Should we Tax the rich as an economic resolve?

" I think taxing is the wrong way to go about it. However, some of those billions in bonuses should be spread around the lower-worker wages as well, because after all they are just as responsible for the companies success as anyone. When a company manages to get more work done without hiring anyone new, who do you think actually did the extra work? It wasn't management.  I'm not saying managers and CEOs should make the same as hourly employees, but come on, you can afford to pay them more than that. Henry Ford knew he'd get the best out of his workers if he paid them well, and look how that turned out. "

If someone got rich the legal way then good on them, they shouldn't be ultimate solution of today's world. 
If someone's rich all money is his/hers. It's non of our business what they spend it on. Could be booze, women, video games - i don't care. Of course, taking 10 million from Bill Gates wouldn't hurt him but he has earned that money and it's all his no matter what's going on in the world.

The problem with taxing the rich is that it's a punitive action and while i'll agree some individuals that are rich have obtained their wealth unfairly some individuals that are rich have actually generated value to society. Taxing the rich is a blind solution that doesn't address who is producing value and who is not, it's fundamentally an emotional response to inequity where as a rational response would be to addressing the institutional problems that lead to failure, socialism for the rich or the ability of the rich to transfer their costs to other members.
 
Benefits obtained should be proportional to value given, taxation doesn't internalize this and is destructive to society.
 
Also if we consider the idea of marginalism to be true then taxing somebody with 7 million vs somebody with 10 million  to an equal percentage generates a utility advantage for the individual at  10 million. The richer individual might pay more but his taxed wealth offers him additionally less utility then the taxed wealth offers to the individual at 7 mill so one could argue progressive taxation is fundamentally in-egalitarain because of the marginalism concept.

In a perfect society, the rich would not be taxed more, as it seems like having everyone pay the same rate of taxation is the "fair" thing to do.  However, we don't live in a perfect society.  For equal taxation, the rate of taxation would have to be something that even the poorest of the poor could afford.  This won't work, however, as if everyone in society is barely being taxed, then society will collapse in on itself in deficit.  As such, while it is not "fair", the most logical solution would be to tax the rich more.  An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.  However, the rich should not be expected to carry the financial burden of society alone.  Other means of generating revenue should be examined before such tax increases are implemented.  
 
America's(I speak only for my own country) largest dilemma is a decline in stoicism in its population.  More people are needlessly accepting social security, when they are still capable of being productive.  There is no longer a sense of selflessness and unity in working towards a larger goal of making a brighter future.  These characteristics are what built every great civilization of the past.  And the gradual loss of these traits in their populations is what brought them to their ends.  Economics, at their core, are based on a nation's capacity to fulfill the needs of itself.  Taxation is not the answer to fixing the current economic decline seen in my country.  It's the people that must be fixed.

Honestly, we should tax every single person as an economic resolve. 

Fuck no...

" @Fajita_Jim said:

" I think taxing is the wrong way to go about it. However, some of those billions in bonuses should be spread around the lower-worker wages as well, because after all they are just as responsible for the companies success as anyone. When a company manages to get more work done without hiring anyone new, who do you think actually did the extra work? It wasn't management.  I'm not saying managers and CEOs should make the same as hourly employees, but come on, you can afford to pay them more than that. Henry Ford knew he'd get the best out of his workers if he paid them well, and look how that turned out. "

You just described "trickle-down" theory.  The Regan Administration made this a big selling point when they leveled off taxes for all classes (where the wealth had been paying a majority).  The outcome: The wealth were taxed significantly less and didn't "trickle" single dime.  Everyone else's taxes went up and the national debt sky-rocketed.  Keep in mind, when tax laws were created, they only taxed the wealthest.  And they were taxed 80%+.  Guess what?  They were still rich as fuck.  Lets break this all down in a more simple way:  Person A is rich with $100.  Person B is poor with $10.  Current tax (approximate) - 33% tax on Person A leaves $67.  28% tax on Person B leaves $7.20Flat tax - 40% tax on all.  Person A is left with $60.  Person B is left with $6. High Wealthly tax - 70% tax on Person A leaves $30.  0% tax on Person B leaves $10. Seems to me that, compared to Person B, Person A is still rich as fuck no matter what. $30 seem awful low to you?  Use realistic amounts then.  Change Person A to $100,000,000 and Person B to $45,000. 90% tax on $100,000,000 is still rich as fuck.  Especially when compared to the paltry $45,000. "

" @HeghmohQib said:

" @Fajita_Jim said:

" I think taxing is the wrong way to go about it. However, some of those billions in bonuses should be spread around the lower-worker wages as well, because after all they are just as responsible for the companies success as anyone. When a company manages to get more work done without hiring anyone new, who do you think actually did the extra work? It wasn't management.  I'm not saying managers and CEOs should make the same as hourly employees, but come on, you can afford to pay them more than that. Henry Ford knew he'd get the best out of his workers if he paid them well, and look how that turned out. "

You just described "trickle-down" theory.  The Regan Administration made this a big selling point when they leveled off taxes for all classes (where the wealth had been paying a majority).  The outcome: The wealth were taxed significantly less and didn't "trickle" single dime.  Everyone else's taxes went up and the national debt sky-rocketed.  Keep in mind, when tax laws were created, they only taxed the wealthest.  And they were taxed 80%+.  Guess what?  They were still rich as fuck.  Lets break this all down in a more simple way:  Person A is rich with $100.  Person B is poor with $10.  Current tax (approximate) - 33% tax on Person A leaves $67.  28% tax on Person B leaves $7.20Flat tax - 40% tax on all.  Person A is left with $60.  Person B is left with $6. High Wealthly tax - 70% tax on Person A leaves $30.  0% tax on Person B leaves $10. Seems to me that, compared to Person B, Person A is still rich as fuck no matter what. $30 seem awful low to you?  Use realistic amounts then.  Change Person A to $100,000,000 and Person B to $45,000. 90% tax on $100,000,000 is still rich as fuck.  Especially when compared to the paltry $45,000. "

" @Geno:  We are not, "in it together" people are predatory toward other people and at this scale of society 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

 sacrifice to others is not a viable means of maintain future cooperation because of cognitive and perceptual limits of the human brain to address accounting imbalances and free-riding.

I agree some poor people, if given more resources, woudl benefit from them and distribute potential economics benefits to society as a result. I also understand the externality argument; it's good not to have a hobo explosion in your commercial districts. This doesnt' rationalize the question of "who is capable" and who is unwilling; who would use that wealth to better themselves and who would use it to extend the consumption of leisure at others expense. 

And wealth hoarding is very easy in a system where the government guarantees the value of your money and maintains this monopoly of exchange value.  In addition Rawlsian notions of "Democratic price fixing" don't allow prices to adjust in the market and eliminate the signals to emerge that are necessary to allocate economic resources, in this case when everybody gets together(in this case the labor input), before their fate is chosen, and decides garbage men should make as much as dr.s you have disrupted the signaling mechanism of markets and you cannot rationalize what labor is needed because you've caused labor prices to become sclerotic.

This also doesn't address the rational ignorance problem when democratic decisions tending to lead to very poor outcomes because the incentives of democracy destroy the incentive to make informed selections.  Knowledge is not equally distributed so equal distribution of political capital will result in poor institutional performance when relegated to an egalitarian decision network. Democracy must be scalar and dynamic.

Further more... why not bifurcate need into an urgency that results in a requirment for survival or some state, and need that is the product of economic incentives in the sense that the urgency arrives because certain skills or autonomy where not developed becasue the costs of not doing so where not experienced to the same degree under a non-redistributive regime.  Need itself can be an economic output. "

Here is the state of affairs as it is in britain but it could probably be extrapolated to america i guess 
 
We have had governments that continuously offers us bribes of our own money. By all means tax the rich, but there arent enough rich for it to make a difference and for things to carry on as they are, there is no other choice but to tax the poor. Its not good or just, but if we want to have a welfare state etc its the only way to make things work financially

" @Fajita_Jim: i dont think you understand how accounting works for that system to work youd also have to force employees to pay when a company ceases to be profitable, do you want that? "

I'm working hard on my dayjob. I have a career ahead of me. If i knew that the tax would increase at one point, I wouldn't be so motivated to work hard today and improve myself.

Exactly, institutions of family and church have to be replaced with something that reinforces cooperation. The welfare state, subsidies and regulatory capture, and proactive transfers foster a cleptocratic order. Dunbar elucidates the horizons of social perception and beyond these scales individuals cannot reckon the value or lack of value individuals in society create. Institutions like the market try their best to rationalize where value is created and where it isn’t, institutions like proactive impositions invert the cooperative nexus and promote predation on man vs. man because value is not permitted to be assessed. We must select the correct institutions and do so carefully.

 At the massive scales of society we are talking about what method exists for rationalizing who is consuming and who is generating value ? At small scales it is obvious that enforcment is relatively simple matter because we see each other daily and have a robust awareness of not only a binary assessemtn of good vs bad, but also a amplitude assessement of "how good" vs "how bad". The welfare state does not allow this analytical and very human component to function and it also assumes that economic outcomes necessitate equal need and equal potential to provide future need, its' overtly general. 
 
Further more there is no exit mechanism where as in small cooperative circles i could more easily defect from future cooperative endevors from you if i believe your unreliable and will no remunerate me.

 Donation to charity may not do good if it retards the development of socially valuable skills in the recipient of the charity. If altruism itself is selfish which looks to be the case as Trivers 71 demonstrates then you cannot assume acts of charity are mutually beneficial.

I agree here, there's nothing stopping a homeless person from spending it on alcohol rather than improving their situation. However, are you saying that it's better to not help them at all simply because of this possibility? I don't think the possibility that someone would use it for self-improvement is small. For instance, many of the new homeless people within the past few years have been middle-class Americans laid off from their jobs due to the recession. Surely a large percentage of them would spend it in productive ways.

I don’t know how you can assume people would use proactive impositions to accelerate their autonomy when research demonstrates that individuals on unemployment benefits tend to seek employment upon the immanent cessation of these benefits. Or applying the peltzman effect here that the cost of failure to do so is now transferred to unwilling parties, I don’t share your faith in those you will never meet so I don’t have any interest in sharing the costs of their activities.

 And I’ve said nothing about “not helping”. I stated that we should bifurcate need or realize that need itself may exist and need also may be the outcome of economic incentives facilitated by welfare systems. Since need is only one word and not two I’m not sure this communicates well other than to say that I believe there are two phenomena at work here. One that is reasonable and another that destroys the incentives of the recipient, morally hazardous if you will. 

I don't recommend price fixing at all, nor do I suggest that garbage men should be making as much as doctors (that would be in fact very bad as any Communist country has shown).

 The Rawlsian veil of ignorance is not focused on members in society determining the wages of specific labor classification before those members achieve those labor classifications ? 
I mean i dont' want to fall into the cliche of attacking socilialism or redistributed regimes on teh basis of the dr. vs garbage man argument. I only bring that up bcs rawls has himself found  a new way to support the absurdity of that argument in his "theory of justice" which doesn't sound just to me but a regurgitation of the pay scale argument from the pre-utopians like Fourier.
 
Also competing theories of the business cycle internalize the notion of failures of wages to adjust because of the duration of contracts.

 

  I'm talking about the very wealthy vs. the very poor, and taxation. What would be a very minor detriment to a wealthy person (slight increase in taxes) can be converted into a large boon for a person or even persons in need. It would also introduce more money into the economy. The top 1% of Americans have hold of 80% of the wealth and don't spend most of it, if you want to see sclerosis then look at that.

Cantillion effects ensure that the poor see the money after its’ been depleted of value so the rich will derive more utility from inflationary monetary policy proposals. Also I am not here to advocate for the poor, only in my own interests.

And is the stratification of wealth the result of not enough forcefull redistribution or too much intervention in the economy to begin with?  

1 the ROA on rent seeking activity is about 22,000 %. The regulatory aspects of the state seem to benefit the richest and the period where interventionists love to tout, Clinton witnessed the largest reduction in regulation, more so then reagan.

2 Corporations and limited liability are socialist in the sense that, while they stimulate capital accumulation for firms they transfer the costs of the firms behavior to unwilling parties as holders of public companies do not experience threats on their non-invested assets, yet a dog owner is held liable when his dog gets off the leash and kills a child a holder of publically traded stock is not.

I don’t believe the problem is not enough forced transfer, its’ to much intervention to begin with. Force transfer only erodes the incentives. The nexus of the problem is the market has shifted itself away from public reach and into a political coordinate where only elites have access.

@RJMacReady said:

This also doesn't address the rational ignorance problem when democratic decisions tending to lead to very poor outcomes because the incentives of democracy destroy the incentive to make informed selections.  Knowledge is not equally distributed so equal distribution of political capital will result in poor institutional performance when relegated to an egalitarian decision network. Democracy must be scalar and dynamic.

I think I agree with you here, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the topic.  

Scalar democracy is a market system , what I’m saying is that making decisions about how to distribute wealth via pure or rep democracy are not good ideas. The institution of democracy is not sufficient to derive fair and egalitarian institutions itself, which I suppose is a paradox as democracy is defined as rule of the people, but then democracy is riddled with catastrophic paradoxes, see Condorcet.

If we wish to be talking about who owes who what, and we are talking about setting rates of taxation for certain stratums how do we determine if we should or not and what methodology do we use to instantiate the policy? Starting from democracy will not answer this question accurately.

I'm not quite understanding this one, could you explain in more detail?

Yeah , as I said above need is one word and not two yet may describe different social/economic phenomena. Perhaps the phrase I need is moral hazard punctuated by familiarity with Peltzman which is generalized. When you discount failure, you will get more failure.
 
To sum all this... The rich dont' need to pay more, The rich who obtain regulatory benefits that transfer costs to us that are no internalized in the price structure and are the product of centralized institutional coercion need to be addressed. Politics is just a secondary market, and that's the market you need to constrain. Firing you guns on the rich because they are rich will yield tons of collateral damage. We need to be surgical. Not all rich people are the same.

Also i cannot answer the question should the rich pay more. I can say that individuals in Louisiana who arrange flowers should.  Why because they obtain regulatory insulation from state licensing. In order to arrange flowers you need a license to do so, this precludes individuals who have fewer economic resources from competing. So those that make money by obtaining regulatory advantage from the state should certainly have some of their wealth denied to them. But iwill never say "all the rich"  or "all the poor" deserve this. My concern is that beneifts shoudl be proportional to value created or value consumed.

" I'm working hard on my dayjob. I have a career ahead of me. If i knew that the tax would increase at one point, I wouldn't be so motivated to work hard today and improve myself. "

Depends on how rich we're talking about. 
 
If we're talking about multi-millionare who's a CEO of a corporation, then taxing them more isn't going to hurt them.

" @Geno: with the topic.    

Dunbar's number refers to the maximum size of a group in which people can maintain tangible socialrelationships, i.e. friend, boyfriend, family etc (that's why it's roughly ~150, far from the scale of a civilization). I'm referring to more institutional relationships; if you donate to a charity, assuming that the charity is honest and passes it on to those who need it, then you've done good whether or not you personally know the recipients.

 

Exactly, institutions of family and church have to be replaced with something that reinforces cooperation. The welfare state, subsidies and regulatory capture, and proactive transfers foster a cleptocratic order. Dunbar elucidates the horizons of social perception and beyond these scales individuals cannot reckon the value or lack of value individuals in society create. Institutions like the market try their best to rationalize where value is created and where it isn’t, institutions like proactive impositions invert the cooperative nexus and promote predation on man vs. man because value is not permitted to be assessed. We must select the correct institutions and do so carefully.

 At the massive scales of society we are talking about what method exists for rationalizing who is consuming and who is generating value ? At small scales it is obvious that enforcment is relatively simple matter because we see each other daily and have a robust awareness of not only a binary assessemtn of good vs bad, but also a amplitude assessement of "how good" vs "how bad". The welfare state does not allow this analytical and very human component to function and it also assumes that economic outcomes necessitate equal need and equal potential to provide future need, its' overtly general. 
 
Further more there is no exit mechanism where as in small cooperative circles i could more easily defect from future cooperative endevors from you if i believe your unreliable and will no remunerate me.

 Donation to charity may not do good if it retards the development of socially valuable skills in the recipient of the charity. If altruism itself is selfish which looks to be the case as Trivers 71 demonstrates then you cannot assume acts of charity are mutually beneficial.

 
 

I agree here, there's nothing stopping a homeless person from spending it on alcohol rather than improving their situation. However, are you saying that it's better to not help them at all simply because of this possibility? I don't think the possibility that someone would use it for self-improvement is small. For instance, many of the new homeless people within the past few years have been middle-class Americans laid off from their jobs due to the recession. Surely a large percentage of them would spend it in productive ways.

I don’t know how you can assume people would use proactive impositions to accelerate their autonomy when research demonstrates that individuals on unemployment benefits tend to seek employment upon the immanent cessation of these benefits. Or applying the peltzman effect here that the cost of failure to do so is now transferred to unwilling parties, I don’t share your faith in those you will never meet so I don’t have any interest in sharing the costs of their activities.

 And I’ve said nothing about “not helping”. I stated that we should bifurcate need or realize that need itself may exist and need also may be the outcome of economic incentives facilitated by welfare systems. Since need is only one word and not two I’m not sure this communicates well other than to say that I believe there are two phenomena at work here. One that is reasonable and another that destroys the incentives of the recipient, morally hazardous if you will. 

  

I don't recommend price fixing at all, nor do I suggest that garbage men should be making as much as doctors (that would be in fact very bad as any Communist country has shown).

 The Rawlsian veil of ignorance is not focused on members in society determining the wages of specific labor classification before those members achieve those labor classifications ? 
I mean i dont' want to fall into the cliche of attacking socilialism or redistributed regimes on teh basis of the dr. vs garbage man argument. I only bring that up bcs rawls has himself found  a new way to support the absurdity of that argument in his "theory of justice" which doesn't sound just to me but a regurgitation of the pay scale argument from the pre-utopians like Fourier.
 
Also competing theories of the business cycle internalize the notion of failures of wages to adjust because of the duration of contracts.

 

  I'm talking about the very wealthy vs. the very poor, and taxation. What would be a very minor detriment to a wealthy person (slight increase in taxes) can be converted into a large boon for a person or even persons in need. It would also introduce more money into the economy. The top 1% of Americans have hold of 80% of the wealth and don't spend most of it, if you want to see sclerosis then look at that.

 

Cantillion effects ensure that the poor see the money after its’ been depleted of value so the rich will derive more utility from inflationary monetary policy proposals. Also I am not here to advocate for the poor, only in my own interests.

 

And is the stratification of wealth the result of not enough forcefull redistribution or too much intervention in the economy to begin with?  

1 the ROA on rent seeking activity is about 22,000 %. The regulatory aspects of the state seem to benefit the richest and the period where interventionists love to tout, Clinton witnessed the largest reduction in regulation, more so then reagan.

2 Corporations and limited liability are socialist in the sense that, while they stimulate capital accumulation for firms they transfer the costs of the firms behavior to unwilling parties as holders of public companies do not experience threats on their non-invested assets, yet a dog owner is held liable when his dog gets off the leash and kills a child a holder of publically traded stock is not.

 

I don’t believe the problem is not enough forced transfer, its’ to much intervention to begin with. Force transfer only erodes the incentives. The nexus of the problem is the market has shifted itself away from public reach and into a political coordinate where only elites have access.

 

@RJMacReady said:

This also doesn't address the rational ignorance problem when democratic decisions tending to lead to very poor outcomes because the incentives of democracy destroy the incentive to make informed selections.  Knowledge is not equally distributed so equal distribution of political capital will result in poor institutional performance when relegated to an egalitarian decision network. Democracy must be scalar and dynamic.

I think I agree with you here, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the topic.  

 

Scalar democracy is a market system , what I’m saying is that making decisions about how to distribute wealth via pure or rep democracy are not good ideas. The institution of democracy is not sufficient to derive fair and egalitarian institutions itself, which I suppose is a paradox as democracy is defined as rule of the people, but then democracy is riddled with catastrophic paradoxes, see Condorcet.

 

If we wish to be talking about who owes who what, and we are talking about setting rates of taxation for certain stratums how do we determine if we should or not and what methodology do we use to instantiate the policy? Starting from democracy will not answer this question accurately.

   

I'm not quite understanding this one, could you explain in more detail?

 

Yeah , as I said above need is one word and not two yet may describe different social/economic phenomena. Perhaps the phrase I need is moral hazard punctuated by familiarity with Peltzman which is generalized. When you discount failure, you will get more failure.
 
To sum all this... The rich dont' need to pay more, The rich who obtain regulatory benefits that transfer costs to us that are no internalized in the price structure and are the product of centralized institutional coercion need to be addressed. Politics is just a secondary market, and that's the market you need to constrain. Firing you guns on the rich because they are rich will yield tons of collateral damage. We need to be surgical. Not all rich people are the same.

"

" Also i cannot answer the question should the rich pay more. I can say that individuals in Louisiana who arrange flowers should.  Why because they obtain regulatory insulation from state licensing. In order to arrange flowers you need a license to do so, this precludes individuals who have fewer economic resources from competing. So those that make money by obtaining regulatory advantage from the state should certainly have some of their wealth denied to them. But iwill never say "all the rich"  or "all the poor" deserve this. My concern is that beneifts shoudl be proportional to value created or value consumed. "

" Depends on how rich we're talking about.  If we're talking about multi-millionare who's a CEO of a corporation, then taxing them more isn't going to hurt them. "

" @l4wd0g said:

" @Detrian said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" How about we tax everyone at a flat 20%. No Exceptions. Everyone Pays 20%. "

Because 20% is enough to make some people unable to afford a good standard of living you chimp. This is why the rich pay more, cause sending kids to school and eating at the same time doesn't make the family bankrupt. "

So what is a "good standard of living?" Just curious. It's a nice little emotion bearing phrase, but it doesn't really mean anything. Now let me explain what I mean. The words "Good," and "Standard" means change with each reader. My good standard of living is very different than yours. It's like what a politician says, " I believe in family values." Great  I'm sure Charles Manson has "family values," but they aren't my family values. Makes sense?    Education is free. Until you reach college then you have to make financial choices: Join the military, take out student loans, work and attend classes.    Life is all about choices isn't? You can chose how you spend you money. You don't need: A car, to live alone, have an Xbox, have a huge TV, have kids that you can't afford.    I survived on $9,000 a year while going to college. I had roommates, I couldn't eat out, I couldn't have Starbucks, I couldn't have a monster TV. But, I could eat, I could pay for school, and I could drive a car with insurance.   Thanks for calling me a chimp though, personal attacks always a great way of proving your point. "

The standard of living has a real, widely accepted definition you faux intellectual. Look it up and maybe I'll stop calling you names when you have an opinion based on more than your sob story. "

" @l4wd0g said:

" @cjmabry said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" @cjmabry said:

" Let's be honest, if you're a billionaire, you're not going to be any less-off with a couple million gone.   Example: You have 10 billion dollars sitting in a pot. Whenever you invest it or spend it on something, you take the money from the top of the pot and use it. Since you have soooooo much money, you're never gonna use the money at the bottom of the pot, because you'll never get there. Make sense? So why not tax the insanely rich a little more.  "

 Let's punish the successful. Fantastic idea! They should pay for my education and my health care, my car, my home, and anything else I think I'm entitled to.  I can sit at home playing my Xbox. "

If that's how you see it, then fine. But the top 2% won't ever touch most of their money. They have millions of dollars that'll never be used, while some families literally have nothing. But it's such a big deal to use that money that would have never seen the light of day otherwise to help some poverty ridden people.  Society's thinking is way messed up imo. People think it's fine for other's to have loads of money that they'll never use, while so many people live in poverty. "

I understand, but the problem with that is that those you want to take more are the one who are giving sizable donations (millions of dollars) to charities every year. Will they continue to donate? Will they stay citizens if we make them pay more? There are serious questions when you talk about rasing people's taxes.  "

i recommend you pick up a tax guide book, they have to donate money to charity, or else they get it taxed, but they just donate it since that money gets them appraisal or sometimes the charity helps them out a little with their contacts. In other words, its lose alot more money, or lose a little less of that. Besides if they don't do it, the government can just take their money and donate it themselves.  "

I dunno, that's not exactly worked before so... no?

" @Detrian said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" @Detrian said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" How about we tax everyone at a flat 20%. No Exceptions. Everyone Pays 20%. "

Because 20% is enough to make some people unable to afford a good standard of living you chimp. This is why the rich pay more, cause sending kids to school and eating at the same time doesn't make the family bankrupt. "

So what is a "good standard of living?" Just curious. It's a nice little emotion bearing phrase, but it doesn't really mean anything. Now let me explain what I mean. The words "Good," and "Standard" means change with each reader. My good standard of living is very different than yours. It's like what a politician says, " I believe in family values." Great  I'm sure Charles Manson has "family values," but they aren't my family values. Makes sense?    Education is free. Until you reach college then you have to make financial choices: Join the military, take out student loans, work and attend classes.    Life is all about choices isn't? You can chose how you spend you money. You don't need: A car, to live alone, have an Xbox, have a huge TV, have kids that you can't afford.    I survived on $9,000 a year while going to college. I had roommates, I couldn't eat out, I couldn't have Starbucks, I couldn't have a monster TV. But, I could eat, I could pay for school, and I could drive a car with insurance.   Thanks for calling me a chimp though, personal attacks always a great way of proving your point. "

The standard of living has a real, widely accepted definition you faux intellectual. Look it up and maybe I'll stop calling you names when you have an opinion based on more than your sob story. "

I had some really awful reply's but whatever. How about you show me the document you're talking about. "

" Never has so much information been collected to so little extent... you are an idiot of the highest caliber... pseudo intellectualism leads to nothing, we are on a giantbomb clarity is one of the most important things you should have when arguing... Wages have stopped rising since 1970, the US consumer has been using short term methods to survive, like increasing his hours, which they did by 20 per cent(but then they ran out of hours), and then they took loans backed up by their houses, then they use credit cards, and finally that led to the crash. Your philosophies will get you nowhere, learn to control your pride or feed it somewhere where people cannot read it.  
@Meteora said:

" @hicks91 said:

" @Fajita_Jim: i dont think you understand how accounting works for that system to work youd also have to force employees to pay when a company ceases to be profitable, do you want that? "

By that logic, CEOs shouldn't have got billions in collective bonuses as their companies failed and faltered these past few years (speaking specifically of the finance industry). It would all come from that pool so I fail to see your point. "

" @gamefreak9 said: 

Are  you suggesting rent-seeking is not a problem and does not exacerbate wealth inequality ? If you wish to summarily dismiss this activity then can i assume that you believe regulatory capture is of no consequence to wealth stratification?   So the housing market has had a tremendous relaxation of lending standards, not  just  from programs like bush's american dream act and democrats CRA but from the inception of FDR's fanny and Freddy and the erosion of lending standards accross the board as the result of a legacy of creditor bailout from the mexican peso rescue of 95, long tern capital managament 98 and prior to all these major rescues in the 70's and 80's of creditors including the savings and loan. This pattern has continued on for decades, it's no wonder lending standards have deteriorated and why people are underwater and there is un-calculated amounts of toxicity in the system now, and why there is a credit card culture.  

 This, as well as other things stated, seems to demonstrate that state intervention tends to benefit the rich.   If the government is going to "artificially" stimulate the housing market then taking a loan against your house is a great idea because you can use it as a credit card but when this asset bubble implodes that financial strategy will ultimately hurt you if you don't foresee it. In addition, historically people did not own their own homes at the same rate they do now. Centralized policies have altered teh entire pattern of wants, now we all must have our own houses and single people must even own. Not only does this skew statistical analysis but it leaves the financier in a really exposed position if the asset they are financing has a negative value correction.  Bush, along with the Dems wanted to accelerate home ownership, and they were successful. As you can see it comes at a unforeseeable cost as do most government policies and programs.    You want the rich to pay more, fine. I want the rich who obtain benefits from an unfair system to pay more. That's teh difference here, is that clear? Sorry for the anecdote but another reason i oppose proactive impositions is angry responses like this. I have experienced tremendous hostility from people for reasonable events, but this excoriation i get from people advocating for the least well off puts you in a position of alleged moral superiority which i think is a farce and is atleast not measurable. If you wanna argue, fantastic, but enough with the drama, it's unconvincing. If you wish to actually advocate for the poor do so at your own costs and not in a anonymous internet forum where your histrionics come at no personal/financial costs to you. Also what part is unclear, you mentioned clarity? "

" @l4wd0g said:

" @Detrian said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" @Detrian said:

" @l4wd0g said:

" How about we tax everyone at a flat 20%. No Exceptions. Everyone Pays 20%. "

Because 20% is enough to make some people unable to afford a good standard of living you chimp. This is why the rich pay more, cause sending kids to school and eating at the same time doesn't make the family bankrupt. "

So what is a "good standard of living?" Just curious. It's a nice little emotion bearing phrase, but it doesn't really mean anything. Now let me explain what I mean. The words "Good," and "Standard" means change with each reader. My good standard of living is very different than yours. It's like what a politician says, " I believe in family values." Great  I'm sure Charles Manson has "family values," but they aren't my family values. Makes sense?    Education is free. Until you reach college then you have to make financial choices: Join the military, take out student loans, work and attend classes.    Life is all about choices isn't? You can chose how you spend you money. You don't need: A car, to live alone, have an Xbox, have a huge TV, have kids that you can't afford.    I survived on $9,000 a year while going to college. I had roommates, I couldn't eat out, I couldn't have Starbucks, I couldn't have a monster TV. But, I could eat, I could pay for school, and I could drive a car with insurance.   Thanks for calling me a chimp though, personal attacks always a great way of proving your point. "

The standard of living has a real, widely accepted definition you faux intellectual. Look it up and maybe I'll stop calling you names when you have an opinion based on more than your sob story. "

I had some really awful reply's but whatever. How about you show me the document you're talking about. "

Can't afford a browser that goes to google or what. "

The Advantages of a Flat Tax

 There are two principal arguments for a flat tax-growth and fairness. Many economists are attracted to the idea because the current tax system, with its high rates and discriminatory taxation of saving and investment, reduces growth, destroys jobs, and lowers incomes. A flat tax would not eliminate the damaging impact of taxes altogether, but by dramatically lowering rates and ending the tax code's bias against saving and investment, it would boost the economy's performance when compared with the present tax code.

 However, the most persuasive feature of a flat tax for many Americans is its fairness. The complicated documents, instruction manuals, and numerous forms that taxpayers struggle to decipher every April would be replaced by a brief set of instructions and two simple postcards. This radical reform appeals to citizens who not only resent the time and expense consumed by filing their own tax forms, but also suspect that the existing maze of credits, deductions, and exemptions gives a special advantage to those who wield political power and can afford expert tax advisers.

 If enacted, a flat tax would yield major benefits to the nation, including:

 Faster Economic Growth. A flat tax would spur increased work, saving, and investment. By increasing incentives to engage in productive economic behavior, it would also boost the economy's long-term growth rate. Even if a flat tax boosted long-term growth by only 0.5 percent, the income of the average family of four after 10 years would be as much as $5,000 higher than it would be under current tax laws.

 Instant Wealth Creation. According to Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson, tax reform would boost national wealth by nearly $5 trillion.[7] It would do this in part because all income-producing assets would rise in value since the flat tax would increase the after-tax stream of income that they generate.

 Simplicity. Complexity is a hidden tax amounting to more than $100 billion. This is the cost of tax preparation, lawyers, accountants, and other resources used to comply with the Internal Revenue Code. The Internal Revenue Service even admits that the current tax code requires taxpayers to devote 6.6 billion hours each year to their tax returns.[8] Yet even this commitment of time is no guarantee of accuracy. The code is so complex that even tax experts and the IRS often make mistakes. All taxpayers, from General Motors to a hamburger-flipping teenager, would be able to fill out their tax return on a postcard-sized form, and compliance costs would drop by tens of billions of dollars.[9]

 Fairness. A flat tax would treat people equally. A wealthy taxpayer with 1,000 times the taxable income of another taxpayer would pay 1,000 times more in taxes. No longer would the tax code penalize success and discriminate against citizens on the basis of income. Tax burdens would no longer depend on the number of lawyers, lobbyists, and accountants on the payroll.

 An End to Micromanaging and Political Favoritism. A flat tax gets rid of all deductions, loopholes, credits, and exemptions. Politicians would lose all ability to pick winners and losers, reward friends and punish enemies, and use the tax code to impose their values on the economy. Not only does this end a major source of political corruption, but it is also pro-growth since companies would no longer squander resources lobbying politicians or making foolish investments just to obtain favorable tax treatment.

 Increased Civil Liberties. Under current law, people charged with murder are presumed innocent and thus have more rights than taxpayers dealing with the Internal Revenue Service. By contrast, a flat tax would eliminate almost all sources of conflict between taxpayers and the government. Moreover, infringements on freedom and privacy would fall dramatically since the government would no longer need to know the intimate details of each taxpayer's financial assets.[10]

 Global Competitiveness. In a remarkable development, former communist nations are leading a global tax reform revolution. Estonia was the first to adopt a flat tax, implementing a 26 percent rate in 1994, just a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The other two Baltic republics of the former Soviet Union enacted flat taxes in the mid-1990s, with Latvia choosing a 25 percent rate and Lithuania picking 33 percent. Along with other free-market reforms, the flat tax significantly improved economic growth, and the "Baltic Tigers" became role models for the region. Learning from its neighbors, Russia stunned the world by adopting a 13 percent flat tax, which went into effect in 2001.
 
A Single Flat Rate. All flat tax proposals have a single rate, usually less than 20 percent. The low, flat rate solves the problem of high marginal tax rates by reducing penalties against productive behavior, such as work, risk taking, and entrepreneurship.

 Elimination of Special Preferences. Flat tax proposals would eliminate provisions of the tax code that bestow preferential tax treatment on certain behaviors and activities. Getting rid of deductions, credits, exemptions, and other loopholes also helps solve the problem of complexity, allowing taxpayers to file their tax returns on a postcard-sized form.

 No Double Taxation of Saving and Investment. Flat tax proposals would eliminate the tax code's bias against capital formation by ending the double taxation of income that is saved and invested. This means no death tax, no capital gains tax, no double taxation of saving, and no double tax on dividends. By taxing income only one time, a flat tax is easier to enforce and more conducive to job creation and capital formation.

 Territorial Taxation. Flat tax proposals are based on the commonsense notion of "territorial taxation," meaning that governments should tax only income that is earned inside national borders. By getting rid of "worldwide taxation," a flat tax enables U.S. taxpayers and companies to compete on a level playing field around the world.

 Family-Friendly. All flat tax proposals have one "loophole." Households receive a generous exemption based on family size. For instance, a family of four would not begin to pay tax until its annual income reached more than $30,000.[6]

 Consumption-Based. A tax code that does not discriminate against saving and investment is considered a consumption-based tax system, regardless of whether taxes are deducted from the paycheck or collected at the cash register. In this respect, a flat tax is a type of consumption tax. The difference between a flat tax and a national sales tax is where the tax is collected. A flat tax is levied on income-but only once and at one low rate-as it is earned. A sales tax is levied on income-but only once and at one low rate-as it is spent.

It's a small sample from the www.heritage.org/ There are also articles on the flat tax on the Economist. Penn and Teller's Bullshit  even did an episode on taxes(Season & Episode 7), and they are very liberal.  

I could write up some wall of text, but I think I'll just say no.

But, what if I am a millionaire (as in I only have $1 million dollars... nothing more...

Even $100,000 of taxes would be A LOT!

I'm not down with this!

" But, what if I am a millionaire (as in I only have $1 million dollars... nothing more... Even $100,000 of taxes would be A LOT! I'm not down with this! "

" I don't think it would be right to say that all rich people have worked hard to get lots of money. "

" @natetodamax said:

" I don't think it would be right to say that all rich people have worked hard to get lots of money. "

I don't know where it was said but the 1 percent of us that is rich has either inherited, borrowed, or traded for their wealth.  No one ever gets rich by working hard and saving up. "

If Aerosmith are to be believed, we should actually Eat the Rich.

Whatever happened to people living within their own means? Personally, I wanna get by on my own merit, and not have to get welfare from a wealthier person. Doesn't matter how they got it, you may not think they deserve it, but that's America and they have every right to keep what they earn.   
 
You can spin it all you want with this economic diction, but it just comes down to people who have less than stellar jobs wanting the wealthy to give them money, and I have no respect for those people. 

I am just curious how many of you actually realize who pays the vast majority of Americas taxes already?  Here is a hint, if you want to tax money who is the best people to get it from?  Obviously it is the ones who have the most.

Yes, rich people are pretty much the downfall to humanity.

I think there should be a tax on all foreigners living abroad :D

" @Geno: with the topic.    

Dunbar's number refers to the maximum size of a group in which people can maintain tangible socialrelationships, i.e. friend, boyfriend, family etc (that's why it's roughly ~150, far from the scale of a civilization). I'm referring to more institutional relationships; if you donate to a charity, assuming that the charity is honest and passes it on to those who need it, then you've done good whether or not you personally know the recipients.

 

Exactly, institutions of family and church have to be replaced with something that reinforces cooperation. The welfare state, subsidies and regulatory capture, and proactive transfers foster a cleptocratic order. Dunbar elucidates the horizons of social perception and beyond these scales individuals cannot reckon the value or lack of value individuals in society create. Institutions like the market try their best to rationalize where value is created and where it isn’t, institutions like proactive impositions invert the cooperative nexus and promote predation on man vs. man because value is not permitted to be assessed. We must select the correct institutions and do so carefully.

 At the massive scales of society we are talking about what method exists for rationalizing who is consuming and who is generating value ? At small scales it is obvious that enforcment is relatively simple matter because we see each other daily and have a robust awareness of not only a binary assessemtn of good vs bad, but also a amplitude assessement of "how good" vs "how bad". The welfare state does not allow this analytical and very human component to function and it also assumes that economic outcomes necessitate equal need and equal potential to provide future need, its' overtly general. 
 
Further more there is no exit mechanism where as in small cooperative circles i could more easily defect from future cooperative endevors from you if i believe your unreliable and will no remunerate me.

 Donation to charity may not do good if it retards the development of socially valuable skills in the recipient of the charity. If altruism itself is selfish which looks to be the case as Trivers 71 demonstrates then you cannot assume acts of charity are mutually beneficial.

I agree here, there's nothing stopping a homeless person from spending it on alcohol rather than improving their situation. However, are you saying that it's better to not help them at all simply because of this possibility? I don't think the possibility that someone would use it for self-improvement is small. For instance, many of the new homeless people within the past few years have been middle-class Americans laid off from their jobs due to the recession. Surely a large percentage of them would spend it in productive ways.

I don’t know how you can assume people would use proactive impositions to accelerate their autonomy when research demonstrates that individuals on unemployment benefits tend to seek employment upon the immanent cessation of these benefits. Or applying the peltzman effect here that the cost of failure to do so is now transferred to unwilling parties, I don’t share your faith in those you will never meet so I don’t have any interest in sharing the costs of their activities.

 And I’ve said nothing about “not helping”. I stated that we should bifurcate need or realize that need itself may exist and need also may be the outcome of economic incentives facilitated by welfare systems. Since need is only one word and not two I’m not sure this communicates well other than to say that I believe there are two phenomena at work here. One that is reasonable and another that destroys the incentives of the recipient, morally hazardous if you will.  

I don't recommend price fixing at all, nor do I suggest that garbage men should be making as much as doctors (that would be in fact very bad as any Communist country has shown).

 The Rawlsian veil of ignorance is not focused on members in society determining the wages of specific labor classification before those members achieve those labor classifications ? 
I mean i dont' want to fall into the cliche of attacking socilialism or redistributed regimes on teh basis of the dr. vs garbage man argument. I only bring that up bcs rawls has himself found  a new way to support the absurdity of that argument in his "theory of justice" which doesn't sound just to me but a regurgitation of the pay scale argument from the pre-utopians like Fourier.

 

  I'm talking about the very wealthy vs. the very poor, and taxation. What would be a very minor detriment to a wealthy person (slight increase in taxes) can be converted into a large boon for a person or even persons in need. It would also introduce more money into the economy. The top 1% of Americans have hold of 80% of the wealth and don't spend most of it, if you want to see sclerosis then look at that.

 

Cantillion effects ensure that the poor see the money after its’ been depleted of value so the rich will derive more utility from inflationary monetary policy proposals. Also I am not here to advocate for the poor, only in my own interests.

 

And is the stratification of wealth the result of not enough forcefull redistribution or too much intervention in the economy to begin with?  

1 the ROA on rent seeking activity is about 22,000 %. The regulatory aspects of the state seem to benefit the richest and the period where interventionists love to tout, Clinton witnessed the largest reduction in regulation, more so then reagan.

2 Corporations and limited liability are socialist in the sense that, while they stimulate capital accumulation for firms they transfer the costs of the firms behavior to unwilling parties as holders of public companies do not experience threats on their non-invested assets, yet a dog owner is held liable when his dog gets off the leash and kills a child a holder of publically traded stock is not.

 

I don’t believe the problem is not enough forced transfer, its’ to much intervention to begin with. Force transfer only erodes the incentives. The nexus of the problem is the market has shifted itself away from public reach and into a political coordinate where only elites have access.

@RJMacReady said:

This also doesn't address the rational ignorance problem when democratic decisions tending to lead to very poor outcomes because the incentives of democracy destroy the incentive to make informed selections.  Knowledge is not equally distributed so equal distribution of political capital will result in poor institutional performance when relegated to an egalitarian decision network. Democracy must be scalar and dynamic.

I think I agree with you here, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the topic.  

Scalar democracy is a market system , what I’m saying is that making decisions about how to distribute wealth via pure or rep democracy are not good ideas. The institution of democracy is not sufficient to derive fair and egalitarian institutions itself, which I suppose is a paradox as democracy is defined as rule of the people, but then democracy is riddled with catastrophic paradoxes, see Condorcet.

 

If we wish to be talking about who owes who what, and we are talking about setting rates of taxation for certain stratums how do we determine if we should or not and what methodology do we use to instantiate the policy? Starting from democracy will not answer this question accurately.

I'm not quite understanding this one, could you explain in more detail?

 

Yeah , as I said above need is one word and not two yet may describe different social/economic phenomena. Perhaps the phrase I need is moral hazard punctuated by familiarity with Peltzman which is generalized. When you discount failure, you will get more failure.
 
To sum all this... The rich dont' need to pay more, The rich who obtain regulatory benefits that transfer costs to us that are no internalized in the price structure and are the product of centralized institutional coercion need to be addressed. Politics is just a secondary market, and that's the market you need to constrain. Firing you guns on the rich because they are rich will yield tons of collateral damage. We need to be surgical. Not all rich people are the same.

I really am much too ignorant on the matter to have a worthwhile opinion, but perhaps a slight tax increase could be helpful. Nothing too extreme^^

the socialist line of the state knows better how to spend my money than i do is wearing thin

Just remember. Be careful of what you incent because you just might get it. 
 
I stumbled upon this a while ago but I think it goes well with this thread: ( http://howastute.blogspot.com/2008/10/allegory-about-our-tax-system.html ) 
 
 Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. 
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"
"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!    

Bringing taxes from 34% to 39% for 250k dollars and up, sure, that's the magic bullet that will solve this. Clearly this wasteful spending can be circumvented with high taxes, that's why we have all those utopias in Europe. How's that Euro doing, by the way?

I don't have the time to read through the whole thread but am going to write a brief response to the topic anyways because of the video posted by the OP. 
 
These days U.S. and indeed most if not all countries over the world are home to most complex societies that have ever existed. By complexity I mean there are so many moving parts to a modern society that we need an expert for anything and everything. We need an expert gardener, burger flipper, police offer, doctor in variety of fields, analysts of all types and on and on. And obviously many jobs, regardless of expertise needed, are not considered to be socially worthy enough to warrant a good pay. 
 
Right now in the U.S. approximately 25% of people have a BA, 5% have MA, and less than 1% have a doctorate in any field. So even if everyone got a PhD, we would still need a lot of people working in minimum paying jobs.  That's just the kind of society we live in. 
 
In a sense, this is OK. Even if not everyone can have a good enough paying job to be able to  buy a mansion, as a society we can still erect social structures that allows even people at the lowest level to meet the minimum standard of living. Just like the government maintains the military to protect ALL citizens from foreign nations the government has the ability to support some form of global healthcare system so that those at the lowest level don't go bankrupt just by paying their medical bills. 
 
So why should the rich bother paying a little more in taxes to support social structures that would mainly benefit those at the lowest level? I don't believe there is some sort of moral imperative for this, but  there are some pragmatic reasons for doing so.  In a democratic country the citizens really do get the politicians that they deserve. Research has shown that people elect politicians that are up to 20 points higher in IQ than themselves, but not more. And the average IQ of U.S. as a nation is 98. So even if some people show up on political scene who are brilliant  enough to run a complex society like U.S., people would not vote for them because they are too smart. And the rich should be concerned about  this. After all, they would also like to live in a country that is socially stable and is not run by buffoons. 
 
In conclusion, if the rich pay a little bit more that helps everyone reach a little bit closer to achieving the minimum standard of living, then it benefits everyone in the long run. Instead of working two or three jobs just to cope with basic needs of one's family, people would have time to actually live and participate in periphery activities, like being politically active. It would help elevate national dialogue from "keep the mexicans away" to "do we really need military bases all over the world?"