Turns Out Americans Actually Do Want to Tax the Rich

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always surprised at how we have become the country of “its hard so we don’t do it.”

Single payer is hard so we won’t do it
Taxing rich people is hard so we won’t do it
Making equitable education is hard so we won’t do it
Building up infrastructure is hard so we won’t do it


What is this??

Funny.
I find it hard to believe how so many choose to demonize the wealthy.
Like Howard Schultz, for example. He worked to make his millions.
Keep on, folks. The truly wealthy have options. They can choose to leave.
Much like they did in France.

He probably worked to make his hundreds of thousands. The rest was a windfall. No one ever earned a billion dollars.

Imagine if someone said that a vaccine only saves a few hundred thousand people, the other billions of people were just lucky, no vaccine ever prevented a billion sicknesses. By this analogy, I am illustrating that incremental value of a product or service in economics doesn't diminish as you get it to more people, but rather it multiplies. So long as the payment is not coerced, the profit is absolutely earned and not a lucky windfall.

There is nothing one person can do that to "earn" billions.

Everyone who is a billionaire benefits from the work, intelligence and creativity of thousands of people. The only difference is they live in a society/economy where the rules allow them to skim off an enormous share of the profits for themselves.

If what you say is true, then why can't everyone become a billionaire? They just gather together thousands of people, and BOOM! Right? Where's the rule that gives Jeff Bezos his billions of dollars? I want a rule like that for me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always surprised at how we have become the country of “its hard so we don’t do it.”

Single payer is hard so we won’t do it
Taxing rich people is hard so we won’t do it
Making equitable education is hard so we won’t do it
Building up infrastructure is hard so we won’t do it


What is this??

Funny.
I find it hard to believe how so many choose to demonize the wealthy.
Like Howard Schultz, for example. He worked to make his millions.
Keep on, folks. The truly wealthy have options. They can choose to leave.
Much like they did in France.

He probably worked to make his hundreds of thousands. The rest was a windfall. No one ever earned a billion dollars.

Imagine if someone said that a vaccine only saves a few hundred thousand people, the other billions of people were just lucky, no vaccine ever prevented a billion sicknesses. By this analogy, I am illustrating that incremental value of a product or service in economics doesn't diminish as you get it to more people, but rather it multiplies. So long as the payment is not coerced, the profit is absolutely earned and not a lucky windfall.

I don’t think you understand how analogies work.

The analogy is in the incremental value of a product or service, which is rather well illustrated by vaccines since it's a per-person dose and therefore easy to visualize. It's more difficult to measure "incremental utility or happiness from using Facebook" though there is certainly some value there since people are willing to click on ads hosted on Facebook in order to use Facebook. However the concept is the same: there is incremental value gained by each individual, and therefore the value multiplies. This perfectly illustrates the concept that it's not a zero sum game, that economic value is wholly creative, and more of some economic utility doesn't reduce the marginal value of it towards zero. The modern tech age's greatest invention is the increased efficiency at which a company can deliver and earn economic value from individuals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always surprised at how we have become the country of “its hard so we don’t do it.”

Single payer is hard so we won’t do it
Taxing rich people is hard so we won’t do it
Making equitable education is hard so we won’t do it
Building up infrastructure is hard so we won’t do it


What is this??

Funny.
I find it hard to believe how so many choose to demonize the wealthy.
Like Howard Schultz, for example. He worked to make his millions.
Keep on, folks. The truly wealthy have options. They can choose to leave.
Much like they did in France.

No one is demonizing the wealthy - we are demonizing the wealth gap. Rising wealth gap is destructive to a country. I pay property tax for a property I bought after working 30 years. So I do not see a reason for super rich people to pay wealth tax on their diamonds, yachts, and planes they have worked for. Its okay if some wealthy folks leave America for this reason (although I can guarantee you that most would not). It's not like the wealthy people are sharing their wealth or obligation to maintain this country anyway. All the laws that the wealthy support is regressive and detrimental to the long term viability of this country. So, I do not care if they leave.

Could have fooled me. The wealth gap is being blamed on the wealthy. Democrats believe wealth is a zero-sum game, that the wealthy are wealthy because they somehow cheated the money from those people who are poor. Just look at the posts that started this thread - describing wealthy people as hoarders, implying that there is a fixed amount of wealth to be hoarded. Yes, you pay property tax, so do wealthy people.

The wealth gap is a result of the unfair rules of the game in the economic system we have set up. For billionaires that convince themselves that their wealth is 100% earned and no one else who helped create those profits is entitled to a larger share, yes they deserve to be demonized

No one is demonizing bill Gates for becoming a billionaire then giving his money away to save lives and improve education

Name off some of those unfair rules. I mean, what gave Microsoft an unfair advantage over Apple in the late 80s, and what gave Apple an unfair advantage over Microsoft in the late 2000s. What gave Amazon an unfair advantage over Barnes and Noble, and what gave Five Guys an unfair advantage over your local favorite burger joint. No one is entitled to anything that they have not earned, and what they earn is determined by market value of their work output.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell us how taking more money from people who are wealthy will make you more wealthy.
How will taxing the wealthy solve the problem of income inequality.

It will allow for more services to be provided to all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell us how taking more money from people who are wealthy will make you more wealthy.
How will taxing the wealthy solve the problem of income inequality.

It will allow for more services to be provided to all.

Then why does the US have the most progressive tax system compared to other developed countries but higher inequality than most? Why is there a reverse correlation between the progressivity of a country's tax system and its GINI coefficient? In other words, why do countries with a more flat and less progressive tax system tend to have more equal income distribution?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always surprised at how we have become the country of “its hard so we don’t do it.”

Single payer is hard so we won’t do it
Taxing rich people is hard so we won’t do it
Making equitable education is hard so we won’t do it
Building up infrastructure is hard so we won’t do it


What is this??

Funny.
I find it hard to believe how so many choose to demonize the wealthy.
Like Howard Schultz, for example. He worked to make his millions.
Keep on, folks. The truly wealthy have options. They can choose to leave.
Much like they did in France.

No one is demonizing the wealthy - we are demonizing the wealth gap. Rising wealth gap is destructive to a country. I pay property tax for a property I bought after working 30 years. So I do not see a reason for super rich people to pay wealth tax on their diamonds, yachts, and planes they have worked for. Its okay if some wealthy folks leave America for this reason (although I can guarantee you that most would not). It's not like the wealthy people are sharing their wealth or obligation to maintain this country anyway. All the laws that the wealthy support is regressive and detrimental to the long term viability of this country. So, I do not care if they leave.

Could have fooled me. The wealth gap is being blamed on the wealthy. Democrats believe wealth is a zero-sum game, that the wealthy are wealthy because they somehow cheated the money from those people who are poor. Just look at the posts that started this thread - describing wealthy people as hoarders, implying that there is a fixed amount of wealth to be hoarded. Yes, you pay property tax, so do wealthy people.

The wealth gap is a result of the unfair rules of the game in the economic system we have set up. For billionaires that convince themselves that their wealth is 100% earned and no one else who helped create those profits is entitled to a larger share, yes they deserve to be demonized

No one is demonizing bill Gates for becoming a billionaire then giving his money away to save lives and improve education

Name off some of those unfair rules. I mean, what gave Microsoft an unfair advantage over Apple in the late 80s, and what gave Apple an unfair advantage over Microsoft in the late 2000s. What gave Amazon an unfair advantage over Barnes and Noble, and what gave Five Guys an unfair advantage over your local favorite burger joint. No one is entitled to anything that they have not earned, and what they earn is determined by market value of their work output.

Where do I begin?

1. Preferential tax rate for capital gains vs. earned income
2. Corporations' ability to deduct interest expense for all forms of debts
3. Depreciation of assets to shield income from taxation
4. Legal tax avoidance maneuvers available to multi-national corporations but not small businesses
5. The LLC model that allows shady businesses to fleece innocent bystanders but leaves no one with recourse when they want to sue
6. The myriad ways to structure estates so that close to zero tax is paid
7. The fact that Apple Corp and Warren Buffet pays a tax rate that is easily 10x lower than the one I pay on my W2 income
8. The fact that SALT deduction limitations don't apply to Schedule E income

....shall I continue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that for the added revenue from taxing the rich to make a dent, DCUM would have to agree that the rich includes anyone worth $3 million or earning $300k+. Watch the DCUM liberals squawk about that.

But I'd be for it.

Tax away. HHI $500-700k.

Glad to hear it. I wish more rich families in DC liberal land were like you. (And yes, you're rich.)

eh

It's easy to lie on an anonymous forum.

Sure, but I'm not.

I want to add that I'd be up for higher taxes only if many loopholes are eliminated. The truly "rich" shouldn't have a diminishing effective tax rates because of creative accounting. I have friends (who make way more than us) who laugh over how little they pay - it's disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Trump voter here; I don't have a huge problem with a wealth tax over twenty million, or increasing marginal rates over 10 million.

[Anonymous]

Big companies and billionaire company founders have benefited from huge tax incentives to go to one city vs another.

The US started going downhill when Reagan pushed the trickle down economics (which does not WORK!).

Let's go back to the tax rates we had back after Kennedy lowered them.

We have dropped funding higher education to the point that schools are having to make it up in extreme tuition hikes.
We aren't funding health care/health care coverage the way we should be.
We aren't funding education the way we should be.

We have a huge infrastructure problem where many bridges have been just barely maintained and they were not built to last more than 50 years and are at the end of their lifespan.

We have problems that higher marginal taxes on the wealthy (1.2 million and up HHI) would solve.

1.2 million was the start of the highest marginal bracket under FDR. Sounds about right to me...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always surprised at how we have become the country of “its hard so we don’t do it.”

Single payer is hard so we won’t do it
Taxing rich people is hard so we won’t do it
Making equitable education is hard so we won’t do it
Building up infrastructure is hard so we won’t do it


What is this??

Funny.
I find it hard to believe how so many choose to demonize the wealthy.
Like Howard Schultz, for example. He worked to make his millions.
Keep on, folks. The truly wealthy have options. They can choose to leave.
Much like they did in France.

No one is demonizing the wealthy - we are demonizing the wealth gap. Rising wealth gap is destructive to a country. I pay property tax for a property I bought after working 30 years. So I do not see a reason for super rich people to pay wealth tax on their diamonds, yachts, and planes they have worked for. Its okay if some wealthy folks leave America for this reason (although I can guarantee you that most would not). It's not like the wealthy people are sharing their wealth or obligation to maintain this country anyway. All the laws that the wealthy support is regressive and detrimental to the long term viability of this country. So, I do not care if they leave.

Could have fooled me. The wealth gap is being blamed on the wealthy. Democrats believe wealth is a zero-sum game, that the wealthy are wealthy because they somehow cheated the money from those people who are poor. Just look at the posts that started this thread - describing wealthy people as hoarders, implying that there is a fixed amount of wealth to be hoarded. Yes, you pay property tax, so do wealthy people.

The wealth gap is a result of the unfair rules of the game in the economic system we have set up. For billionaires that convince themselves that their wealth is 100% earned and no one else who helped create those profits is entitled to a larger share, yes they deserve to be demonized

No one is demonizing bill Gates for becoming a billionaire then giving his money away to save lives and improve education

Name off some of those unfair rules. I mean, what gave Microsoft an unfair advantage over Apple in the late 80s, and what gave Apple an unfair advantage over Microsoft in the late 2000s. What gave Amazon an unfair advantage over Barnes and Noble, and what gave Five Guys an unfair advantage over your local favorite burger joint. No one is entitled to anything that they have not earned, and what they earn is determined by market value of their work output.

Where do I begin?

1. Preferential tax rate for capital gains vs. earned income
2. Corporations' ability to deduct interest expense for all forms of debts
3. Depreciation of assets to shield income from taxation
4. Legal tax avoidance maneuvers available to multi-national corporations but not small businesses
5. The LLC model that allows shady businesses to fleece innocent bystanders but leaves no one with recourse when they want to sue
6. The myriad ways to structure estates so that close to zero tax is paid
7. The fact that Apple Corp and Warren Buffet pays a tax rate that is easily 10x lower than the one I pay on my W2 income
8. The fact that SALT deduction limitations don't apply to Schedule E income

....shall I continue?

1. This is to encourage investment activities, but I'm actually with you here. Capital gains should be treated the same as ordinary income. I don't believe we should give incentives for investment activities.
2. Expenses are always deductible since it's a cost of doing business. Interest expense is the same as any other expense.
3. Depreciation of assets doesn't shield income from taxation, it's simply a recognition that purchases of capital assets lose their value over time and that it essentially becomes a yearly expense. "Strategies" in depreciation can be used to smooth out tax burdens but there are rules to follow, and overly aggressive depreciation is against the rules. Also if an asset is overly depreciated, its cost basis is similarly reduced, and if it is ever sold, then the proceeds is fully taxable.
4. They are available to all businesses, they are simply inefficient to use for small businesses. This is like complaining that single people can't take advantage of bulk savings available at Costco - except for maybe the alcohol deals.
5. Not sure what is inherently shady about an LLC. It does cap liability but only when the actions of the LLC owners are lawful. If the operation is truly shady as you've described, the LLC veil is easily pierced, with the owners personally liable for debts and judgements.
6. Yes there are ways to structure estates to minimize Estate tax, but it is not nearly as effective or prevalent as you are making it out to be. Variations of the scheme essentially hinges on gifting it prior to death, or entering into some type of joint ownership with the descendants - both activities have limits and triggers tax liabilities. Where this can be effective is when the wealth is somewhere near the exemption limit, or if current tax laws are more favorable than expected future tax laws. But if someone has wealth that is multiples of the exemption limit, no amount of structuring is going to save them substantial amounts of estate tax unless they just donate the money to charity.
7. With this single point, we see that you are now just making stuff up, or have such a skewed view of facts that you must go back and examine your sense of reality. Warren Buffet has openly claimed that he pays 16%, so I find it highly unlikely that you are paying 160% tax rate on your W2. Also, this Forbes analysis indicates that Warren's effective tax rate is actually much higher than 16%: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/23/warren-buffetts-actual-tax-rate-is-31-while-his-office-workers-pay-21/#726208383279 . Also from Forbes, we know that Apple pays 25.8% tax rate: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2017/04/18/what-americas-biggest-companies-pay-in-taxes/#36f334182f51 . Again, I highly doubt that you are paying 258% of your income in taxes.
8. Schedule E is reporting income from business activities, which by nature necessitates that expenses be deductible, and local government taxes are expenses.

Again, these rules are available to all competitors, you have not answered how these rules led to Amazon making billions of dollars for Jeff Bezos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that for the added revenue from taxing the rich to make a dent, DCUM would have to agree that the rich includes anyone worth $3 million or earning $300k+. Watch the DCUM liberals squawk about that.

But I'd be for it.

Tax away. HHI $500-700k.

Glad to hear it. I wish more rich families in DC liberal land were like you. (And yes, you're rich.)

eh

It's easy to lie on an anonymous forum.

Sure, but I'm not.

I want to add that I'd be up for higher taxes only if many loopholes are eliminated. The truly "rich" shouldn't have a diminishing effective tax rates because of creative accounting. I have friends (who make way more than us) who laugh over how little they pay - it's disgusting.

Warren Buffet says he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell us how taking more money from people who are wealthy will make you more wealthy.
How will taxing the wealthy solve the problem of income inequality.

One simple way that would really benefit the middle class would be to use increased tax revenues to dramatically lower tuition at public universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Trump voter here; I don't have a huge problem with a wealth tax over twenty million, or increasing marginal rates over 10 million.

Fellow Trump voter here, why 20 million though, and why 10 million? How did you arrive that that number? Just feels right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is that for the added revenue from taxing the rich to make a dent, DCUM would have to agree that the rich includes anyone worth $3 million or earning $300k+. Watch the DCUM liberals squawk about that.

But I'd be for it.

Tax away. HHI $500-700k.

Glad to hear it. I wish more rich families in DC liberal land were like you. (And yes, you're rich.)

eh

It's easy to lie on an anonymous forum.

Sure, but I'm not.

I want to add that I'd be up for higher taxes only if many loopholes are eliminated. The truly "rich" shouldn't have a diminishing effective tax rates because of creative accounting. I have friends (who make way more than us) who laugh over how little they pay - it's disgusting.

Warren Buffet says he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Yea, that's what he says... and then there's reality:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/23/warren-buffetts-actual-tax-rate-is-31-while-his-office-workers-pay-21/#52e93f43279d

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell us how taking more money from people who are wealthy will make you more wealthy.
How will taxing the wealthy solve the problem of income inequality.

One simple way that would really benefit the middle class would be to use increased tax revenues to dramatically lower tuition at public universities.

Public universities don't need money. They've been busy increasing their tuition at 2x the rate of inflation for the past two decades. Go look on any modern public university campus and you'll see fancy new buildings, stadiums, luxurious "lifestyle" type facilities. Universities have increased tuition not because they needed to, but because they could, because student loans have been easy to get with no limit on the degree sought. What I would support is eliminating Federal backed student loans but make all community colleges free. This way, anyone can go get a college education at their local community college with no tuition cost - I would even go so far as to say throw in all books, materials and lunch. For those that want to attend a non-free public university, they can pay the tuition or obtain private loans - which will typically only be underwritten if the degree sought has a good future earnings potential. So we would have a three tiered system: completely free public education from K through undergrad, subsidized public colleges, and subsidized private colleges.