People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike. • Hacker News Board

Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.

#101

Post by brg » Sun, Feb 07, 2010, 9:54 AM UTC

codexon wrote: post #58

brg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality humans are not so different from each other in terms of production and skill... Perhaps you simply don't have experience, but this is certainly not true. There are clear deviations from the norm. Once you start your own business or start to manage groups this becomes quite clear.

Not when there are billions of people in the world in you are looking at the top 100,000 or so. The differences are quite small. This number is far larger and uncorrelated with the number of billionaires in the world. And even when you cite coding studies, the magnitude is somewhere between 25:1 not 1000:1. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000072.html

Thank you for that link, but it goes to prove the point.

The article mentions that in debugging time, the difference is 25:1. In terms of hours, that is a bug getting identified in one hour versus 3 working days. The difference is staggering. Consider the difference in coding time from the article, 5:1. The higher end of the curve completes in one quarter what it takes an average programmer over a year. In terms of development lifecycle, a project will be cut due to reorganized priorities before a group of average programmers even begin to think about a beta while a group of the strongest will have been working on version 4.

Looking for a 1000:1, 100:1, etc is a meaningless standard. If you meet a man twice your size, wouldn't that difference seem staggering? But it is only 2:1.

Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.

#102

Post by codexon » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 12:48 AM UTC

brg wrote: post #101

codexon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when there are billions of people in the world in you are looking at the top 100,000 or so. The differences are quite small. This number is far larger and uncorrelated with the number of billionaires in the world. And even when you cite coding studies, the magnitude is somewhere between 25:1 not 1000:1. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000072.html

Thank you for that link, but it goes to prove the point. The article mentions that in debugging time, the difference is 25:1. In terms of hours, that is a bug getting identified in one hour versus 3 working days. The difference is staggering. Consider the difference in coding time from the article, 5:1. The higher end of the curve completes in one quarter what it takes an average programmer over a year. In terms of d…

1000:1 is a meaningful standard.

There is a point where it becomes unbelievable to say someone is 1000 times better than the top 100,000 people out of however many billion are on the planet right now. A look at any competitive sport or Olympics will show that top athletes are winning by a razor's edge in the milliseconds.

Would you believe it if someone claimed to be a million times better at a certain skill than the top people in the world? The magnitude of difference definitely matters, and let's not delude ourselves into inflating these ratios higher than they actually are.

Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.

#103

Post by SamAtt » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 4:25 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #54

SamAtt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't "wealth" as much as it's "more wealth". There's a classic example of a secretary who did her job really well so she got a raise only to find it bumped her into a higher tax bracket and she actually made less money. So from that point on Secretaries didn't bother to excel. This applies equally to the engineer who makes $225,000 and who might be willing to put in extra effort but won't if the reward isn…

That story about the secretary? That is completely contrary to the way a marginal income tax actually works. There is no way, in the American progressive tax system, to get a raise, be moved into a higher tax bracket, and end up taking home less money. It's just not possible. @ryanwaggoner - correct, ty.

It can if you combine a marginal Federal Tax with a State Flat Tax. Not all tax systems are progressive

Re: People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.

#104

Post by encoderer » Mon, Feb 08, 2010, 8:36 PM UTC

SamAtt wrote: post #103

encoderer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story about the secretary? That is completely contrary to the way a marginal income tax actually works. There is no way, in the American progressive tax system, to get a raise, be moved into a higher tax bracket, and end up taking home less money. It's just not possible. @ryanwaggoner - correct, ty.

It can if you combine a marginal Federal Tax with a State Flat Tax. Not all tax systems are progressive

Ok, I'll bite... How?

A state flat tax will tax this new raise at the same flat rate as all the existing pay.

The marginal federal tax will tax the new raise, in your scenario, at the new, higher tax bracket.

But your scenario would have the gov't taxing this new cash into the red, reducing her take home pay. That's not gonna happen. Period.