Taxation and Public Policy - oh just pay your damn taxes and quit whining

I thought last time was the last time???

I don't respond well to demands and I'm not here to answer you're baited questions. If you have some rebutal to any of the data I've posted just go ahead and post it for everyone to see. You don't need me to prove your point.

What's stopping you from stating your case if you already know the answer? Go ahead if you think that that whatever categories of wealth you are imagining negate all the data I've tried to provide in this thread.

Go for it! I'm actually looking forward to you trying to make your argument. Trying to bait me with questions you already think you know the answer to is lazy, dishonest and intellectually weak and you know it.

Go ahead. Why do catagories of wealth negate all the statistics and charts I've tried to provide? And I would suggest you have not been involved in rodeos but flea circuses.

You haven't done any of that. You've made allusions to catagories of wealth without explaining or defining your terms in any way.

Again, the floor is yours. Go ahead and explain why you think these categories are relevant to the discussion. What's stopping you?

More repetitive ad hominem with no value. No I don't care about your questions and I'm not interested in taking part in your style of posting on this forum but as I said you are free to make your case if you think it is important.

Which categories am I excluding? You seem to be unable to explain yourself. What abstract categories? What definitions of wealth? Why are the definitions I've already given you from reputable sources to be dismissed out of hand? It's not an internet dictionary, it's the on-line version of the Business Dictionary? Are you saying you know more than they do?

Again the floor is yours to coherently and logically explain your definitions. Nothing is stopping you from making a case.

What are LW Complex self serving placard slogans? What does that even mean? It sounds like something you made up to try and dismiss data you don't want to address or that you can't address.

At various times on this thread, I' ve presented data, statistics and charts if you follow the links from the Congressional Research Council, the National Taxpayers Union, The Commerce Dept., the Wall St. Journal, Oxfam, the World Equity Report, the Global Wealth Report, the World Economic Forum, the Department of Labour, the Congressional Budget Office, A research paper by Thomas Picketty et al, the IRS, the Chamber of Commerce and the US Census Bureau.

You dismiss all this out of hand and call it some kind of imaginary LW resentment complex and refuse to address any of it. None of it! Instead you throw out a bunch of ad hominem BS and keep repeating the same idiotic made up jargon that doesn't mean anything and adds nothing to the discussion and then you accuse me of deflection and not defending claims.

And what have you provided to back up your position? One report from a extreme, right--wing libertarian think tank fully funded by the Koch Brothers with a clear agenda to fight any kind of government regulation or taxation on anything. And you have been completely unable to defend your claim from that report that everyone is prospering in the US which is absolutely ludicrous when one actually looks at the real data.

So poorly written that it comes off as incoherent. I have explained upthread exactly what I mean by income inequality. You are free to rebut it in any way you please including introducing arbitrary categories if it pleases you.

No one is stopping you from making your claim about these categories so go for it. In fact, I insist.

God You're repetitive. You only need to say something once, you know. If you have something from the folks at Cato that you think disproves all the data I've posted then make your case in a coherent and intelligent way and back your claim up.

I've already told you that just saying household wealth has increased says nothing about the proportion of wealth each demographic of household receives. I've even provided you with a range of data and information on this but you refuse to even address it and instead throw out ad hominem bullshit and the same comical memes and demand answers to questions you claim to already know the answer to over and over again.

If you already know, spit it out and let everyone judge it on it's merits.

Why do you think you need a written record of any discussion with a leftist? This is a internet forum for people to express opinions. There is already a record when you post. Why are rightist opinions any less needing of some imaginary record than anyone else.

And why are you so important that anyone cares what you write in the first place?

Are you having some kind of weird courtroom fantasy delusion or something?

 

very nice but the problem i have with this analysis is that you basically infer that tax policy (marginal tax rates) is the only explanation of the rise in inequality and that it has also created big systemic (bubbles?). This is tunnel vision...

So based on your charts and analysis, seems you consider 60s golden years. Now let's compare 60s to today and let's not just look at marginal tax rates, which is the only difference of significance to you.

In 1960, there were 180 million Americans, there are 350 million today

In terms of demographics, country was much less diverse back then. In the 60s, 88% were white, now whites are 72%. Back in 60s, most immigrants came from Canada, Italy, Germany etc... in past decades? India, Mexico, Asia, latin america etc... Illegal immigration has exploded. Also, we need to look at age mix as-well. The % of over 65 today is twice or 3 times what it was in 60s, supporting an older population is expensive. The immigration problem has definitely contributed to a rise in inequality for a couple of simple reasons - 1. Most immigrants (especially illegals) come here searching for brighter economic future; i.e., they are poor. By coming in, they increase the lower income base and suppress wages. 2. These immigrants also make it harder for lower skilled Americans to find jobs. Now the problem is two fold - more poor coming in and these very same poor keeping American citizens from getting jobs they need.

Let's look at economic changes. Back then, manufacturing was booming and it was vital in employing blue collar workers who felt good about themselves, they were producing something. Globalist trade policies has decimated manufacturing jobs and the economy has transitioned to service sector. The problem here is that lower skilled Americans thrived on manufacturing jobs, which have been shipped abroad. The service sector jobs, in totality, require higher skills and America has looked at foreigners to fill in many of those jobs, keeping a large sector of Americans struggling to find jobs they can thrive on.

Was the internet up and running back then? dot.com boom came much later.. Economy has made drastic shifts and undergone drastic changes my friend, even the financial sector is completely different today.

So, to ignore these incredibly drastic changes in industry, trade, demographics and basically point to marginal tax rates as the magic that can fix inequality is a joke.

 

Yet another post from a poster who claimed a "massive transfer of the nation's wealth to the wealthiest individuals" in the U.S. and "a shrinking of overall prosperity" in the U.S. a) without telling us the definition of the highly abstract term "wealth" that was used to formulate the specific claim made, i.e. the method used to calculate wealth, what categories of wealth were included and excluded, despite my very easy to read, clear discussion of various categories of "wealth" and repeated requests; b) without telling us the definition of the highly abstract term "prosperity" that was used in the claim or even how it has "shrunk."

Studies compiled from government data prove that the poor and rich in the U.S. have most of the same things people want, the true "wealth" of the types people enjoy daily, and as government data compiled in the Cato report prove unequivocally, summarized in a list on page 6 of the linked Cato report, prosperity in the U.S. during the last 100 years has increased at a greater rate than at any other time in human history for common people.

"Wealth inequality" that results from proliferated innovations in a world-historical tech boom such as your cellphone, life-extending medications, all manner of computer tech, and 100 other things such as refrigeration, automobiles and electricity we take for granted, is a very good thing, not a social problem at all. It signals that a) we are willing to voluntarily trade abstract dollars for true wealth, things and services that enhance our lives greatly, and b) the amount of such voluntary exchanges, the amount of available abstract $$ for such transactions, is high and still increasing. People who disagree are free to forego all the things and services they willingly buy and hoard abstract $$ instead. Who makes that choice? Well certainly no one posting to this forum is making it.

This exposes the lie narrative on wealth inequality for what it is, a placard slogan, not a serious claim of fact. The gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex blasts these lies out constantly in efforts to generate fake resentment among voters, to enrich itself via more and more government growth and power, taxes, regulations at all our expense.

Remember folks, ALL the self-enriching, toxic, divisive Complex lie narratives on wealth, wealth inequality, prosperity, tax policy, gender, race, etc., are not designed to address or solve any real social problems or even advocate for realistic policy options, but designed to take more from YOU, the ordinary taxpayer of the non government-dependent private sector, for THEM, and to do so by force of government.

Are they fooling you?

 

7 reasons to worry about the middle class today:

Despite gains in national income over the past half-century, American households in the middle of the distribution have experienced very little income growth in recent decades:


Median household income has barely budged in recent decades
Median household income19701975198019851990199520002005201019672015$0$10,000$20,000$30,000$40,000$50,000$60,000$70,000Real 2016 dollars$0$70,000


Source: U.S. Census, Historical Income Tables, Table H-5: Race and Hispanic Origin of Householder--Households by Median and Mean Income: 1967 to 2016


The stagnant growth in median incomes is in stark contrast to the income trajectories of those at the very top of the income distribution. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the middle three household income quintiles experienced income growth rates of 28 percent from 1979 to 2014 in real terms. The top 20 percent – a group Richard Reeves refers to as “Dream Hoarders” – saw their incomes grow by 95 percent over the same period. Taxes and transfers reduce the level of inequality, but have done little to affect the trend. Further, the redistributive role of such policies is weaker in the U.S. than in other advanced economies, who have experienced smaller increases in income inequality than the U.S.

Trends in wealth inequality are even more dramatic than for income. One widely cited estimate from Emmanuel Saez and Gabrial Zucman suggests that the top 0.1 percent wealth share increased from 7 percent in 1978 to 22 percent in 2012.

Not only has income growth slowed in recent decades, measures of overall welfare that include the value of rising life expectancy and the impact of growing consumption inequality have slowed as well – at least since 2007 – as shown by our colleagues Ben Bernanke and Peter Olson in the first chapter of Brookings Big Ideas for America, edited by Michael O’Hanlon.

[paste:font size="5"]2. EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES ARE DECLINING


https://www.brookings.edu/blog/soci...ons-to-worry-about-the-american-middle-class/

Examining the “World Inequality Report” — published Thursday by the creators of the World Wealth and Income Database, who include the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez — it is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology. The report finds that the richest 1 percent of humanity reaped 27 percent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 percent, by contrast, got only 12 percent.

Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable. In China, 15 percent of the income growth since 1980 flowed to the richest 1 percent of Chinese while 13 percent flowed to the bottom half. Even in egalitarian, social-democratic Europe, 1-percenters got 18 percent of the growth in the period. The bottom half got 14 percent. And among the more unequal regions of the world — the United States, say, or Russia — income disparities are reaching levels not before seen in modern history: The bottom half of Americans captured only 3 percent of total growth since 1980. The income of the bottom half of Russians actually shrank.

But again, policy matters. Say countries decide to push vigorously back against inequality — as vigorously as the European Union pushed in the 36 years after 1980. In that case, the world’s income gap would even shrink a little: by 2050, the bottom half would get 13 percent of the pie; the share of the top 1 percent would shrink to 19 percent of the world’s income.

What we probably don’t want the world to do is follow the trajectory of inequality in the United States. If it were to do that, by 2050 the few at the top of the pyramid would be drawing 28 percent of global income. The bottom half would get only about 6 percent.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/business/world-inequality.html

The labor share of most advanced economies has declined since the 1980s, and this decline has been associated with an increase in income inequality. This post finds that, indeed, inequality increased more in advanced economies that experienced a larger decline in the labor share.1

Measuring Labor Share
The labor share is the share of gross domestic product (GDP) that is paid as compensation in the form of wages, salaries and other benefits (such as pensions and insurance), and it is informative about the distribution of income between labor and capital.



Technological progress promotes economic growth, but as the findings above suggest, it can also reduce the welfare of a large part of the working population and eventually have a negative effect on economic growth.

An important role for policymakers would be to smooth the transition when more jobs are taken over by the de-routinization process. At the end of the day, technology should relieve people from performing repetitive tasks and increase the utility of our everyday lives.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/july/income-inequality-affected-labor-share

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2017/04/04/world-economic-outlook-april-2017

Back in 1980, the bottom 50 percent of wage-earners in the United States earned about 21 percent of all income in the country — nearly twice as much as the share of income (11 percent) earned by the top 1 percent of Americans.

But today, according to a massive new study on global inequality, those numbers have nearly reversed: The bottom 50 percent take in only 13 percent of the income pie, while the top 1 percent grab over 20 percent of the country's income.

The 2018 World Inequality Report, written by a team of leading international economists including Thomas Piketty of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” fame, finds that the rise of income inequality in the United States is “largely due to massive educational inequalities, combined with a tax system that grew less progressive despite a surge in top labor compensation since the 1980s, and in top capital incomes in the 2000s.”

Since the 1970s the price of higher education has skyrocketed, putting the price of tuition out of reach for many low-income students. Over the same time, the tax code became more generous to the wealthiest Americans — the top marginal income-tax rate fell from 70 percent in 1980 to 39.6 percent in 2017, taxes on capital gains fell by more than half from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, and the estate tax has fallen as well.

Those changes have made it easier for high-income Americans to grab more and more of the income pie in any given year.

From 1980 to 2014, for instance, the bottom 20 percent of earners in the United States saw their after-tax income rise by just 4 percent, according to the World Inequality Report. By contrast, the top 10 percent saw their post-tax income more than double over the same period.

 

Okay, which is relevant why? There should be 170 million more consumers today then, right?

Not according to the Pew Research Centre which says that the US will need close to 800,000 workers in the next few decades:

"Further studies show that the importance of this population of workers will only grow in coming years. For example, in 2014, unauthorized immigrants made up 24 percent of maids and cleaners, an occupation expected to need 112,000 more workers by 2024. In construction, the number of additional laborers needed is estimated at close to 150,000. And while only 4 percent of personal care and home health aides are undocumented, the U.S. will soon require more than 800,000 people to fill the jobs necessary to take care of retiring baby boomers."

Yeah, but there is no reason that with investment in research and innovation we could not replace those manufacturing jobs with jobs in a green economy and high technology. There was a large public investment in research and development back in the 50's and 60's. There is all kinds of opportunity for investment in developing new technology's and moving the economy away from fossil fuels. This is being completely undermined by lobbyists and entrenched interests that are actively hindering any effort to move to a new economy:

"The decline in federal support for higher education has corresponded with tuition hikes at public colleges and universities; those hikes make it harder for low-income students to complete their studies and enjoy the “college premium,” the increase in pay that accrues to university graduates. In the 1970s, Pell grants for low-income students covered nearly 80 percent of the costs at a public university; by 2013-14, they covered just 31 percent. Federal research spending is once again roughly at pre-Eisenhower levels.

Lower taxes on the wealthy are irrelevant to solving these problems, and may worsen them. The decline in the marginal tax rate and in the top capital gains tax rate over the past six decades has not, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, correlated with economic growth. Instead, it is “associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.” Most economists discredit the notion that lower taxes will lead to greater growth and employment. Sweden, with a top marginal tax rate of 56.4 percent, experienced a GDP growth rate of 3.2 percent in 2016, more than double the U.S. rate of 1.5 percent."

DAVID GOLDFIELDis the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and the author of The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good.

Okay, my original point was that a marginal tax rate of 92% didn't tank the economy and in fact produced the greatest economic boom and era of economic equality in human history. Are you saying we cannot achieve this again because of changes in industry, trade and demographics?

Don't forget that with increasing automation jobs in the future are going to be nothing like they are even today. How are we going to adapt? Do we continue to view free market fundamentalism and neo-liberal policies as the natural order of things and obscene levels of inequality as the natural order of things or do we adapt and evolve more efficient ways to enhance productivity and a balanced, sustainable economy?

 

Hey, I support Trump but I also agree with a high income tax rate on high income earners BUT we need to continue with Trumps tax plan first. First we need to eliminate all the tax deductions that mainly benefit the highest income earners and raise the standard tax deduction to releif the poorer who rarely if ever benefit much from itemized deductions. The last change in the tax was good but we need more of that.

Then we can raise the tax on the highest earners, greater than 500k and also tax 1mil earners even higher.

 

As posted in another thread recently, LW Brookings, a source cited already in the thread, claims that poor teens in the U.S. need do only -three- things to have a 75% chance of joining the middle class (~50k income), and a higher than 90% chance of escaping poverty.

1. Don't drop out of HS (free HS with a free bus that takes you there complete with free meals)
2. Don't have children until marriage/they can be afforded (free birth control at the health clinic)
3. Work a fulltime job and keep working fulltime. (getting a job in the U.S. has never been easier than during the Trump Administration)

Doing
4. Avoid alcohol and drugs including nicotine.
5. Learn a marketable skill using one of MANY inexpensive paths to doing so.

Will not only guarantee middle class, but true prosperity.

If it's THAT easy to join the middle class, and two of the factors are incredibly easy to do, the third only slightly harder, then the condition of the middle class in the U.S. must be pretty damn good, not shrinking.

Never in any country at any time in history has it been so easy to start out poor and join the middle class so rapidly. That's why millions of people the world over are trying to emigrate here. If things were as bad as self-enriching gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex hacks claim towards their own benefit at YOUR expense, all those millions of people wouldn't be trying so desperately to gain U.S. citizenship.