OK, lets discuss, "gross wealth inequity or inequality". How much should the top 1% pay? 15% of all income taxes, 20% of all income taxes? What's the right balance to redistribute the wealth in this country? Agreed, they should not pay just 1%.
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4thefunofit
Well-Known Member
I can't give you exact numbers since I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable of the details. But if you consider the metaphor of a seesaw to represent the economy with individual wealth distributed in increasing order along the board, the idea would be to find the point where total wealth on either side is balanced. That point would be the "fulcrum" from which increasing wealth would translate to increasing taxes, and decreasing wealth would translate to decreasing taxes with both being proportional to percentage of total wealth for any particular wealth class. I fully realize this is speculative, but I believe it would be fair and equitable.
4thefunofit
Well-Known Member
Opps!.....deleted duplicate post.
Yeah, thats pretty vague, non definitive, smoke and mirrors and not much use......It only matters when everybody has to pay something, and everyone is aligned and incented to produce something.
Skin in the game.
If I can sit home and watch soap operas and reality TV and not work while you work, produce goods and services and support me thats not a fair distribution of taxes is it?
In my ecomomy, you dont work, and produce, you dont eat. I would make exceptions od course for those mentally or physically incapacitated......you notice I did not say disabled.....because even those with disabilities as long as they are not incapacitated can produce goods, and services, especially in a high tech world where computer work is valuable.
The point is I want the bottom 1% to work as hard as the top 1% too.
I want everyone to pay some taxes in proportion to their means and what they earn and need to live on.
No free rides except for those who really need a free ride.
Your answer is a liitle like the 1860s cartoon....."Dont tax you, Dont tax me, Tax that feller hidin behind the tree!" Give me something that defines who gets taxed and how much they pay all down the line.
Wealthiest to poorest, all work, all pay taxes, and all get to eat and live
life. Some may work harder or smarter. Some may hardly work or make poor decisions, but everyone tries. Everyone pays something.
Thats fair.
If you just wanna take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor
ie wealth redistribution, that does not work. Pretty soon the ones that did work and produce more, have nothing, and the ones that never worked or hardly did spent what you redistributed and no body can make anything anymore......Thats what happened to USSR, Cuba, N.Korea, Venezuela, dozens of other places.
Just contrast the wealth and advancement and purchasing power of an average poor S. Korean to the
Average N.Korean who starves every day. Yes they made it all equal in N.Korea. No rich folk there.
They all starve like dogs unless you are military or in the Communist Party.
Skin in the game.
If I can sit home and watch soap operas and reality TV and not work while you work, produce goods and services and support me thats not a fair distribution of taxes is it?
In my ecomomy, you dont work, and produce, you dont eat. I would make exceptions od course for those mentally or physically incapacitated......you notice I did not say disabled.....because even those with disabilities as long as they are not incapacitated can produce goods, and services, especially in a high tech world where computer work is valuable.
The point is I want the bottom 1% to work as hard as the top 1% too.
I want everyone to pay some taxes in proportion to their means and what they earn and need to live on.
No free rides except for those who really need a free ride.
Your answer is a liitle like the 1860s cartoon....."Dont tax you, Dont tax me, Tax that feller hidin behind the tree!" Give me something that defines who gets taxed and how much they pay all down the line.
Wealthiest to poorest, all work, all pay taxes, and all get to eat and live
life. Some may work harder or smarter. Some may hardly work or make poor decisions, but everyone tries. Everyone pays something.
Thats fair.
If you just wanna take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor
ie wealth redistribution, that does not work. Pretty soon the ones that did work and produce more, have nothing, and the ones that never worked or hardly did spent what you redistributed and no body can make anything anymore......Thats what happened to USSR, Cuba, N.Korea, Venezuela, dozens of other places.
Just contrast the wealth and advancement and purchasing power of an average poor S. Korean to the
Average N.Korean who starves every day. Yes they made it all equal in N.Korea. No rich folk there.
They all starve like dogs unless you are military or in the Communist Party.
4thefunofit
Well-Known Member
Happy you got that off your chest, but I didn't say those things you accuse me of saying. I said, nor implied, nothing about redistribution or people sitting home living off government handouts. The only thing I've described is a possible mechanism for a fair and balanced tax structure. Period. Sorry if that upsets you.
No, I am not upset, but maybe you could explain your fair and balance structure with some more detail or an example with numbers so it will not be so theoretical, but more real or easy to visualize.
4thefunofit
Well-Known Member
I'd love to give you a more detail description of how this would fall out, but I simple do not have access to the relevant numbers. I can, however, define what I mean by wealth and taxes; wealth being the total of all income, property, and belongings of significant value; and taxes being the total of all taxes of any type, including state and local, sales, gas, federal income, etc. Again, sorry.
QuietTexan
Well-Known Member
We have a good tax system it in theory, the special interest carve outs have chewed up the tax code to the point it's unregonizeable. We need a new one. We got new ones in 1954, 1986, and it's about time for a re-write.
Okay, try this picture for size. Would it shock you to find that the top 1% already pay 40% of all taxes? Is that a fair share?
The top 6% pays about 60% of all taxes and so on and so forth.......top 15% pays over 70% of all taxes.
This is where we are right now, today.
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HRM Johnny
Well-Known Member
Another obvious and important question is what are the essential functions of government; i.e. how much do we need to have. Also, how can the government increase revenue? Raise tax rates? Lower tax rates? Does anyone remember the Laffer curve?
-just my two cents worth
By the way, I aint hardly got no dog in this hunt my self. I might be in the last 50-70% of that graph at best, pretty middle class.
My immigrant Grandfather came here in 1917 with the shirt on his back. Literally no possessions whatsoever. Maybe not even underwear.......He walked across Siberia to Japan, cleaned toilets in Japan for 3 months to get fare on a banana boat to the U.S.
He lived in Mexico 5 years as a Russian Jew escaping the Bolshevik Communists in order to get legal approval to come live in the
United States. My other Grandfather was a poor dirt farmer in Alabama who tried running a general store, but went bankrupt because he lent credit to folks who had nothing to eat in the depression. He lost everything he had except 160 acres of dirt his wife inherited which he farmed all his life to make a living. My grandmother, his wife, always said "Don't take any wooden nickels". Cause that's what people tried to pass off during the depression, wooden buffalo nickels. They were desperate.
My mom hoed cotton, milked cows, and plucked feathers off of geese to make down pillows. So, I aint from rich stock, but we got fairly middle class by working our tails off and getting some education, and trying to make good decisions.
America has been and is the land of opportunity for those who will work and persevere, and they can get their "fair share" by
getting educated and working hard. Not by me having to pay all their bills. When Obama care came in I was paying about $8,000 a year for my Blue Cross, Blue Shield medical care, just an personal medical policy for my family of 3. Now my costs were supposed to go down by $2500 a year, but you know.......they went up to $25,000 per year for that policy which I had since 2003. I had to ditch it, because I could not pay $25,000 a year out of my pocket for medical care, and the reason it went up, is because Obamacare taxed those who could pay and gave free medical care to those who could not pay. Well, I don;t know if they couldn't pay or didn't work or anything else about them, I just knew that even though I was working my tail off I could not pay $25,000 a year for my medical insurance to help someone else out. That's my own personal example of how the government does not always tell the truth, does not always redistribute in ways that are fair or sustainable. So what some say is fair...... means some have to give a lot more than what is really fair. Big government is not the right one to decide what's fair.
My immigrant Grandfather came here in 1917 with the shirt on his back. Literally no possessions whatsoever. Maybe not even underwear.......He walked across Siberia to Japan, cleaned toilets in Japan for 3 months to get fare on a banana boat to the U.S.
He lived in Mexico 5 years as a Russian Jew escaping the Bolshevik Communists in order to get legal approval to come live in the
United States. My other Grandfather was a poor dirt farmer in Alabama who tried running a general store, but went bankrupt because he lent credit to folks who had nothing to eat in the depression. He lost everything he had except 160 acres of dirt his wife inherited which he farmed all his life to make a living. My grandmother, his wife, always said "Don't take any wooden nickels". Cause that's what people tried to pass off during the depression, wooden buffalo nickels. They were desperate.
My mom hoed cotton, milked cows, and plucked feathers off of geese to make down pillows. So, I aint from rich stock, but we got fairly middle class by working our tails off and getting some education, and trying to make good decisions.
America has been and is the land of opportunity for those who will work and persevere, and they can get their "fair share" by
getting educated and working hard. Not by me having to pay all their bills. When Obama care came in I was paying about $8,000 a year for my Blue Cross, Blue Shield medical care, just an personal medical policy for my family of 3. Now my costs were supposed to go down by $2500 a year, but you know.......they went up to $25,000 per year for that policy which I had since 2003. I had to ditch it, because I could not pay $25,000 a year out of my pocket for medical care, and the reason it went up, is because Obamacare taxed those who could pay and gave free medical care to those who could not pay. Well, I don;t know if they couldn't pay or didn't work or anything else about them, I just knew that even though I was working my tail off I could not pay $25,000 a year for my medical insurance to help someone else out. That's my own personal example of how the government does not always tell the truth, does not always redistribute in ways that are fair or sustainable. So what some say is fair...... means some have to give a lot more than what is really fair. Big government is not the right one to decide what's fair.
HRM Johnny
Well-Known Member
' … right balance to redistribute the wealth …" ?!! Why should wealth be redistributed? I assume, considering the context, that you mean compulsory wealth redistribution. Why can't we just use voluntary wealth redistribution? Let those who want to make charitable contributions do so. Americans make way more charitable contributions than any other country. Also, what gives the government the right to redistribute wealth? There was certainly nothing in the constitution that allows it.
One might also consider the fairness of a flat tax.
One might also consider not taxing income. The only reason that I can find for taxing income, is to accommodate a graduated income tax-which is one of the three core principles of Socialism. If we don't need Socialism white tax income?
If the top one percent makes 21% of the income, why shouldn't they pay 21% of the taxes?
4thefunofit
Well-Known Member
Yes, those graphs have been around for awhile. However, they do not consider taxes of all sorts, percentage of wealth and income paid towards taxes of all sorts, nor do they consider the amount of disposable income after taxes.
nor jobs created by those that build businesses, and produce national GDP. Im no fan of Jeff Bezos, but I think he has done more with the money he has made than would have been done with it if given to the government. A lot of folks have jobs from what he has built, and they all contribute taxes and wealth to the national GDP too. Those graphs are from IRS data by the way.
Lets just agree everyone needs to eat and live a nice life, everyone needs to work and contribute that can, and
that government cannot do everything for everybody under the sun.
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