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Sort of a loaded debate. Taxes are currently the lowest they've been in generations. I'm for a tax increase to 90's levels for those in the top 1%. I'm also for a new tax bracket for the Romney's of the world because it's not really fair to tax someone making $250,000 a year the same percent as someone making $25,000,000 a year.
I am also for criminalizing tax evasions. Why is it okay for a millionaire to steel millions from the American people, but if someone living in poverty takes a wallet with over $500 they are felons and go to jail?
Taxes are currently the lowest they've been in generations.
Currently the lowest they've been in where? The taxes aren't the same in all countries. And in for example my neighbour countries like Denmark, the taxes there are higher than ever.
That is a brilliant (though perhaps unintended) point. You'll notice on issues like life expectancy, child mortality, health, and quality of life, nearly all of the high-tax Scandinavian and other European countries score the best by far in the world.
Apparently these high taxes in these countries have their rewards. Kinda throws the whole "no taxes no government" = somehow a better life under the bus.
I was just wondering why you thought this was a loaded debate - I mean, this is probably one of the biggest debates considering politics, or am I wrong?
But I agree with you on what you say. Free is not always the best.
I mean, take the hospital for instance. Since everything we do there is payed with taxes, the government tries to make our hospital visits at minimum.
Because they are the ones who are paying right?
I would rather pay my own bill, and then know I get the best of everything, than have the government pay it, and get .. the second best of everything. Do you understand what I mean?
You do realize that health care in places like america is generally pretty sucky compared to other countries with a single payer system right?
Unless you own the hospital, a hospital, especially one which is a business rather than a government service, will try their hardest to make your hospital visits at minimum, it is the nature of competition.
If the government is paying all public hospitals, then there is no need for competition.
Many many people chose the privat hospitals instead of the public ones, simply because there is no competition between the public hospitals. Because why compete if you get paid with or without the costumer?
That is why the privat hospitals are much better, because they compete, and they want their service to be the best you can get.
I wasn't aware of that the american hospitals weren't that great. But that wasn't really my point.
I was just wondering why you thought this was a loaded debate - I mean, this is probably one of the biggest debates considering politics, or am I wrong?
The debate is loaded because it's argued under the assumption, in general in the current political climate, that taxes are especially high now and that there has been some recent tax hike. Both assumptions are incorrect. I'm on this side because taxes should be as low as they can be whilst providing needed services. But, right now taxes should be raised on the top 1% to 90's levels and there should be made a new tax bracket for the extremely wealthy (a cut off of $250,000/ year is ridiculous when you have individuals making over a billion a year.)
So, low taxes, great. Lower taxes now? Bad idea. States are stretched to their limit budget wise and as a result it's jobs that are being cut, which only hurts the economy further.
I mean, take the hospital for instance. Since everything we do there is payed with taxes, the government tries to make our hospital visits at minimum.
No, most of what goes on in hospitals is paid for through people's health insurance. The only tab the government picks up is when people go to the hospital with a life or death injury or disease and have no means to pay for it.
What a universal healthcare system does and why it is so successful in other countries is 1. It ensures everyone is paying something. 2. That plus you're cutting out the various bureaucracies within insurance and providers that is profit based instead of health based means people actually pay less. 3. Because people without insurance can now see a doctor sooner (and are paying into it) more diseases are caught sooner saving both lives and money for everyone.
Really, it takes mental gymnastics to not see the benefit of a universal health system... but luckily this is not theoretical. We have proof of what does work and what does not. Our old system does not. The new one works well but not quite as good as a truly universal healthcare system.
It is a start though.
would rather pay my own bill, and then know I get the best of everything, than have the government pay it, and get .. the second best of everything. Do you understand what I mean?
Well, if it were the case that modern medicine were not astronomically expensive sure. Back when a doctor had a duffel bag with some penicillin and aspirin, if you were middle class you could afford to do that. The life expectancy was quite a bit shorter, but hey.
Today though, if you scrape your leg jumping into a body of water and happen to get a skin eating virus, you can't afford to treat it. If you get brain tumors you probably can't afford the brain surgery to get rid of the brain tumors, etc.
The idea that government is some floating magical thing in and of itself is wrong. It is us. You are paying for it the same as you pay insurance premiums. The only difference is through government it is not based on profit, and you have a say in how that healthcare is shaped through the representatives you vote for.
Taxes are currently the lowest they've been in generations. I'm for a tax increase to 90's levels for those in the top 1%.
This is why we need a flat tax rate, so people like you stop asking the government to raise taxes on someone else to pay for your stuff. If we were all taxed the same, then you might think twice about raising taxes.
Quit being greedy and keep your hands off of other people's cash.
I'm also for a new tax bracket for the Romney's of the world because it's not really fair to tax someone making $250,000 a year the same percent as someone making $25,000,000 a year.
Yeah, people being taxes and treated equally is not fair at all.
A person can work 40+ hours /week, and their job may be just as essential to society, yet taxing them at the rate of a millionaire would mean their death, while a millionaire who may or may not need to work at all, would not even notice it.
A flat tax is inherently a tax against the poor and middle class in far greater proportion than to the rich. It is not strictly a matter of numbers, it is a matter of means.
Philosophically even your idea is completely unfair and frankly would be destructive to any society.
In practice it is even worse though because the rich have the benefit of an enormous number of breaks that the poor and middle class often do not even know exist. If you were to implement a flat tax it would result in the poor and the middle class paying out of pocket for every benefit of the rich, while the rich have an actual tax rate of nearly zero.
You have those with the most paying nothing or next to nothing for the nicest roads, the most prompt attention from police and paramedics, for not every needing to have to join the military and risk their lives to pay for school, they get the best schools even if they choose public schools, thanks to the area they live in,
and they would pay for none of it while those struggling and working every hour of their life pay all of that for them.
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. A flat tax would be an epic disaster.
Again, everyone paying the same percentage is fair.
A person can work 40+ hours /week, and their job may be just as essential to society, yet taxing them at the rate of a millionaire would mean their death, while a millionaire who may or may not need to work at all, would not even notice it.
I am not asking for lower class workers to pay the same rate as millionaires, I'm not even for an income tax, I think we should base it off of sales taxes and consumption tax.
A flat tax is inherently a tax against the poor and middle class in far greater proportion than to the rich. It is not strictly a matter of numbers, it is a matter of means.
Philosophically even your idea is completely unfair and frankly would be destructive to any society.
If you taxed everyone the same rate, its not unfair at all. The rich pay more, seriously, the top 25% of America pays 90% of the taxes, that's not fair in the least.
In practice it is even worse though because the rich have the benefit of an enormous number of breaks that the poor and middle class often do not even know exist.
These aren't breaks, they are loopholes, these would not exist if we didn't have such a screwed up tax codes, the existing code needs to be scrapped completely because you cant tinker with because it is just so messy.
Simplify it and there are less loopholes.
If you were to implement a flat tax it would result in the poor and the middle class paying out of pocket for every benefit of the rich, while the rich have an actual tax rate of nearly zero.
Top 25% pay 90%, top 1% pays 30%. I'm not really one for just using pictures, but this is what the current situation looks like
You have those with the most paying nothing or next to nothing for the nicest roads, the most prompt attention from police and paramedics, for not every needing to have to join the military and risk their lives to pay for school, they get the best schools even if they choose public schools, thanks to the area they live in,
Local police forces, roads and public schools are payed for by local taxes, if the rich weren't paying a lot for them, they wouldn't be there. As for people having to pay for school by joining the military, not being able to pay for school does not mean you have to join the army, there are these things called loans, heard of them? You take money and then pay it back, if you cant pay it back, then the investment wasn't worth what you payed for it.
and they would pay for none of it while those struggling and working every hour of their life pay all of that for them.
Again, if a rich guy goes to college, they pay for it. If they use the "nicest" roads (because their roads are paved of gold while ours are made out of fecal matter) they pay for that in local taxes. Interstate high ways are payed for by the Feds, however, most roads are payed for by local and city taxes.
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. A flat tax would be an epic disaster.
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. A non-flat tax is unfair and promotes this greedy "I am entitle to free stuff" (Modern Liberalism) way of thinking.
I think those who say that they want no taxes are just kidding themselves. Even if we're in agreement that government is entirely too large, there are still some basic services that are more practical to provide on a governmental level than an individual level. We can't have ever last street we drive on to be a toll road for example. It's just not practical. I don't think taxes should be at a level where they are a burden for anyone, yet they should be high enough to cover essential services. What's utterly insane is the number of people who do not pay taxes at all. Even if you're poorer, there's still a certain cost to your being in society. You use the same services as everyone else and you should pay for them. On the flip side, we shouldn't rape the rich, but they should pay a rate that is the same is everyone else.
Mitt Romney, still refusing to release his returns, says that he's always paid at least 13% in taxes. And that's supposed to make me feel better? I always pay at least twice that. Usually I'm somewhere between 28 and 33 per cent. And I'm not worth anywhere near what Romney is worth. I dislike the thinking that says tax this guy less and tax that guy more. Ideally, our tax rates should be roughly the same on a percentage basis. That's probably somewhere between 22 and 27 per cent. I don' think anyone should pay much more than 27%.
I get what you're saying, and of course it is fair that everyone pays the same percentage amount of taxes.
But let's imagine, that I make 100 bucks a month, and you make 1000 bucks a month.
Then if the percentage is 27%, I would pay 27 bucks in tax, and you would pay 270.
That means, that I am left with 73 bucks, while you are left with 730.
You can pay all your bills with 730, but now I have trouble with paying mine, because I only have 73 bucks in my pocket.
So what happens now? The government see's, that I have trouble with paying my bills, so they support me with money. Where do these money come from ? They come from the taxes I paid when I got my salary.
So when someone earns as less as me, why bother take taxes from me, when I still get it back.. I mean isn't it just going through needless trouble?
If this is asking over what we'd want, I'll be the first to say I think the middle and upper class should all have one, flat, proportional rate. If we pay 15%, the wealthy should pay 15%. As much as welfare isn't uplifting the lower class, it's necessary to prevent the lower class from growing and causing the middle class to collapse, and therefore we should still pay taxes into welfare just as we do anything else.
The rich should never pay proportionally less taxes then the middle class. Sadly, they do, at the moment.
Wellfare causes the middle class to grow, the amount of taxes that have to be taken out of the economy and given to people hurts the economy and the idea of wellfare and food stamps locks people into poverty. When your being supported for free and the government says "don't look for a job and the money keeps coming" they're stuck. If anything wellfare has just shrunk the middle class.
But I do believe we should all pay the same amount in taxes, a flat tax rate is the only fair tax rate.
To start, the idea that most people on welfare of food stamps have decided not to work is just not true (most work and many are retired, kids, students etc). I don't like our current system any more than most, but let's work with facts. The problem with flat tax is the rest of our economic system is not "flat" in it's treatment of others. The deck is "stacked" towards the wealthy and has resulted in greater wealth disparity than we have seen in decades. The US now has less upward mobility than nearly all European nations, I find that sad as a tremendous loss of freedom in this country. It's not just taxes, but the entire system is unbalanced.
Another way to look at it is the wealthy draw more from our society (all wealth ultimately comes from a larger whole). Those that benefit most should pay most. In case your wondering, I'm one of those small business people who are supposed to be afraid increasing tax rates, but I just see it as paying back when for success that is given.
I don't like our current system any more than most, but let's work with facts. The problem with flat tax is the rest of our economic system is not "flat" in it's treatment of others.
At the moment its not flat, stealing from one person and giving it to another is not fair at all.
The US now has less upward mobility than nearly all European nations, I find that sad as a tremendous loss of freedom in this country.
Well two things:
1. Don't look to Europe for answers, their Keynesian economics are a failure that is destroying them.
2. People not making as much as some one else is not a loss of freedom, someone stealing money from a more successful person is a loss of freedom.
It's not just taxes, but the entire system is unbalanced.
So what do you want? A society where everyone makes the same amount of money?
Another way to look at it is the wealthy draw more from our society (all wealth ultimately comes from a larger whole). Those that benefit most should pay most.
The rich don't draw the most, nearly all the rich people in this nation are business men. When you open a business you are providing a service and creating jobs, the rich are doing more to help society. And if there was a flat tax rate then the wealthy would still pay more.
Why in the world should I pay money to someone for doing nothing? A business can build roads much more efficiently WITHOUT the government interfering. A toll would be annoying, but it would still end up being a lot less than taxes.
Electricity would probably be a lot cheaper too. Why use oil when there are better sources? If a company is trying to get the best energy source for the most profit, then thorium fits the bill. Cheap, safe for the environment. It's great, but there are too many laws in the way, or I'd go and do it myself.
A business running everything would save everyone a lot of money. If the government only had laws prohibiting excessive monopolies and patent laws .
If monopolies and unfair prices could be managed, it would be a working system, I think.
