Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than the rest of America's taxpayers, new study finds

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gas taxes don't come anywhere near close to paying for roads.

They aren't meant to.

They're intended to pay for maintenence of the roads...

Okay, they don't cover that either.

 

[Bomb#20]

I understood your analogy. I just recognize it as crap. Loren didn't drive his car. Your capital gains helped you keep up with inflation. The gains weren't fictional. Those were real dollars that you have in your pocket that you otherwise wouldn't.

Inflation is just another form of tax. The government "deserves" to benefit from inflation for the same reason it deserves to benefit from any other tax. Because the tax will be used to provide services to the people. And yes, sometimes assets are exposed to more than one single tax. This isn't a novel concept.

I.e., it's truthful to measure the starting point in different units from the ending point because doing so broadens the set of assets exposed to the asset tax and you like asset taxes. Looks like an "Appeal to consequences" fallacy.

What the hell are "fictional wages"?

It was a hypothetical. But yes, some people are taxed on fictional wages they didn't receive. In the U.S. it happens to restaurant employees -- if the IRS thinks total reported tips are too low then it makes the individual workers pay taxes on the tips it suspects the workers collectively received and didn't report.

Your analogy is crap.

inflation is reality. It's here. It's not going away. Get used to it. An apple you buy today is not going to be worth the same in a year. It will decay or cost you energy to preserve. Entropy is coming for us all. You want your money to have the same value as time progresses. Tough. Inflation is part of reality and it can and does affect wages too.

And since it affects wages we crank the boundaries between the tax brackets up every year. We don't make believe that minimum wage workers are middle-class because $16.50/hour is a pretty decent wage in 1985 dollars.

 

[Bomb#20]

Will this become a debate about what "society" should or should not mean? Wiktionary offers six definitions of this English word including

A number of people joined by mutual consent to deliberate, determine and act toward a common goal.​

This definition may be compatible with bilby's, but this view is not universally held. For example, on 14 July 1789 a group of French citizens informed their government that they had not given consent and that any goal was not held in common. And right here in this thread we see Infidels who seem to agree that "society" should be managed to favor the interests of the wealthiest land-owners, rather than any mutual consent to serve any common goal.

Storming of the Bastille followed the publication of Du contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique by Jean-Jacques Rousseau but, as we see in this thread, the Enlightdarkened view has not yet taken full hold in America.

FIFY. The Enlightenment was the Age of Reason. The Reign of Terror, thirty thousand murders, and a death sentence for the guy who wrote The Age of Reason followed the storming of the Bastille. (Which, incidentally, was no longer even being used for political prisoners. The mob set free five actual criminals and two suspected criminals locked up at their families' request.) Here's what an actual Enlightenment philosopher had to say about that publication:

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid.​

I herewith ask that a translation of Du contrat social be incorporated into the record by reference. Hence I can confine my further remarks to information gleaned from the Wiktionary page.

The etymology is interesting:

PIE /*sekʷ/ (“to follow”) > /*sokʷ-yo/ (“companion”) > Latin socius (“associated, allied; partner, companion, ally”) > societās, societātem > Old French societé​

Now that you have so ably elucidated the meaning of "society", how about you look into the meaning of "contract"? When Rousseau cribbed his theory from the absolute monarchist Hobbes, he seems to have thought swapping out Hobbes' bad sovereign for his own good sovereign would be enough to fix the concept. But he preserved the rot at the heart. Origin myths are exactly as much a basis for a system of government as strange women lying in ponds distributing swords; and Rousseau's/Hobbes' consent-by-proxy makes exactly as much sense as Christianity's sin-by-proxy and atone-by-proxy.

Certainly the word's source ("ally", "companion") is incompatible with apparent present-day American "conservative" belief that regression to a "society" featuring landowners and serfs should be the goal.

I take it you think what made serfs serfs wasn't the whole working without pay and not being allowed to quit thing, but rather the landowners not giving them free stuff. After you look up "contract" maybe you should look up "serf".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Certainly. I wasn't complaining about the rich paying for the government, just pointing out a fact -- a fact the study authors were undoubtedly aware of when they made the decision to claim the government is paid for by the average American. I was catching them in a lie, not editorializing about who ought to pay what.

What is it with your obsession with the truth? Forget about reality, embrace eat the rich!

Not sure what you mean by "tax wealth". If you mean, why shouldn't we tax rich people, nobody said we shouldn't. If you mean, why shouldn't we have a wealth tax, there are any number of reasons it's better to tax people on their income than on their assets; I can go into some of those reasons if you care about the distinction. The most important reason is sheer practicality -- a federal asset tax is unconstitutional and amending the constitution is bloody hard, so if your goal is just to get more money to pay down the deficit and/or provide for the needy, simply adding another income tax bracket is going to deliver the money a lot sooner.

And what is wealth? Cash in the bank, certainly. Stocks, generally--but many of the people at the top own enough that they couldn't actually liquidate their positions at anything like "market" value. Art, property--what people will pay.

Why is there this religious idolization of ridiculous levels of wealth?

I lost you. Who religiously idolizes ridiculous levels of wealth? Certainly not Loren or Derec or me -- we just see rich people as people instead of as some hostile alien life form. The religiousness looks to me like its on the part of the folks who hate the rich so much they think it's worth lying and it's worth making the poor poorer if that's what it takes to tear down ridiculous levels of wealth.

I think it comes down to seeing all that "wealth" that is the means of production and imagining that it can go to the people. Seed corn is so delicious!

These wealthy seem to have forgotten what happened to the uber-wealthy occasionally when the peasants had had enough. The Romans understood you need to through the proletariat a few bones. The very wealthy have mistaken that to be meant as literal.

Hyperbole much? The difference between capitalism and the ancien regime left-wingers have such a hardon for overthrowing again is that in capitalism, obesity is a disease of the poor.

Yup. I've seen poverty worse than anything you see in the US. Not the sanitized version that's all most people ever see of it. They're not fat. If they are clad it's in whatever odds and ends they can get.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What the hell are "fictional wages"?

It was a hypothetical. But yes, some people are taxed on fictional wages they didn't receive. In the U.S. it happens to restaurant employees -- if the IRS thinks total reported tips are too low then it makes the individual workers pay taxes on the tips it suspects the workers collectively received and didn't report.

Likewise, time deposits.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

FIFY. The Enlightenment was the Age of Reason. The Reign of Terror, thirty thousand murders, and a death sentence for the guy who wrote The Age of Reason followed the storming of the Bastille. (Which, incidentally, was no longer even being used for political prisoners. The mob set free five actual criminals and two suspected criminals locked up at their families' request.) Here's what an actual Enlightenment philosopher had to say about that publication:

And note that the French revolution set France back about 30 years.

 

[Bomb#20]

What the hell are "fictional wages"?

It was a hypothetical. But yes, some people are taxed on fictional wages they didn't receive. In the U.S. it happens to restaurant employees -- if the IRS thinks total reported tips are too low then it makes the individual workers pay taxes on the tips it suspects the workers collectively received and didn't report.

Likewise, time deposits.

That's one point of view; but I expect Zorq would argue time deposits don't count as wages. He'd probably say "If you don't want to pay tax on gains, nobody is forcing you to invest." about those too.

FIFY. The Enlightenment was the Age of Reason. The Reign of Terror, thirty thousand murders, and a death sentence for the guy who wrote The Age of Reason followed the storming of the Bastille. (Which, incidentally, was no longer even being used for political prisoners. The mob set free five actual criminals and two suspected criminals locked up at their families' request.) Here's what an actual Enlightenment philosopher had to say about that publication:

And note that the French revolution set France back about 30 years.

If you count Napoleon, yep. But I'm not sure it's fair to blame the revolution for having a military genius with a taste for world conquest fall into its lap, which seems kind of unforeseeable -- unlike pretty much everything Burke forecast coming to pass.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why is there this religious idolization of ridiculous levels of wealth?

I lost you. Who religiously idolizes ridiculous levels of wealth? Certainly not Loren or Derec or me -- we just see rich people as people instead of as some hostile alien life form.

I give up. Let me know if you actually want to have a discussion.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think it comes down to seeing all that "wealth" that is the means of production and imagining that it can go to the people. Seed corn is so delicious!

LP in top hat, with monocle: Oh dear boy, don't you understand, blessed are the job creators. Why do you hate the wealthy?

The GOP won. The Federal Government will cut Social Security checks in the near future. Medicare will likely be cut. Domestic spending slashed. But I understand what matters most. This is like the gun violence, where the dried blood of a 10 year old pales in importance to what you think matters moist. Can't tax the wealth. We can manage lacking tax revenue by cutting services until we are in a Libertarian utopia where some regions have things.

Wrong on gun control, wrong on taxation, and I can wait until they are finished with their plans on vaccination.

 

[Toni]

Wow.
Spoiler alert: Social Security payroll TAXES are NOT a defined-contribution investment vehicle. Instead they are TAXES.

Doesn't change the basic nature that they're retirement funding, what you get out is capped so what you put in should also be capped.

The argument Loren offers could just as sensibly be applied to income taxes, which are also TAXES. After all, some of the taxes go to fund (at least in the olden pre-Trump days) food provided in public schools for the children of low-income families. The affluent send their kids to private schools and do not benefit from this portion of their tax payments: Why should they contribute to others' children? For that matter, why should money be stolen at gunpoint^* from the rich for the upkeep of national parks the rich will never visit? (The rich prefer their holidays in the South of France.)

But Loren's apparent dislike of stealing money from the rich at gunpoint^* is irrelevant. The dispute is about simple arithmetic. I am refuting the claim that the super-rich pay as much, proportionally, as the working class do in TAXES, at least when TAXES are defined to include all TAXES.

* - "stealing money from the rich at gunpoint." I don't know if Loren would endorse this hyperbole, common among many "fiscal conservatives" and "libertarians." But he certainly doesn't endorse Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." At this point in our political dysfunction if you walk like a right-winger and talk like a right-winger, I shall treat you as a right-winger.

Taxes are for running society. Social Security & Medicare are for retirement, if you don't pay in you don't get anything out.

Both what you pay in and what benefits you receive are capped. Social security and Medicare are part of running a society as should all taxes and government programs be. I would argue that the amount you pay in is capped too low and that SS taxes should be applied to earned income above the current limits.

As far as taxing social security benefits, I think that it should be means tested. Wealthy people who collect SS benefits absolutely should pay taxes on those benefits. People who live on SS without other significant income should not.

Social security also pays some benefits to the disabled and minor children of deceased parents. While I absolutely do applaud d that at least some efforts at gong these groups are undertaken, I’m not certain that Social. Security is the best way to do it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What the hell are "fictional wages"?

It was a hypothetical. But yes, some people are taxed on fictional wages they didn't receive. In the U.S. it happens to restaurant employees -- if the IRS thinks total reported tips are too low then it makes the individual workers pay taxes on the tips it suspects the workers collectively received and didn't report.

Likewise, time deposits.

That's one point of view; but I expect Zorq would argue time deposits don't count as wages. He'd probably say "If you don't want to pay tax on gains, nobody is forcing you to invest." about those too.

I was talking about stuff you're taxed on without actually getting. You get the money eventually, but you're taxed on it when it accrues even though you can't actually use it at that point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think it comes down to seeing all that "wealth" that is the means of production and imagining that it can go to the people. Seed corn is so delicious!

LP in top hat, with monocle: Oh dear boy, don't you understand, blessed are the job creators. Why do you hate the wealthy?

The GOP won. The Federal Government will cut Social Security checks in the near future. Medicare will likely be cut. Domestic spending slashed. But I understand what matters most. This is like the gun violence, where the dried blood of a 10 year old pales in importance to what you think matters moist. Can't tax the wealth. We can manage lacking tax revenue by cutting services until we are in a Libertarian utopia where some regions have things.

Wrong on gun control, wrong on taxation, and I can wait until they are finished with their plans on vaccination.

The gun control bit is all emotions and/or lies. Facts we present get ignored. Basically all proposals from the left are do-something things that either will do pretty much nothing or will disarm the law abiding while doing little to the criminals. Suicide data is routinely mixed with homicide data ("gun deaths") despite them being very different problems (and, notably, there is a negative correlation between gun suicide rates and gun homicide rates.) And who is most likely to kill themselves with a gun? Old people. Does that not suggest it's people facing the end of life and choosing not to suffer?

And objecting to eat the rich is not the same thing as supporting the GOP/MAGA. I don't object to progressive taxation, I object to confiscatory taxation. You milk the cow, you don't eat the cow.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Taxes are for running society. Social Security & Medicare are for retirement, if you don't pay in you don't get anything out.

Both what you pay in and what benefits you receive are capped. Social security and Medicare are part of running a society as should all taxes and government programs be. I would argue that the amount you pay in is capped too low and that SS taxes should be applied to earned income above the current limits.

I have no problem with adjusting the cap. It's just it should be reciprocal--raise the cap, raise the maximum benefit.

As far as taxing social security benefits, I think that it should be means tested. Wealthy people who collect SS benefits absolutely should pay taxes on those benefits. People who live on SS without other significant income should not.

Absolutely not.

1) Means testing on something the majority of the population receives is not a good idea in the first place, you spend too much for what you save.

2) Anything of the sort adds up to making it into a welfare program.

3) I still favor fairness in the tax code even though it's been shat on since pay-as-you-go. 50% of what you paid into SS is taxed, 50% of what you get out should be taxed.

Social security also pays some benefits to the disabled and minor children of deceased parents. While I absolutely do applaud d that at least some efforts at gong these groups are undertaken, I’m not certain that Social. Security is the best way to do it.

I'm not sure, either, but I don't see this as a big deal in either direction.

 

[Toni]

Taxes are for running society. Social Security & Medicare are for retirement, if you don't pay in you don't get anything out.

Both what you pay in and what benefits you receive are capped. Social security and Medicare are part of running a society as should all taxes and government programs be. I would argue that the amount you pay in is capped too low and that SS taxes should be applied to earned income above the current limits.

I have no problem with adjusting the cap. It's just it should be reciprocal--raise the cap, raise the maximum benefit.

As far as taxing social security benefits, I think that it should be means tested. Wealthy people who collect SS benefits absolutely should pay taxes on those benefits. People who live on SS without other significant income should not.

Absolutely not.

1) Means testing on something the majority of the population receives is not a good idea in the first place, you spend too much for what you save.

2) Anything of the sort adds up to making it into a welfare program.

3) I still favor fairness in the tax code even though it's been shat on since pay-as-you-go. 50% of what you paid into SS is taxed, 50% of what you get out should be taxed.

Social security also pays some benefits to the disabled and minor children of deceased parents. While I absolutely do applaud d that at least some efforts at gong these groups are undertaken, I’m not certain that Social. Security is the best way to do it.

I'm not sure, either, but I don't see this as a big deal in either direction.

I’m really not certain how different your raising the cap plus raising the benefit compared with means testing.

I think that SS taxes should be progressive, with higher earners contributing a higher percentage compared with those earning lower wages.

 

[laughing dog]

SS was created to appear to be something earned rather than a straight welfare payment in order to gain support in Congress. Means testing was explicitly avoided in order to keep SS appear more like an insurance plan. That also somewhat insulated it from having benefits cut if it was viewed as pure welfare.

That strategy has been successful up for 90 years.

When SS was created, the cap on taxable wage earnings was instituted to avoid the optics of paying out large benefits to very high income retirees.

 

[Bomb#20]

Why is there this religious idolization of ridiculous levels of wealth?

I lost you. Who religiously idolizes ridiculous levels of wealth? Certainly not Loren or Derec or me -- we just see rich people as people instead of as some hostile alien life form.

I give up.

Good choice, since you don't have a case.

Let me know if you actually want to have a discussion.

So "Why is there this religious idolization of ridiculous levels of wealth?" is your notion of actual discussion, is it? Was I supposed to just tug my forelock, say "Yes m'lord, as you say.", accept your abusive fabrication about me as a shared premise for discussion, and reply with "Well, sir, I'm an idiot who religiously idolizes ridiculous levels of wealth because <fill in blank>."? You did not actually want a discussion. You wanted to put me in my place, to own the nonprogressives, and probably to grandstand to your choir. So let me explain something to you: I'm not a Christian -- turning the other cheek isn't really my thing. So if my negative reaction to your insult makes you feel wronged, get over yourself. You want to blame someone for this not being an actual discussion, buy a goddamn mirror.

Now, if you decide you do actually want to have a discussion even though I won't bend the knee to you, how about you explain what it was you saw in my post that looked like religious idolization to you? Was it the fact that I caught the study authors lying and called them on it? I'll defend anybody from his opponent's lies. Or was it the fact that I'm evidently not a fan of wealth taxes?

Taxing wealth is based on assessing wealth, i.e., on the government making a determination of how many dollars an asset is worth. That is necessarily subjective -- let's leave the fantasies of "objective value" to the Randroids. If it isn't just the arbitrary opinion of some bureaucrat then it's a market price, i.e. the arbitrary opinion of would-be buyers. So let's consider a hypothetical scenario. Suppose I offer you $1000 for your dog. Of course you'll decline -- he's your best friend and you're not going to sell him out to some stranger -- but just getting the offer means the market price of your dog is $1000. Market price is a measure of how much other people want your stuff. Do you think you should have to report my offer to the IRS and pay the government, let's say, 2% of the $1000 I offered you, in return for for the privilege of getting to not sell me your dog? That's a rhetorical question -- no need to answer. I don't actually care whether you think you should have to pay $20 for other people wanting your dog; the pertinent data is that I don't think you should have to pay for other people wanting your dog.

So, given all that, the actual discussion question for you is this: In your opinion, is the fact that I don't think you should have to pay for other people wanting your dog a good reason to believe I religiously idolize your dog?

I apply the same standard to Jeff Bezos that I apply to you, not because I worship his wealth, but because both of you are people and I leave double-standards to progressives the way I leave other-cheek-turning to Christians.

 

[laughing dog]

A market price is the monetary value offered for an item or service and accepted.

An unaccepted offer is not a market price since it is not accepted.

 

[Bomb#20]

A market price is the monetary value offered for an item or service and accepted.

An unaccepted offer is not a market price since it is not accepted.

Fair point. Google tells me the bid/ask on Amazon stock is $232/$235. So if some hypothetical Asset Assessor Service tries to use market conditions to assess the worth of Bezos's 900 million shares, they'll figure out would-be buyers would rather have Bezos's stake than $209 billion, whereas would-be sellers would rather have $212 billion than Bezos's stake. So the AAS would presumably assess Bezos's stock for tax purposes at somewhere between those numbers. Which is to say, an offer to buy that is not accepted is a lower bound on what an asset will be assessed to be worth. And both the upper bound and the lower bound are measures of how much other people want Bezos's stuff.

 

[TV and credit cards]

A market price is the monetary value offered for an item or service and accepted.

An unaccepted offer is not a market price since it is not accepted.

Fair point. Google tells me the bid/ask on Amazon stock is $232/$235. So if some hypothetical Asset Assessor Service tries to use market conditions to assess the worth of Bezos's 900 million shares, they'll figure out would-be buyers would rather have Bezos's stake than $209 billion, whereas would-be sellers would rather have $212 billion than Bezos's stake. So the AAS would presumably assess Bezos's stock for tax purposes at somewhere between those numbers. Which is to say, an offer to buy that is not accepted is a lower bound on what an asset will be assessed to be worth. And both the upper bound and the lower bound are measures of how much other people want Bezos's stuff.

Wouldn't it be better to use stock valuation?

 

[TV and credit cards]

So, given all that, the actual discussion question for you is this: In your opinion, is the fact that I don't think you should have to pay for other people wanting your dog a good reason to believe I religiously idolize your dog?

Don't answer that Jimmy. It's a trap! I have it on good authority that unless you're breeding dogs for monetary gain, you will receive a pet exemption.