Bernie Sanders to unveil plan to cancel all $1.6T of student loan debt • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by acheron » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 1:04 PM UTC

jqgatsby wrote: post #84

rayiner wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article criticizes Sanders' proposal for allocating a large government benefit disproportionately to the middle class. I'm criticizing the proposal for the same reason. My point about taxes is the flip side of the same criticism. "Progressive liberals" view the upper middle class as a marginalized class that should receive government benefits, not a privileged class that should pay for them. That's why Sanders' p…

Your example of the guy who has $100K in student loans and is making a $100K salary in New York is a good example, but I think we very much disagree on how he should be treated. If he's living in NYC, his take-home is about $68k after taxes and he's laying out $3500/month in rent for a one bedroom and paying $1k/month for the loans. That leaves him $1100/month for utilities, medical, and, you know, food if he wants t…

Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption just as much as leasing a new BMW or going on European vacations twice a year. If he wants to stop "just treading water", then he can move somewhere else, such as a place that's not in the top 3 most expensive areas in the country; just like the guy with the BMW can buy a used Honda instead.

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

#92

Post by jqgatsby » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

acheron wrote: post #91

jqgatsby wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example of the guy who has $100K in student loans and is making a $100K salary in New York is a good example, but I think we very much disagree on how he should be treated. If he's living in NYC, his take-home is about $68k after taxes and he's laying out $3500/month in rent for a one bedroom and paying $1k/month for the loans. That leaves him $1100/month for utilities, medical, and, you know, food if he wants t…

Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption just as much as leasing a new BMW or going on European vacations twice a year. If he wants to stop "just treading water", then he can move somewhere else, such as a place that's not in the top 3 most expensive areas in the country; just like the guy with the BMW can buy a used Honda instead.

That's a common fallacy. Places that have high paying jobs usually have high cost of living. You can't typically command high salaries in cheaper areas, but people seem to think that just by virtue of living in a certain area you are defacto well-off.

Anyway, this hypothetical guy isn't helping my case, because we can either add or subtract virtues to make him more or less sympathetic. As someone who matched this description personally, I can tell you I did not feel "upper middle class" by any stretch of the imagination, which is what I was responding to.

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

#93

Post by solotronics » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

ru999gol wrote: post #18

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…

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…

I understand you are upset but I ask you to please consider this briefly. If you change conditions to make a specific place more appealing to the rich this does not in any way hurt the poor in that area. If having rich people around was bad for the lower income citizens then people with low income in Monaco would be worse off than people with low income in Africa.

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

#94

Post by solotronics » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

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.

It's not a race to the bottom, for a number of reasons America is a good place already for international corporations to have headquarters. We have a strong and mostly fair legal system, and rule of law that many countries do not have. We have a world class workforce. But by having high corporate income tax you are driving away companies that would otherwise HQ here and bring money and taxes. I see benefits and no downsides to making the environment here even more appealing to corportations.

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

#95

Post by dmos62 » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 10:58 AM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #94

dmos62 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a race to the bottom, for a number of reasons America is a good place already for international corporations to have headquarters. We have a strong and mostly fair legal system, and rule of law that many countries do not have. We have a world class workforce. But by having high corporate income tax you are driving away companies that would otherwise HQ here and bring money and taxes. I see benefits and no do…

Race to the bottom was not a clear expression of what I meant. I meant that US would compete with other tax environments for lowest corporate taxes, which would drive down corporate taxes globally. The obvious implication is that the corporations then contribute even less to the governmental budgets. In terms of foreign policy, this has the problem of breaking solidarity with other countries. Actually, it seems that the whole idea is based on competition instead of cooperation, but given US policies today, that would be normal. What I'm wondering is would this pay off to the winner that would attract many corporations, but derive minimal taxes from them. What's the mechanism to profit from their operating within your administrative unit in that case?

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

#96

Post by solotronics » Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 12:54 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #95

solotronics wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a race to the bottom, for a number of reasons America is a good place already for international corporations to have headquarters. We have a strong and mostly fair legal system, and rule of law that many countries do not have. We have a world class workforce. But by having high corporate income tax you are driving away companies that would otherwise HQ here and bring money and taxes. I see benefits and no do…

Race to the bottom was not a clear expression of what I meant. I meant that US would compete with other tax environments for lowest corporate taxes, which would drive down corporate taxes globally. The obvious implication is that the corporations then contribute even less to the governmental budgets. In terms of foreign policy, this has the problem of breaking solidarity with other countries. Actually, it seems that…

Corporations don't exist in a vacuum, they are organizations of people working and recieving salaries. I would argue that by having corporate headquarters located somewhere you are bringing massive net benefit if you only look at salary. The corporate income tax is just extra that the government can squeeze out of them and its become apparent that the biggest corporations can get out of most of that anyways in the US by careful gaming of the tax code. Thus my proposal to lower the rate to a more realistic amount and simplify the tax code. Amazon paid $0 corporate income tax last year on $11 billion in income, they structure the company around reinvesting all the profit for the exact reason of not paying taxes. 2% flat rate for everyone is much better than 0% for the most cunning.