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.