RBG passes away | Trump to nominate replacement soon

[SinNombre]

That is almost certainly what is going to happen.

Guaranteed unless he wins. Then elections were fair.

He will claim victory on the first night in any case to invalidate postal ballots.

 

[Redplane]

If Trump chooses Joan Larsen there may actually be some dems to get on board with it. She s nowhere near as scary as Handmaid's Tale Barrett. Would seem like a possibly pretty smart move even.

 

[SinNombre]

I have no experience with this not having lived in the US, but I have heard that before, yeah, that taxes aren't actually very low in the US. Any idea how come you pay all that tax but why government services are anyway very poor? I mean, if revenue is high but the state still isn't providing broad public health or employment insurance and infrastructure is crumbling (from what I've read), you have to wonder where that money goes - or am I missing something?

Btw, to clarify, I didn't say 'raise income tax', I said 'stronger progressive taxation'. By that, I mean that it could start from 0% for bottom salary brackets, and go much higher for the top, with an exponential-type scale (i.e., not linear) in between. The top income tax bracket in the US still had a 70% tax percentage in the 70s, and now it's 37.5%, while for the bottom bracket it dropped only from 14% to 10% (source). And it's a similar story in other OECD countries (if not as extreme). That's criminal. But anyway, all very theoretical - I was just trying to make the point that no-one is really addressing the poor, and so they vote for whoever somehow appeals to them most. And that's not necessarily the Democrats, even if they are supposed to be the leftist party.

I do not believe in crazy income taxes. You are only taxing employees then. 70% income tax just destroys the morale of a 22 year old with no dad's money entering the workforce.

Employees work hard and make little money (relatively), need to tax employers and shareholders, and old wealth more.

My logical tax system would have flat and lower income taxes, and much higher estate/inheritance tax, loophole-free corporate taxes and dividend taxes, and a wealth tax.


Now, to answer where does the money go?
1. Corporations (healthcare is one example)
2. Military
3. Corruption - most blue states have a bloated, corrupt and inefficient public sector

 

[SinNombre]

If Trump chooses Joan Larsen there may actually be some dems to get on board with it. She s nowhere near as scary as Handmaid's Tale Barrett. Would seem like a possibly pretty smart move even.

Trump doesn't care about getting the dems on board.

His base wants him to own the libs.

 

[Redplane]

Trump doesn't care about getting the dems on board.

His base wants him to own the libs.

This is true.. Unfortunately.
Though McConnell seems smart enough to understand the backlash of putting up a candidate who will nothing but polarize. I know it seems silly to trust turtle neck has an ounce of human in there but you dont stay in that position so long without being somewhat strategic. Idle hope I guess.

 

[Sweet Square]

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[Cheimoon]

I do not believe in crazy income taxes. You are only taxing employees then. 70% income tax just destroys the morale of a 22 year old with no dad's money entering the workforce.

Employees work hard and make little money (relatively), need to tax employers and shareholders, and old wealth more.

My logical tax system would have flat and lower income taxes, and much higher estate/inheritance tax, loophole-free corporate taxes and dividend taxes, and a wealth tax.

This is going off-topic, but I get the impression that you don't know how progressive income tax works. In the example I was giving, your 22 year old would pay very little tax, and same for those people that make little money. Income tax applies per bracket: for example, you pay 0% on the first $10k of your income, 5% on your income from $10-20k, and so on - until you get to the highest bracket, where you pay 70% tax for any income over, say, $1M. So those with low incomes pay very little tax altogether, while those with very high incomes pay different levels of tax over various parts of their income, culminating in a very high tax over the top part of their income.

I think that covers all your counter-arguments. I agree that you should additionally tax profit (to stimulate companies to invest in staff, infrastructure, and R&D), incomes from shares, and wealth (we're going into Piketty's territory here) - but I wasn't trying to set up an exhaustive tax scheme. (That would include also closing loopholes and abolishing non-progressive taxes, like VAT/GST/sales tax, as much as possible.) I would personally strongly oppose a flat income tax (it's not for nothing that rightists support a flat tax and leftists progressive taxation), unless it is accompanied by a very high minimum wage and top wage restrictions.

Anyway, we can have a tax thread if we want to continue this!

 

[nimic]

Guaranteed unless he wins. Then elections were fair.

He won last time, and he still immediately claimed Clinton got millions of fraudulent votes.

 

[SinNombre]

He won last time, and he still immediately claimed Clinton got millions of fraudulent votes.

Only when Clinton supporters claimed fraud first.

This is going off-topic,

Agree about being off-topic, but lots of high-performing 22 year olds are making 150k+ these days in the US and in your system, they would be paying 50% off the bat which would hinder a lot of technical innovation. I also do not think 1M or so are crazy wages, and those are generally paid to people who are the very best in their field after many years of hard grind.

I think you are conflating your desire to tax people more while ignoring most people on a salary never really make a lot (as a percentage of total individual wealth). Shareholders and/or old wealth make orders of magnitude more.

Income is the way for poor people to gain class mobility, and progressive income tax (with crazy higher brackets) works actively against that. There is a reason why some of the fiscally worst states in the US have high graduated state taxes.

 

[Cheimoon]

Agree about being off-topic, but lots of high-performing 22 year olds are making 150k+ these days in the US and in your system, they would be paying 50% off the bat which would hinder a lot of technical innovation. I also do not think 1M or so are crazy wages, and those are generally paid to people who are the very best in their field after many years of hard grind.

I think you are conflating your desire to tax people more while ignoring most people on a salary never really make a lot (as a percentage of total individual wealth). Shareholders and/or old wealth make orders of magnitude more.

Income is the way for poor people to gain class mobility, and progressive income tax (with crazy higher brackets) works actively against that. There is a reason why some of the fiscally worst states in the US have high graduated state taxes.

Well, I disagree on that approach and thinking. I also don't think a tax system should be particularly bothered with people making $150k+ in a first job if the US median personal income was $33,706 in 2018 (source). Anyway, we can discuss this further if we ever have a thread on tax systems.

 

[Redplane]

Only when Clinton supporters claimed fraud first.



Agree about being off-topic, but lots of high-performing 22 year olds are making 150k+ these days in the US and in your system, they would be paying 50% off the bat which would hinder a lot of technical innovation. I also do not think 1M or so are crazy wages, and those are generally paid to people who are the very best in their field after many years of hard grind.

I think you are conflating your desire to tax people more while ignoring most people on a salary never really make a lot (as a percentage of total individual wealth). Shareholders and/or old wealth make orders of magnitude more.

Income is the way for poor people to gain class mobility, and progressive income tax (with crazy higher brackets) works actively against that. There is a reason why some of the fiscally worst states in the US have high graduated state taxes.

Ive seen this argument about wages, taxes and innovation before and nothing ive seen actually shows there to be a true connection between the two.

In fact, in just about any study ive ever seen the US consistently ranks below other counties or about on par with those that have considerably lower average pay and higher tax rates. It also in no way accounts for quality of life and actual take home pay which in many countries has been shown to be about a wash when you factor in a lot of costs that are covered or protected against elsewhere - like health insurance, education costs, liability exposure, cost of (good) food, freedom of movement without dependence on cars and costs that come with that, hours put in at work vs time off, etc. And then we havent even begun to dissect the lots of high performing 22 year olds making 150+ statement . Like Chei seemed to imply - that number is so minuscule it shouldn't even be a primary focus for any of these types of discussions.

 

[entropy]

Why should the Supreme Court, an unelected body that is richer, whiter, and more male than the United States is, continue to have such outsized power in the lives of ordinary people?

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