I’m looking for serious answers to understand the mentality. Please avoid the snark. I know it’s low hanging and tempting but I’m pretty sure most, if not all, of use here on Lemmy “get it”.
I just can’t get out of my head how absurd it is that we, in the U.S. anyway, put so much of the tax burden on working class folks instead of those most benefiting from our economic system.
It seems to me the standard deduction should be at least the median personal income (~$40k) if not the mean(~$60k) with progressive tax brackets adjusted to cover costs thereafter and possibly a supplemental wealth tax.
But I’m not an economist so trying to understand why I’m wildly wrong and this would be a terrible idea either from an economic perspective or from a political perspective.
20 years ago, the right wing propaganda machine was focused on (before they went full out fascist) low taxes for the “job creators” such as corporations and rich people, on the basis of that leading to more lucrative job opportunities for everyone else. The thinking was that the people and corporations in this low-tax environment would have incentives for creating jobs “here” instead of moving them overseas.
Not everyone on that side of the isle have realized that this results in jobs still ending up overseas, along with money that could’ve funded schools, roads, libraries, et al. And many of those who have realized it continue along the same path because it’s too profitable for them to do so.
Remember this next time you hear slogans such as “trickle down economy”, or Glitch McConnells favorite: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.
Don’t be fooled, taxes are just a way to extract the fruit of the poor folks’ labor and give it to the rich and powerful. Always have been, since their inception. Not just in America, here in the (highly idealized by lemmy) EU I cost my company 3200€ a month, 1850€ go to my bank account and 1350€ to the government, plus up to a 21% vat from the things I purchase. Amazon pays literally 0€ in taxes.
I think it’s ok for everyone to pay something, and income tax is progressive.
Social security tax is regressive, and sales tax is regressive. So I’d remove the cap on social security, tax unearned income more, and exempt more necessary items from sales tax, if looking to get more from the more wealthy, as income tax is the only one working right - when I was poor my federal income tax was 0, when I was poor with kids I got a little more back than I paid in, now we are doing well, paying lots because we make more at work.
Blind greed and incredible selfishness.
Basically you’re trying to reason madness.
The rich control the laws and they don’t want to contribute.
The argument is that the rich and powerful are rich enough and powerful enough to corrupt the system and not have to pay taxes.
Incompetence at being selfish.
They think they’re being selfish, but they fucking suck at it. They think selfish means “I don’t want to pay taxes but fuck you you still have to pay I win you lose”.
If they were even slightly competent at being selfish, they’d realize in about three seconds that doing things that way makes your town (and more) stressed out and shitty, and you still have to live there, and you can only build walls so high.
And even if we got rid of physics so you could build impossibly tall walls, now you’ve definitely lost because you had to build them in the first place, instead of being even remotely sensible and building a world where your neighbor would be happy to see you, or thrive peacefully and leave you be.
The “economics” of it are mostly about couching this damning and embarrassing realization in big words so that everybody stops paying attention because they yawned and lost interest.
If you are talking about federal income taxes, they are actually progressive. The vast majority of the money collected comes from the top 50%, the 1% pays something like 25% of the total just by themselves. Its why Republicans and billionaires bitch about it so much and want to eliminate the federal income tax. In reality poor people are mostly impacted by sales taxes, and that’s because of the basic economics involved that make sales taxes inherently regressive.
The problem is creative tax application AKA tax evasion. Somehow, rich people manage to pay way below what one would expect in relation to their income.
It’s the same as in every business: those making decisions think that the decision making is the hardest and most important part of the equation. Not only that, they believe that it is their right and that they worked very hard to get where they are.
There are two reasons they have to believe that:
- if they didn’t, they’d feel that they didn’t deserve it
- it also explains (to them at least) why there is inequality
The common argument that is brought up against change now is capital flight: “if businesses and rich people were taxed too much, they’d leave the country”. There is a great fear that they will leave and take all the good jobs with them. The counter argument to that is: they aren’t the only ones with brains to get a business going. Rich people aren’t smarter than non-rich people, businesses that leave did employ people from whence they left and they also probably sold to the people in that area or country.
Now, of course the speed of departure, the political reaction, and the location are important.
Speed: instant departure can have a serious impact as the jobless might not be able to find other employment quickly. A graduated departure allows that however and also makes it possible for people to focus on other jobs/specialisations in the first place.
Political reaction: depending on where you are, providing recertification and training courses, having good welfare programs, and most importantly having an exit tax can help soften the blow of departure
Location: A big employer leaving a small town can be devastating. A small employer leaving a city, less so. A big employer leaving a city can burden the city, but the other factors are important.
Great question but you are asking the wrong people as you can see. You won’t find serious arguments or alternative views here.
This really demonstrates what I dislike about Lemmy. Too many people who want to inject their political beliefs into every conversation. Supply side economics is a thing. Whether it works or not is highly subject to debate but it is an entire school of thought in economics.
Yeah. I tried and failed to head it off at the pass. There are some good comments in here though.
I’m pretty sure their argument is “because fuck everyone but us who can decide that.”
“Because we can.”
Rich people have special access to the legislative machinery that you and I don’t. Through
bribes“contributions” they can craft laws that let them avoid paying their fair share of the tax burden. They can also “modify” pending legislation to remove the penalties for breaking those laws. It must be nice to live in a consequence-free environment.The sad truth is that this is exactly the answer. Rich people have more power by virtue of being rich.
Sorry, OP might judge this to contain some snark and as such, is ineligible. ☹️
Because fucking over the poor is how the rich stay rich.
This is political science 101
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
Its basic selfishness that people seem to not grow out of. Even the poorer class act selfishly so there is no difference when they are rich.
So the richer you get the less you want to contribute to gov programs and what not. Its always the “why would i want to give money to a gov that doesnt know how to use it? Or why is it my problem to help people who are lazy?” They are seemingly reasonable arguments but actually are immature
