why pay more taxes when there's no accountability and responsibility regarding spending? spending needs to get under control before raising taxes is even a thing.
When you raise money from donors to win election to an office, those donors effectively become your constituency, rather than the people living in your state or district. Those donors will also offer you strangely sumptuous speaking fees or a lucrative lobbying position after you leave office.
If politicians' incentives can be aligned with their constitutional constituencies (not donors), they can make decisions that are actually in the best interest of those they represent, rather than the highest bidder.
Are you saying it is simply having some power over the budget that corrupts politicians, and not what they have to do in order to obtain that power that corrupts them?
You really think rich people will suddenly start paying taxes because government is more efficient? I don't think that is their gripe. If that was the case thet would not be lobbying for complex tax codes which exempt yachts.
Because right now the middle class is paying the bill and the working class is getting abused. The ownership class just skates on, doing less to justify their existence every year.
Or do you feel like a billionaire space race is a good use of society's efforts?
A lot of the "spending" was used for tax cuts instead of infrastructure. It's kind of funny how Trump burned huge holes into the state budget and yet it's the infrastructure bill that is going to ruin everything.
Too many people, especially high income software dev's, that government can not spend enough money. So to them them the spending is not out of control at all, they want the 3, 4, 8 trillion spending because they have bought into the government-side economic model that inflation is good, government spending is good, and the "evil rich" (who if you ask them is always someone that makes more than them. They are not "the rich" it is the others....) needs to just pay "their fair share"
of course they will not define what what "fair share" is, just that is "more than they are paying now" however much that is...
I firmly believe even if we had a 110% tax rate it would not be "enough" for some of these people
You are confused because the word "rich" has two meanings. Agreed, a lot of devs are "rich", compared to the average citizen. But the problem is not "they slightly more than me and they are bad because I'm envious". It's "they make so much money that they are writing their own laws with it, and they're killing my country and my planet in the process". That is a different kind of "rich". It's "I can buy a full news studio if I want"-rich.
That second class is who the people are referring to when they say "the rich".
And most of them are paying much less taxes over their income than you or I, in percentage. They are so wealthy that they can afford to pay full teams of people who specialize in tax evading, and that costs them 1% of their income, but then they avoid paying taxes on the rest.
The usual "fair share" tax is a gradual tax. For example. 10% for the first $10000 earned. 15% for the next $20000. And so on. Such a tax can never reach 110%, by definition. It cuts a dev salary by 40% or even 50%. For one of these rich people, it can go to 70% or 80%, but it would be orders of magnitude more, in absolute numbers. But as I said, none of them pays that. They'd rather provoke a war than pay that.
>>That is a different kind of "rich". It's "I can buy a full news studio if I want"-rich.
There are 3 problems with that.
1. Even if you took 100% of their wealth, no income, their entire wealth, it would not even pay the interest on the debt. Let alone anything meaningful
2. You still have not defined "the rich" I want a number. 1 Billion? 10 Billion? 100 Billion? Give me an income or even wealth number..
3. It is not actually true. And it is easily proven as we have a few example. The most famous was Bernie. He was always "Millionaires and Billionaires do not pay their fair share" until he became a millionaire then just like that is was "Billionaires do not pay their fair share". Then you have many champagne socialists on YT spending millions on homes, cars, etc all talking about how the "rich do not pay their fair share" and ofcourse they are not the rich
>>And most of them are paying much less taxes over their income than you or I, in percentage.
Playing with the tax rates is not going to change that, in fact most of them increasing the tax rates will cause a inverse in collections as it becomes more profitable to evade..
If you look at the amount of revenue the IRS collects from Income tax as a percent of GDP it is almost a flat line, it does not matter what the rate it, the IRS ends up collecting about the same amount.
>>Such a tax can never reach 110%
Sure it can, in a number of ways because it is not a single taxing entity, State, Federal, Local.. They do not have to allow you to deduct the taxes you paid to the other entities, infact that is a big issue today with the SALT limits. Then you have people proposing WEALTH based taxes, which could exceed the actual income a person made if they are asset heavy and income light.
> it can go to 70% or 80%, but it would be orders of magnitude more, in absolute numbers. But as I said, none of them pays that. They'd rather provoke a war than pay that.
No Shit, that is just strait up theft. I dont know how anyone could even begin to justify 50+%.. I am opposed to income based taxation in the first place, but Shit 80%? really.
So I am left to ask.
1. Please define "Rich" in a actual dollar amount
2. Please define what you believe is a "fair" marginal rate for all income based taxation (state, federal, and local) for a person making this "rich" income.
3. If the government cannot collect the amount if needs to pay for goods and service how or (who) do you propose they make up the difference?
