How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

Those things are not mutually exclusive. You absolutely seem to be moving the goalposts. You say your introducing points but each response is "what about the next issue down the line" i.e. moving the goalposts.

> To be honest, I don't really understand your position.

That there are best practices for every field of government, and they should be followed instead of politicians going by what they feel.

You're focusing on semantics and being for example "well define best", and I just don't see that as being a particularly productive avenue of conservation.

You want to try and make the point that everything is subjective, I guess, but it isn't. Again, there are best practices. Best as in the dictionary definition of the word. Context would be, as said, ensuring the UN charter of rights and freedoms is being implemented correctly (should I expect a request to define "correctly"?) It wouldn't be tyranny for a government to rule according to expert advice and suggestion, it would be competence.

If you really want to take the discussion into arguing about different people's definitions for best (or 'reasonable', or whichever word quote me saying), then we don't have anything further to discuss. It's not a discussion I find value in or have an interest in having.

This is generally how conversations or debates go, when people don't immediately agree with you. Asking what about X? Moving the goalposts is quite different. If I said I will believe you if you if you gave an example of Y, then when you showed me Y, asked for Y+Z. In this conversation, I havent set any goals, just asked questions and made counterpoints.

In general think maybe you are misunderstanding me, I absolutely agree there is a best way to go about a given thing. I dont see how you can think what goverment should be doing isnt particularly relevant.

I personally think that many articles of the UN declaration of human rights are garbage, and would oppose my government implementing it in practice.

Again, government competence depends on what you want the government to do.

My fundamental point was people don't agree on what the government should do. It sounds like you have walked this back, so I dont think we have much left to talk about.

We aren't going to hash out an agreement of what governments Should do over HN.

To be sure, use of the terms "progressive" and "substantial" in context here is quite misleading at face value, and every time you handwave this federal receipts as a percentage of GDP metric as if it somehow magically supports an argument that the wealthy are paying their equitable and sustainable share, it comes off even more as disingenuous.

We need only disaggregate this total metric and recognize a long declining trend in tax receipts on corporate income as a percentage of GDP[1] to see how such an argument falls flat on its face.

Furthermore, we can see from the CBO report previously cited[2] that at the individual income level, the largest gap in tax liabilities by a massive margin is from underreporting of business income, i.e. flow-through from partnerships, S corps, estates and trusts, rent and royalty, farm, and nonfarm proprietor income...and that doesn't even account for the sophisticated evasion that's happening right under our noses as previously mentioned.

So if total receipts remain flat (as you point out) while receipts attributable to corporate income are clearly on a declining trend, it begs the question: who/what has been shouldering the implied delta?

It should come as no surprise that corporate profits after tax is strongly correlated to public debt as a percentage of GDP[3], of course, with a grift catalyst that comes along every few decades that allows the cart to lead the horse for truly outsized profits before the inevitable reversion to the mean expensed by even more public debt.

It should also be unsurprising that when public debt to receipts ratio[4] is levered over 6x with interest rates as high as they are (never mind the $82+ billion and snowballing negative carry by the Fed[5]), negative sentiment brews as private wealth locks in exit liquidity while the rest of the public braces to "socialize losses" in the long run.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17rUd

[2] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467#_idTextAnchor018

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17s68

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17saE

[5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RESPPLLOPNWW

Speaking of handwaving, showing that corporate receipt are down a percentage doesn't negate the argument whatsoever because: 1) corporations aren't people, 2) corporate taxes make up a small part (6%) of total tax burden.

Take a look at personal income taxes which are 42% of government revenues.

https://taxfoundation.org/top-1-percent-pays-more-taxes-bott...

The percentage of all income taxes paid by the top 1% has increase from ~20% in 1990 to 35% in 2011.

The tax burden has gotten more progressive over time, not less.

> That means Copeland’s church gets a pass on what would otherwise be an annual property tax bill exceeding $150,000 — money that other local taxpayers must backfill to cover the cost of schools, police and firefighters.

How on earth does this make sense? It’s not like there’s some divine requirement that an exact number of dollars must be paid and now everyone else is on the hook. Taxing rich people more is convenient and mostly accepted but come on, it’s 1 person, they aren’t using more schools/police/whatever.