That depends upon the capital assets of the enterprise. Borrowing costs money but the difference between enterprise and the federal government is that enterprise must budget the pay-down of debt if it borrows while the federal government only budgets the payment of the interest (and doesn't even really do that). As the interest payments on the ever increasing national debt increase it leaves less revenue for necessary spending which drives up the tax rates to fund the additional expenditures. Basically we're paying more while receiving less because of the interest on the ever expanding national debt.
Only if you want to engage in special pleading to pursue a fallacy of false Cause. Socialism already took us to the Moon and back. Capitalism is still discovering a profit motive.
The self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality. I don't have a problem with the natural right to property -- i.e., property in the fruits of one's labor. Property in land is not in that category, as it cannot exist naturally. It can only exist, has only ever existed, by government fiat. On what planet? Property in land is above all the legal entitlement to exclude others from it, not merely to use it yourself. That is very much the point. I understand them fine, as proved by my demolition of them. Locke was talking utter rubbish, as it is physically impossible to mix labor with land. That is just an indisputable fact of objective physical reality, so I would suggest it is rather you who are having trouble understanding Locke's (lack of) argument. Of course, I made no such confusion. You just made that up. So you agree that as property in land removes people's rights to liberty, it violates the Constitution as well as everyone's rights. Good. As above. I don't really care who the facts of objective physical reality that I have identified for you disagree with. Facts are stubborn things.
That is objectively false. Almost all US personal income tax is paid by mid- and high-income working people, not the wealthy. You are incorrectly assuming that "the wealthy" means, "those with high incomes." But that is factually incorrect. The measure of whether one is wealthy or not is their wealth, not their income. This error has been repeated so often it cannot possibly be accidental. They already get to make the laws, but WE pay everything. Why do you try to pretend they are not paying other taxes? Of course income tax is a tax on income, and if you have no income you pay no income tax. That does not mean you are paying no tax, despite the lies of scum like Mitt Romney. You have repeated that error dozens of times that I am aware of, despite being corrected on it dozens of times. No, the greedy, evil, privileged, parasitic wealthy pay almost no taxes. It is mid- and high-income working people that pay almost all taxes.
Socialism didn't take us to the moon and back. Taxation of capitalism took us to the moon and back and even then it was politically motivated and not scientifically motivated. Manned space flight in the 1960's was purely about political propaganda and we paid far more for the propaganda than the scientific knowledge that would have gained without manned space flight. We could have gained the same scientific knowledge for a fraction of the cost if we would have not spent all of the money necessary for manned space flight.
That is correct and we don't tax wealth, which is "assets minus liabilities" but instead tax income. While based upon the 2009 tax rates, that were increased in 2013, the tax chart below of revenue received by the federal government still remains accurate enough to show where the federal income tax revenues are coming from. The middle income tax brackets still provide the bulk of revenue for the federal government providing more than the top income tax bracket and all capital gains taxes collected combined. Working Americans, not super-wealthy investors, provide virtually all of the tax revenues to the federal government even when they're working Americans with relatively high incomes from their employment. This is reflected by out tax codes. If you're working then the highest tax rate you pay is 39.6% but if you're a super-wealthy investor, not working for a living but instead living off of the income from your investments, then you have a maximum tax rate of just 20%. Below are a couple of charts reflecting the disparity in taxation for "workers" that have earned income and "investors" that don't work at all and have unearned income. A study a couple of years ago established that the top 400 income households, with an average income of about $250 million per year, paid less than 18% in personal income taxes which is roughly the same as an upper middle income household with $90,000 in income for the year. We know that Mitt Romney, because he released his tax information, paid about 14% on over $22 million in income in 2011.
Once again my tax proposal with the Exemption and a flat tax rate above the exemption addresses all of our current problems by creating true "progressive taxation" to fully fund the government. Let us make one assumption where a 25% tax rate would fully fund the general expenditures and a $50,000 Exemption based upon median income so we can create the following example. Household income and effective tax rate: $50,0000 = 0% $60,000 = 4.17% $100,000 = 12.5% $150,000 = 16.7% $1,000,000 = 23.75% $22,000,000 = 24.94% (Mitt Romney) $250,000,000 = 24.995% (Top 400 income households in the US) A income tax can't be more progressive than this and none of the households are harmed financially by the tax burden. We can also note that working Americans have a lower tax burden than they do today so effectively this is a "tax cut" for over 99% of all Americans that actually work for a living. Yes, it does represent a slight tax rate increase of about 5% (20% to 25%) for wealthy investors in the top 1% of income households that have been historically under-taxed for decades but it isn't even a significant tax increase for them and they can certainly afford to pay their fair share in taxes.
socialism starts with a social contract. simply using the (other) Peoples' money is socialism. manned space flight was public policy, not a private business venture. it was "command economics" as that form of socialism, that took us to the Moon and back, last millennium. - - - Updated - - - Is it safe to say, that the one percent may not pay any income taxes, but only capital gains taxes?
The obvious complete lack of knowledge related to capitalism and socialism is apparent in this statement because virtually all of the statement is false. The personal income tax, corporate income tax, and the capital gains tax are all income taxes imposed to fund the general expenditures of the federal government. The FICA/Payroll/Self-employment tax is also an income tax used to fund Social Security and Medicare. This is why when "right-wing" social conservatives claim that low income households don't pay any "income taxes" they're lying. While 47% of income households don't pay the "personal income tax" they are paying the FICA/Payroll/Self-employment income tax that's equal to 15.3% of gross reported worker's income. My income tax proposal in this thread doesn't address the FICA/Payroll/Self-employment tax because it's unrelated to deficit spending and the national debt but I have addressed that "income tax" in other threads. Social Security and Medicare spending hasn't created even one dime of deficit spending nor has it ever contributed to the national debt.
Your tax rate is favorable to the rich and its not going to balance the budget since spending has to increase to help us return to the moon, among other things. The best way to balance the budget is to remove all the exemptions of the rich, and keep the tax rates the same as they are now. You lower the tax burden to 25 percent on the richest, presently its 40 percent and if the exemptions are removed that will be great since the rich will pay 40 percent of their income to us, instead of 0 percent with exemptions. The Federal income tax has 7 tax brackets: 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33%, 35%, and 39.6%. https://www.irs.com/articles/2015-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions
Not really. It is just bad management, like the US under the Articles of Confederation. The several States had the money.
It is why I am advocating solving simple poverty and the capital effects of capitalism's natural rate of unemployment, on at-will basis in our at-will employment States, and at the rock bottom cost of a form of minimum wage that simply clears our poverty guidelines.
Fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and fourteen dollar an hour unemployment compensation for being unemployed in an at-will employment State, solves for simple poverty and the capital effects of capitalism's natural rate of unemployment, and enables more Persons to pay more taxes.
We tax positive and negative estates every second of every day...they're called sales tax and excise tax. If we can do this for local governments we can also do it for the federal government. Only the smallest fraction of Americans don't have $10-$100 per year to help fund the federal government which they demand...
actually the law of supply and demand if allowed to operate would eliminate unemployment! capitalism's rate of unemployment is 0%
Higher labor costs for all US business equates to inflation and less competitiveness. Nothing is FREE! Society should not force stuff into private enterprise when it is rooted in politics and does not solve any problems...
False with what? You need an actual argument, not just propaganda and rhetoric. - - - Updated - - - just another canard by capitalists. quantitative easing hasn't created inflation. supply side economics can handle inflationary tendencies.
The sales tax is acknowledged as being one of the most regressive form of taxation because it imposes a much higher tax burden on the poor than on the wealthy. Few people actually believe that the poor should carry the highest tax burden in supporting our government. Even FairTax.org that advocated a consumption (sales) tax for funding the federal government acknowledged how wrong this was by including a "prebate" (refund of the tax in advance of spending) in it's proposal. A study a few years ago on state taxation found that WA, that has a high sale tax, imposed a tax burden on low income households 14-times greater than it imposed on the highest income households. Do you really believe that the low income household should pay a much, much, higher percentage of their income to fund the federal government when compared to the super-wealthy that have far more income than they could ever spend? The excise tax, in principle, is only imposed on non-essential items so the person/household is never required to pay an excise tax. This opinion is completely unsupported by statistical analysis. Once again using the MIT Living Wage Calculator that establishes the minimum-mandatory expenditures of the household I'll refer to Los Angeles County that arguably has a high cost of living but also has about 10 million people. http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06037 The cost of living before taxes for a single person is $26,127 or over $12.50/hr and for a family of three (two adults, one child) with both working is $61,789 or over $14.85/hr for both adults. If they're earning less than that, and statistically about 40% are, then they don't have even $10 that they can afford to send to the federal government in the form of a personal income tax. They don't have enough income to even fund their basic minimum-mandatory expenditures. BTW - A couple of years ago I read that the median hourly wage in the United States was only $10.54 per hour which is about equal to what a single person requires just to fund their minimum-mandatory expenditures.
While I wouldn't say that most companies have an incentive program for reducing the costs many do but remember that the incentive program itself costs money and there are also costs associated with making the changes necessary to save money. I've mentioned before that I identified a problem on the 767 production line at Boeing that saved the corporation $22 million over five years but it cost Boeing $5 million to make the changes (and I didn't receive a dime in incentive money). It literally required the Board of Directors to approve the change because of the costs of implementation. SS, SSI, and Medicare all reflect Congress addressing a symptom of a problem while ignoring the actual problem. In the 1930's Congress correctly identified a problem that about 1/2 of Americans, upon reaching the age where they were too old to work, had been unable to accumulate enough assets (wealth) to provide income when they were forced to retire from the workforce. Congress ignored the problem (a lack of personal assets) and instead addressed the symptom (a lack of income). The same problem of a lack of personal asset (wealth) accumulation persisted and in the 1960's Congress re-identified it because the "same" 1/2 of Americans couldn't afford private health insurance when they become too old to work and once again Congress ignored the problem. They created Medicare to provide the insurance as opposed to addressing the lack of asset (wealth) accumulation. By addressing the symptom, as opposed to the problem, the problem only becomes worse over time. It's like the brain tumor where we treat the pain, first with aspirin and then as the tumor gets worse with morphine, but while we've mitigated the pain eventually the patient dies from the brain tumor that wasn't treated. With Social Security, SSI, and Medicare we're addressing the symptoms so the costs of treatment keep going up because we never treated the problem of a lack of asset (wealth) accumulation when the person is working. That's why I've previously proposed "privatization" of Social Security but unlike Republican proposals mine was based upon the "minimum wage" and instead of simply replacing the "current benefits" my proposal increased the minimum benefits four-times when compared to what they are today. The problem is that it requires a 45 year transitional period (i.e. the working lifetime of the person) and it would cost between $40-$45 trillion (the same amount it's going to cost anyway) that would have to be funded by removing the cap on Social Security taxes and imposing the tax on all income, regardless of source. It also completely eliminated Medicare because the people would have enough assets to provide the income so they could afford to purchase health insurance when they retired. It also retained a safety net, 4-times greater than today, but because the vast majority of households would have the income necessary the safety net would be very small expenditure-wise. You mention taking Obamacare to the "lowest possible level" and with that I agree. Instead of the government involvement the health insurance should be funded directly by the employers. During my working career in aerospace I always had company group health insurance and it has the best benefits and lowest costs to the employee. I've proposed that all employers either provide group health insurance or contribute an amount per hour worked to a pool so that all employees could either use the group health insurance or draw from the pool to fund their own health insurance. This removes the government except in those cases where the people aren't a part of the fulltime workforce. Medicaid, which is locally administered by the States, would be the safety net to provide the health insurance for those that don't fall into the full-time work force. I don't know where the idea comes from that the states can't afford to fund their own expenditures and must rely on the federal government taxing the people of the state and then giving money back to the state. Why doesn't the state tax it's own people to fund it's expenditures as opposed to having the federal government tax the people of the state and then "refund" that taxation to the state in the form of federal subsidies. The taxes are coming from the same people. For example if we assumed that school funding at the state was coming exclusively from the property tax and it's 7% short of fully funding education, relying on the federal government to tax the people of the state to provide that funding, then the state could raise the property tax by 7% and refuse the federal funding. If all of the states do that then the federal funding for education disappears because the states would be taxing the people directly as opposed to having their hand out wanting federal funding. The taxes are coming from the same people so the claim that the people can't afford what they're already paying for is illogical.
if i may be allowed to address this specific paragraph, the congress of the 1930's could not solve for everyone having personal assets because that is impossible to do without a social scheme that redistributes wealth through paper money, that is not backed by a gold standard since you can't redistribute gold fairly to everyone. taxation is the only way to pragmatically redistribute wealth to everyone, there is no way you can visit the door of every American and find out why they are unable to have enough personal assets for retirement. not everyone can lead productive lives, and it is unfair to leave them behind. taxation is not treating a symptom, it is treating the problem.
of course thats cretin, anti-science, and 100% liberal. If you reward unproductive lives you encourage unproductive lives and the unproductive population grows rather than shrinks creating more and more problems. Have you ever heard of Charles Darwin? When will liberals adopt the modern concept of science??
