OT: Tax the rich???

I'm sure that they already understand it. 15% is a fairly low rate of personal tax and 35% is still lower than average tax rate around the world.

If you are only making $30,000 per year before tax, you have got barely enough money to pay for food and housing, and that 15% income represents a big chunk of your disposable income. If you make $300,000 per year, you will spend more on food and housing, but not ten times as much, so the fact that you are paying out twenty times as much in tax still leaves you with plenty of disposable income to play with.

Despite your Libertarian delusions, sustaining an advanced industrial societies involve a lot of collective expenditure on things that everybody needs and uses, and progressive income tax - progressive in the sense that you pay out a bigger proportion of you income in tax if you have a higher income - is a popular way of paying for that expenditure.

Some countries have experimented with marginal rates of tax going up to 95% on the highest tranches of your income, but in practice this just meant that nobody had an income high enough to qualify for this "super-tax" - people still ended up being paid loads of money, but tax avoidance accountants made sure that it didn't qualify as taxable income. So the marginal rates of income tax now tend to peak at 50% or

In the UK you pay 50% income tax on earning above 150,000 pounds per year.

In Australia it is 45% on income over $A180,000 per year.

In the Netherlands it is 52% on income over 54,776 euro per year - $77,261.55.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

So, making him pay over twice the rate you pay still isn't enough?

This shows it's nothing but envy: "still leaves you with plenty of disposable income to play with."

Well, yeah - he either worked ten times as hard as you, or was ten times more productive than you, or worked ten times smarter than you; you think he should be punished for his success just because you're too lazy, incompetent, or stupid to compete with him? So you think that that makes institutionalized theft moral?

"He's having more fun than me, so I'm gonna punish him by sending government storm troopers to take away at gunpoint what he's earned by the sweat of his own brow!"

Now, if the guy stole it, that's obviously illegal and immoral, and he should be caught, and pay restitution.

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT TOOK PLACE! He _earned_ it by busting his butt ten times as much as you did!

Sheesh! Rich

When the punishment for success becomes too severe, people just walk. This has been demonstrated over and over and over again and I can't understand the mindset of those who still believe it can be made into a viable system after centuries of evidence to the contrary.

The skydivers call it "brain lock," which, by the way, is the only thing that can kill you when you're in free-fall at 3000 feet (1 Km), assuming your 'chute was packed right.

Thanks anyway. Rich

Actualy, they don't. Financial rewards is only one of the factors that motivate people to do well in their jobs, and it is generally held that it isn't the most important one. Work is primarily a social activity and people get off on being able to help other people and enjoy the status they earn by being particularly effective in helping other people.

Badly constructed financial incentive packages have decreased productivity by imposing competition in jobs where cooperation was central.

Except that you can't point to any such evidence, because it doesn't exist.

You should know - you are obviously a sufferer.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Your government is running at an enormous deficit at the moment, so it obviously isn't enough.

That doesn't show envy - it's just a report of the practical consequences of paying a higher rate of income tax on a higher than average personal income. That's what I did for most of the time I was working in the UK, and that's what my wife is doing now.

I don't "envy" people who are in that kind of tax bracket - I am the kind of person who was in that tax bracket, and will be again if I can ever get myself another job.

My above-average income reflected the fact that I was good at electronics and knew a lot about physical science in general. I spent ten years at university getting to know about phsyical science, and picked up my electronic skills on the way. I was on tax-payer-funded scholarships and grants for all of that ten years, and it certainly seems fair to me that I paid a higher rate of income tax on the top slice of my income which I owed to a long period of learning at the tax-paers expense.

This is scartcely institutionalised theft - it's more institutionalised investment, with sciety getting part of the profits from the investment they made.

Actually, he didn't. He earned it by working smarter rather than harder, and in most cases he got to be able to work smarter because the society he grew up in chipped in towards making it possible for him to learn how to work smarter. And income tax isn't theft, it's a legally imposed tax.

If you hadn't destroyed quite so many brain cells learning how to work dumber, you probably wouldn't post such blatant nonsense.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Maybe you'd rather him come round with his gun.

No he didnt, he just has a job that pays ten times as much as you.

Taxing the richer looks fairer to the poorer, helps stop them burning down your house.

Are you saying you are completely without any?

Tell you what. Let's make it a totally fair tax -- the exact same rate for everyone. But on wealth. No tax at all on income. To minimize disruption, arrange the rates on wealth such that the tax revenue to the gov't starts out about where it is right now.

Equality for all. I'm sure you'd support that.

Jon

You look at it the wrong way. Rich people pay more tax to keep the less rich people from looting and other criminal behaviour.

Yes, Rich... they ARE going to tax you.

So you're saying that government acting as the criminal's agent is OK?

SO you're saying that all jobs are equivalent and the reason one pays more than another is simply because the employer is more "giving"?

Certainly it does. It's called "envy". It's not pretty.

So you also wish to reward criminals.

You are warped!

I'll put you down in the pro-government-by-Mafia column.

found:

That's the problem. Playing with money is not investment. Only peopke who have "too much" money invest it. Investment is the way an economy defers some current consumption for future capability.

Government is terrible at investing. Most taxes are squandered in counter-productive nonsense, a double-whammy of badness.

Once tax rates get above 33% or so, it becomes more logical to structure your life to avoid taxes than to earn more.

Popular, and often self-defeating.

John

Businesses can walk easier than individuals. Or just die, and get replaced by imports. Lots of companies set up foreign affiliates and shift profits there. Who needs jobs anyhow?

The option to "walk" shows up in states here. I know people who moved themselves or their businesses from California to Nevada because of the tax differentials. Lots of electronic assembly has move to Mexico or farther.

Tricky assumption.

Insane sport!

John

This is interesting:

If you tax the productive people to subsidize the unproductive ones, and kill jobs in the process, people will move. In the USA, people move between states. But the broader principle applies: people and businesses move around the world in response to tax pressures.

At some increasing tax rate, the Laffer peak is past and government revenues drop. But the tax rate that most benefits society is surely below the rate that maximizes tax revenue.

A minor upside to high corporate tax rates is that some sorts of investments and expenses and waste are tax deductable, so are differentially encouraged. I get, in effect, about 35% off the price of an oscilloscope, or some silly office decorations, or a hotel room, because of the tax rates. Lefties consider the tax lost on corporate expenses to be "subsidies."

John

Not necessarily. But investment is one way of "playing with money".

Only people who have more money than they need to satisfy their immediate needs can invest it.

re capability.

But then again, so are individuals.

Some taxes are squandered on counter-productive nonsense - as in the corn-into-ethanol-for-cars scheme in the US - but there's plenty of counter-productive spending going on outside of governemnt too. Every penny that Exxon-Mobil spends on denialist propaganda is seriously counter-productive, though their spending has been sufficiently effective to fool you amongst many others.

Perhaps, but people on Germany, Australia and the UK don't seem to bother. In practice marginal rates of up to 60% on the top bands of income seem to be cost-effective. 95% rates certainly weren't.

Your economy isn't doing as well as Germany's, despite a distinctly lower rate of personal tax. To some extent this is because you don't tax the rich enough, and allow your legislators to set up sweet-heart deals that give individual industries irrational tax breaks, and to some extent because you spend more on "defence" than anybody else (though a lot of this is effectively welfare donations to the military industrial complex, fueled by kick-backs to your elected representatives).

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

To a lefty, taxes aren't about raising revenue, they're about "equality". Tax at 100% and everyone is "equal". Perfect.

Just listen to them squeal about "big oil subsidies".

Mostly people just whinge about it, unless it's easy, low risk and relatively cheap. Moving to a different state/province is relatively easy- you can find schools, malls, and a residential area the spouse will go along with in most regions, and people tend to speak a similar language and share many customs (and nobody has to apply for visas, endure years of being at the mercy of a new government as a less-than-citizen, deal with foreign laws and customs etc-- moving to a different country is not so easy). Of course big companies will put facilities in places where the executives would never consider living themselves, at least not on the terms that the workers would have to live.

Why the obsession with tax rates? Total money sucked out of the economy by government is more important, no? Deficit spending, user fees, and debasing the currency have probably exceeded direct taxes.

So if you're hawking pricey oscilloscopes you'd like corporate taxes to be low relative to personal taxes, but high compared to just socking the money away, right?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

" snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

They're too stupid to know the difference between "subsidies" and "tax credits".

No, not really. Chances are, you pay nothing. And 30k is pretty good for Eastern Kentucky but I don't think you can make rent on it in SoCal.

I dunno. Because taxing the guy making 30k in East Kentucky sounds pretty bad, maybe.

-- Les Cargill