TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 The rich financially benefit more from living in an ordered society provided by government. It makes sense that, as they accrue more benefits, that they pay more taxes. I do not see why this is hard to understand. and taxing folks who cannot afford to pay is fucking retarded, Yant. I don't believe that 45% of americans cannot afford to pay any taxes. How do the rich financially benefit more from society than any other person who lives in society? What benefits do they accrue? If you're talking about money then what should be fairly obvious is that as people provide goods and services to society. The only idiotic thing would be to punish people for providing goods and services to society. How is that not obvious? You honestly believe that Mitt Romney contributes 1000 times more to society than someone who makes $50,000 per year? It's not a punishment. It would only be a punishment if people were somehow worse off for making more money. But guess what, if you make more money you're still going to end up with more money, even if the government takes a larger percentage of it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madbassman39 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 I would say someone who makes $200k a year is very well off. If someone paid 50% taxes on his 50 million a year, he would still have 25 million dollars a year. It would take someone 12.5 years, making $200K (without paying taxes) to make what the other person who paid 50% taxes made in one year. It would take someone who makes $100k a year 25 years to catch up to the millionaires one year (this is tax the 50, no tax on the 100k). 25 years! Now lets say that person makes the same amount the next year. I would now have to be 74 (I would have a year under my belt so it would 24+25 years, which is 49 years) to catch up to that someones two years. If I started making 100k a year on my birthday (I'm turning 25 this May) I would be 50 years old to catch up to half of that 50 million. And this is removing all the tax on the 100k, and a huge 50% on the 50 million. If you think about the sheer amount of money that 50 million dollars is, its an incredible amount of money, and when you collect that in one year, and pay a higher tax wage... you are still left with a huge amount of money. I'm not saying tax the rich only, just higher taxes. When you really think about how much money the average person makes, even with higher taxes, the rich are still way way better off. In reality, being my age, I won't be making 100k this year, and I will have to pay taxes on my earnings. Reality is, that 50 million isn't paying 50% of earnings in tax. I will take a lifetime to earn what someone who makes 50 million in a year moving my way up in a company. I'm not all that driven by money, so I probably wont be making 50 mill a year, but even if I did, I don't think I would complain about my living situation after taxes. I'd be better off than most of the planet with just half of what I earned. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thursday Next Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Not sure how it works in the US, but in the UK you get taxed on the earnings above the threshold so if you earn £200k, the first £37.5k is taxed at 20%, then the next £112.5k is taxed at 40% and the last £50k is taxed at 50%. Of course once you get into the 10's of millions you might as well call it 50% on the lot as the first £150k is a drop in the ocean, but for those just above the threshold, it's an important distinction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 I'm not super familiar with the tax code, but I believe it works the same way here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 There are already tiered income brackets in america. You're taxed at a certain rate for the first x amount of dollars and anything more than that get taxed at a higher rate and so on. In response to people making tons of money and what they do or don't contribute to society. Someone asked a football kicker one time if he thought it was fair to get paid millions of dollars to kick a football. The player looked back at the reporter and simply said "I can do something you can't do". I thought that was a pretty good response. CEOs are people upon whom rest the jobs of tens of thousands of people many times. There are very few people who can be a CEO and those people are often compensated handily. Bad CEOs result in the destruction of companies, the loss of thounsands of jobs, wasted money and can have a negative impact on the economy. So yes Ethan, it's very easy to see how the impact of one person's decisions can be 1000x greater than the impact of another persons decisions. I know we all think we can be CEOs of companies or great football players or whatever you want to say but the fact is that the best and the brightest, the people who contribute or provide unique services get rewarded handsomely by society and that's a good thing because it increases wealth to everyone who benefits from their contributions. To say that somehow that person should automatically begin to forfeit large portions of their earnings simply because "they can afford to" is simply jealousy in my opionion. Furthermore it's simply stupid to assume that rich people having lots of money is a bad thing. You want rich people to have money so they can spend it on whatever goods or services you supply, so they can expand their own companies and hire more people and so that the economy can grown and flourish. The worst thing you can possibly do is take money from productive people, and give it unporductive waste. Wealth is not static. Wealth can be created and it can be destroyed. With the same amount of materials you can either create 4 factories or you could build one factory, tear it down, build another one, tear it down and build another one and tear it down. You can expend time, money, resources and manpower and have it be all worth nothing or you can spend time resources and manpower to make the world a better place. In my experience the government is great at wasting all of the above while corporations provide goods and services and make the world a better place. You need a government to hold it all together but trying to replace corporations with governement like the afformentioned health care bill is a bad idea. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faiblesse Des Sens Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 To say that somehow that person should automatically begin to forfeit large portions of their earnings simply because "they can afford to" is simply jealousy in my opionion. It would be nice if proportionally they contributed the same, rather than less of their earnings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 I agree that taxation should be a percentage based system with a poverty level at which people do not have to pay (much lower than it is now). I think tierd % rates or people paying higher % of their total earnings than other people is completely unfair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 ...the fact is that the best and the brightest, the people who contribute or provide unique services get rewarded handsomely by society... I simply don't believe this is true. Look at executives who run a company into the ground, only to jump ship and get hired as executives at another company. I know this is the ideal of capitalism, but I don't think reality bears it out. You want rich people to have money so they can spend it on whatever goods or services you supply... Actually it's far better to give poor people more money. Poor people spend every single dollar they have come in, rich people don't. It's better for the economy to give a million poor people $1 than it is to give one rich person $1M. Finally, I want to make clear that I am not opposed to the free market, I think overall it's a decent system for allocating resources. However, if you rely solely on the free market you end up with some people getting tons and tons of resources and others getting not enough. I think we as a society have a duty to ensure that everyone in our society has at least a certain minimal standard of living (adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, education (and I don't mean everyone needs a free ride through college either)). Once we ensure that, everything above and beyond that can absolutely be allocated by the free market. But those who are benefiting most from society have the highest duty to give back to that society. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) The problem is we're already more than providing a minimal standard of living. If you check census data we have the richest poor people in the world. The problem is that by propping up and making poor people comfortable your enabling them to be less productive. The more you reward people who are unproductive the less productivity you get. Additionally you're paying people money to take money from rich people and give it to poor people so you're wasting money to waste money. It's all about encouraging people to be productive. Ironically what most very rich people do is give their money to the poor. They're also much better at it than the government is. Edit: going back to your quote: "It's better for the economy to give a million poor people $1 than it is to give one rich person $1M." Well, not if half of that gets wasted by employing a few hundred people to distribute that money. If only $500,000 or even $800,000 goes to poor people then you've just taken $200,000 out of the economy that could have been used for something productive and wasted it on overhead. Any good company would tell you that keeping your overhead low is crucial to being profitable and yet we insist on creating as much overhead as possible when running our government. Edited March 16, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 When we have people in this country who can't afford to go to the doctor until they are so sick that they end up in the emergency room, and people losing their houses because of medical bills, we are not providing that minimal standard of living. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Having a house is not a "minimal" standard by any stretch of the imagination. No society has ever come close to providing a house for every one of its residents. You have to step back to the meta view of the economy if you're going to discuss healthcare or housing or those things. If you want more people to have houses you need to have more people building houses and providing housing. If you want more people to have medical care then you need to be encouraging people to become doctors or nurses or to work for pharmaceutical companies etc. How is rewarding people for not learning skills and encouraging people to not get jobs going to result in there being more doctors, more hospitals more houses and more food? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madbassman39 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 To say that somehow that person should automatically begin to forfeit large portions of their earnings simply because "they can afford to" is simply jealousy in my opionion. I wouldn't say jealousy, but more along the lines of thinking economically. With the current standard of living, be it what you may, means that an equal percentage will have a much larger impact on those in lower income brackets than those in higher income brackets. Someone with a family of 4 making $75k a year, having to pay 20% will have a vastly larger impact on their life style than someone making $200k a year in the same situation. I know that the tiered makes it seem unfair to the wealthy, but we are also trying to help those in lower income levels to keep spending. The less money they have tied up in taxes, the more they can spend on luxury and necessity items. The more they spend, the more the money goes back into the system. Thats the idea of the tiered, to create minimal impact on the lower income brackets. I'm not saying it's ideal for those who are in higher tax brackets, but the impact on them is still less than that on the lower income brackets. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted March 16, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 How is rewarding people for not learning skills and encouraging people to not get jobs going to result in there being more doctors, more hospitals more houses and more food? Giving people necessary medical treatment is not "rewarding" them for anything, it's being a decent human being. Anyway, we're just going to have to agree to disagree about this. I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Having a house is not a "minimal" standard by any stretch of the imagination. No society has ever come close to providing a house for every one of its residents. Okay so if having a roof over your head and to be in good health isn't what you consider to be the minimum standard of living a country can provide it's population then what would you say should/is the minimum standard of living? Like if you were to lose everything tomorrow what would you be perfectly happy with as a minimum standard of living for you and your family? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) Someone with a family of 4 making $75k a year, having to pay 20% will have a vastly larger impact on their life style than someone making $200k a year in the same situation. That's simply not true, as your standard of living increases your cost of living increases substantially as well. Electricity, property taxes, and just the upkeep of a larger home or a nicer car can be quite a bit more expensive. Cost of living increases proportionally just like everything else but you're proposing increasing taxation exponentially which simply is excessive. How is rewarding people for not learning skills and encouraging people to not get jobs going to result in there being more doctors, more hospitals more houses and more food? Giving people necessary medical treatment is not "rewarding" them for anything, it's being a decent human being. Anyway, we're just going to have to agree to disagree about this. I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me. Depends on how you define necessary. Besides, as Darwinists would think you guys could grasp easily how society paying money to sustain individuals who are not productive is a drag and not a boon. I think you do agree with me that all of these programs hurts the economy but you're simply arguing "it's the right thing to do". That's totally different. Okay so if having a roof over your head and to be in good health isn't what you consider to be the minimum standard of living a country can provide it's population then what would you say should/is the minimum standard of living? Like if you were to lose everything tomorrow what would you be perfectly happy with as a minimum standard of living for you and your family? You can live in a small apartment and have a roof over your head. Providing someone a house is different. Ethan was talking about people losing their houses. As far as medical treatment goes everyone gets life sustaining medical care. Beyond that, if you want medicine you should have to pay for it. Disclaimer: I'm not against life sustaining medical care or some levels of government intervention for the very poor. I just think we're way beyond that now. I do not wish to go back to having people living in hoovervilles. Edited March 16, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 In a lot of cases, medicine IS life sustaining medical care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madbassman39 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) Someone with a family of 4 making $75k a year, having to pay 20% will have a vastly larger impact on their life style than someone making $200k a year in the same situation. That's simply not true, as your standard of living increases your cost of living increases substantially as well. Electricity, property taxes, and just the upkeep of a larger home or a nicer car can be quite a bit more expensive. Cost of living increases proportionally just like everything else but you're proposing increasing taxation exponentially which simply is excessive. Its only proportionately equal if the families live proportionately equal. Not everybody making more money has to own a more expensive car, nor do they have to have a bigger piece of property, nor do they have to use more electricity. They could, if the 200k a year person wanted too, live identical life styles. What you are suggesting is that earning more means that you have to spend more, but I disagree. The cost of living is the same for every single person, the cost of luxury is what increases. Just because you can afford a better lifestyle, doesn't automatically mean you have to. EDIT: I am not saying that they have to live identical lives. If I could afford a better lifestyle I would. What I am saying is that a much nicer lifestyle is a choice and not a necessity. Edited March 16, 2012 by madbassman39 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Depends on how you define necessary. Besides, as Darwinists would think you guys could grasp easily how society paying money to sustain individuals who are not productive is a drag and not a boon. I think you do agree with me that all of these programs hurts the economy but you're simply arguing "it's the right thing to do". That's totally different. I don't have the expertise to say whether any given program is good or bad for the economy, and I've seen it argued both ways. However, I will agree with you that even if it's bad for the economy I still think we should do it because it's the right thing to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 EDIT: I am not saying that they have to live identical lives. If I could afford a better lifestyle I would. What I am saying is that a much nicer lifestyle is a choice and not a necessity. It's only a choice if you allow those people who earn more money to keep a proportional amount. What I am saying is that if you increase taxes exponentially then you're making it exponentially harder to get a bigger house or a nicer car as the costs of those things are not linear. Your mortgage is not the only thing that gets more expensive with a larger house. Besides, what are you suggesting people who are richer should be doing with their money if they are richer besides get nicer things? You think everyone should live in a 2000 square foot house and drive the same cars regardless of their lifestyle? The idea of a free market is that people who want bigger houses and nicer things should be able to work hard and earn them and if you're stifling that then you're going to end up with a less productive society. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 But the thing is hard work doesn't automatically transform into wealth, even when it's something society very much needs. Just look at farmers, work their asses off to produce products without which we would all die, yet they're lucky if at the end of the season they've got enough money to plant again next year. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 Okay so if having a roof over your head and to be in good health isn't what you consider to be the minimum standard of living a country can provide it's population then what would you say should/is the minimum standard of living? Like if you were to lose everything tomorrow what would you be perfectly happy with as a minimum standard of living for you and your family? You can live in a small apartment and have a roof over your head. Providing someone a house is different. Ethan was talking about people losing their houses. As far as medical treatment goes everyone gets life sustaining medical care. Beyond that, if you want medicine you should have to pay for it. Ah, so the disagreement was over semantics then? (despite house covering pretty much any dwelling people live in.) As for life sustaining medical care I was under the impression in the US it was only life saving, not sustaining? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 They have to "stabilize" you before they can release you, so depending on your condition it might not be possible to fully stabilize you and they have to keep treating you (like if you require a machine to breathe). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madbassman39 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) Quoting is too difficult with a slow internet. @ Yant. I am not at all saying that they have to live proportionately, and nor am I saying that they should or have to live the same life style. I am saying that the wealthier life style is a choice to make, which is completely unrelated to your income. The higher income you earn, the more of a wealthier life style you can afford, but that doesn't mean you have to. If you want a nice car, then by all means go for it. That's whats great about the society in which we live. If I make 50 million a year, but I really just like a Honda Civic, then I can have a Honda Civic. Nobody forces me to buy a Bentley because I can afford it. Just because they are paying less taxes doesn't mean they are living better, if they want to live better they have to work hard at it, just as you say, but that doesn't mean they have to. I am not suggesting the richer shouldn't spend their money, but when they do, I am saying its a choice. Nothing about paying proportionate taxes has anything to do with choice, the wealthy are not making equal money after they pay more taxes, they are still making more money to purchase their luxury items. Edited March 16, 2012 by madbassman39 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope V2 Posted March 16, 2012 Report Share Posted March 16, 2012 (edited) But the thing is hard work doesn't automatically transform into wealth, even when it's something society very much needs. Just look at farmers, work their asses off to produce products without which we would all die, yet they're lucky if at the end of the season they've got enough money to plant again next year. That's a bit of a stereotype. There are plenty of farmers or even farming corporations that do pretty darn good for themselves. Yes, you need government regulation to make sure that there is a chance for people to advance in the world. I think sometimes conservatives forget this. I do however think there is plenty of room for people in america to work hard and get ahead. I studied engineering and make decent money doing it. Would I have bothered to go through all that schooling if I could have made just as much money by working at gamestop? No, I would not. It was the incentive of money that made me go do engineering and it's because so few other people can't or wont bother to be engineers that I make good money for doing it. Would you have bothered to go through all the extra years of law school and the bar exam and all of that if you weren't going to be compensated for all of it? I doubt it. I am not suggesting the richer shouldn't spend their money, but when they do, I am saying its a choice. Nothing about paying proportionate taxes has anything to do with choice, the wealthy are not making equal money after they pay more taxes, they are still making more money to purchase their luxury items. It's not a choice if you take it from them before they can spend it. Edited March 16, 2012 by Yantelope V2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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