Only the richest ancient Athenians paid taxes

Post by alchemist1e9 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 5:45 AM UTC

jquery wrote: post #49

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will speculate there is a completely different mechanism for inequality than taxation policies. Let’s call it crony capitalism and specifically originating within the financial system. Federal reserve policies and bailouts and socialized losses with privatized gains are what cause inequities, imho. I can give a few specific examples that might help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_Lane_Transactions https://www…

Of course The Fed is a generator of inequality, but if taxes were set properly, it could be counterbalanced. We can see this in European countries with much lower rates of inequality because of high taxes on excessive wealth and income. They also have central banks printing money at insanely low interest rates (or even negative rates)… until recently… perhaps they have raised their rates in tandem with the US.

Post by mjfl » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 7:37 AM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #25

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #9

This is a case of apples and oranges. Modern people expect more from their government than the Athenians so more people need to pay taxes to finance it. I agree that the more you earn the more you should pay in terms of percentage of income but the idea that only the rich need to pay taxes is unmaintainable. Also, when it comes to taxes no one is rich, just ask the high income people. There are plenty of people that…

> the idea that only the rich need to pay taxes is unmaintainable I'm not so sure. Taxes are for lots of things, but one of them is making sure a power hungry psycopath doesn't set themself up as king. We might end up spending less of it on weapons that cost thousands of dollars every time you pull the trigger if we taxed the problem away before it could gain momentum.

Post by jquery » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 8:12 AM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #51

jquery wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course The Fed is a generator of inequality, but if taxes were set properly, it could be counterbalanced. We can see this in European countries with much lower rates of inequality because of high taxes on excessive wealth and income. They also have central banks printing money at insanely low interest rates (or even negative rates)… until recently… perhaps they have raised their rates in tandem with the US.

There was an analysis which showed that lower european inequality vs the US is attributable to immigration at both the bottom end and the top end. No European nation has even remotely similar levels of poor and rich immigrants. The analysis showed if you exclude those populations the US inequality is lower. I can’t find the paper done on US data but this is one discussing similar idea: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/e…

Post by Epa095 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 8:54 AM UTC

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #24

ggm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A basis for argument by low tax fanatics that think a modern Athenian state is possible, drugs, TV shows, VLSI and togas, all in with jets and retsina. UK income tax was notoriously applied as a temporary expedient. The low tax fans want a return to the pre Victorian levels of poverty that went hand in hand with the non-welfare state.

I don't think so. Low tax advocates want a more streamlined government that looks after core functions (managing trash, police, etc) rather than what it has taken on today (entire multimillion dollar agencies tasked with getting more women into high status jobs, regulation of the size and shape of cabbages, etc) The idea that "people who want less tax than I do just crave widespread poverty" is a sign you have an ide…

Post by refurb » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

jquery wrote: post #29

utopcell wrote: post #21

Without delving into any moral or fairness arguments, it is probably fair to say that a US tax payer in the top 1% probably already pays 10x to 100x in taxes, in absolute terms, compared to the median tax payer. If I'm reading this [1] correctly, in 2020 about 99% of the population was responsible for 56% of individual taxes while 1% was responsible for the rest 44%. [1] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-i…

Whatever they’re paying, it’s not enough, because inequality is increasing. In other words, they’re paying an outrageous amount of the taxes because they make an extraordinarily amount of the income (and wealth). I’m not talking about someone who got a bunch of RSUs and paid 50% on their $2m payday, it’s the billionaires like Trump who treat tax evasion as a game because the consequences are lower than the expected r…