Thanks for posting that. So we drive the IPO market offshore and strangle the domestic capital markets with regulation. Small business suffers, and employment suffers. But you won’t hear that sort of analysis on the nightly news. After all, who cares whether Wall Street does IPO’s? Wall Street is evil!
If they felt abused, they could stop doing it or “block” those who are heavy users. But it seems they are happy enough to do it, even to encourage it and be helpful with it. If they were losing money, they wouldn’t do it. But they do.
It’s even more unfair when 50% pay all the taxes and the other 50% get a free ride.
This says in effect that everything is Caesar’s.
Only if we permit it. Caesar is trying to erode Hope and Charity by fostering “faith” in Caesar.
I know it would be like a “poll tax,” and everyone would freak out, but I think those that are receiving benefits from the government shouldn’t get to vote.
I’m not sure who you think it’s unfair for… to me it seems to indicate that the top 10% are making about 70% of the money. The only real relevant number is how much of a % the top 10% are paying in terms of their income. If one guy made all the money, he pays all the taxes.
It seems crazy at first, until you realize that all the talk about the income gap growing was true: I suspect that the bottom 50% are just not making enough to even bother taxing now. Do we know how much money the bottom 50% are making? I know it’s not zero, but it sure seems to indicate to me that they’re making close to zero… because you don’t seriously think anyone in this country pays 100% in taxes to cover half the population that’s getting off free. Some people are being taken for a ride… that’s true.
So then by your reasoning it must be true that the Japanese, the Chinese, the British, Germans, French, Swedes, and the Canadians who have far more of their income “confiscated” have no incentive to work and are therefore unproductive? Your argument is preposterous. People work because they were created by God to work. Work is what fulfills the human spirit and what gives a person their identity and dignity. In the early Church everyone worked hard yet not everyone earned as much. So the wealth was divided among everyone in a particular Christian community so that basic human needs were met.
I agree. In fact, that’s the real problem all this focus on taxes and monetary incentives creates: it demoralizes both wealth and work. This is why paying bank CEO’s bigger bonuses doesn’t make them better CEO’s.
If you punish your top producers, you run the risk that they will stop producing. You should always reward the top producers. The income tax punishes those who want to succeed. We should be encouraging more people to become wealthy, rather than punishing and demonizing success.
The top producers are already rewarded by their work. So you want a regressive tax? If the tax rate is perfectly flat and they make 70% of the money, then they pay 70% of the taxes.
No one is demonizing success. What do you mean encourage more people to become wealthy? If everyone is equally wealthy, no one is rich. If the top 10% of the people only paid 10% of the taxes (as might sound “fair” to you) they wouldn’t be rich, would they? Or are you saying the richer you are, the less tax you should pay proportionately? Like, everyone pays exactly $1,000 in taxes every year. Is that what you mean by income tax being wrong?
Well you did say “encourage people to be wealthy” and not “encourage people to work”
Money is an ends in our culture, the means are varied. Work is only one of them. We have gone from a culture of work ethic, to a culture of money worship.
It’s related, but ultimately a different argument than taxation. You’re upset about how the taxes are spent. The biggest programs we spend taxes on are medicare, social security, and defense (I might be leaving one out). You can make a case for giving out less unemployment benefits, etc. but I think that barely scratches the surface of where our money goes. I certainly hope you don’t mean that people who paid into social security don’t deserve to get their payouts.
That’s the trillion dollar question: is it unsustainable, or is that just the way the system is designed? The system only seems to work on borrowing more and more money. If the government paid off all its debt tomorrow, the only benefit that would have economically is opening the door to more debt and stimulation. The question of sustainability really comes down to this: is the government debt realy like household debt? Is there a point at which the credit gets cut off because no one trusts you anymore?
The problem with trying to use the income tax to tax the rich is that you are reallying not attacking people with large acculations of wealth but those people trying to GET rich! $200,000 a year may seem a lot to someone making $50,000, but it is not an indication of a great fortune.
Fact is that the politicians have promised the people much more than the treasury can bear. Now comes Mr. Obama who promises them more, much more when he offers universal health care.
The difference is that Mr.Obama has greatly increased the debt in just a short period of time, more than Mr. Bush did in 7 years. Furthermore,much of the debt that Mr. Bush raised was "temporary,"for the conduct of a war. What Mr. Obama proposes to do is to raise it to pay the bills over the next twenty years. He apparently would like the United States to have the same sort of welfare state as nations like Germany and France, and with the same levels of taxations. Germans and Frenchmen lives comfortablelives, but I don’t think that many Americans realize how little disposable income the ordinary German or Frenchman has in comparison with the average American.