Give me a good reason why the rich should pay more taxes

It's still absolute wealth that matters. You don't care what someone else has relative, you care about how much is really in your own pocket, how much definitive wealth you have to spend. "Share" would only matter if the pie of wealth is static, but it's not, it keeps growing.

And Measured in real dollars? Yeah, no duh, even doing that, our economy is still close to tripling in size.

It's not economic inequality that matter, it's mobility, and that is is still quite alive in America.

 

They do pay payroll taxes on all of their income, while the rich only pay payroll for a small part of their income.

 

Because (*)(*)(*)(*) needs to get payed for and they are the ones with the cash.

 

stop calling FICA "payroll tax". Its social security. and I agree with you, FICA should be paid on all income, not just the first 106K.

 

stop calling FICA "payroll tax". Its social security. and I agree with you, FICA should be paid on all income, not just the first 106K.

 

They use a LOT more services than you do. Think about it.

 

No, the problem is that the govt is spending too much on (*)(*)(*)(*).

 

So the government violently extracts money from people so that it can then protect those same people? The one's from which it just extorted money?

I'd rather have a system of governance in which all people, including those in the government, were legally prohibited from initiating violence against the person or property of others. Under such a system of governance, taxes would be illegal and those attempting to collect them would be considered criminal.

 

Of course wealth inequality matters. That's one of the things that a market does. Poor people just get outbid on everything.

 

How about because a person should pay according to their income and the rich even though they pay the largest amount of taxes, their tax rate is small compared to their income. They control the greatest amount of wealth in this country. There tax rate is about half of what it was in the 1950's and 1960's and they can get further deductions that the average American can't. When his tax rate is lower than his secretary, there is something wrong there.

 

But the landowner doesn't do that. The producer that the landowner is demanding money from does. The landowner just pockets the producer's high bid in return for doing nothing.

Wrong again. The "collective authority" of the community typically just establishes some constraints on land use to make sure that nuisances are contained, that infrastructure can be planned and constructed, etc. But it is the market and the producer who is actually using the land who decide how it is used.

Don't worry too much about your inability to answer The Question. No one has ever been able to answer it, and no one ever will.

You incorrectly assume that individual landowners aren't the ones doing the zoning. In fact, landowners control zoning in effectively all jurisdictions, because there is just too much money to be made by owning land when it is rezoned for more productive use. Essentially all successful civic election campaigns are paid for by private landowners in return for zoning favors -- especially zoning restrictions on everyone else's land to drive up the value of their own.

Wrong again. Your source is not even making the appropriate comparison (i.e., over time, not between current income classes) to support your claim. Here's the proof that I am right and you are wrong:

http://www.quickanded.com/2010/02/effective-tax-rates-of-the-richest-400-americans.html

They pay a FAR lower rate on the only valid basis of comparison: ability to pay, which is by definition conferred by assets, not income.

And you'll be lying. Most of the assets of the rich consist of uncrystallized gains in asset value that have not only not been taxed twice, they have NEVER BEEN TAXED AT ALL.

More stupid, dishonest garbage.

 

Thanks for the link.

So let's get into that a bit. I'm just going to do some rough estimates here, so keep that in mind. Outlays for the 2012 US Federal Budget were 3.796 trillion dollars. 3.796 trillion divided by 365 comes out to 10 billion 400 million dollars. So that's how much for one day. Multiply that by 8 and you get 83 billion 200 million dollars. So if your source is correct that's how much you get from increasing taxes on the wealthy from Obama's plan. The deficit for 2012 was 1.327 trillion dollars. That means that from Obama's plan would reduce the deficit by 6.27 per cent just by requiring the wealthy to pay more. That's a pretty substantial chunk. Combine that with some other things and you cut a substantial part of the deficit.

I totally agree with you that 250k is not very rich. In fact it's not rich at all, and I think that the current tax rate on that type of income is unjust and counterproductive. That said, I don't agree that only spending cuts will solve the problem. To be more precise, you could cut the deficit by enough spending cuts, but you would create larger problems by doing so. Therefore there needs to be a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, and on that point, Obozo is quite right.

Really like that Obozo thing! Nice ring to it! LOL

 

To repay what they are taking from the community.

 

No, you're actually just lying.

No, you're just lying. That income is not taxed again. The NEW income, which you did not receive before and therefore was not taxed before, is taxed as it is received.

Stop lying.

 

Why is it when I post the above everybody ignores it like I'm on ignore?
It's the fair way to tax folks equally to insure they both expend the same percent on their incomes on both survival and taxes.

 

Those who make a million a year typically aren't doing it by productive labor but by rent seeking.

You mean, why would he copy Apple's Macintosh interface, which was copied from Xerox's interface? Maybe because he would prefer $200M/yr to $200K/yr, and he understands that the $800M/yr in taxes would be less than the value of the government-issued and -enforced copyright and patent monopolies that enable him to make $1G/yr rather than $200K/yr?

To make $200M/yr rather than $200K/yr, just like Gates.

Same reason, sunshine.

GET IT?

Ahem. Read the above over and over again until you understand it, and then apologize for stinking up the thread with your stupid, dishonest garbage.

Garbage. It is the injustice of the system that redistributes wealth from the productive to the greedy, privileged, parasitic rich that causes the social problems that government spending futilely tries to ameliorate. Eliminate the injustice, and the social problems go away, and so does the need for so much government spending.

But it would still not be the main problem.

 

The full value of what they take from the community would be enough -- i.e., about five times as much as they are currently paying.

True: taxing privilege is the solution -- except to the dishonesty and viciousness of those whose idea of argument is to accuse the opponents of injustice of envy for its beneficiaries.

 

Nope. That's not his plan.

Ah, no, actually, it really, really doesn't, and you are lying.

Flat false.

But the corporation's income is not your income. Therefore your income is not being taxed again. You are just lying.

Their "potential" income. Not their actual income. You continue to talk stupid, dishonest garbage.

 

Of course there is.

Rewards commensurate with contributions and penalties commensurate with depredations.

In the same arithmetic ratio.

No, you are lying about what he plainly wrote.

I agree that income tax is inherently unfair and should be abolished.

But how is that fair? Those who gain more from government and the community are then getting a better than fair deal, while those who get less are getting reamed.

 

You forgot the smiley.

 

You'd have to be stupid to think that everybody paying a fixed amount on taxes would be fair instead of going by percentage. I think graduated taxes are more fair than a flat tax rate, because the rich benefit more as a percentage of their income than average citizens do. People in the U.S. don't realize how much the rich actually make.

 

You are conflating one's right with the result of how they choose to exercise said right.

That said, supposing your assertion were logically correct (which it isn't, but let's have some fun with it, shall we?), you have yet to back your assertion with empirical evidence to support it (for example, do you have a percentage of robberies per income capita?). I know of no evidence that states otherwise. An officer at a mansion costs the same as an officer at a hovel, and I would also say that there is far less square footage of "mansions" then there are of hovels in the United States and less so of even more poor, undeveloped countries so there are, I would assume, more "hovels" to defend.

EDIT: oh, I almost forgot...