Hi, Bomb. I know you're smarter than you sound. At this point, if I wrote "The sky is blue" I think you'd post an erudite-sounding paragraph discussing the difference between azure and cyan.
Good argument.
I'm not sure what you mean by "government-enforced ownership." A main role of government is to HELP the rich everyone with police, judges and prisons so that the mob can't rush in and seize the rich's property.
FIFY.
Which is to say, when the mob rushes in and seizes the rich's property, who exactly do you think it is that winds up doing grunt work in Paris while going from salon to salon trying to convince anyone who'll listen to help restore them to their former riches, and who exactly do you think it is that's still trapped in Russia, starving to death in the resulting famine?
I'm not bothering to understand what this means, except as a variation on "The police will protect the homes of everyone. whether they live in a $100 million mansion or under a bridge."
Oh, wait. Even that's not true: Wealthy people do generally get better response from police and justice system.
Well, dude, if you don't bother to understand, you have no one to blame but yourself when you wind up completely misunderstanding. Exactly which part of "famine" do you think means something about equality of police response? When governments stop using police, judges and prisons to prevent mobs from rushing in and seizing the rich's property, you get
famines. The Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cambodia. That is the mechanism by which the role of government you mentioned
helps everyone; it isn't by means of protecting the homes of those living under bridges that it helps everyone.
The way forward to reduce (not eliminate) income inequality is by
- Making tax codes more progressive. People earning $10 million annually should pay at least a slightly higher tax rate than those making do with just $1 million annually.
This is a popular sentiment. I find it incomprehensible except as an expression of unalloyed outgroup hostility, or else perhaps as a strategic attempt to divide and conquer by creating a conflict of interests. Why on earth should the government involve itself in interfering with the results of the market
specifically on behalf of those making $1 million a year, people who don't need the help, people who are evidently entirely capable of simultaneously standing on their own feet while also paying their full share of a citizen's obligation to help cover the general overhead of maintaining a functioning society?
So multi-millionaires have the same needs, wants and life-styles as multi-billionaires?
How the devil did you get that out of what I wrote? Of course they have different needs, wants and lifestyles. You appear to have concluded I was implying they had the same needs, wants and lifestyles because you took some other premise of your own for granted. Most likely it was the authoritarian premise that it's a proper function of government to micro-manage the people's wants and lifestyles in pursuit of whatever goals government social engineers happen to prioritize whether there's a rational basis for it and a compelling state interest at stake or not.
I submit that there's a rational basis and a compelling state interest at stake when the government decides poor workers being able to afford shoes for their kids is more important than a rich investor being able to afford a vacation in Cancun. But that does not qualify as a reason to imagine there's any rational basis or any compelling state interest at stake when the government decides rich investors being able to afford vacations in Cancun is more important than a richer CEO being able to afford to buy a Hawaiian island. The differences between multi-millionaires' needs, wants and lifestyles and those of multi-billionaires are too trivial to constitute grounds for discrimination in favor of the one against the other. A government should not enact one law for me and a different law for thee if it doesn't have a darn good reason.
How about people earning $900,000? The way you write, I'd guess your ideal tax table would be full of "cliffs".
Dude! You just made that up. The way I write had nothing to do with it. You picked two arbitrary data points so I talked about those two data points. How I would extrapolate below those two points was left unspecified. Of course if the tax system were up to me it wouldn't have cliffs. Cliffs are stupid -- they create perverse incentives. And as some wag put it, "People respond to incentives. That is the whole of economics -- the rest is commentary."
My guess is your math is good enough to know that an infinitely-differentiable function which is straight-lined over any tiny segment must be straight-lined everywhere.
You have a purely aesthetic preference for analytic functions? Personally, I bear no prejudice against spline curves. "Infinitely differentiable" is not a compelling state interest. My guess is your math is good enough to know a discontinuous function is a cliff, but a function with a discontinuity in its second derivative is not a cliff and does not create a perverse incentive.
Besides which, good luck getting a tax law full of logs and exponentials enacted. Existing American tax rates aren't even splines; they're just piecewise linear, in service of the very compelling state interest in a tax law that's comprehensible to accountants, and taxpayers, and basically everyone but politicians. (Did I mention I'd be in favor of making it a felony to do taxes for a congressthing? That would simplify the tax law right quick.
)
The moral case for a progressive tax is two-fold. First, it's a way to correct for the economic insanity western civilization has gotten itself into of taxing workers on their income instead of on their profit: the excess of their income over the necessary expenses they must pay in order to maintain that income stream.
What on earth are you babbling about? If you think Elon Musk should have been allowed to deduct his health insurance premium from his $30+ billion income in 2021, I don't disagree.
I'm "babbling" that a poor worker on the edge of holding it together should get to deduct his health insurance premium and his grocery bill and his rent; and the fact that he can't deduct any of those and can't even deduct a major hospital bill unless it exceeds 7.5% of his income is stupid, and unjustifiable. And discriminatory, since businesses are allowed to deduct the expenses they have to spend in order to keep their revenue streams coming. (And yes, Musk should be allowed to deduct those things too, since the law should be the same for everyone unless there's a darn good reason otherwise.)
It's the political clique which you now seem to be allied with that eliminated most deductions.
What the bejesus are you on about? Who is it you think I'm allied with? There is no political clique that gives a rat's ass about what I'm talking about. A plague on all their houses. I'm Thoreau's "majority of one".
. . .But neither of those reasons has any bearing on people making $1 million a year. So what moral justification is there for progressive tax rates at the high end of the income scale?
I write "a slightly higher tax rate" and you accuse me of coddling those with a million-dollar income? If I were going for the grade-school "logic" that apparently appeals to you now, I'd accuse you of coddling those who make just $900,000.
As opposed to the grade-school illogic that appeals to you? You'd accuse me of that because you make up garbage about others. I said not a word about $900,000; you impute cliffs and extrapolations without evidence, for rhetorical purposes. Don't do that.
(For what it's worth, I don't see a good reason for the top tax bracket not kicking in at a level below my income. I'm a prosperous well-paid worker bee. Never been to Cancun, but it doesn't take a $900,000 income to go there and I could go if I prioritized that.)
And why are we speaking of "morality" again?
"Again"? You started it and neither of us stopped. If you're under the impression that
"People earning $10 million annually should pay at least a slightly higher tax rate than those making do with just $1 million annually."
and
"Corporations should pay higher tax."
aren't moral claims, you're delusional.
Corporations should pay higher tax.
<counterargument snipped>
Gibberish. <counter-counterargument snipped> You're gasping[sic] at straws to bring up side-issues like this. What's next? A lecture on the difference between "qualified" dividends and "unqualified"?
Dude, you're the one who brought up a detail of the tax code. If it's a side-issue, let's move on.
Anyway, property tax — though arguably regressive — is a better way to raise revenue than, e.g. sales or payroll tax. If you don't know why start a thread and ask
So who said anything in favor of sales and payroll taxes? Those (and a payroll tax
is a sales tax) have a greater distorting effect on economic decision-making than property taxes, income taxes, and profit taxes.
... AFTER you've calmed down.
... says the guy who resorted to insults and wrote in all caps.
[rant rant babble babble]
I had a very favorable impression of Bomb#20. Well-informed, articulate and intelligent centrist views. I hope that Bomb#20 comes back.
Good argument.
