Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. I think supply-side economics deserves more nuance than simply thinking we need to make the tax rate arbitrarily low. The Laffer curve isn't the only thing you should look at, since where you tax can be just as important as how much you tax. Take corporate taxes for example. If one were to advocate to get rid of corporate taxes, you might think that person unabashedly biased. What kind of person would want to g…
You can't do that, because the Walton family and others are really, really good at avoiding getting taxed. Even small business owners like my uncles do whatever they can to avoid any sort of taxes. I never paid VAT on sport equipments or DIY equipment, which are what they sold, but we also managed for my whole school life to avoid paying VAT on school supplies, and it's probably the same for my 22 cousins. Tax avoida…
Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
161–170 of 210 posts
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as if it's something that needs to be debunked. When half the country has believed something for close to a half a century, across multiple generations, you bet your ass it needs to be debunked. The fallacy of the "precious job creators" is as American as "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" The fact that you and I were not dumb enough to fall for it doesn't really help anyone in the grand scheme of things. The…
No one believes in trickle-down economics. As GP said, it's a pejorative straw man invented by its opponents .
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say a corporation's taxes should, at the very least, cover the tax burden generated from not paying their employees enough to make a living wage. So if their employees are on government assistance, the cost to provide that assistance is inherently their burden. One way or another, every employee they employ will be earning a living wage from them. I don't even care about overlap. If both Target and Walmart ha…
That's an interesting view though. If Walmart employees somebody who's part time and is on Medicaid are they on Medicaid because of Walmart or because they couldn't commit to enough hours to go full time? 9% of 1.6 million employees on Medicaid means they are employing over 1.4 million people who are not on Medicaid, all of whom are taxed for income, payroll, property, sales, etc. If Walmart decided tomorrow to termi…
Significant enough that Walmart couldn't operate without them. Not to mention, Walmart manages to capture those government dollars through accepting EBT and such.
And the goal is to make WalMart pay regardless of how they try to weasel out. If you say "only full time", then they employ thrice as many people and give no one enough hours to make a living. Same if you prorate to hours worked.
Essentially you need to stop inventing rules and systems that can be gamed. Because Walmart is incentivized to game them. Push them in the direction of hiring people full time and paying them a fair wage for their time.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are supply side policy arguments that make sense. But that's separate from the linked article, which was a discussion of an empirical paper that claims to find evidence that "tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich" A good faith way of addressing the argument would have been to look at examples where evidence appears to contradict this, or potential flaws in the academic paper, rather than dismiss the id…
My problem is not the article saying that tax cuts for the wealthy are bad. Although this moves us into normative territory, I'd actually personally agree that tax cuts for the wealthy are not we need. But my problem is that "take from the poor and indiscriminately give to the rich" is a mischaracterization of supply-side economics.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since you clearly haven't finished listening to the full joke yet, I'll reveal the punchline: What you describe is what Rogers called "trickle up ". "Trickle-up economics" has never been formally used to refer to a policy either, but at least if you called it that we would understand what you are trying to say. "Trickle-down economics" doesn't even make sense beyond a device used to setup a joke. It is bizarre that y…
"Grow the pie" is the phrase used by proponents, because they understand that "trickle down" invites uncomfortable discussions about "are you sure this will actually help me" while the pie analogy cleverly makes this question difficult to talk about. But it's the same argument and everyone can see it.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
The poor will then give it back to the rich in higher prices for the same amount of stuff. The only real way to tax the rich is to ensure that the rich have to compete for workers by paying competitive wages
This makes the false assumption that all the money given to the poor go back into high margin goods that the rich profit from? it ignores competition, ignores productivity gains by a lesser impoverished population, ignores the impact on small businesses... there are all sorts of losses inherent to poverty that shouldn't be discounted, like the inability to save via bulk purchasing, transportation, high cost credit, p…
Taxes on the rich are like increased power bills. Businesses pass on costs at a markup.
They can do that because you need a job to eat and they only need to hire if there is a profit to be had.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Grow the pie" is the phrase used by proponents, because they understand that "trickle down" invites uncomfortable discussions about "are you sure this will actually help me" while the pie analogy cleverly makes this question difficult to talk about. But it's the same argument and everyone can see it.
Proponents of what? Growing the pie isn't going to convince anyone who has a small slice of anything. Maybe you've never seen a pie before, but no matter how much it grows by the angle of your slice remains the same. People don't care about how much absolute wealth they have. If they did they'd all be happy as even the peasants today are richer than the kings of yore. In reality, people are only concerned about havin…
No, cool tech does not make up for the ruinous cost of health care, housing, and education vs median wages. Maslow's Hierarchy still exists. A system that fails to deliver food and shelter for a reasonable number of worked hours at a reasonable and available job is still a failure no matter how cool the Big Screen TVs are.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't do that, because the Walton family and others are really, really good at avoiding getting taxed. Even small business owners like my uncles do whatever they can to avoid any sort of taxes. I never paid VAT on sport equipments or DIY equipment, which are what they sold, but we also managed for my whole school life to avoid paying VAT on school supplies, and it's probably the same for my 22 cousins. Tax avoida…
The purpose of a government is not to raise the most tax money possible.
And in order to do that, it needs money.
Money it raises by taxation.
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And you wonder why Mississippi is richer than the UK Because Mississippi didn't have Brexit /s All jokes apart I don't see any real evidence that Mississippi is richer than the UK. Their median household disposable income is pretty damn close ($49k vs $54k). The UK has a better social and health safety net (where would you rather be unemployed or disabled?). Mississippi has much lower life expectancy than the UK (6…
Mississippi has far better food and better weather so I don't think life is better in the UK. Also, I have no idea where you got the life expectancy number from, but its not current. I suspect its just a bit old. Its currently like 74 and mostly that's the effect of the Oxy epidemic which is going away with time. I have been to the UK and I have been to Mississippi. Quality of life in Mississippi is far higher unless…
Re: Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I extend an olive branch anyways? I really believe in good faith, civil conversation, and I'd love the opportunity to make amends here. You've said you won't respond further, but seeing your passion, I think it would be great if we could have a civil conversation. I genuinely believe that trickle-down and supply-side economics are meaningfully different things, and I think there would be much to gain from hearing…
I'll pick up the conversation if GP won't (GP = grand parent, your post is the parent of mine and the post above is the grandparent of mine). You're missing the forest for the trees. I argue that the forest is a high level strategy that has been playing out for approaching 50 years: 1. Push money into the capital economy and cut taxes. If anyone complains, cite growth. 2. Push taxes into the labor economy and cut ben…
Now (1) and (2) as you mentioned, are broadly associated with the economic right in America. The usual narrative is that Republicans want to do (1) and (2) to concentrate more wealth among the rich, their reason for doing this being the trickle-down economics creed. There's two main problems with this narrative I see.
The first, is that (1) and (2) aren't strictly right or left. They can be bipartisan. The left--broadly associated with increased taxes on the rich, labor rights, and a bigger welfare state--despite its reputation, often engages with parts of (1) and (2). This is because (1) and (2) aren't strictly set. You can have parts of (1), or parts of (2), or mix-and-match, but presenting them as definitively joined is unfair.
Take the Inflation Reduction act from the Biden era, passed during a blue Congress. It invested heavily in renewable technologies--typically a left-wing endeavor--but wouldn't things like EV tax credits technically be considered corporate freebies, i.e. a bit of (1)? Or Trump's Working Families Tax Cut (the BBB), which although cut taxes for the rich, did genuinely expand the child tax credit and double the standard deduction--the opposite of (2). The point being that there's nuance in how you execute these policies.
The second problem I see with this narrative, is that policy goals are not the same thing as policy results. If legislation endeavors to solve a problem, but fails, it would be unfair to say that the legislation's purpose was to fail. While one could make the claim that (1) and (2) promote an upward redistributive, I don't think you can make the case that either the left or the right specifically aim for that.
This comes back to my central problem in this thread: trickle-down economics isn't a real policy. If you take purported aim of this caricature policy--taking money from the poor and indiscriminately giving it to the rich--nobody is seriously advocating for that. While you might think that that is what's broadly happening within the economy today, it's unfair to blame amalgamations of (1) and (2) policy and say that advocates of supply-side economics _want_ further inequality.