41–50 of 78 posts
I mean. I guess I'm glad someone is out there actually looking at the data. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure it's not going to actually sway anyone.
Sure, tax cuts haven't work yet, but that's because they're still too high!! One more should do it.
From the abstract: > We find tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment. Our results therefore provide strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy. I'd be interested in hearing from those…
> I'd be interested in hearing from those who consider this a surprising result. To me it seems entirely expected, but with online echo-chambers being what they are I have no doubt my lack of surprise could just mean I'm in an informational cul-de-sac. What people think causes wealth inequality: Low tax rates on higher income people. What actually causes wealth inequality: Corporate mergers, consolidation, lack of an…
This is a bad example. All else being equal, society doesn't care if there's one 100-billionare, or 100 1-billionares, if the rest of the income- and wealth- distributions remain the same. What really drives the inequality is, as you noted, consolidation, lack of antitrust enforcement. When a market is reduced to a handful of companies, that don't compete, but collude. And lack of labor organization to serve as a counterweight.
(This is meaningful because, if you split ownership of a company among more people, their personal wealth may be lower, but the company still acts as a unit on the market.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If stealing corrects unjust inequality then it is, in fact, good. Yes. This is literally the principal behind "if you are starving it is not morally wrong to steal food." Which I know a lot of people disagree with and I don't need to hear the arguments about again . But my conscious is clear; some forms of theft are not wrong.
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Anyway I am quite well paid myself these days, so I have no need or moral justification to steal.
I'm not sure using taxes as a way to combat income equality is effective either. Just because taxing the rich less allows them to make more money does not imply taxing them more allows the non-wealthy to prosper.
I think the point is not that it's taking money from the rich. I mean, that's a necessary part of it. The point is that that money is forced to recirculate in the system. The thing people seem to forget is that taxed money doesn't just disappear. It right back into the economy. The target, predominately, is the working class, either directly via Gov't employee wages, or social programs. Or it goes back indirectly, th…
Basically there is no such thing as stagnant money imho.
What taxes imply (again in my opinion) is that we believe the government is better at investing that money than the economy participants themselves. In some cases that is true where the return is over several decades or there is little to no direct monetary return at all (but still very necessary - social programs). But in many cases it is not.
I used to believe taxes were a good way to redistribute wealth. That is until I moved to San Francisco and saw how a welfare super state prioritizes its spending. $75,000/tent/year homeless camping sites, 2 million heroin needles, community ambassadors who aimlessly wonder the mission district with multilingual pamphlets on how to sign up for welfare benefits. Billions funneled to nonprofits, who in turn support poli…
false dichotomy, even if you believe SF spends money wrong, that doesn't justify the tax cuts for the rich
I'll approach this from a different perspective, in the last 20 years can pro-higher tax proponents provide proof of a single program that actually improved the quality of life of US citizens in the middle class? I suspect, many will spring up and suggest Obama Care, but where is the data to support this? I know myself and my families health insurance continues to rise and rise (self employed). My mother is on Medica…
- We all got free vaccines, produced in record time.
- A lot of people are getting the child tax credit.
- A lot of people got extended or expanded unemployment benefits.
- Some jobs were sustained by PPP funding.
- A lot of people were able to stay in their homes both because of eviction moratoriums and rent repayment programs.
- Literal military personnel were setting up and staffing hospitals.
Sure, you might say, but all these things are temporary responses to a short-term-ish crisis. And that's true; and that's also partly what the state is for, right?
But in normal times, I was raised middle class and:
- I went to 3 public schools and a state university
- Growing up my parents regularly took me to the public library. I later became a volunteer there.
- When I commuted daily, it was on public transit.
- I backpack in USFS wilderness zones. I maintain a plot at a community garden managed by my city's parks department. When it's sunny I run through a park with a literal polo field.
- When I am choking on wildfire smoke, I know that state and federal firefighters are trying to control it.
- I haven't had the time yet, but I want to take free Spanish classes at my city's community college.
- I drink clean municipal tap water and flush into a municipal sewer.
- And basically every item I've bought has traveled over public roads, bridges, etc, which I navigate with GPS.
I'm not saying we get a good deal. Public spending is often laughably inefficient or downright corrupt. But to pretend one doesn't benefit at all seems like it's failing to notice a lot of the fabric of our world, or appreciate how much worse it could be.
Question I'm asking in good faith: will this proof have any consequence for the bottom 99.99%? Is there a way this research helps shape policy?
Is it possible that it moves the Overton window? I mean, in the US there has been serious funding for decades aimed at moving the needle around things like guns and taxes. And that organized long term effort has been very successful. Possibly some of these things may result in some swing back to the middle?
I used to believe taxes were a good way to redistribute wealth. That is until I moved to San Francisco and saw how a welfare super state prioritizes its spending. $75,000/tent/year homeless camping sites, 2 million heroin needles, community ambassadors who aimlessly wonder the mission district with multilingual pamphlets on how to sign up for welfare benefits. Billions funneled to nonprofits, who in turn support poli…
We shouldn't tax work at all. We should tax resources and land because they are part of nature and we should use them as little as possible for efficiency's sake. A tax on work basically tells us to use people as little as possible, e.g. use more automation than necessary. You end up with a situation where you both have too many robots and too many unemployed people.
I own land, and do not believe property should be subject to any tax. Are we citizens with property? Or surfs where the state, grants us the ability to use land?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd be interested in hearing from those who consider this a surprising result. To me it seems entirely expected, but with online echo-chambers being what they are I have no doubt my lack of surprise could just mean I'm in an informational cul-de-sac. What people think causes wealth inequality: Low tax rates on higher income people. What actually causes wealth inequality: Corporate mergers, consolidation, lack of an…
> When does Zuckerberg have more wealth? When Facebook has a 900 billion dollar market cap and he pays a 70% tax rate, or when Facebook has a ten billion dollar market cap and he pays a 30% tax rate? This is a bad example. All else being equal, society doesn't care if there's one 100-billionare, or 100 1-billionares, if the rest of the income- and wealth- distributions remain the same. What really drives the inequali…
That's the point of the example.
Zuckerberg owns a given percentage of Facebook. That isn't what increases over time. If he ever wants to spend any of the money, that only ever goes down. The reason he's a multi-billionaire is that a given percentage of Facebook causes him to be when Facebook is a single 900 billion dollar company when it wouldn't if there were a hundred Facebooks each of 1% the size and he only owned the original percentage of one of them.
> And lack of labor organization to serve as a counterweight.
Labor organization is just a different kind of consolidation. It's only useful against a monopoly -- otherwise the business has thin margins and there is nothing for a labor monopoly to extract -- but the correct response to a business monopoly is to smash it to pieces.
Quoted post unavailable.
Nationally it is estimated that workers are not paid at least $19 billion every year in overtime[12] and that in the US $40 billion to $60 billion in total are lost annually due to all forms of wage theft.[13] This compares to national annual losses of $340 million due to robbery, $4.1 billion due to burglary, $5.3 billion due to larceny, and $3.8 billion due to auto theft in 2012.[14]