the marginal middle class dollar of income about 3x higher than we do a marginal dollar of investment income. Marginal income middle class tax rate [0]: 22%, some at 24% Marginal capital gains rate for a fairly generous set of assumptions that benefit your argument: 15%. 24% is 60% higher, not 300% higher, than 15%. That's more or less taking the best-case for your argument. Add FICA contributions…

...you're right. I was figuring a marginal tax rate of about 40% and dividing by 15%, then rounding up. In practice the number is closer to 2x, as you said. Why does that change the analysis?

If the magnitude of the difference doesn't change the analysis, why mention it in the first place?

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#53

Post by Turing_Machine »

sokoloff wrote: post #17
epgui wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are things that everyone want, they don't really distinguish those who complain about taxes from those who don't. I'd propose, simplistically, that people who demand tax cuts have in common the following characteristics: - they may be confused about the role(s) of taxation - they may not have sat down with pen and paper to try and figure out how to work a government's finances - they may not be aware that a lot…

I think there's a non-trivial (and certainly non-zero) portion of the population who would specifically enjoy tax hikes on other people who have become, in their judgment, too successful .

Envy is a powerful force, to be sure.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#54

Post by platz »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #49
platz wrote: post #40

david cay johnston on the moral basis of progressive taxation (3 min) https://youtu.be/8Qsl6QUlWVc

What he's talking about (the wealthy people of Ancient Greece voluntarily giving away some money for the greater good) sounds more like a charity.

I believe he said the wealther you got, the bigger burden you owe to athens, because without Athens you wouldn't have gotten rich, and we want there to be rich people in the future in athens as well.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#55

Post by davidivadavid »

platz wrote: post #54
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he's talking about (the wealthy people of Ancient Greece voluntarily giving away some money for the greater good) sounds more like a charity.

I believe he said the wealther you got, the bigger burden you owe to athens, because without Athens you wouldn't have gotten rich, and we want there to be rich people in the future in athens as well.

Probably worth noting that a flat tax system would fit that description, even though it's not "progressive". I'm curious what the specifics of Athenian taxations were.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#56

Post by ObserverNeutral »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #29
ObserverNeutral wrote: post #2

taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy...and so forth In this case, of course there was a tax on wine in ancient Egypt in order to represent the social hatred which ensu…

That doesn't even make sense. Why would you "need" taxes to "represent" social hatred?

To avoid violent fighting. People hate those who are doing better than themselves and thus they come together to bring those anomalies down.

Back in the days it was all done violently, nowadays it's done subtly via taxation

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#57

Post by ObserverNeutral »

newacct583 wrote: post #11
ObserverNeutral wrote: post #2

taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy...and so forth In this case, of course there was a tax on wine in ancient Egypt in order to represent the social hatred which ensu…

This is an extraordinarily bad take. In the US we tax the marginal middle class dollar of income about 3x higher than we do a marginal dollar of investment income. Do we hate the middle class more than wall street? We tax canadian steel more than chinese PCBs. Do we hate the Canadians more than the Chinese? More broadly, this would seek to interpret the lowest-tax anarchies as the most tolerant and loving societies a…

> More broadly, this would seek to interpret the lowest-tax anarchies as the most tolerant and loving societies and the highest-tax liberal democracies as most hate-filled, which seems equally suspect.

The level of hate towards the elites and those who are doing better than the mean is the same, anarchies solely express such hatred with violence and violent repossession of the stuff and the status accumulated by the "elites".

liberal democracies etc. do it annually, subtly via taxation.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#58

Post by ObserverNeutral »

tomdell wrote: post #12
ObserverNeutral wrote: post #2

taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy...and so forth In this case, of course there was a tax on wine in ancient Egypt in order to represent the social hatred which ensu…

Public benefit, not hatred, is the primary motivation behind higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. These taxes were at their highest in America around WWII and following - the money was used to fund the war. These taxes are at historic lows in America thanks to waves of major tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy since the 80s. Social services have been defunded in parallel. Taxes are raised for corporati…

> Public benefit, not hatred, is the primary motivation behind higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy

All taxes are essentially a re-do or a refund at the socieatal level

Corporations sell a product or a service, citizens see such product/service and think they might use it to improve their lives.

Then they decide to exchange some social status (represented by their net worth in USD) for the quality of life provided by that product or service.

Then they collectively realize that everybody had the same idea and that the corporation and its owners accumulated so much social status in the form of net worth flowing out of citizens and into the corporation/owners coffins.

Now they want all want a re-do/refund even though they voluntarily agreed to exchange part of their social status for quality of life and the corporation delivered on that.

What pushes people to claim a refund is :

1) They regret that everybody had the same idea as themselves and that they contributed to socially elevate that person so much

2) Hedonistic treadmill kicks in so the quality of life provided by that product/service doesn't feel as good as the first day you used it...so you are now even more regretful that you purchased it.

Witnessing the social elevation of somebody other than self (and having contributed to such social elevation) plus the hedonistic treadmill which makes the product/service not feel like something that is so special anymore compels people to come together and claim a refund in the form of taxation against those who were socially elevated

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#59

Post by tertius »

tomdell wrote: post #12
ObserverNeutral wrote: post #2

taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy...and so forth In this case, of course there was a tax on wine in ancient Egypt in order to represent the social hatred which ensu…

Public benefit, not hatred, is the primary motivation behind higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. These taxes were at their highest in America around WWII and following - the money was used to fund the war. These taxes are at historic lows in America thanks to waves of major tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy since the 80s. Social services have been defunded in parallel. Taxes are raised for corporati…

Instead of looking at tax rates, look at how much the government actually collected as a % of GDP. It's fairly flat.

Re: In the Beginning, There Were Taxes

#60

Post by AstralStorm »

mulmen wrote: post #48
jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned this theory from David Graeber's Debt . You are a ruler with an army. That army has to be fed. It can just violently take what it needs from the population. But that is disorderly and makes people mad at you. So, instead, you issue money to the soldiers. By why would the population take this money in exchange for food? Even if it's made out of a precious metal, what does a peasant want with gold, when nobod…

This is an interesting idea but seems simplistic. Certainly the peasants also need to trade with each other, regardless of the presence of an army? Money facilitates that trade. You can barter chickens or goats or whatever but at some point nobody needs more of those either. Especially because chickens have to be fed. When the thing being traded has only abstract value it becomes money, even if the tokens are chicken…

Athenian field workers were not quite peasants from later ages, and a lot of trade was ran in kind. Early units of money were weights - usually of grain and equivalent. Money only made the exchanges a bit simpler.
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