Not with the high tax rates you propose.
-
Features
All Morals & Ethics are Biased, Self-Serving - Exhibit A - The Brahmin & the Royal
- Thread starter Ramaraksha
- Start date
Elixir
Made in America
What rate is that, and at what income level did I specify it to be effective Loren?
You’re making shit up.
Check the quote chain. You said 95%.
Elixir
Made in America
TOP bracket. Sheesh. I did not say "over $100m a year" or "over $100b a year".
It should be progressive. Obscene levels of income should be taxed obscenely - they still get the same standard deduction that you and I do and the same rate on the next bunch of chump change that the rest of us live on. But then it starts going up - rapidly. They should be able to accumulate wealth, just not "buy an election, buy the most popular social media platform and run it into the ground, lose the COMBINED STATE BUDGETS OF FOURTEEN STATES in a COUPLE OF MONTHS on a single holding - no problem" kind of wealth.
Bomb#20
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 9,503
- Location
- California
- Gender
- It's a free country.
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationalism
Humans aren't reasoning engines -- we have a complicated relationship with our premises. We're perfectly capable of not believing a premise when thinking about it explicitly, and even knowing why that premise is wrong, and yet still implicitly relying on it when we make arguments and make judgments. Most of thought is pattern-matching, not explicit deduction, and our brains have millions of pattern-matching circuits formed by millions of years of natural selection augmented by years of habit and training. That doesn't go away on a dime just because someone's read about all the famines caused by people trying to make farming societies live by "to each according to his need,". Why does anyone write "Why does anyone need..." unless all that ingrained hunter-gatherer mentality is still actively causing "Why does anyone need..." arguments to get approval signals from pattern-matchers in his brain? That isn't to say that you can't advocate progressive taxation on some rational grounds, such as maximizing revenue for social welfare; but we keep seeing people advocating it beyond that point to levels where it's plainly counterproductive, motivated by spite rather than for the sake of any positive goal.
If a meaningful number of people are subjected to that tax rate you have a society in which it's impossible to become a billionaire other than via unrealized stock gains.
Elixir
Made in America
IF you only imposed that rate on incomes above $999,999,999.00 that is not the case whatsoever.
Certainly if you imposed it on everyone who exceeded the standard deduction, billionaires would go extinct when the last living cases died out.
Somewhere in the middle is a range where it is relatively easy and accessible to attain wealth enough to support a generation or few of extended family in luxury, but perhaps not sufficient to purchase control of a Country?
It wasn't Musk's money that did it, anyway.
Ramaraksha
Senior Member
It's not about what YOU or I think - i couldn't care less for Caste or the Royalty - but what we see happening in this world
Brahmins were thought to be at the apex of Hindu society for a very long time - a lot less now but still some old ideas persist
And we all know how people drool over the Royals - it seems the marriage of Diana was carried by ALL the networks?
These people are praised, loved, looked up to, given riches to live the easy good life
Look up the UK newspaper - the Telegraph - it has a whole section devoted to Royalty!
bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
- Messages
- 40,218
- Gender
- He/Him
- Basic Beliefs
- Strong Atheist
It was 1981. Over forty years ago.
At that time there were three TV channels available in the UK (Channel 4 wasn't launched until the following year). Two of those channels were broadcast by the BBC, so there were two "networks", BBC and ITV.
ALL two covered the wedding.
southernhybrid
Contributor
Wait a minute....the highest federal income tax rate in the US is not 50%. It's 37%. Plus there are lots of loopholes and deductions, so I doubt many if any very wealthy people are paying a 37% federal tax rate. To me, it appears as if the lower income folks are the ones who are getting screwed. Just sayin' but do go on.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
WAB
Contributor
You're not allowed to use more than three dots for an ellipsis.
People tend to look at the total being paid--and that includes the 15.3% of Social Security/Medicare taxes. (Just because the employer typically pays half doesn't mean it's not paid, and those of us who are self employed have no employer to pick up half, we pay it all.)
But that means the true top rate is 24% + 15.3% = 39.3% as above that the Social Security portion drops out.
southernhybrid
Contributor
The claim was made about the maximum federal income taxes, not FICA. FICA is very different from federal income taxes.
Bomb#20
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 9,503
- Location
- California
- Gender
- It's a free country.
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationalism
You appear to be talking about post #93. No, the claim was not made about the maximum federal income taxes. Nobody said "federal". The top U.S. state tax rate is 13%. 37% + 13% = 50%. The claim had been made that "Sweden has far higher taxes on high earners." The top Swedish rate of 55% includes both federal and local income tax. The top federal income tax rate in Sweden is 20%. Their mix of federal and local tax isn't federal-dominated like ours. To get an apples-to-apples comparison you need to look at the totals, 50% vs 55%. That doesn't look far higher to me. YMMV.
Hey, eating the rich is by definition a good thing. Why are you trying to introduce facts in a matter of faith?