Originally Posted by Arroyo_Doble
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02-19-2012, 10:33 AM
02-19-2012, 10:55 AM
The Top 10 Percent of Earners Paid 70 Percent of Federal Income Taxes
Top earners are the target for new tax increases, but the U.S. tax system is already highly progressive. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.
02-19-2012, 04:45 PM
You're looking a specific percentage but the correct answer is they should be taxed however much it takes.
If we take a scientific look at what works and what doesn't, focus on efficiency and effectiveness rather than profit, we can have robust social programs that work for not much more than we are paying now. Adam Smith, in his foundational text on free market economics, The Wealth of Nations, explained that the wealthy should pay more than their proportional share of their wealth in taxes to sustain the social needs of the society within which they come upon their wealth.
You state that the wealthy pay the lions share of certain taxes, which is true, but that's because they also own the vast majority of the nation's wealth. This would be like a guy going to dinner with five friends, and being outraged that he has to pay a larger percentage of the bill, because he ordered $80 worth of steak and lobster with a $300 bottle of wine, while the five friends ate $10 appetizers and water. Of course he has to pay more back.
If the system were modestly different, resulting in a more equitable distribution of wealth (and no this does not mean everyone is paid the exact same), then the taxation would also be different. If working people had a larger share of the pie, they would be expected to pay a larger share of the taxes.
These are fairly modest ideas that most nations consider rather conservative in nature. It's only within an extremely desperate far-right ideological framework that these ideas appear radical.
Nationalizing all property in the country and executing the wealthy to permanently change the very coordinates of the system as we know it is an extreme radical proposal. Adjusting tax rates and expanding social programs so that the system that currently exists can continue to function is actually conservative in nature.
Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
02-19-2012, 04:53 PM
“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
-Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
02-19-2012, 04:53 PM
No. What you are saying is the rich guy should pay more simply because he can. Now if he consumed more, then of course he should pay more, which is what happens daily here in the USA. Rich guy drives a gas hog and pays. Rich guy buys a big house and pays. Rich guy goes to fancy restaurant and pays.
We pay income tax, not wealth tax. Florida tried to tax people on net worth. Didn't get anywhere.
02-19-2012, 04:56 PM
So what would you rather have 8% of 1983, or 7% of 2007?
Last edited by Starbuck; 02-19-2012 at 05:00 PM.
02-19-2012, 05:01 PM
However much it takes for what, exactly? To pay for government? They don't have enough assets to cover our current expenditures.
But how much more? Should we tax a rich man until he needs the safety net because we have rendered him poor? For that matter, what is the moral claim that the poor have on the taxes of the rich?
Yes, but if they went to dinner and the waiter presented him with the only check and the others informed him that he was on the hook for their dinners, regardless of what they ate, then he'd have a right to complain, wouldn't he? And after the first meal, they'd have no constraints on what they ordered, because they know that they aren't paying for it. So, once again, what is their claim on his purse?
You talk about an equitable distribution of wealth as if wealth is just sitting there, waiting to be distributed. It isn't. It must be created, first. The factory that employs a worker wouldn't exist without the risks undergone by the owners. Why are they obligated to share that with their workers?
No, they are radical ideas that have been presented so often, in such moderate language, that they no longer seem radical, but in fact, they fail whenever they are implemented, as the Greeks are currently finding out the hard way.
Hardly. Nationalizing all property and executing the wealthy is one end of the radical spectrum (or used to be, before the Khmer Rouge expanded the definition of who was to be executed to anyone who'd lived in a city, wore glasses, was moderately well-read, or had never pushed a plow), but using the tax code to meet the same ends is not less radical, it's simply a less obviously extreme version of the radical position that the wealthy must pay their "fair share", a nebulous term that radicals never seem able or willing to define. Well, here's where you get to define it. What is the "fair share" of taxation that we ought to demand of a Bill Gates, or me, for that matter? I'm in the process of preparing my tax papers for our accountant, and I want to know whether you think that I'm contributing my "fair share" or not. Give me a number.
02-19-2012, 05:31 PM
Source Wei?
“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
-Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
02-19-2012, 05:33 PM
I'm perfectly happy to debate the spending side of this argument. I am reasonable and see that cutting spending is half of this process. I think there should be a debate on what needs to be cut and how much, we should aim at lowering our expenditures overall, although this can be done through cutting in some areas and raising others.
However, there needs to be a reasonable concession that revenue is part of this too. The last decade has been a period of tax cut economics, to ignore the effects of this is to be deliberately obtuse. If you want a sustainable system you need to fund it through taxes, which after periods of large scale tax cutting may need to be raised. It's really not the end of the world to raise some taxes and make some spending cuts.
I should've known it would be best to avoid analogies...Yes, but if they went to dinner and the waiter presented him with the only check and the others informed him that he was on the hook for their dinners, regardless of what they ate, then he'd have a right to complain, wouldn't he? And after the first meal, they'd have no constraints on what they ordered, because they know that they aren't paying for it. So, once again, what is their claim on his purse?
Because it is the workers who create it -You talk about an equitable distribution of wealth as if wealth is just sitting there, waiting to be distributed. It isn't. It must be created, first. The factory that employs a worker wouldn't exist without the risks undergone by the owners. Why are they obligated to share that with their workers?
This is an issue of value and where it comes from. Let's take two items, a jacket and a bundle of blu-ray disks. Let's say they both have a pricetag of $60. Now clearly, in terms of use-values, these items are very different. If you are cold and you don't have a blu-ray player, then the jacket has greater use-value to you. If you live in South Texas and you get bored easily, then the blu-rays have more use-value to you. These items are qualitatively different in their use-values and cannot really be compared to one another on a consistent basis.
However, the fact that they both are worth $60 says something about them. It says there is something that is quantitatively equivalent between the two items. This equivalency is the equivalency of another form of value, exchange-value. This means that exchange value has nothing to do with their physical, qualitative use-values.
What this means, effectively, is that instead of giving someone $60, you could give them the jacket, which they exchange for the blu-ray disks, which they sell for $60. Each of these interactions are equal exchanges, because when you are trading the jacket or the disks as commodities, you are exchanging them for their exchange-values, not their use-values. It means that getting $60 worth of tradeable commodities is the same as getting $60, at the level of exchange value.
Some people might say a thing is worth only what someone will pay for it, as if value arises out of the exchange itself, but this isn't true , as can be seen in cases where it cost more to make a product that you get from selling it. If it takes $90 to produce a jacket that only sells for $60, this process doesn't work and no wealth is generated. There is actually a loss of wealth in this process. This is because a certain amount of wealth goes into the creation of the product, via the labor of the production process.
Suppose there is a city that desires 2 plants for trade which grow in equal volume. One of these plants grows plentifully just a mile away from town, while the other grows 40 miles away. If these plants were to be exchanged, the plant that grows further away would have a higher exchange value because it takes more labor and time to acquire it. More labor goes into the commodity, so it is worth more.
Of course it is far more complex than these simple examples, but this is a very basic skeletal picture of where value comes from. When the process gets larger, you get more and more interesting and complex examples that are grounded in this picture but require even greater analysis.
Profit comes from paying workers less than the exchange value of the commodity, meaning that profit and therefore wealth comes directly from workers.
It is absolutely true that the owners play a very important role, and without the owners there are no workers (in this system), but without the workers, there can be no wealth generation.
I'm going to guess you are going to try to point out some inane example to counter one sentence of this post while ignoring the vast majority of it so I'll give you the condensed version here: Owners owe a share of their wealth to their workers because it is the workers who produce the goods or services which generate profit during the process of exchange. No workers, no goods or service, no profit. Simple as that.
Yes the Greeks the greeks the greeks the right-wings favorite country to look at.No, they are radical ideas that have been presented so often, in such moderate language, that they no longer seem radical, but in fact, they fail whenever they are implemented, as the Greeks are currently finding out the hard way.
How about we look at Germany, which has even more robust social programs, stronger labor laws, and the best economy in Europe?
A fair share would be one that is proportional (or greater) to what they make, as Adam Smith said.Hardly. Nationalizing all property and executing the wealthy is one end of the radical spectrum (or used to be, before the Khmer Rouge expanded the definition of who was to be executed to anyone who'd lived in a city, wore glasses, was moderately well-read, or had never pushed a plow), but using the tax code to meet the same ends is not less radical, it's simply a less obviously extreme version of the radical position that the wealthy must pay their "fair share", a nebulous term that radicals never seem able or willing to define. Well, here's where you get to define it. What is the "fair share" of taxation that we ought to demand of a Bill Gates, or me, for that matter? I'm in the process of preparing my tax papers for our accountant, and I want to know whether you think that I'm contributing my "fair share" or not. Give me a number.
Originally Posted by Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
02-19-2012, 05:35 PM
Source your previous post #54 and don't ignore me Wei.
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