Taxation: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Wow, this is a strange tone. Usually the left attacks capital and holds up labor. In any case, the latter leads to the former. Stealing income is no different to stealing the equivalent amount in assets. $10 out of your pay is the same as $10 out of your savings account.

That's not true at all. Protection is actually quite cheap on the free market.

Police are not free. They have to be paid for somehow. At the moment they're paid out of taxes, which shifts the burden from the rich (where it should be/would be in a society that cared about liberty), to everyone, including the poor and middle class.

Landowners protecting their land is but one aspect of feudalism, and is a weak one at that. The crown provided the nobility with their land, and provided implicit protection. You can't color that minor aspect with the unrelated horrors of the system: state distribution of land and coercion upon the poor, among other things.

Again, that's assets, not income.[/QUOTE]

The point was that the op was saying the rich should pay more to protect their property, since they have more to lose.

The reason why they tax income and not assets is that taxing assets would make anything short of massive profits a death sentence for any business. It amounts to the same thing: they take your money, they just calculate what they take in a different way.

 

This is a good idea. The problem with the flat tax is that it will never fly politically. No sooner you pass it, the politicians demagogue the tax. The left will say "the rich are not paying their fair share!"

 

How does a software programmer use more infrastructure then a truck driver? Don't government workers benefit from tax purchased infrastructure more then any other type of employee? Don't they get the benefit of working in a posh marble building? What benefit do companies paying out millions in regulatory costs like pharma, get from the infrastructure? Isn't their contribution more valuable then that infrastructure, or at least their costs higher then what they get?

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Meanwhile they will block any attempts to change the most regressive government program in history, social security.

 

The issue is not what kind of revenue even small communities, just that they need enough revenue to support the services residents demand. A share of state personal income tax based on population can furnish that revenue as well as property tax without hurting the poor who happen to own a small home and can't afford the tax. Alabama has solved that problem for the aged by eliminating property tax on the elderly/disabled whose income is below a specific threshold and is reduced as their income goes up to a given point at which they pay the entire bill.

 

Progressive taxation is moral and it's smart.

 

Last I looked, software programmers and truck drivers were not rich. The fact is, rich people get value of the infrastructure in direct proportion to their income.

Government workers are there to furnish services to citizens. Granted, the government is employee bloated, but the purpose of the government labor pool is to perform the services of government.

 

Tell that to zuckerburg how do the use the same amount of infrastructure again? Does a welfare mother who uses food stamps, head start, high cost low performance public schools, project housing, and public transportation and an Obama phone and Medicaid and SSDI not using more of the infrastructure?

This is a BS claim made by the left to justify taking of property. Just admit it you want them to pay more simply because they make more. Just be honest, you can at least fall back on practicality arguments then

 

Most times inferstructure is paid for by the developer with the approval of local planners and taxes pay for upkeep. Up here they also charge by road frontage so the rich do pay more. Right now we chooseto live in the city with al the amenities or out a little further with less that cost less, wouldn't that change the mix and make local planning much more difficult.
I agree with most of what you said up top , I just can't make this work in my head.

 

All we hear about is people trying to get the US for the opertunity that can be had there. That dosn't mean everyone will get rich but some will, how about they return the favor before the take the money out of the country.

 

I call dodge on many of my questions, especially the infrastructure and who benefits from it more.

How did they make the money in the first place? By enriching people's lives unless they are politicians or their friends right? So why should they give more to politicians and their friends?

It is not an honest debate to say they are not paying their fair share, when the few at the top pay for the lion's share of government. It is honest to say, that is where we get the juice because that is where the squeezing is best. That is fair and honest, but to say they have to pay "fair share" more then other people because of their wealth is just punishment for success. If it is the same rate on taxes between different types of income that is a better argument IMO.

 

People at the top can re-invest and for the most part deduct that from the tax bill in one way or another but moving off shore to avoid taxes, dosn't show loyalty the country that made it possible. Raw Raw wave a flag, send people to war, complain about the poor but let me hide my money over here.

 

Money that is moved overseas was taxed when they got it. How much more do they owe then that? If you invest internationally, why would you do so in a jurisdiction that greatly limits your abilities? It is the government's fault, not the taxpayer. Government serves the taxpayer, not the other way around. Without taxing any of the money in the Caymans, they are becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world, would be much more so if they got rid of all their regressive tariffs, but that is island policy for you.

The right doesn't complain about the poor in that sense, we complain the policies enacted in their name that do not serve them and only make the problem worse. A job is the best solution to curing poverty. We complain when they are demagogued into voting for populist politicians looking to gain some power by pandering to them with economic solutions that will harm the country and reduce social mobility in the long run. People at the top give more to the poor then the rest of society combined, they are not all bad people, they dont hate the poor. Giving their money to the government will not solve the plight of the poor, trillions in War on Poverty Spending and we are right back where we started. Would have solved it just giving the cash away.

 

So let's just say I come to your country or I am born there and do something that makes me very well off, just saying.
The people doing this would understand it better than I but I will give it a stab.
I need to build a factory, I could build it anywhere, like some area where jobs are few and there by help some poor inside the country with jobs and take all the tax deduction that come with that. Or I could build a factory in some other country and use all the same deduction and save taxes that would be paid to your country.
If I do really well I could buy a couple of ships to move my good and register it somewhere that has lower taxes and regulation and employee wages
So the taxes were saved on all the money that went oversees, which would be fine if the country picked up taxes from the proffits, like the loyal guy that built his factory in the country. When you can tell us that there is no discount for investment overseas, I will buy you're arguement

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So let's just say I come to your country or I am born there and do something that makes me very well off, just saying.
The people doing this would understand it better than I but I will give it a stab.
I need to build a factory, I could build it anywhere, like some area where jobs are few and there by help some poor inside the country with jobs and take all the tax deduction that come with that. Or I could build a factory in some other country and use all the same deduction and save taxes that would be paid to your country.
If I do really well I could buy a couple of ships to move my good and register it somewhere that has lower taxes and regulation and employee wages
So the taxes were saved on all the money that went oversees, which would be fine if the country picked up taxes from the proffits, like the loyal guy that built his factory in the country. When you can tell us that there is no discount for investment overseas, I will buy you're arguement

 

Whose fault is it that they require so much in taxes? Do you believe you owe your government, or your fellow man? First loyalty?

(It is funny I argue this, because in real life I only buy American and Japanese goods for my business lol..very little from overseas, but the Japanese can fish, and have some real quality products I can't get a better substitute here. For me though it is more of a quality rather then a loyalty issue. At sea, discount made goods aren't worth the money paid for them).

 

Every person in the country was invited or they were native and share equally in what makes the country great or not. You just can't have a country with out working poor or lower middle class. It's tempting to look at these people like dead weight but really if you accept the fact they are here to stay, then you have to look to where the money has to come from. And then the first place to look is the guy thats getting away with something. You can look at some people getting extra food stamps or you can look at the guy that has a compay owned suite in Hong Kong and a company jet and takes his family on tax deductable holidays.
From a practable point a view, where do you get more money. 30,000 inforcement officers chasing food stamp fraud or changing a few loopholes. Nobody wants the rich to pay to many taxes, but they are taking advantage.

 

Excuse me, but do you know the difference between infrastructure and social programs?

When discussing infrastructure, there is no doubt that the rich use the "infrastructure" to a greater degree than does the poor.

 

In some states even in my lifetime the adjacent residents paid for paving the street next to their home. In the case of new developments the contractor does do the water and sewer lines, so you are correct there. But what I was talking about the rich using the infrastructure more than the poor, they drive more, they fly more, their investments use the highways more et al.

 

What many people simply will not accept, as you have, is that there will always be poor and rich and in between. If we started fresh today, with the lowest earning worker having a wage capable of supporting a family, we could expect within his generation a time will come when he will be considered below the poverty line. A poverty line is a statistical approach to wages and he who makes the least is below the line. No matter how you move the bottom, medium or high wage points, that will always be the case. There is no such thing as eliminating poverty because as we elevate the poor the poverty seems to catch up with them in short order.

Probably the best way to describe the situation is, prices will automatically adjust based on the wage levels of consumers, such that the lower paid have achieved no actual gain even with a raise in pay.

 

I agree, but we have now an independent source that values the property and then the city applies the mil rate to that, thereby making it somewhat progressive.
I just can't imagine a state or fed manager deciding on the needs or wants of a local community. A community that voted for the wrong party could get left out, we have enough of that now.

 

Sure but that's not a reason to leave them behind, we need to advance any idea that would allow them to move up the ladder, education, small business loans. Not a hand out but a hand up, some future to work for. But if the idea is to get rich from that hand up and move the money off shore and avoid taxes, it's a waisted effort.
I see in India, they have big farms too but they are building a small econimy with in the big one by encouraging small business to make smaller farm equipment so the small farm can produce and sell locally. It works fine in small areas and still dosn't stop the farmer or equipment company from growing and being really successful.

 

That is why I said personal income tax at the state level and municipalities getting a pro-rata share based on population, effectively revenue neutral. Property taxes in most places are regressive in that everyone pays the same millage per % of assessed value for home sites at a 10% owner occupied and a 20% commercial rate. A state wide progressive income tax written into the code with a given % for the state and the balance distributed to the counties and cities on a basis of population.

Feds do not know what the localities need and though states are closer, block grants based on population gives the towns the right to allocate funds as their citizens want, all within constitutional limits of course. Statutory rates specified for distribution puts the political decisions at the lowest level possible and seriously reduces regressive taxation like sales tax, property tax, or LVT.

 

There is never a reason to leave people behind. But statistically the population is broken down into quintiles and the 5th quintile will always be at the bottom no matter how many $$$ you give them as it becomes the new norm with each advance. Moving money overseas is a different story with different answers so lets leave that one alone for the moment.

India's economy is growing in leaps and bounds with an emerging middle class of more people than the total population of the US (300 million). You are right about small equipment for small farms, but there are also large co-op farms with shared heavy equipment which works well. When I lived in India the problem was not so much the production of food, but rather the employment of a larger part of the population furnishing labor, thus the old methods fit in very well as labor intensive work was the norm. That was 60 years ago and one would not recognize the progress without having knowledge of the old with which to compare. As they progressed from nothing to something an LVT was introduced which worked for a while but there were entire state sized areas with such low income people occupying the land to grow food not having money to pay the LVT. That was just one more situation where LVT could not be reasonably applied as proved by trying it.

 

The problem with changing anything as big as property tax, how it works and what it supports, as you know as fast as the change would come some would have tax lawyers and the like all over it to be able to buffalo the system before the administraters really understude how things work. It's not just making the tax more equitable but making all the rules and pitfalls would have to be figured out ahead of time.Who are you going to trust for all these details, you only have to look at your farm bill today, how meny congressmen and senators recieve money from that?

 

In the fifties we made jokes about the junk coming from Japan and then at some point their quality was there. We joked about this pony car coming from SK and now the make some of the best cars. What bugs me is high priced products like some clothes come from the same swet shop factorys as the Walmart junk. Don't get me wrong I buy shirts at Walmart, I refuse to buy the same shirt at Sears for 3 times the price

 

India had the LVT implemented? That's news to me and I doubt it. Perhaps you can help me out because I can't find anything on it.