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.
The isn’t snark. The answer is simply greed. The rich want to be richer. They want it all. The mentality is, “I don’t care about anyone else, I want it all.”
Edit: removed a redundant sentence
Mathematics and Politics.
There are many more people who are “working class” than rich. The argument is that if you take some money from a lot of people, you get more money than if you take a lot of money from some people.
There’s also the argument that if everyone pitches in, the overall burden for each individual is less.
What this fails to address is that the richer you are, the more you can play with your money and end up with nothing to tax. This is why the rich get richer and the rest of us don’t.
Running through all that is a thing called “trickle down economics” which claims that the money from the rich ends up in society, but recent reviews of this have proven this to be nonsense. Politicians use this as an argument for the status quo.
Finally, the rich shape the narrative. Politicians are essentially elected by the rich through their manipulation of the story through their media empires and social media platforms.
The argument is that if you take some money from a lot of people, you get more money than if you take a lot of money from some people.
That’s all dependent on how much you’re taking and from who which I addressed in my comment.
There’s also the argument that if everyone pitches in, the overall burden for each individual is less.
This only makes sense if you define “burden” with a fixed dollar amount. A $6k tax “burden” is going to be a much harder burden on someone who makes $40k than someone who makes $250k
What this fails to address is that the richer you are, the more you can play with your money and end up with nothing to tax.
This could be addressed by the wealth tax I mentioned.
In the end, I do believe it’s politics and the wealthy manipulating people’s perception.
They’ve got us focused on this bullshit culture war when what we need is a good old-fashioned class war.
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. ☹️
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.
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
The argument is: They’re poor, what are they gonna do a about it?
The argument is that the rich and powerful are rich enough and powerful enough to corrupt the system and not have to pay taxes.
Blind greed and incredible selfishness.
Basically you’re trying to reason madness.
They are less powerful and easier to tax. It’s all about power, The rich by themselves are less powerful than the masses when the masses are together. Which is why they’re taxed at all. There’s something more powerful
The standard deduction should be at least the median income…? Wouldn’t that mean that half of people would pay no income tax?
You might say this is what we should do, but I think it’s far from obvious.
If you earn $40k and the first $13k is untaxed, then you’re paying no taxes on about the first third of your income. And from there you begin paying in the lowest bracket.
If you make $100k, and the first $13k is untaxed, that’s the first 13% of your income, not 33%. And some of your income will be taxed at levels higher than anything the $40k earner pays. I just fail to see how this is placing the burden on the poor. It Is structured to do the exact opposite and give them the most breaks.
The fact that there’s one standard deduction for the whole country is insane, since $13k means something extremely different in different places.
But across the board I’d probably agree that the floor on the deduction should come up, and we should raise taxes on extreme wealth to make it up. But at least in its most essential form, income tax is already progressive.
So I don’t really get your question. But who am I fooling? I’m going to be downvoted into oblivion for going against the popular narrative on this.
Going against the popular narrative? What would that be, that progressive tax brackets are the very fucking least we can do (and is clearly not enough)?
No man read the top dozen voted root comments and you will see the narrative: rich people are using their political access to fuck you and get richer. The OP doesn’t even acknowledge progressive tax brackets. The entire system apparently is specifically designed to direct money out of starving people into the super wealthy. That’s the narrative. It’s right up there with “CEOs don’t do anything” and “you shouldn’t recycle because it’s just a scam cooked up by Big Plastic.” It’s actually hard to be a good liberal when those around me are dripping with this kind of horseshit nonstop.
The standard deduction should be at least the median income…? Wouldn’t that mean that half of people would pay no income tax?
Half or more depending on mean or median. But that’s just a starting point for the discussion.
You might say this is what we should do, but I think it’s unreasonable to say that it’s a total head scratcher why we don’t already.
That’s not what I was intending to ask. Sorry if I phrased it poorly. I’m trying to understand the arguments against it because it’s what makes sense to me.
I just fail to see how this is placing the burden on the poor. It Is structured to do the exact opposite and give them the most breaks.
I think the logical thing is to have those who most benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for be the ones who contribute the most. And those that are seeing the least benefit be exempt.
I’d probably agree that the floor on the deduction should come up, and we should raise taxes on extreme wealth to make it up. But at least in its most essential form, income tax is already progressive.
This is almost exactly what I suggested. I think we’re basically on the same page.
Yeah I think we may only differ on degree, and yes some of my confusion about your post came from phrasing. There are still some phrasing points I’m struggling on.
I think the logical thing is to have those who most benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for
The poor benefit from roads, schools, firefighters, Medical/Medicaid, and utilities as much as anyone. But I think you had the super wealthy in mind. “Those who benefit from infrastructure” is an odd way to pinpoint the super wealthy.
be the ones who contribute the most.
This part is already true. Progressive tax brackets have them contributing the most as a proportion of pay, and far and away the most in absolute numbers.
And those that are seeing the least benefit be exempt.
The entire lower 50-60% of the economy is an extremely inclusive notion of “those who benefit the least.”
Again, phrasing.
I think the logical thing is to have those who most benefit from the infrastructure our taxes pay for
The poor benefit from roads, schools, firefighters, Medical/Medicaid, and utilities as much as anyone. But I think you had the super wealthy in mind. “Those who benefit from infrastructure” is an odd way to pinpoint the super wealthy.
Those who “most benefit” would be those who have been able to leverage the infrastructure and security provided to profit wildly. Not those who are just scraping by.
I think we do agree on all but degree like you said. And maybe mean/median income is too high. I was just trying to come up with a somewhat natural but objective breaking point. I think a more reasonable but also more subjective one might be the “living wage” which will certainly be much lower than mean/median but also much higher than $13k.
P.S. Tangentially related, I found this living wage calculator which put my current LCOL residence at ~$42k and my previous HCOL residence at ~$57k. Turned out to be much closer to Mean/median than I expected.
I think you need to take a step back and stop talking about income tax. Instead, talk about wealth distribution overall. What about businesses? What about corporations? What about passive income? What about savings that’s passed to children? What about inheritance tax? What about tax fraud and tax evasion? And I meant to separate those explicitly, because there are many weak points in the tax code that allow for companies to take advantage of the ability to send money overseas, for example.
If all you’re doing is adjusting the standard deduction or the base exemption or the top threshold for social security payments, you’re ignoring the gigantic high-dollar figures that are happening with the billionaires and the largest corporations in the world. And if you ignore them, then there’s no way you can fix the corruption that’s plaguing modern society.
Of course I think you were trying to keep your focus narrow, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it’s also worth noting in at least one comment that the big picture involves much more important questions about how we should allow wealth to be redistributed.
Something I never see mentioned is the risk of “brain drain”. If you tax the rich too heavily, there’s a possibility that they’ll just move to another country with lower taxes, taking their companies (and jobs) with them.
That’s not brain drain. Brain drain is when high qualified people leave their country, mostly because of the lack of infrastructures costing them opportunities for studying or working in their respective field.
What you’re talking about is capital flight. This is an issue that is systematically raised as a counter-argument by liberals in debates on taxation. The problem is that it is seriously overestimated:
- Leaving a country is a lot more complicated than it sounds: you lose your family, your friends, your culture, your habits. Many millionaires who leave their country end up coming back after a few years.
- You can’t relocate your real estate investments.
- Going abroad doesn’t exempt you from paying taxes (especially exit taxes).
- A country that wishes to do so can prohibit the relocation of a profitable company, or even nationalize it.
- Many rich people who threaten to leave if taxes are raised end up doing the math: if there’s a profitable business, they’ll stay. And in a country that finances its infrastructure soundly and has a good distribution of wealth, there’s profitable business to be had.
raised as a counter-argument by liberals in debates on taxation.
Which liberals are defending heavy taxation of the working class?
Not so much defending heavy taxation on the working class specifically, instead focusing solely on why the wealthy and mega corps have to have a low tax rate
They don’t
You’re equating wealth with intelligence. Bad take.
IMO the most valid argument is that there are way more people making a middling income than people making a high income, so any reduction in taxes for those people would need a proportionally much larger increase in the upper brackets to maintain the same level of tax revenue, if it’s possible to make the numbers work at all depending on how much of a tax break you want to give. The minimum amount to be taxed is set based on where the tail end of the bell curve is, the number of people who are poor enough not to be taxed is small.
Of course there’s also the fact that the richest people don’t get their money from having a job at all, it’s all in investments, so messing with income tax rates doesn’t even affect them.
And that’s the definition of capitalist vs working class. A top surgeon makes a lot of money yes, but they are still working class because their main income is from salary.
Earning a big salary or buying some stocks don’t make anyone a capitalist. Being the owner of Johnson and Johnson, hiring an administrator and not working a day in your life does. And that’s the kind of people who get richer with any crisis, holds the biggest part of Johnson and Johnson profits, and pays no tax at all.
To build off of this, if you collect $1000 in taxes from a million people and you’ve just pulled in a billion dollars. With 300 million people in the country that’s a lot of tax dollars.
Obviously if you can tax 1000 out of every million dollars in wealth and individual earns in a year you can easily collect far more in taxes given how many multimillionaires will see their wealth increase by tens or hundreds of millions in a year.
This is all super reductive for simplicity. It’s worth looking at how the super rich are able to avoid paying taxes. Are they not paying taxes because they’re doing things with their money that is directly incentivized and generally better for the country than if they simply hoarded the same money, such as running the money through charities, clean energy installtions, etc? I’m honestly asking because i really don’t know and I dont have the time right now to pull at that thread and research the question
It’s very clear to me that everyone substantially richer than me should be paying the taxes, and everyone else and I should pay no taxes.
This attitude works pretty well at all but the very highest income levels.
I often wonder this myself. Why do rich people, who have so much wealth that it is unimaginable to us, not want to pay any taxes? It hampers the economy, makes it less adaptable to contractions, and makes the lives of the vast majority of the population much more difficult. At a macro level, I really don’t see any benefits to it. So, here’s my best guess.
- Power & control. A poor and uneducated population is much easier to control than a financially stable and educated population. If people are fighting each other for survival and minimal luxuries, then they can’t organize to improve their lives as a whole. Add to that being uneducated, they get their “education” via the media and are easily manipulated via propaganda.
- Strength. Similarly, they want to feel strong by manipulating the system to get what they want. By getting the government to do what they want and finding loopholes to reduce their burden, they feel stronger than others. This gives them a sense of strength that they seek, which ultimately means safety for them.
- Greed. They just want the numbers on their bank statements to be higher. Some people are proud of numbers, so the larger the number, the more proud they are. It doesn’t matter if the number is relative, so the value doesn’t really have any practical impact on their lives. They just want a larger number. I swear, sometimes we should just print fake bank statements wich ridiculous numbers, give them to the wealthy, and congratulate them. That’s what they want: to be envied.
- Lack of care. They literally do not care about others. It’s not even an issue that fits in their heads. Find someone that is politically right-leaning and ask them what they think about the economic situation in a poor and war torn country. Their response would be indictive of how the wealthy think about us.
- Narrow & short sighted. They can’t see the whole picture. They’re focused solely on their own relative position on the hierarchy and can’t consider how their desires will impact the whole system in the long-term. They can’t see that if the lower classes are complacent and uneducated, their products and creativity suffer. Look at Russia where people contribute just enough to get paid and all creativity is to please the elites. This stifles academic and scientific progress while also damaging integrity. People don’t contribute to the economy because they have a personal drive. They contribute to please their superiors. This results in a terrible economy full of corruption and lack of ingenuity. The wealthy can’t see that because they don’t care about it. They just want to feel strong and in control.
They don’t vote as much. They trust the media telling them that oligarchy is bestest for them. Talking point like Harris wants to raise taxes, and Trump wants to lower taxes ignores the context that those raises/lowers are on the rich/oligarchs, and being lower information/invested voters they get deceived.
Well over 95% of the public does not understand the tax code well enough to pay attention to tax proposals, and many poor/simplest tax filings are given to external services. Scamming the public on tax policy, and especially in electoral propaganda/deception, it is very easy to sell stronger oligarchy power over a declining America as if that will improve America if it is shouted loud enough.
