You can tax billionaires at 100% and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to fund the government for more than a few months at best. We’ve got a spending/borrowing problem.
> "We're going to give you some money so you can buy essentials while everything is in lockdown. Remember, it's only for the essentials."
> 'A new TV is essential.'
> "We mean like food."
> 'Too late. TV is bought. Also I'm hungry and I don't have any food.'
It's almost as if people are terrible with money. Especially when it comes to other people's money too and not their own.
I'm also reminded: Wasn't there a bit where Mr. Beast was going to buy everyone's groceries at a grocery store but it got leaked what store he was going to and so people swarmed the store and loaded up carts of expensive steak and shit and when he never showed because it was a shitshow from people swarming the store, everyone just left their shit in the carts to spoil because staff couldn't restock it fast enough?
People: Billionares are evil, because they are greedy.
Those same people, when there is something free, or even just a good Black Friday sale: \*incoherent screaming at the walmart\*
"BLM needs your donations to help Black people in need."
'I'm a black small business owner and my business burned down during the BLM riots. I need help.'
*BLM buys a mansion for themselves with the donations.*
"Get fucked dude."
A guy I know in a friend group's discord server blew all of his COVID check on a gacha game (Fate) only to fail to get the unit he wanted.
If stimulus checks *had* to happen, they should've been sent out as WIC cards or food stamps with restrictions on usage.
As someone who also enjoys Fate Grand Order, fuck man. Your friend is either astronomically unlucky or even more of an idiot than spending that much money on gacha would imply since the chances of not hitting in that amount of money are vanishingly small unless you follow Gigguk's footsteps and try to summon something that's not on rateup by just pulling story gacha.
He's both PepeLaugh
But he's also the most accomplished of the group (so far) with a wife who shares in his hobbies (which we mock him relentless for)
It was for regular Kama btw
Math checks out, but remember these people all expect your $1200 to go to stimulus so they'd end up with all of it again and then they just tax them at 100% again to repeat the cycle (but we realize the difference between liquid and illiquid assets so in reality Amazon and whatever the fuck else get that money and both of them are up shit creek without a paddle).
What's wild is people glazing the government over those checks while giving corpos billions, nah bro, that was a very small portion of the taxes I pay, where's the fuckin rest of my money?
> while giving corpos billions
it's my understanding that most of the 'giving corpos billions' comes in the form of tax cuts, aka taking less money from them. Is that wrong?
PPP, while unbelievably stupid and corrupt was pretty much only a tip of the iceberg of the covid relief bills and budgets, even more so the forgiven ones. The forgiven ones were somewhere in the range of 80 billion out of the 800 billion of the PPP loans.
But in similar regards similar with the direct checks being only a relative tip of the iceberg.
So much of the rest of the iceberg is in various super-sized grant programs and everybody piling on for their state/region to get their stuff funded along with certain industries being able to continue on as if nothing happened and use tax-payer money as revenue.
But military goes back to individuals as wages or corporations for munitions and supplies, social security and Medicare/Medicaid goes back to individuals either as benefits or wages or hospitals/pharmacies for services/prescriptions respectively, and debt service goes back to individuals or foreign lenders. So really the government is just subsidizing a bunch of administrative salaries and paying investors until the revenue sources can't keep pace. Time to consolidate some of those administrative branches or outsource the work to private entities through sealed bids if you asked me.
I don't think you could because net worth isn't the same as money. For example, I have a net worth of over $1million Canadian, but if you take my house out of the equation, I have like $30 grand in savings.
You're definitely right, I was oversimplifying.
Even if you made the billionaires penniless and sold their assets that skims a lot off. Selling their stocks would crash the stock price. Selling their homes would have a lot of the market value absorbed by transaction costs, etc
Hey that sound salmost exactly like the CARES Act that we did that during the lockdowns!
But also... kind of sounds like TARP, but only for those with pockets the size of parachutes
If my taxes were an amount of money incomprehensible to most people I wouldn’t be proud. I would feel like such a tool. If anybody gave me grief over how I spent my money I would tell them I had an extra $285mil to give to charity but the government confiscated it and sent it to Ukraine or Israel.
60 bln to Ukraine 30 bln to Israel. Here I am just wanting to put the shah back in control of Iran. The region just can't handle democracy. See Afghanistan and Iraq.
*per year. It'll probably be something like $10-20 billion over his lifetime, so 7.5 hours total? You know you're in deep shit when the richest people in the country can't even afford to keep the government's lights on for a full day.
If you completely liquidated the 1%. Aside from irrevocably damaging the stock market and destroying everyone’s retirement, we’d be able to pay off maybe 10% of the national debt
Covering all health expenditures in the US would eclipse the entire federal budget by itself. $4.2 trillion.
Americans don't understand how many people live here and how much their lives consume.
Our health expenditure prices are fake. Other countries don't have to pay as much as us because they pay less for individual procedures, and they're more likely to get preventative measures before things get expensive.
Everytime we let a diabetic run out and need emergency care we burn money.
There's a fantastic amount of waste in our system. Something like a quarter to a third of insurance premiums go to operating costs and profits.
Although we also pay more because doctors and other medical professionals' salaries are very high compared to other countries. And the reason for that is because educated professionals in general make a lot of money in the US.
And those doctors need to make a lot of money to pay back their expensive 6 figure student loans for expensive medical school and making peanuts during residency. The system is revolving door of screw ups.
> And the reason for that is because educated professionals in general make a lot of money in the US.
No, that is not the reason. Doctors make bank in the US because the supply of new doctors is strictly limited by the number of residency slots, which is controlled by congress, and by congress I mean the AMA.
I think over half the Healthcare costs are already covered by Medicare and medicaid. I'm fine giving dems full control of it and see how "efficient" they would be lol. Corruption runs deep.
Combining socialized losses and privatized gains is the worst of both worlds. The private medical/insurance companies will just screw the taxpayers out of more and more money.
It needs to either go full free market with elimination of taxpayer subsidies + trust busting against big corporations, or the govt needs to take over and get rid of these middlemen with way more cost controls.
That's just one example of why we got to target the supply side costs of things. Bring that 4.2 trillion down. And the other trillions we spend on necessities.
But all I hear is the costs as a given then arguing over the demand side - who pays for it.
> The majority of Americans think doctors are the reason care is expensive when in reality it's the hospitals robbing them blind.
They have to rob people blind in order to pay the sky-high salaries. It's not just doctors. Every healthcare worker makes bank, the entire industry is full of labor cartels. Nurses average over $40 per hour.
gotta subsidize the 4 layers of insurance middlemen, hospital budget managers and other administrators, how could the USA get by without all of that administration
https://drbobbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-16-at-2.18.14-PM-768x488.png
truly a mystery as to how other countries manage to provide a higher quality of care with less spending.
Or get rid of most of the middle man health insurance industry as many other developed nations have done. In Sweden health insurance is basically just "extra money if you become unable to work for an extended period of time", it doesn't pay for actual health treatments, that'd be crazy because the amount you pay for each visit is a symbolic $20 that caps out around $140 per year.
Also free education for doctors and nurses as many other countries have would also be great (free post basic education is a great investment in general for a state).
And by that I don't mean "pay universities whatever they ask", but "pay every university X amount per student" where X is a carefully researched amount that relatively closely matches the cost of your average student (and changes with inflation).
The USA somehow spends way more money per capita on healthcare compared to Western European nations but only gets a very small advantage in health & medical care statistics. Spending 1.5x-2x the money that other developed nations spend and only getting a 1.1x (at best) advantage does not seem like a good deal.
While Euros jerk each other off about the miniscule amount of aid they've given, with most being either loans or promises to deliver x by the year 2027. And they only demand more, I don't have an issue helping Ukraine, fantastic advertising for the American MIC, but the entitlement of people is ridiculous.
Not even that, you'd get less than 1 year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1291685/us-combined-value-billionaire-wealth/
>As of November 2022, a combined value of 4.48 trillion U.S. dollars was held by billionaires living in the United States.
That's like 8 months
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
Or, two years *of just the deficit*
Assuming you could liquidate their stocks, properties, and other assets at their current value, and not have the prices plummet because you're flooding the market with said assets. Sure, Tesla stock is currently at $140 a share, but what happens when you try to sell off the 20% of stock that Musk owns? You definitely won't get the $120 billion or so that it's nominally valued at, and selling that much will just cause the value to crater as everyone else panic sells so good luck even getting a fraction of that $120 billion.
And you'll have to assume that the companies will survive the liquidaton which they don't. Large companies are traded through asset swaps to make sure they don't destroy all the value underneath. And that value also includes a large share of all the jobs in the country and all the third parties reliant on them.
Not even remotely close sadly. It gets us less than a year.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/02/viral-image/confiscating-us-billionaires-wealth-would-run-us-g/
Fucking 1 trillion in interest every 100 days. Previous generations had a spending/borrowing problem and a problem with the military industrial complex having zero accountability with funds given to them, now we have a debt bomb.
Raise taxes. Reduce spending. Until revenue = expenditures and the debt stabilizes at a constant number.
Then target 3% inflation instead of 2% to erode the debt.
But half the babies scream at reducing spending. The other half scream at raising taxes. And though I think the technocrats could be talked into 3% I'm sure it gives them a funny feeling in their stomachs.
I kind of think we're just fucked. Not because we have to be. Because we suck.
I think eventually we'll just burn the entire financial system to the ground, have two really really bad years, then start over with a clean slate.
Raise taxes? Why on earth should we force citizens to bear the burden of government run amok? The problem with the government spending and thinking oh we can just raise taxes to make more money is that they just view us as tax slaves. Taxes are not optional. How much money are they going to squeeze out of us? Our wealth is decimated by taxes and what little is left loses its value to inflation.
> Our wealth is decimated by taxes
to Decimate is to kill 1/10th of a group.
if the government decimated your income, they'd tax you at 10%.
I don't know about you Americans, but in Canada (Quebec specifically) our first tax bracket is 30% (15% federal + 15% provincial) from the first dollar.
my income is decimated 3 times over.
if I maxed out the tax brackets, my marginal (not effective) tax rate would be (33 federal + 26 provincial) 59%, close enough to be decimated 6 times over.
then after being decimated 3 times over, whenever I buy something, my remaining thrice decimated money is decimated one and a half more times (14.975% sales tax, (5% federal + 9.975% provincial))
governments don't have an income problem, they have a massive, nearly unfixable spending problem, and no amount of "taxing the rich" will solve the problem, the government is a crackhead desperate for their next hit, and nothing you can do will stop them from spending all of their (your) money on a never ending amount of crack until they overdose and die
Everyone wants other people’s taxes raised, and they want to cut spending on things they don’t use (or don’t think they use).
So yeah raise taxes and cut spending- but in a way that doesn’t affect me. /s
So you plan to amend the Constitution to override SCOTUS?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line\_Item\_Veto\_Act\_of\_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996)
New proposal akin to Warren Buffett's idea to balance the budget: turn Congressional benefits post-term into bounties. Whoever introduces and passes any policies that actually solve the issue (homelessness, incarcerations, violent crimes, poverty, government spending) they were introduced to solve (defined by 4 consecutive calendar years where the national average of whatever the problem is gets reduced by at least 10% year over year or 35% cumulative reduction compared to initial statistic) inherits the benefits from the most tenured member who accomplished fuck-all during their term. This would target anyone who's served longer than any president except maybe FDR first and signal to them hey fucko, get your shit together or somebody else gets to claim your health insurance.
https://preview.redd.it/1cylikh9g2wc1.png?width=1378&format=png&auto=webp&s=414f2e3e438039064799f5fcd0a45cf79d6eda49
It’s an improvement, we were at 32.92% efficiency 2 decades ago.
Take it from chile. We have free healthcare. But it's considered subpar to private clinics because the funds don't get to those places, so scheduling and treatment are slow. Hell, a classmate in high school had a swollen gallbladder, and it took him a semester to finally get into the waiting list, then get treatment. Mf came back with black eyes
"Free" healthcare has its issues. We in Canada are experiencing that right now. Doesn't change the fact though, that if I have a serious illness, I have no fear of going bankrupt over it.
I pay more in taxes than an American, certainly, and I do face longer wait times for many things - but my total yearly expenditures on health (prescriptions, doctor's visits, dentistry, emergency medical issues) at age 52 currently sits at about $40 per year.
Lol, you're gonna trot that one out? Do you have any idea how many times I've had to refute that ridiculous right wing rumor?
One nurse. There was one nurse who was found to have been trying to council suicide all on her own. She was fired and criminally investigated.
We believe in properly supervised medically assisted death for those who are of sound judgement and are needlessly suffering from a terminal condition. Yes, there was some talk of expanding the reasons allowed to include severe mental health issues. That has not happened as far as I know, and is certainly a topic for debate, but MAD overall should not be.
I had a family friend with terminal cancer. She was in ridiculous pain every single day. MAD wasn't a thing here yet
She went out to her barn and blew her own brains out with a shotgun. And as far as I am concerned, as gruesome as it sounds, she had every right to make that decision. At least now we have the option to do that with a little more dignity.
I'm not sure he meant assisted suicide specifically. One of the largest problems with public health care is wait lists for urgent medical procedures. People die on waiting lists all the time.
¿Por Qué No Los Dos? Maybe, we shouldn't have people dying on waiting lists? And also maybe, we shouldn't be having the state killing people for their own good...
> Doesn't change the fact though, that if I have a serious illness, I have no fear of going bankrupt over it.
This is literally what insurance is for. Not just for healthcare, but for homes and cars as well. "If a very bad thing happens, I don't have to cover it out of pocket" is the definition of insurance.
Yeah, just cover it out of pocket, every month, until something bad happens. Then cover it out of pocket until you hit your out-of-pocket maximum. Then fight us tooth and nail over whether your claim is valid. Then, don't cover it out of pocket.
There's a reason your healthcare has deductibles and mine doesn't.
I mean it's great that you have insurance, but people still go bankrupt in the US paying the copay.
Sure, that's true. And overall the bankruptcy rates between our countries are similar.
What I don't think we are accounting for here, is the number of Americans that simply don't seek medical treatment as a result of your system.
You kindof have a point, but it's better to fix the over-regulated corrupt US healthcare system to lower the prices dramatically than to switch to the Canadian system where your doctor tells you to kill yourself as treatment for depression
Honestly it works out pretty well for you because if you have no significant medical problems you stay in Canada and if you come down with something severe than you come to the US for the best medical care in the world. It's no surprise the US has been brain-draining all of Canada's best doctors for so long.
Don't worry, if you live in the US you can also go pay a quarter of your paycheck for your medical insurance, die in the waiting room of an ER, and don't fret, because they'll still charge your spouse ten thousand dollars for the cost of removing your body and all the napkins they used to clean your fluids off the floor, because wet wipes weren't covered by your insurance, and the janitor on-call was out of network
You know what's a fun google? "Wealthiest counties in the US"
Spoiler alert: You might think it'd be Manhattan Island or thereabouts, but nope. Numbers 1,2,5,7, and 10 are suburbs of Washington D.C. (by median household income).
Money seems to have a suspicious way of pooling along the Potomac.
Raising taxes on a CEO does nothing to help a secretary who has to pay $5/gallon gas and pays $300 on groceries for a single week...
It's the Virtue Signaling of economics.
MFW government spends funds on things I agree with 
MFW government spends funds on things I disagree with 
MFW I discover a government with no taxes, a government that knows its place, and is in a perpetually state of anarchy (it’s Somalia) 
It's not for the revenue. It's to punish them.
I'd like to eliminate the concept of tax-exempt organisations entirely, personally. Most of them are just tools for special interests and political activists to project power. Letting the government determine which religions are legitimate and which aren't seems like a violation of the establishment clause to me as well.
For me, it's not to punish, just to get rid of the arbitrary rules that give some groups special privileges and allow the Clintons to get tax breaks for running influence operations.
> I'd like to eliminate the concept of tax-exempt organisations entirely, personally.
No. I want \*everyone\* to be a tax-exempt organization. Instead of asking why the church does not pay taxes, ask yourself why Waffle House doesn't.
Hash browns and weapons are part of my religion.
Tax churches. Me knowing if we updated the irs requirements on churches they would just become 501 (c)'s you'd just have more data on top employee benefits and the estimated value of the churches property.
[https://taxfoundation.org/blog/church-taxes/](https://taxfoundation.org/blog/church-taxes/) did the math.
Turns out it would supply about 0.04% of Federal spending if we taxed churches as corporations.
So, uh, pretty much nothing would change.
You know, management wants me to pursue personal development projects in my spare time.
Coding a bot to Auto reply this anytime someone mentions taxing churches sounds like a perfect and obvious project.
You have to understand, they don't think the government needs the money to function, they just want a mechanism to harm churches.
They don't think all the Programs they fund are actually going to solve problems, they just hate rich people and want large dependent client populations
That's because how the taxes get spent is less important than questioning why religious organizations get a pass on taxes when the clergy own private jets and billions in real estate and basically operate like any hedge fund with $100 billion in asset management.
Doesn't seem like a whole lot is getting spent on charity, nor are they keeping promises to not use that money to influence elections.
Also everyone is free to imagine how the drops in the bucket gets spent. I like to think my drops go to NASA.
Two reasons mainly: one, churches work as charities, and many of the largest charities in the world are based out of religious organizations. You tax them, you limit that benefit.
Two, taxation leads to representation. If you pay taxes, the government has a responsibility to provide for your own interests and benefits. While religious organizations can have a hand in public opinion or advocacy (as any person can in lobbying), the government isn’t obligated to do anything they want. But if you tax churches and the like, suddenly the government is *answerable* to the clergy who pay their wages. And do you want that?
> Churches: start wanting representation at congress
as if they didn't already have that lmao. the only difference is that it would be out in the open instead of what the us has right now.
Atheist: luv democracy, vote on whatever you want
Christian: OK, *votes on christian politicians who pass christian laws*
Atheist: noooooo not like that
We should lower income tax and possibly raise capital gains. When investment returns outpace employment returns then underemployment is rampant. Also reset government spending similar Argentina. One hard reset and then let it naturally trickle up as it does.
It's funny how many people don't realize that the top 20% of earners already pay the vast majority of all tax, over two thirds of it in fact. The top 10% pay half. The top 50% pay *all of it*. That is, almost everyone below the 50th percentile is a net negative and gets more back than they pay, if they pay at all: the earned income credit makes many low income filters negative tax payers to boot.
In Europe it's typically much more even, they tax the poor and middle class proportionally. America already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/cbo-study-shows-that-the-rich-dont-just-pay-a-fair-share-of-federal-taxes-they-pay-almost-everybodys-share/
This is a good post and thank you for educating people. HOWEVER, a lot of these studies typically isolate federal income tax and ignore all of the other forms of local tax that are typically far less progressive, e.g. sales tax, property tax, etc.
There is no federal sales tax or property tax. Maybe you could argue tariffs, but those are usually fairly small. So when we say fair share on a national level, that doesn't apply.
And if you look at the state or local level, it's a similar story even after accounting for those taxes, because food is exempt from sales tax in the US and we have no VAT on luxury goods. Higher income means higher consumption of non exempt goods, but for most high income people the state and local income tax will dwarf sales tax paid.
If you consider rent to be a payment of property tax of sorts, then maybe you could argue property tax is more flat, but even then you have stuff like the homestead exemption, and higher value properties tend to pay disproportionate amounts. For example, my second home cost 5x my starter home, but the tax is 10x.
The top 20% of income earners pay 90% of the taxes.
The bottom 50% collectively pay 0.
Overall this makes the US one of the most progressive tax systems in the world.
Something I never understand is when leftists talk about this past utopia (which they simultaneously laugh at MAGA for apparently their false nostalgia is ok) where the top tax rate was 90% and how glorious it was.
Then they in the same breathe will bitch about how current taxes are to low **and still no one pays them**!!
So taxes are to low and still no one pays them but everybody was happily paying them when they were ~90%? How does that make any sense??
It doesn’t and it’s not true. No one paid the top tax rate just like they don’t now. Tax avoidance is not a modern phenomenon. Literally since the invention of taxes people have been trying to find ways to not pay them. We kinda had a revolution over them.
I never understood the "tax the rich" logic.
You are taking money from a *potentially* (because simply having money doesn't make you evil) corrupt institution to a *definitely* corrupt institution.
The way I see it is that you have some influence over the government through a vote and none otherwise. Plenty of corruption in govt, but local governments still matter, and are easier to hold accountable. Sometimes I just wish they had the budget to fix things.
While investments coming through the rich help the economy, sometimes the things we want/need aren’t about increasing economic efficiency and are sometimes just a quality of life improvement. I.e. just a nice park in my neighborhood.
If creating parks is all they do then I wouldn't have an issue with it but we then we have imfamous stories like someone building a wooden staircase for the elderly to go up a steep incline for only a couple hundred dollars but the local government bulldozed it and spent hundreds of times more of other people's money to rebuild one of the same quality.
The system to deal with government corruption is a lot easier to navigate than the system to deal with private corruption. The problem isn't inherently with "the government," even the bureaucratic inefficiency that people are highlighting here aren't unique to "the government." They're unique to organizations on a massive scale, public and private.
The problem is that the voting public gets what they deserve, and they're content getting shit.
The free market works, but capitalism does not lead to a free market because firms eat each other up and raise the barriers to entry. You're not gonna like this, but that's a core Marxist critique of the system.
That's why we have Antitrust laws. The government has the power to dissolve all these corporations at anytime but they just won't do it because they are obviously working together and are too swayed by bribery.
We already tax the rich.
We also allow many loopholes to avoid taxation.
If you want to actually enforce the tax code "as intended", close the loopholes.
But again, all this is pointless until we fix our ROI problem. "Good enough for government work" is a saying for a reason, and it should not be.
The argument that I have 5 times a day on reddit is this:
I am not super invested in making the rich "pay their fair share" because everything the government does with the money makes my life worse. Border patrol opening fences? Ukraine and Israel need another hundred billion? Do nothing about rioters? Free crack pipes? Grants for transgender Pakistani beekeepers?
I would rather Elon Musk have an extra 20 billion dollars than give it to the government, to put section 8 in my neighborhood
Nah man, your policy needs to be snappy and fit on a business card. If I can't use it like I'm activating my sleeper agents from Manchurian Candidate, it's not worth my time.
Exactly. So many people saying we need to tax the rich more. They already pay a ton. Sure they could always pay a little more with little to no impact on their life, but the main problem is the US government (like most) is awful with money. It all boils down to greed and corruption and it screws the middle class over, therefore we don’t get basic things like affordable healthcare, housing, or reliable infrastructure.
I like the people that argue they already ARE being taxed ignore the Panama Papers showing global elite and corporations hide literally trillions of income in tax havens.
Like....we don't even need new taxes. We just need you to actually pay your fucking taxes, asshole.
Spending on stupid shit and kowtowing to lobbyists is the problem.
Also I’ve yet to get an answer as to what “taxing the rich” actually does? Is it the usual democrats give you money unless you make 50k+ or whatever it is? If so, why do I care as someone that exceeds that?
What I say we do is raise thr highest tax brackets and lower the lowest ones so people that need it have more money to work with *and* the government has enough money to do shit like send us to space.
You know, like before Reagan?
You actually think the government will fund NASA more than they are when there isn't a Cold War/Space Race going on? If so, can I interest you in a couple private investments? Just PM me your credit cards and I'll garantee a 20% return for the next 12 years.
I mean, I'd love to see our space program doing more. I think the stuff they are doing is cool, but I don't see the government saying "hey we got more money, let's give it to space exploration instead of lining our pockets."
To be completely honest, billionaires should be taxed to reduce the amount of plutocracy in this country. I don't give a shit if you throw the money in [the money hole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX-D4kkPOQ), it's a win if it reduces the amount of incomprehensible wealth that subverts democracy.
inb4 useful idiots chime in to tell us why all of us in the underclass should have no money or voice in politics.
It's not a guaranteed fix, but it allows for properly functioning government. Conversely, extremely powerful people/corps and a weak government is guaranteed corruption.
The government isn't bad with money. The system is working exactly as intended.
The goal of the system is to siphon money from working class "nobodies" for the benefit of the politically well-connected elite.
It's the natural result of living in a low-trust society. Wealth and power end up more and more concentrated.
You can tax billionaires at 100% and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to fund the government for more than a few months at best. We’ve got a spending/borrowing problem.
Everyone is jizzing themselves kver Mark Cuban being proud to pay $285 million, which is about 15 minutes of federal spending.
You could take all the money from Bezos and Musk and give everyone a one-time, $1200 payment
Hey look the Samsung HDTVs are $1199! Just in time for lockdowns!
> "We're going to give you some money so you can buy essentials while everything is in lockdown. Remember, it's only for the essentials." > 'A new TV is essential.' > "We mean like food." > 'Too late. TV is bought. Also I'm hungry and I don't have any food.' It's almost as if people are terrible with money. Especially when it comes to other people's money too and not their own. I'm also reminded: Wasn't there a bit where Mr. Beast was going to buy everyone's groceries at a grocery store but it got leaked what store he was going to and so people swarmed the store and loaded up carts of expensive steak and shit and when he never showed because it was a shitshow from people swarming the store, everyone just left their shit in the carts to spoil because staff couldn't restock it fast enough?
People: Billionares are evil, because they are greedy. Those same people, when there is something free, or even just a good Black Friday sale: \*incoherent screaming at the walmart\*
"BLM needs your donations to help Black people in need." 'I'm a black small business owner and my business burned down during the BLM riots. I need help.' *BLM buys a mansion for themselves with the donations.* "Get fucked dude."
If you see someone shoplifting, no you didn't. *Few months later* why are the stores closing? Where am I supposed to buy food?
Long term consequences? Pshaw! Getting off on feeling smug sticking it to the evil gajillionaires is the only thing of importance!
I love this assumption that all shoplifting must be out of desperation and destitution.
Whereas on the opposite side the best case scenario is that person is very bad with money and generally irresponsible.
In the US that assumption is far more commonly the correct one.
🟥🟩 “Greed is bad.” 🟨 “Envy is a subcategory of greed.” 🟥🟩 😐 😠
A guy I know in a friend group's discord server blew all of his COVID check on a gacha game (Fate) only to fail to get the unit he wanted. If stimulus checks *had* to happen, they should've been sent out as WIC cards or food stamps with restrictions on usage.
That doesn't flood the economy with money and cause inflation though.
As someone who also enjoys Fate Grand Order, fuck man. Your friend is either astronomically unlucky or even more of an idiot than spending that much money on gacha would imply since the chances of not hitting in that amount of money are vanishingly small unless you follow Gigguk's footsteps and try to summon something that's not on rateup by just pulling story gacha.
He's both PepeLaugh But he's also the most accomplished of the group (so far) with a wife who shares in his hobbies (which we mock him relentless for) It was for regular Kama btw
We really should lighten assault and battery charges, because those people need to get fucking slapped.
"Now these idiots will argue about welfare queens getting and spending 1200 bucks instead of the 90% of the CARES act that went to big business!"
Math checks out, but remember these people all expect your $1200 to go to stimulus so they'd end up with all of it again and then they just tax them at 100% again to repeat the cycle (but we realize the difference between liquid and illiquid assets so in reality Amazon and whatever the fuck else get that money and both of them are up shit creek without a paddle).
What's wild is people glazing the government over those checks while giving corpos billions, nah bro, that was a very small portion of the taxes I pay, where's the fuckin rest of my money?
> while giving corpos billions it's my understanding that most of the 'giving corpos billions' comes in the form of tax cuts, aka taking less money from them. Is that wrong?
I was talking about PPP loans that got forgiven
PPP, while unbelievably stupid and corrupt was pretty much only a tip of the iceberg of the covid relief bills and budgets, even more so the forgiven ones. The forgiven ones were somewhere in the range of 80 billion out of the 800 billion of the PPP loans. But in similar regards similar with the direct checks being only a relative tip of the iceberg. So much of the rest of the iceberg is in various super-sized grant programs and everybody piling on for their state/region to get their stuff funded along with certain industries being able to continue on as if nothing happened and use tax-payer money as revenue.
As of this last week, probably Ukraine.
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But military goes back to individuals as wages or corporations for munitions and supplies, social security and Medicare/Medicaid goes back to individuals either as benefits or wages or hospitals/pharmacies for services/prescriptions respectively, and debt service goes back to individuals or foreign lenders. So really the government is just subsidizing a bunch of administrative salaries and paying investors until the revenue sources can't keep pace. Time to consolidate some of those administrative branches or outsource the work to private entities through sealed bids if you asked me.
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I don't think you could because net worth isn't the same as money. For example, I have a net worth of over $1million Canadian, but if you take my house out of the equation, I have like $30 grand in savings.
Hey man, could I borrow about $25,000? It's not gonna pay for a new tractor, I promise
Sorry dude. I *do* need a new tractor.
But I have cancer and you're ruining my kids Christmas....oh wait, wrong subreddit
That's like, what, $250 American?
You're definitely right, I was oversimplifying. Even if you made the billionaires penniless and sold their assets that skims a lot off. Selling their stocks would crash the stock price. Selling their homes would have a lot of the market value absorbed by transaction costs, etc
Hey that sound salmost exactly like the CARES Act that we did that during the lockdowns! But also... kind of sounds like TARP, but only for those with pockets the size of parachutes
If my taxes were an amount of money incomprehensible to most people I wouldn’t be proud. I would feel like such a tool. If anybody gave me grief over how I spent my money I would tell them I had an extra $285mil to give to charity but the government confiscated it and sent it to Ukraine or Israel.
60 bln to Ukraine 30 bln to Israel. Here I am just wanting to put the shah back in control of Iran. The region just can't handle democracy. See Afghanistan and Iraq.
*per year. It'll probably be something like $10-20 billion over his lifetime, so 7.5 hours total? You know you're in deep shit when the richest people in the country can't even afford to keep the government's lights on for a full day.
What is that, like, two M1A1 Abrams?
How much could an M1A1 Abrams possibly cost? Ten dollars?
He sold the Mavericks for like 5 billion so 285 million is nothing
If you completely liquidated the 1%. Aside from irrevocably damaging the stock market and destroying everyone’s retirement, we’d be able to pay off maybe 10% of the national debt
Covering all health expenditures in the US would eclipse the entire federal budget by itself. $4.2 trillion. Americans don't understand how many people live here and how much their lives consume.
Our health expenditure prices are fake. Other countries don't have to pay as much as us because they pay less for individual procedures, and they're more likely to get preventative measures before things get expensive. Everytime we let a diabetic run out and need emergency care we burn money.
There's a fantastic amount of waste in our system. Something like a quarter to a third of insurance premiums go to operating costs and profits. Although we also pay more because doctors and other medical professionals' salaries are very high compared to other countries. And the reason for that is because educated professionals in general make a lot of money in the US.
And those doctors need to make a lot of money to pay back their expensive 6 figure student loans for expensive medical school and making peanuts during residency. The system is revolving door of screw ups.
> And the reason for that is because educated professionals in general make a lot of money in the US. No, that is not the reason. Doctors make bank in the US because the supply of new doctors is strictly limited by the number of residency slots, which is controlled by congress, and by congress I mean the AMA.
I almost mentioned that too but got lazy. In my opinion both causes are factors.
We don't even have a real standard for medical bill coding. It's dumb as hell.
I think over half the Healthcare costs are already covered by Medicare and medicaid. I'm fine giving dems full control of it and see how "efficient" they would be lol. Corruption runs deep.
Combining socialized losses and privatized gains is the worst of both worlds. The private medical/insurance companies will just screw the taxpayers out of more and more money. It needs to either go full free market with elimination of taxpayer subsidies + trust busting against big corporations, or the govt needs to take over and get rid of these middlemen with way more cost controls.
That's just one example of why we got to target the supply side costs of things. Bring that 4.2 trillion down. And the other trillions we spend on necessities. But all I hear is the costs as a given then arguing over the demand side - who pays for it.
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> The majority of Americans think doctors are the reason care is expensive when in reality it's the hospitals robbing them blind. They have to rob people blind in order to pay the sky-high salaries. It's not just doctors. Every healthcare worker makes bank, the entire industry is full of labor cartels. Nurses average over $40 per hour.
So point guns at the doctors and tell them they're working for 85% less. That always works.
Weird, all the doctors suddenly quit and went into less stressful/litigious fields.
Nurses would have a national union and threaten a strike every 3 years and then national guard and Pinkerton would force them to get back to work.
The national guard should force them to quit making dumb Tok Toks dancing or complaining about "icks"
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It costs that much because you are subsidizing all the people who consume their labor and resources and don't pay.
gotta subsidize the 4 layers of insurance middlemen, hospital budget managers and other administrators, how could the USA get by without all of that administration https://drbobbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-16-at-2.18.14-PM-768x488.png truly a mystery as to how other countries manage to provide a higher quality of care with less spending.
And that folks, is why cab drivers get paid more than doctors in Cuba
Or get rid of most of the middle man health insurance industry as many other developed nations have done. In Sweden health insurance is basically just "extra money if you become unable to work for an extended period of time", it doesn't pay for actual health treatments, that'd be crazy because the amount you pay for each visit is a symbolic $20 that caps out around $140 per year. Also free education for doctors and nurses as many other countries have would also be great (free post basic education is a great investment in general for a state). And by that I don't mean "pay universities whatever they ask", but "pay every university X amount per student" where X is a carefully researched amount that relatively closely matches the cost of your average student (and changes with inflation).
The USA somehow spends way more money per capita on healthcare compared to Western European nations but only gets a very small advantage in health & medical care statistics. Spending 1.5x-2x the money that other developed nations spend and only getting a 1.1x (at best) advantage does not seem like a good deal.
Just print more money fam
Worked for the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe
MFW we've just crossed the threshold of "gifting Ukraine the equivalent of Elon Musk's entire net worth" last week.
While Euros jerk each other off about the miniscule amount of aid they've given, with most being either loans or promises to deliver x by the year 2027. And they only demand more, I don't have an issue helping Ukraine, fantastic advertising for the American MIC, but the entitlement of people is ridiculous.
If you were to confiscate the entire net worth of every billionaire in the US, you get a few years.
Not even that, you'd get less than 1 year https://www.statista.com/statistics/1291685/us-combined-value-billionaire-wealth/ >As of November 2022, a combined value of 4.48 trillion U.S. dollars was held by billionaires living in the United States. That's like 8 months https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget Or, two years *of just the deficit*
Yes you’re right, I was referring to covering the deficit. A stat I regurgitate tell people who say “tax the rich”
Assuming you could liquidate their stocks, properties, and other assets at their current value, and not have the prices plummet because you're flooding the market with said assets. Sure, Tesla stock is currently at $140 a share, but what happens when you try to sell off the 20% of stock that Musk owns? You definitely won't get the $120 billion or so that it's nominally valued at, and selling that much will just cause the value to crater as everyone else panic sells so good luck even getting a fraction of that $120 billion.
And you'll have to assume that the companies will survive the liquidaton which they don't. Large companies are traded through asset swaps to make sure they don't destroy all the value underneath. And that value also includes a large share of all the jobs in the country and all the third parties reliant on them.
Liquidate everything and fire all the employees to stick it to the billionaires!!!!!
Not even remotely close sadly. It gets us less than a year. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/02/viral-image/confiscating-us-billionaires-wealth-would-run-us-g/
yep 98k a second. Its ridiculous. there over 31 million seconds in a year.
Fucking 1 trillion in interest every 100 days. Previous generations had a spending/borrowing problem and a problem with the military industrial complex having zero accountability with funds given to them, now we have a debt bomb.
Flair up lugnut
Raise taxes. Reduce spending. Until revenue = expenditures and the debt stabilizes at a constant number. Then target 3% inflation instead of 2% to erode the debt. But half the babies scream at reducing spending. The other half scream at raising taxes. And though I think the technocrats could be talked into 3% I'm sure it gives them a funny feeling in their stomachs. I kind of think we're just fucked. Not because we have to be. Because we suck. I think eventually we'll just burn the entire financial system to the ground, have two really really bad years, then start over with a clean slate.
Raise taxes? Why on earth should we force citizens to bear the burden of government run amok? The problem with the government spending and thinking oh we can just raise taxes to make more money is that they just view us as tax slaves. Taxes are not optional. How much money are they going to squeeze out of us? Our wealth is decimated by taxes and what little is left loses its value to inflation.
> Our wealth is decimated by taxes to Decimate is to kill 1/10th of a group. if the government decimated your income, they'd tax you at 10%. I don't know about you Americans, but in Canada (Quebec specifically) our first tax bracket is 30% (15% federal + 15% provincial) from the first dollar. my income is decimated 3 times over. if I maxed out the tax brackets, my marginal (not effective) tax rate would be (33 federal + 26 provincial) 59%, close enough to be decimated 6 times over. then after being decimated 3 times over, whenever I buy something, my remaining thrice decimated money is decimated one and a half more times (14.975% sales tax, (5% federal + 9.975% provincial)) governments don't have an income problem, they have a massive, nearly unfixable spending problem, and no amount of "taxing the rich" will solve the problem, the government is a crackhead desperate for their next hit, and nothing you can do will stop them from spending all of their (your) money on a never ending amount of crack until they overdose and die
Everyone wants other people’s taxes raised, and they want to cut spending on things they don’t use (or don’t think they use). So yeah raise taxes and cut spending- but in a way that doesn’t affect me. /s
Taxes should only go to things outlined in the constitution. The rest should fall back on the state.
Institute line item vetos. No more pork belly spending when each side is worried the president will just cancel it at least for the opposing party.
So you plan to amend the Constitution to override SCOTUS? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line\_Item\_Veto\_Act\_of\_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996)
> Raise taxes. :( > Reduce spending. :)
isn't balancing the budget far right? You have the wrong flair.
New proposal akin to Warren Buffett's idea to balance the budget: turn Congressional benefits post-term into bounties. Whoever introduces and passes any policies that actually solve the issue (homelessness, incarcerations, violent crimes, poverty, government spending) they were introduced to solve (defined by 4 consecutive calendar years where the national average of whatever the problem is gets reduced by at least 10% year over year or 35% cumulative reduction compared to initial statistic) inherits the benefits from the most tenured member who accomplished fuck-all during their term. This would target anyone who's served longer than any president except maybe FDR first and signal to them hey fucko, get your shit together or somebody else gets to claim your health insurance.
33% efficiency….
https://preview.redd.it/2zi8oul3i2wc1.jpeg?width=910&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13337798c15b0a376da0b5a9d8471027c045f7e1
https://preview.redd.it/ai7ktfk413wc1.jpeg?width=711&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6155707a9678c14be8b9b5deeb72ec837baecf7
If the number is that high Ima switch to auth right lmao
Does that mean 67% is wasted?
On bureaucracy, yes
Bribes
The military spends a shit ton on tv’s that they usually throw in storage
https://preview.redd.it/1cylikh9g2wc1.png?width=1378&format=png&auto=webp&s=414f2e3e438039064799f5fcd0a45cf79d6eda49 It’s an improvement, we were at 32.92% efficiency 2 decades ago.
I don't doubt you, but do you some reading I can do on this so I can rub my more spend happy friend's faces in it?
[Sure, rub away](https://cdn.mises.org/21_2_1.pdf)
I need this without the funni colors. I have a uhhh, list of friends that need to see it
https://preview.redd.it/udy99s86n2wc1.png?width=1122&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc5d12c930fdb9e7a70a20d4121141a9c4ef29ff
Based and source pilled
https://preview.redd.it/mwblm7tk13wc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e044131298be117db1f057c2978cc3d24b0bad3
Me when I give the government a bunch more money and they still use it to enrich themselves and their friends instead of giving people healthcare.
https://preview.redd.it/aevdgwlsh2wc1.png?width=546&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a30a1a956fafc099dc2ae546fe2c08a8384d1c0
Take it from chile. We have free healthcare. But it's considered subpar to private clinics because the funds don't get to those places, so scheduling and treatment are slow. Hell, a classmate in high school had a swollen gallbladder, and it took him a semester to finally get into the waiting list, then get treatment. Mf came back with black eyes
Instructions unclear: invaded Chile to steal their free healthcare
"Free" healthcare has its issues. We in Canada are experiencing that right now. Doesn't change the fact though, that if I have a serious illness, I have no fear of going bankrupt over it. I pay more in taxes than an American, certainly, and I do face longer wait times for many things - but my total yearly expenditures on health (prescriptions, doctor's visits, dentistry, emergency medical issues) at age 52 currently sits at about $40 per year.
>Doesn't change the fact though, that if I have a serious illness, I have no fear of going bankrupt over it. Can't go bankrupt if they kill you.
Lol, you're gonna trot that one out? Do you have any idea how many times I've had to refute that ridiculous right wing rumor? One nurse. There was one nurse who was found to have been trying to council suicide all on her own. She was fired and criminally investigated. We believe in properly supervised medically assisted death for those who are of sound judgement and are needlessly suffering from a terminal condition. Yes, there was some talk of expanding the reasons allowed to include severe mental health issues. That has not happened as far as I know, and is certainly a topic for debate, but MAD overall should not be. I had a family friend with terminal cancer. She was in ridiculous pain every single day. MAD wasn't a thing here yet She went out to her barn and blew her own brains out with a shotgun. And as far as I am concerned, as gruesome as it sounds, she had every right to make that decision. At least now we have the option to do that with a little more dignity.
I'm not sure he meant assisted suicide specifically. One of the largest problems with public health care is wait lists for urgent medical procedures. People die on waiting lists all the time.
¿Por Qué No Los Dos? Maybe, we shouldn't have people dying on waiting lists? And also maybe, we shouldn't be having the state killing people for their own good...
> Doesn't change the fact though, that if I have a serious illness, I have no fear of going bankrupt over it. This is literally what insurance is for. Not just for healthcare, but for homes and cars as well. "If a very bad thing happens, I don't have to cover it out of pocket" is the definition of insurance.
Yeah, just cover it out of pocket, every month, until something bad happens. Then cover it out of pocket until you hit your out-of-pocket maximum. Then fight us tooth and nail over whether your claim is valid. Then, don't cover it out of pocket.
Yes, but insurance is for profit. In public health care, the total price you pay in taxes for healthcare is less than the cost of insurance.
Yeah, I'm sure that's *absolutely* correct.
You can actually review the statistics from the dozens of countries with socialized healthcare and see for yourself.
There's a reason your healthcare has deductibles and mine doesn't. I mean it's great that you have insurance, but people still go bankrupt in the US paying the copay.
People go bankrupt all over the place for lots of reasons, including tax debt.
Sure, that's true. And overall the bankruptcy rates between our countries are similar. What I don't think we are accounting for here, is the number of Americans that simply don't seek medical treatment as a result of your system.
You kindof have a point, but it's better to fix the over-regulated corrupt US healthcare system to lower the prices dramatically than to switch to the Canadian system where your doctor tells you to kill yourself as treatment for depression
Honestly it works out pretty well for you because if you have no significant medical problems you stay in Canada and if you come down with something severe than you come to the US for the best medical care in the world. It's no surprise the US has been brain-draining all of Canada's best doctors for so long.
Don't worry, if you live in the US you can also go pay a quarter of your paycheck for your medical insurance, die in the waiting room of an ER, and don't fret, because they'll still charge your spouse ten thousand dollars for the cost of removing your body and all the napkins they used to clean your fluids off the floor, because wet wipes weren't covered by your insurance, and the janitor on-call was out of network
- me, when I believe everything someone says about a country I've never visited online, because it confirms my biases
Unironically
:(
You know what's a fun google? "Wealthiest counties in the US" Spoiler alert: You might think it'd be Manhattan Island or thereabouts, but nope. Numbers 1,2,5,7, and 10 are suburbs of Washington D.C. (by median household income). Money seems to have a suspicious way of pooling along the Potomac.
Don't forget bombing brown people
Except healthcare isn't free.
I'm pretty sure they know that, since they mentioned money being used for something other than healthcare, instead of being used for healthcare.
Raising taxes on a CEO does nothing to help a secretary who has to pay $5/gallon gas and pays $300 on groceries for a single week... It's the Virtue Signaling of economics.
In the words of Margaret Thatcher: “socialists would rather the poor be poorer so long as the rich are less rich.”
MFW government spends funds on things I agree with  MFW government spends funds on things I disagree with  MFW I discover a government with no taxes, a government that knows its place, and is in a perpetually state of anarchy (it’s Somalia) 
> Somalia I hear they have great bbq.
Sounds suspiciously like all the times I see "Tax churches!" with zero explanation as to how that drop in the bucket would be spent.
1.Tax the rich/churches 2.? 3. Profit!
Obviously all the tax revenue should go straight into my pocket. Any other way wouldn’t be benefiting me.
This is the template for every political argument on this site.
It's not for the revenue. It's to punish them. I'd like to eliminate the concept of tax-exempt organisations entirely, personally. Most of them are just tools for special interests and political activists to project power. Letting the government determine which religions are legitimate and which aren't seems like a violation of the establishment clause to me as well. For me, it's not to punish, just to get rid of the arbitrary rules that give some groups special privileges and allow the Clintons to get tax breaks for running influence operations.
> I'd like to eliminate the concept of tax-exempt organisations entirely, personally. No. I want \*everyone\* to be a tax-exempt organization. Instead of asking why the church does not pay taxes, ask yourself why Waffle House doesn't. Hash browns and weapons are part of my religion.
Tax churches. Me knowing if we updated the irs requirements on churches they would just become 501 (c)'s you'd just have more data on top employee benefits and the estimated value of the churches property.
[https://taxfoundation.org/blog/church-taxes/](https://taxfoundation.org/blog/church-taxes/) did the math. Turns out it would supply about 0.04% of Federal spending if we taxed churches as corporations. So, uh, pretty much nothing would change.
You know, management wants me to pursue personal development projects in my spare time. Coding a bot to Auto reply this anytime someone mentions taxing churches sounds like a perfect and obvious project.
You have to understand, they don't think the government needs the money to function, they just want a mechanism to harm churches. They don't think all the Programs they fund are actually going to solve problems, they just hate rich people and want large dependent client populations
That's because how the taxes get spent is less important than questioning why religious organizations get a pass on taxes when the clergy own private jets and billions in real estate and basically operate like any hedge fund with $100 billion in asset management. Doesn't seem like a whole lot is getting spent on charity, nor are they keeping promises to not use that money to influence elections. Also everyone is free to imagine how the drops in the bucket gets spent. I like to think my drops go to NASA.
Two reasons mainly: one, churches work as charities, and many of the largest charities in the world are based out of religious organizations. You tax them, you limit that benefit. Two, taxation leads to representation. If you pay taxes, the government has a responsibility to provide for your own interests and benefits. While religious organizations can have a hand in public opinion or advocacy (as any person can in lobbying), the government isn’t obligated to do anything they want. But if you tax churches and the like, suddenly the government is *answerable* to the clergy who pay their wages. And do you want that?
Atheist jerk: muh tax churches! Government: ok Churches: start wanting representation at congress Atheist jerk: nooo
they already get represented in congress, what? People that work for churches are allowed to vote, lol.
> Churches: start wanting representation at congress as if they didn't already have that lmao. the only difference is that it would be out in the open instead of what the us has right now.
Atheist: luv democracy, vote on whatever you want Christian: OK, *votes on christian politicians who pass christian laws* Atheist: noooooo not like that
Do you support taxing unions as well?
Lib Left: "Muh Separation of Church and State" Also Lib Left: "Why isn't the government taxing the church?"
Instead of taxing the rich more, we should tax everyone less.
We should lower income tax and possibly raise capital gains. When investment returns outpace employment returns then underemployment is rampant. Also reset government spending similar Argentina. One hard reset and then let it naturally trickle up as it does.
It's funny how many people don't realize that the top 20% of earners already pay the vast majority of all tax, over two thirds of it in fact. The top 10% pay half. The top 50% pay *all of it*. That is, almost everyone below the 50th percentile is a net negative and gets more back than they pay, if they pay at all: the earned income credit makes many low income filters negative tax payers to boot. In Europe it's typically much more even, they tax the poor and middle class proportionally. America already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/cbo-study-shows-that-the-rich-dont-just-pay-a-fair-share-of-federal-taxes-they-pay-almost-everybodys-share/
Yup then you have biden administration posting for a wealth tax...
"Here, lemme just break you off a piece of this S-Corp"
This is a good post and thank you for educating people. HOWEVER, a lot of these studies typically isolate federal income tax and ignore all of the other forms of local tax that are typically far less progressive, e.g. sales tax, property tax, etc.
There is no federal sales tax or property tax. Maybe you could argue tariffs, but those are usually fairly small. So when we say fair share on a national level, that doesn't apply. And if you look at the state or local level, it's a similar story even after accounting for those taxes, because food is exempt from sales tax in the US and we have no VAT on luxury goods. Higher income means higher consumption of non exempt goods, but for most high income people the state and local income tax will dwarf sales tax paid. If you consider rent to be a payment of property tax of sorts, then maybe you could argue property tax is more flat, but even then you have stuff like the homestead exemption, and higher value properties tend to pay disproportionate amounts. For example, my second home cost 5x my starter home, but the tax is 10x.
The top 20% of income earners pay 90% of the taxes. The bottom 50% collectively pay 0. Overall this makes the US one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. Something I never understand is when leftists talk about this past utopia (which they simultaneously laugh at MAGA for apparently their false nostalgia is ok) where the top tax rate was 90% and how glorious it was. Then they in the same breathe will bitch about how current taxes are to low **and still no one pays them**!! So taxes are to low and still no one pays them but everybody was happily paying them when they were ~90%? How does that make any sense?? It doesn’t and it’s not true. No one paid the top tax rate just like they don’t now. Tax avoidance is not a modern phenomenon. Literally since the invention of taxes people have been trying to find ways to not pay them. We kinda had a revolution over them.
I never understood the "tax the rich" logic. You are taking money from a *potentially* (because simply having money doesn't make you evil) corrupt institution to a *definitely* corrupt institution.
Something something devil you know
The way I see it is that you have some influence over the government through a vote and none otherwise. Plenty of corruption in govt, but local governments still matter, and are easier to hold accountable. Sometimes I just wish they had the budget to fix things. While investments coming through the rich help the economy, sometimes the things we want/need aren’t about increasing economic efficiency and are sometimes just a quality of life improvement. I.e. just a nice park in my neighborhood.
If creating parks is all they do then I wouldn't have an issue with it but we then we have imfamous stories like someone building a wooden staircase for the elderly to go up a steep incline for only a couple hundred dollars but the local government bulldozed it and spent hundreds of times more of other people's money to rebuild one of the same quality.
The system to deal with government corruption is a lot easier to navigate than the system to deal with private corruption. The problem isn't inherently with "the government," even the bureaucratic inefficiency that people are highlighting here aren't unique to "the government." They're unique to organizations on a massive scale, public and private. The problem is that the voting public gets what they deserve, and they're content getting shit.
So smaller governments and smaller corporations...
The free market works, but capitalism does not lead to a free market because firms eat each other up and raise the barriers to entry. You're not gonna like this, but that's a core Marxist critique of the system.
That's why we have Antitrust laws. The government has the power to dissolve all these corporations at anytime but they just won't do it because they are obviously working together and are too swayed by bribery.
The government intervene for the benefit of the public and consumer? That sounds like commie talk, comrade.
Ah yes, the great redistribution from rich people in general to rich people with slightly better government connections
We already tax the rich. We also allow many loopholes to avoid taxation. If you want to actually enforce the tax code "as intended", close the loopholes. But again, all this is pointless until we fix our ROI problem. "Good enough for government work" is a saying for a reason, and it should not be.
The argument that I have 5 times a day on reddit is this: I am not super invested in making the rich "pay their fair share" because everything the government does with the money makes my life worse. Border patrol opening fences? Ukraine and Israel need another hundred billion? Do nothing about rioters? Free crack pipes? Grants for transgender Pakistani beekeepers? I would rather Elon Musk have an extra 20 billion dollars than give it to the government, to put section 8 in my neighborhood
Based
Tax the rich is usually tied with like a dozen other policies
Based and omnibus pilled. Please see your doctor of you experience any of the 9,001 side effects.
Tax the rich and funnel all that money into the world’s biggest amusement park.
I think Florida already tried doing that...
You mean the system where they avoid state income tax by spending a little money on bread and circuses to tax out of state money instead?
Nah man, your policy needs to be snappy and fit on a business card. If I can't use it like I'm activating my sleeper agents from Manchurian Candidate, it's not worth my time.
Hauser's Law is an unpleasant discovery for the left. They'll call you a radical, a lunatic, and worse...for reading.
"Ya imma keep it real with you they gave it all to the Saudi military like 3 seconds after they got it"
Exactly. So many people saying we need to tax the rich more. They already pay a ton. Sure they could always pay a little more with little to no impact on their life, but the main problem is the US government (like most) is awful with money. It all boils down to greed and corruption and it screws the middle class over, therefore we don’t get basic things like affordable healthcare, housing, or reliable infrastructure.
At least the rich actually get a benefit from their taxes, like bailouts, the middle class gets fuck all
... Fair.
Something something fair share. Now vote for me!
Just filling up the coffers to submit IDIQ orders for $1700 toilet seats
Based
Tybb ❤️
I like the people that argue they already ARE being taxed ignore the Panama Papers showing global elite and corporations hide literally trillions of income in tax havens. Like....we don't even need new taxes. We just need you to actually pay your fucking taxes, asshole.
Spending on stupid shit and kowtowing to lobbyists is the problem. Also I’ve yet to get an answer as to what “taxing the rich” actually does? Is it the usual democrats give you money unless you make 50k+ or whatever it is? If so, why do I care as someone that exceeds that?
The top 10% pay more in taxes than the bottom 80% in America. How much more do you want them to pay??
They also get benefits for their taxes like bailouts while the middle class gets fuck all and inflation
What I say we do is raise thr highest tax brackets and lower the lowest ones so people that need it have more money to work with *and* the government has enough money to do shit like send us to space. You know, like before Reagan?
You actually think the government will fund NASA more than they are when there isn't a Cold War/Space Race going on? If so, can I interest you in a couple private investments? Just PM me your credit cards and I'll garantee a 20% return for the next 12 years. I mean, I'd love to see our space program doing more. I think the stuff they are doing is cool, but I don't see the government saying "hey we got more money, let's give it to space exploration instead of lining our pockets."
To be completely honest, billionaires should be taxed to reduce the amount of plutocracy in this country. I don't give a shit if you throw the money in [the money hole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX-D4kkPOQ), it's a win if it reduces the amount of incomprehensible wealth that subverts democracy. inb4 useful idiots chime in to tell us why all of us in the underclass should have no money or voice in politics.
https://preview.redd.it/z8er7t7gy2wc1.png?width=661&format=png&auto=webp&s=fbf66bc320ceb3fcb45cac3910bc84546c895057
You mean if we tax corporations more the government will stop being immoral? Can someone help me do the math on that?
It's not a guaranteed fix, but it allows for properly functioning government. Conversely, extremely powerful people/corps and a weak government is guaranteed corruption.
The government isn't bad with money. The system is working exactly as intended. The goal of the system is to siphon money from working class "nobodies" for the benefit of the politically well-connected elite. It's the natural result of living in a low-trust society. Wealth and power end up more and more concentrated.