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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Taxes is theft plain and simple.

The rich have money to spare and taxes doesn't affect them.

If things were FAIR, then anyone making less than 100K a year and owning less than 2 million dollars of real estate, would have to pay ZERO TAXES.

[/quote]

So much of this post is insane... But mainly, no, taxes are absolutely not theft. Think of them as a membership fee for being part of a society.[/quote]

By this logic, everyone should pay for membership.  But that's not how our tax regime works.  [b]It penalizes the most productive and successful in order to benefit those who contribute the least productivity,[/b] for no apparent reason.  It also distorts the economy and markets through ever-changing government efforts to apply social engineering through a system of tax-related incentives and disincentives, causing people and businesses to engage in behaviors they otherwise would eschew.

A fair system would be a flat tax where everyone, regardless of income, pays the same rate.  People with higher incomes pay more, lower incomes pay less, everybody pays and feels the same amount of relative pain.  The inefficiencies inherent in our convoluted system of deductions, income brackets, credits, and exemptions could be instantly eliminated.   [/quote]

Notwithstanding your obviously incorrect assertions that high income earners are necessarily productive and low income earners do not contribute to society, paying your f—king taxes for the benefit of a country which has allowed you to be financially successful, (relatively) healthy, and (relatively) safe IS NOT A PENALTY!

I really wish we could round up all of you “self-made” producers and drop you off in Somalia.  Let’s see how productive you are then.
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People with higher incomes are, by definition, more productive.  They wouldn't be more highly compensated otherwise.  They make more money, spend more money, invest more money, and they pay more taxes.   People with lower incomes do less of all those things.  It's simple enough.   [/quote]

From an economist's point of view, this is not true. People can only spend so much. It is represented by the economic theory, Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC). The MPC is the fraction of the extra income a household consumes rather than saves as their income rises or Change in Consumption/Change in Disposable Income. In general, as a person's income rises, their basic needs are met, and the utility derived from consuming more goods (the marginal utility of consumption) decreases. This leads to a lower MPC.

A middle-class person's income (say $100,000) is closer to what they need to spend to maintain their lifestyle. They are likely spending 80% to 90% of their $100,000 income. The wealthy person (Billionaire), on the other hand, reaches a saturation point of personal spending. A family might buy three homes, a yacht, and luxury goods, but the absolute amount of money they can spend on consumption (as opposed to saving or financial investing) is not proportional to their $10 million income. Even if they spend $1,000,000 on consumption, that is only 10% of their income, leaving 90% ($~9,000,000) to be saved or invested.

A dollar in the hands of a person with a high MPC (middle class) will be spent almost immediately, creating a powerful multiplier effect and boosting Aggregate Demand for goods and services. A dollar earned by a person with a low MPC (the wealthy) is far more likely to be saved.

When the wealthy save large portions of their income, it represents money that is not immediately cycling through the economy to pay for goods, services, and wages. While savings eventually enter the economy as investment, the immediate demand stimulus is diminished. Therefore, a high concentration of income among those with a low MPC (Billionaires) is seriously detrimental to overall economic growth.

The wealthy might spend more in absolute terms, but on aggregate, a healthy middle class spends more than 1 billionaire and it is much better for the economy as a whole to have a large middle class and no billionaires.[/quote]

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