Comment Re:Wait a sec ... (Score 3, Interesting) 902
How about not? Why are the rich paying more? Because they have more money? That's a fucked up excuse.
There are several good reasons for progressive taxation. First, rich people receive a disproportionate amount of the benefits taxes pay for. Large portions of the government, from law enforcement to defense, are devoted to protecting property, both physical and intellectual, which is primarily owned by wealthy people. Second, people have a decreasing marginal utility for money. This means that taxing someone who has a lot of money harms them a less than taxing someone with less money. Third, taxing rich people is better for the economy. Poor people spend a much larger portion of their income than rich people. Rich people save and invest most of their income. Taking away money that would otherwise be spent has a contractionary effect on the economy. Taxing rich people has less of a contractionary effect than taxing poor people.
If you paid according to your income, on everything, people wouldn't work, because 10% of $0 would be the same as 10% of $1,000,000.
How in the world did this post get modded up? I never imagined that "$0 == $100,000" could be considered insightful or interesting.
Hence progressive taxes are for people who have no idea wtf they are talking about (i.e. Basic Economics). Damn, if I made $80,000 a year, and paid $2 for a McDonald's cheeseburger, and a guy making $40,000 pays $1, and a guy making $0 pays $0, what would be the point of working hard?
I find it pretty ironic that you're criticizing others for not having a grasp of "basic economics", considering that you clearly have no idea how progressive taxation works. Your cheeseburger example attempted to describe a situation where everyone's income is effectively the same. That is not progressive taxation. Under progressive taxation, the first M dollars you earn are taxed at a certain rate, the next N dollars are taxed at a higher rate, and so on. No matter how much you earn, the first M dollars will never be taxed higher than the base rate, which means you're always going to keep more money if you earned more money. There will be slightly less incentive to work hard, since you will keep less of the additional money you earn. But the incentive is still there. Plus, it is misleading to say you will have no incentive to work hard, since the largest amounts of wealth don't come from hard work, they come from investment. When someone's not actually doing anything to create their wealth, it hardly matters how incentivized they feel.
There are several good reasons for progressive taxation. First, rich people receive a disproportionate amount of the benefits taxes pay for. Large portions of the government, from law enforcement to defense, are devoted to protecting property, both physical and intellectual, which is primarily owned by wealthy people. Second, people have a decreasing marginal utility for money. This means that taxing someone who has a lot of money harms them a less than taxing someone with less money. Third, taxing rich people is better for the economy. Poor people spend a much larger portion of their income than rich people. Rich people save and invest most of their income. Taking away money that would otherwise be spent has a contractionary effect on the economy. Taxing rich people has less of a contractionary effect than taxing poor people.
If you paid according to your income, on everything, people wouldn't work, because 10% of $0 would be the same as 10% of $1,000,000.
How in the world did this post get modded up? I never imagined that "$0 == $100,000" could be considered insightful or interesting.
Hence progressive taxes are for people who have no idea wtf they are talking about (i.e. Basic Economics). Damn, if I made $80,000 a year, and paid $2 for a McDonald's cheeseburger, and a guy making $40,000 pays $1, and a guy making $0 pays $0, what would be the point of working hard?
I find it pretty ironic that you're criticizing others for not having a grasp of "basic economics", considering that you clearly have no idea how progressive taxation works. Your cheeseburger example attempted to describe a situation where everyone's income is effectively the same. That is not progressive taxation. Under progressive taxation, the first M dollars you earn are taxed at a certain rate, the next N dollars are taxed at a higher rate, and so on. No matter how much you earn, the first M dollars will never be taxed higher than the base rate, which means you're always going to keep more money if you earned more money. There will be slightly less incentive to work hard, since you will keep less of the additional money you earn. But the incentive is still there. Plus, it is misleading to say you will have no incentive to work hard, since the largest amounts of wealth don't come from hard work, they come from investment. When someone's not actually doing anything to create their wealth, it hardly matters how incentivized they feel.
