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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I found Politico's article on tax "loopholes" and the closure thereof: here
. The top ten amount to a total of $834 billion per year and include: employer-sponsored health insurance (this hits both the business and the employee), pension benefits, mortgage interest, Medicare benefits, capital gains rates (actually this is much smaller than I remembered at $71.4 billion), the Earned Income Tax Credit, deduction of state and local taxes, exclusion of capital gains at death/gift carryover, charitable contributions, and employer benefits under "cafeteria" plans.
@Starship: Nobody gets to keep all of their money; it's called taxation. The question isn't whether we should tax, but how much. Absent 100% taxation, there is no point at which you stop getting more money as your income rises.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
There was probably something similar to it that Robber Barons used as self-justifications for hoarding their wealth at the expense of everyone else.
edited 10th Dec '12 1:11:38 PM by Ekuran
Being told to work so that the State can take the majority of my income, hence effectively making me a unwilling volunteer for the State, really isn't my scene. Clearly, this a gross generalization, so obviously, I'll hope you'll correct the assumptions as they arise.
Question to thread: Was Carnegie what we'd call a Rockefeller Republican? I didn't understand all of the cliff notes version of Gospel of Wealth, but for some reason, it sounded.....right..to me.
It was an honorI set up a theoretical tax scenario based on various incomes and tax brackets, to illustrate the concept of progressive taxation.
- Incomes: $10K, $100K, $1M, $10M.
- Tax Scenario A: 20% flat tax
- Tax Scenario B: 0/10/20/30% brackets at $0/10K/100K/1M.
- Tax Scenario C: 0/10/30/70% brackets at $0/10K/100K/1M.
Results:
- In Scenario A, the bottom guy pays $2K in taxes and the top guy pays $2M in taxes. Each time you increase the income by 10 times, you increase take home pay 10 times.
- In Scenario B, the bottom guy pays $0 in taxes and the top guy pays $2.9M in taxes. The $100K earner takes home 9.1 times more money than the $10K earner, and the $10M earner takes home 8.8 times more money than the $1M earner.
- In Scenario C, the bottom guy pays $0 in taxes and the top guy pays $6.6M in taxes. Going up the incomes, the increase in take home pay is 9.1x, 7.9x, and 4.7x.
Results: Even at the top tax bracket under the most progressive plan, a person earning 10 times more money than the guy below him still takes home 4.7 times more money after taxes.
To see the calculations, I uploaded a copy of the document to Google Drive, here
.
edited 10th Dec '12 1:21:40 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The first Facebook response on that "seven steps for the GOP to capture the youth vote" article
:
Can you share the calculations? I want to figure out how much revenue you bring in (as a percentage of all the money everyone makes) if, say, there are ten taxpayers in each bracket.
edited 10th Dec '12 1:23:16 PM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.I just uploaded it and pasted a link (here again if you missed it
). I converted from Excel to ODS for compatibility, but it won't preview for some reason — maybe because this machine only has Office on it and not OpenOffice.
Is there a common file format that I can use?
Hmm, apparently Google Drive can preview XLS files. Linky.
Edit: I updated the spreadsheet with population ratio calculations, figuring the percent of revenue that would come from each income bracket.
edited 10th Dec '12 1:43:53 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Starship:
A given percentage of taxation is not an equal burden to all people. A family of four earning $50,000 gross who is taxed an additional $2,000 is forced to reduce their spending by an equivalent amount. You have gained nothing from this exercise fiscally and you have potentially taken away stuff they need. A family of four earning $500,000 gross who is taxed an additional $20,000 will see virtually no impact on their quality of life, and that $20,000 is probably going to come out of savings rather than spending, anyway.
edited 10th Dec '12 2:09:18 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, there's the "Prosperity Gospel," which is "anyone who is wealthy is so because God wanted them to be, and a strong implication that therefore they shouldn't be handing it out to the poor, who are poor because they deserve it and God wanted them to be."
There is also the "Gospel of Wealth," which is "I got this money through hard work and taking the opportunities open to me, so by God, I'm not going to just give it to people, but I'm damn well going to make sure they have as many opportunities as possible." Thus, those subscribing to it tended to focus on education and improving social mobility, such as (in the instance of Andrew Carnegie) building the famous network of Carnegie Libraries. It's also very hard on those who simply inherit their wealth, viewing them as ill-suited morally for handling it. A Gospel of Wealth-subscribing captain of industry might leave only a portion of his fortune to his children, while investing the rest in libraries or deserving charities.
edited 10th Dec '12 2:09:29 PM by Chalkos
The Gospel of Wealth seems related to liberation theology.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Carnegie's big thing was that people who just inherit their wealth haven't worked for it, and therefore haven't developed the moral fiber necessary to use it. It was as much a class thing as anything else— at the time, "new money" was viewed as a separate class from "old money," so he wasn't exactly at the top of the social pyramid (even if he was at the top of the "haha I can buy your asses out from under you" pyramid). By impugning the morals of old money he was telling them he was better than they were.
edited 10th Dec '12 2:13:34 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Okay, just to be clear, I like taxes. As a card carrying capitalist, I see it as the government provides services to the populace, and like any other laborer, should be paid for it's services. And I see nothing wrong with taxing those who profit off your services more than those struggling to just make it.
I'm just a little concerned because during the OWS threads, there were actually suggestions that people shouldn't be allowed to make over a certain amount of money; that nobody who made that much could possibly have earned it, thus it really is the property of the State.
That kind of Evil Commie Socialism, naturally, is something I'd oppose. Bitterly.
Of course, it was that same fear that allowed me to buy the invasion plot scenarios that was being shoved in my face, so.....
I think that's just hot air, Starship. I can see where they are coming from, but there is a certain point at which taxation becomes punitive and disincentivizes work. That's something the Soviet Union found out the hard way. If it's any comfort to you, those kinds of hardcore socialists are nearly as repugnant to most Democrats as they are to Republicans, and they have no voice in our political platform... unlike the GOP's crazies.
edited 10th Dec '12 2:19:46 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Dammit, why can't we have more guys like that?
This is slightly off topic but it's interesting that Chalkos is talking about Andrew Carnegie. I applied to Carnegie-Mellon a few weeks ago.
I think a lot of that talk also stemmed from frustration, Maxima. And the idea that if we tie the salaries of a top earner in a company to the lowest paid, that would help somewhat with the wealth disparity. I'm not sure if that would work.
But, Costco's CEO pays himself something like (as of my last reading on this particular company) $500,000 a year and manages to pay his workers over fifteen dollars an hour, as well as keeping prices low. This has inspired not only customer loyalty but employee loyalty. Wal-Mart does not follow this philosophy, to the point that people are inspired to protest that store chain specifically and attempt to form a union. The heirs get something in order of millions of dollars from the company.
Which sounds like a more moral business?

Granted, there has been two thousand years between then and now, but there is nowhere in the Bible that supports that as a general thing. Especially not in the New Testament. Remember the Rich Young Ruler who was told to give everything away to the poor if he wanted to follow Jesus?
EDIT: Yes, I'm taking a class on Christian Theology, why?
edited 10th Dec '12 1:05:44 PM by Zendervai