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Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

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Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#11

Post by gota »

solotronics wrote: post #5
xivzgrev wrote: post #2

“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten…

Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If…

I'll focus on the initial part of your post to point out that you _cannot_ trivially avoid taxes for operating in the largest economy in the world while operating in the largest economy in the world.

Sure it's possible under certain aspects (like Facebook et al. paying nearly zero under being "mutlinational" and even that relies on the will of the government to allow it) but that does not apply to the US stock market, does it?

Unless someone knows something I don't I can't be convinced financial players would stop trading in the US because of taxes unless they are really, really abusive.

Some evasion to other markets, perhaps, but how much "down" to developing nations are large funds willing to go?

You can't just seamlessly move the entire thing elsewhere. No other country has the economy and international (military) presence. Do we all agree that makes a difference?

I can't see this level of taxation changing things at all

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#12

Post by buboard »

dmos62 wrote: post #7
solotronics wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If…

I like your ideas. However, I don't fully follow the the low corporate taxes one though. Is the idea to compete in a race-to-the-bottom with corporate taxes and profit from trickle-down economics? I think the popular critique of trickle-down is fair.

Corporation tax does not tax (rich) individuals

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#14

Post by kasey_junk »

rayiner wrote: post #6

This is welfare for upper middle class people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... > “Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee of the Urban Institute have written, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.” The highest-earning quarter of the population holds more than a third of all student debt, while the lowest-earning quarter holds only 12 percent, according to Baum…

We could just rollback the recent tax cuts and have a much more progressive tax policy than a student loan forgiveness program for all.

That said one of the arguments for universal forgiveness is that it’s the only way to get major reform in the space. That seems like a crazy expensive premium to pay to me but maybe I’m naive about the appetite for improving others lives.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#16

Post by jkarneges »

rayiner wrote: post #6

This is welfare for upper middle class people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... > “Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee of the Urban Institute have written, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.” The highest-earning quarter of the population holds more than a third of all student debt, while the lowest-earning quarter holds only 12 percent, according to Baum…

Doing this fairly seems really difficult, when there are people who didn't go to college (but may have wanted to), and people who did go and paid off their debt.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#17

Post by collidge »

I get helping those who are legitimately low income. But this is much broader than that.

Please explain how this is not rewarding those who chose to spend their money on luxuries instead of paying their debt. What about those of us who paid off our debt by living frugally?

As someone in favor of universal health care, subsidizing college, etc, I'm still against this particular policy decision. It's badly-thought-out populist candy.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#18

Post by ru999gol »

solotronics wrote: post #5
xivzgrev wrote: post #2

“Sanders will also release a detailed roadmap -- centered on new taxes on Wall Street -- to raise the $2.2 trillion dollars necessary to pay for this program and his other college funding plans. It will include a 0.5% tax on stock trades (or 50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Sanders believes that could raise more than $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten…

Today we have hyper globalized financial systems and if a country implements taxes like this the big players just move their money elsewhere. This only ends up hurting middle class folks who are playing by the books. I think it would make much more sense to have a very simple tax system (a few percent on every capital gain or income, wether corporate or personal) and get rid of every other complexity and loophole. If…

Its sort of amazing that anyone can still openly advocate that raising taxes on the rich "only ends up hurting middle class" or for "no minimum wage" slavery, without getting the shit kicked out of them. The really crazy thing is they think they are good people, not at all rotten and viscous as they truly are. The cliff between rich and poor is ever more increasing, and you think giving the rich more is going to stop this, you deserve whatever is coming to you when the poor have reached their limit and come knocking on your door.

Maybe at least you will realize, that the poor that is going to kick your head in, is not reading Hacker News.

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#19

Post by lawlessone »

rayiner wrote: post #6

This is welfare for upper middle class people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... > “Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee of the Urban Institute have written, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.” The highest-earning quarter of the population holds more than a third of all student debt, while the lowest-earning quarter holds only 12 percent, according to Baum…

>This is welfare for upper middle class people.

Maybe more lower class people would go into this if they could afford it?

Re: Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt

#20

Post by rayiner »

kasey_junk wrote: post #14
rayiner wrote: post #6

This is welfare for upper middle class people. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... > “Education debt,” as Sandy Baum and Victoria Lee of the Urban Institute have written, “is disproportionately concentrated among the well-off.” The highest-earning quarter of the population holds more than a third of all student debt, while the lowest-earning quarter holds only 12 percent, according to Baum…

We could just rollback the recent tax cuts and have a much more progressive tax policy than a student loan forgiveness program for all. That said one of the arguments for universal forgiveness is that it’s the only way to get major reform in the space. That seems like a crazy expensive premium to pay to me but maybe I’m naive about the appetite for improving others lives.

The recent tax cuts are a side show. The main effect was to bring U.S. corporate tax rates in line with Randian hell-holes like... Sweden: https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/corporate-tax-rate; https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-sweden.pdf (Sweden - 6% of revenue from corporate taxes); https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd... (US - 8% of revenue from corporate taxes).

If we want to help people, we need to raise taxes on the middle and upper middle class and spend it on safety net services, like everyone else in the developed world: https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the...; https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-sweden.pdf (Sweden - 61 % of revenue from from middle class taxes: payroll, social insurance, and goods and services); https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pd... (USA - 41% of revenue from same sources).

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