Millionaires who want to pay higher taxes

[dismal]

It would be folly to voluntarily pay more if nobody else in your peer group is required to join in.

You sacrifice by putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage to benefit everybody then others are just going to capitalize.

Not if they mean what they say. I consider it foolish to give to church, but there are true believers who think it is a good thing.

I think the bigger headline is that we have so many people who think the government does not have good use for the next incremental millionaire's dollar.

This to me raises the question of how much tax is the government currently collecting from millionaires that is not being put to good use.

It would be extraordinarily remarkable if we are taxing millionaires at the exact point where the government has good uses for their money, but the next dollar is better off in millionaires hands. Unless you tax all millionaires, cause then you get a big enough chunk of money for it to be useful.

How does anyone even calculate where that point is, let alone be sure we are at it?

 

[laughing dog]

It would be folly to voluntarily pay more if nobody else in your peer group is required to join in.

You sacrifice by putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage to benefit everybody then others are just going to capitalize.

Not if they mean what they say. I consider it foolish to give to church, but there are true believers who think it is a good thing.

That wins the award for stupidest analogy.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

It would be folly to voluntarily pay more if nobody else in your peer group is required to join in.

You sacrifice by putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage to benefit everybody then others are just going to capitalize.

Not if they mean what they say. I consider it foolish to give to church, but there are true believers who think it is a good thing.

That wins the award for stupidest analogy.

It is fun to quote without understanding.

 

[laughing dog]

That wins the award for stupidest analogy.

It is fun to quote without understanding.

You are the expert, so I will take you word for that irrelevant observation.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

That wins the award for stupidest analogy.

It is fun to quote without understanding.

You are the expert, so I will take you word for that irrelevant observation.

I learned the theory by watching your practice.

 

[laughing dog]

You are the expert, so I will take you word for that irrelevant observation.

I learned the theory by watching your practice.

Wow, that really hurts coming from a libertarian.

 

[ksen]

Nobody's claiming that we're on the verge of another great depression but there have been many hints that the economy isn't nearly as strong as certain politicians and conservative pundits are claiming.

I'm pretty sure no one was claiming they were on the verge of a Great Depression back in the early 1920s either.

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Actually, what everyone can see but nobody can say is that they are actually saying "I want you to raise his taxes, even if it hurts me."

Actually, what they're saying is "Raise my taxes because I have so much it's not going to hurt me to pay more".

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

Nothing is stopping them from just cutting a check to the government.

"Hey I love this new iphone so much I'm going to pay $4500 for it instead of the $1000 sticker price" is just as stupid of an argument as the one you're putting forward.

It's almost as bad as the "Hey I love this new iPhone so much that I going to insist they raise the price form $1000 to $4500 so everyone will have to pay the higher price."

They might say exactly that if they knew that apple had underpriced their product for too long and soon no one would be getting an iphone.

aa

 

[Elixir]

Nobody's claiming that we're on the verge of another great depression but there have been many hints that the economy isn't nearly as strong as certain politicians and conservative pundits are claiming.

I'm pretty sure no one was claiming they were on the verge of a Great Depression back in the early 1920s either.

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Actually, what everyone can see but nobody can say is that they are actually saying "I want you to raise his taxes, even if it hurts me."

Actually, what they're saying is "Raise my taxes because I have so much it's not going to hurt me to pay more".

They might be pissed at the degradation of the very system that made them rich. In real-life terms they might be saying "I don't like potholes."

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Domino's Pizza has taken a very strong stance against potholes.

 

[Elixir]

Domino's Pizza has taken a very strong stance against potholes.

I'm sure that will make the donor class happy, since they don't have to eat that shit.

 

[PyramidHead]

It would be folly to voluntarily pay more if nobody else in your peer group is required to join in.

You sacrifice by putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage to benefit everybody then others are just going to capitalize.

Not if they mean what they say. I consider it foolish to give to church, but there are true believers who think it is a good thing.

I think the bigger headline is that we have so many people who think the government does not have good use for the next incremental millionaire's dollar.

This to me raises the question of how much tax is the government currently collecting from millionaires that is not being put to good use.

It would be extraordinarily remarkable if we are taxing millionaires at the exact point where the government has good uses for their money, but the next dollar is better off in millionaires hands. Unless you tax all millionaires, cause then you get a big enough chunk of money for it to be useful.

How does anyone even calculate where that point is, let alone be sure we are at it?

When you decide to start saving money to buy a new house outright, and I suggest selling lemonade on the street for 25 cents a cup, you're probably gonna tell me it wouldn't make much difference whether the lemonade stand was wildly successful or not. I could tell you that there's no difference between the quarters you get from lemonade sales and the ones that comprise the entire $900k value of the house you want to buy, and while I wouldn't technically be wrong, you wouldn't waste much time trying to find the exact rate of savings that makes sense for your intended purchase, which by logical necessity would be faster than lemonade stand sales and perhaps slower than just finding all the money lying on the ground.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've seen a claim that the top 10% wealthiest people pay 60% of the taxes. But the disparity is that they control >90% of the wealth. As their proportion of national wealth increases and their tax burden relative to that wealth decreases, the common pie to pay for the military, roads, air traffic control, weather surveillance and forecasting, hydrometeorological predictions, waterway maintenance, shrinks. We see it now where taxes and fees are pushed down the economic heap in the form of higher SaLT, tolls, higher fees for use of common park space, etc... The roads are falling apart and they want the $10/hr house keeper that has to live 60 miles outside the city because the pay doesn't support living near the job to pay to fix the pot holes that are busting up the shitty car.

Except taxes are on income, not on wealth. Thus this mismatch means nothing.

All taxes are income taxes and all forms of income are treated the same? News to me.

The mismatch is highly meaningful, especially when considering how taxes are assessed.

Do you not understand that wealth is not the same thing as income? It's quite possible to have one with little of the other.

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The problem here is that you don't understand the difference between working hard and working smart.

You earn those vast sums by doing something better and extracting a portion of the value you thus create.

Loren Pechtel, a cliche for all seasons

In other word, you have no rebuttal.

 

[lpetrich]

These guys are making the argument "the government has better uses of my money than I do". The logical next steps for someone who actually believes this are: a) send it in.

So if someone wants more taxes for military and police force, they are saying "The government is better at protecting me than I am".

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

These guys are making the argument "the government has better uses of my money than I do". The logical next steps for someone who actually believes this are: a) send it in.

So if someone wants more taxes for military and police force, they are saying "The government is better at protecting me than I am".

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

 

[ZiprHead]

These guys are making the argument "the government has better uses of my money than I do". The logical next steps for someone who actually believes this are: a) send it in.

So if someone wants more taxes for military and police force, they are saying "The government is better at protecting me than I am".

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

Do you agree that wealth concentration in this nation is a problem?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

Do you agree that wealth concentration in this nation is a problem?

Too much of the economy is concentrated in the government, yes.

 

[laughing dog]

These guys are making the argument "the government has better uses of my money than I do". The logical next steps for someone who actually believes this are: a) send it in.

So if someone wants more taxes for military and police force, they are saying "The government is better at protecting me than I am".

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

These "idiots" are clearly some of the most productive members of our society according to market theory.

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But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

Do you agree that wealth concentration in this nation is a problem?

Too much of the economy is concentrated in the government, yes.

An economically ignorant response, since the question asked about wealth.

 

[ZiprHead]

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

Do you agree that wealth concentration in this nation is a problem?

Too much of the economy is concentrated in the government, yes.

It's really too bad that you don't have the strength of your libertarian conviction to answer honestly.

 

[ronburgundy]

But there are already taxes being paid. The point is these idiots want to pay even more.

Do you agree that wealth concentration in this nation is a problem?

Too much of the economy is concentrated in the government, yes.

Yeah, the US should be more like the paradises of India, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan whose government spending is a lower % of their GDP, and less like those low quality of life shitholes with government spending that is 40% higher than the US, like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Austria.

Also, by definition, government spending (aka distributions) is the opposite of a concentration of wealth, unless it is spent to benefit the people who already have the most wealth (such as with most military spending, border walls, and most things conservatives want to prioritize in government budgets).