Ah but they're contributing in many other ways! Like, um... uh... let me think for a second...
Hmmm... I'm sure it'll come back to me eventually...
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/
I hate to be that guy but the top 5% pays nearly 50% of all income taxes paid.
Don't get me wrong the system is broken.
And the top 10% owns 67% of all the wealth (I'm not seeing an option to show just the top 5%). Considering how many millions and billions of dollars they all own, it only makes sense that they're also paying the most. Especially since they can easily afford it without lowering their standard of living.
Absolutely agreed they can afford it. I just don't like having disingenuous data presented. The % shown makes it look like they're not paying as much taxes as the rest of us. The reality is they pay the most. We shouldn't have to stoop to creating fuzzy charts, we don't need to because the other numbers are even worse, as you have shown. They own 67% of all the wealth, which is insane.
The graph is showing who pays the least as a percentage of family income. I really don't think it's disingenuous to be talking about tax rates as percentages rather than the total amounts paid.
The % shown makes it look like they’re not paying as much taxes as the rest of us.
That's because proportionally, they are paying less. Millionaires and billionaires are paying taxes at a lower rate then everyone else, even though they have so much more disposable income.
I don't know what your ideal version of talking about this would be, but these three facts, that the top 1% pay the least proportionally, the top 5% pay the most in absolute terms, and the top 10% control two thirds of all the wealth, are all related in a pretty basic way.
I just don't like having disingenuous data presented
The difference between fighting disingenuous data and reframing the issue to favor another party is the degree in which the so-called disingenuous aspect actually matters.
In this case, the fact that the top 4% pay materially more than the rest doesn't actually matter because they own the vast majority of the wealth. If that same wealth were evenly distributed, more of it would be paid into the system. And that is the point.
What you are doing is not representing the other side of a disingenuous issue, what you are doing is framing the issue in a way that favors the wealthy by citing a statistic that is beside the point.
That in itself is dishonest and a talking point that the wealthy use regularly to try and convince people that they are actually the good guys.
Top 5% if AGI. These numbers are based on Adjusted Gross Income. That vastly inflates the portion the truly wealthy pay compared to their wealth. They get to use the stock they own and open lines of credit for cash, then pay down those loans while using them to write off for the little stock they sold. These sort of tricks are why Bezos didn't pay income tax for two years
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-did-not-pay-income-taxes-2-years-report-2021-6?op=1
I appreciate your desire for accuracy, but the context is lacking.
Thank you for adding the always missing nuance. But other readers don't get it twisted; parsing the financials of those too wealthy for mere cash liquidity isn't simple by design. The context is always obscured in Economics because abstraction makes the bills we all pay on their behalf.
They're contributing more, but less of their percentage. Like 20% of $40,000 is less than 10% of $700,000,000.
It's bullshit. Percentage needs to increase with what you make. It will curb inflation and stop the ridiculous wealth disparity from increasing at an ever expanding rate. All the boomers were doing so great in the 1950's because the wealthy had the shit taxed out of them.
What's fucked is that when you have more, you can afford to lose a higher percentage of it. Like Chris Rock said, "if you're worth $30 million and you lose half, you're probably going to be alright. When you're worth $30 thousand and you lose half, somebody's gonna have to die!".
I am in a high income tax group here in Germany. I am happy to pay almost half of my income in taxes and social security/health insurance, if I see that it gets well invested. We are a society and the stronger should always carry the weaker (both financially and also in other aspects).
BUT: I am really pissed that I have to pay such a high percentage of what I have to work hard for, while those who did nothing but being born into a rich family pay hardly anyything at all. High income taxes should only be a thing when wealth taxes are also high, otherwise it only kills the will to work hard.
I definitely lean more towards a capital gains tax over an income tax. People should be rewarded for what they did this week rather than what their grandfather did forty years ago.
However, I am biased since effectively every cent I have comes from income. So maybe take what I say with a grain of salt.
Its just an incredibly misleading statistic. The thing that is missing is that the richest pay more in capital gains not income tax, and this is all state and local so things like property tax and sales tax have a much higher impact on people making less.
What's the deal with Minnesota and Wisconsin? I tend to group them together or associate them with each other but one clearly does things differently. Why the contrast?
From my limited experience, Minnesota is tremendously more progressive than their neighbors who make a really big deal about (poor quality) cheese. I met some younger folks in the Twin Cities who had escaped an otherwise bleak trajectory after growing up in Wisconsin.
If you haven't been, Minneapolis and St. Paul are beautiful cities filled with some lovely people. (They also had some terrorist cells some years back. People need something to do in the cold months, I suppose.) But there's culture and history and decent food and people are really kind and welcoming. And although the winters are cold, getting around in the skyway is a neat idea, despite making the downtown feel like a big indoor mall.
I haven't been to Wisconsin but I know people who have. It sounds like they're trying in some places (Milwaukee) but sometimes trying just isn't enough.
Madisonian here. Wisconsin is a purple state with a major gerrymandering issue. There are deep blue cities of Milwaukee and Madison, and also some smaller cities like La Crosse and Green Bay. Travel just slightly outside those cities, and shit gets MAGA fast. The result is a purple state where it's easy to section off blue and red voting districts.
The Democratic governor has stopped the worst crap coming out of the state legislature, but doesn't have much influence to enact his own agenda.
The state supreme court recently got a liberal majority and promptly shot down the gerrymander maps. The new maps don't guarantee a progressive majority (and in a real democracy, they wouldn't in a purple state), but what should happen is making districts competitive. Legislature candidates will actually need to listen to voters, not just assume they've won as long as they pass the party primary.
Minnesota has the advantage that it has a blue metropolitan area of around 3M people, which is over half the state. Hard to gerrymander that for team MAGA. Madison + Milwaukee metro is around 2M, or around 40% of the state.
Lastly, Minnesota public radio absolutely owns. That may or may not have anything to do with anything else, but I'm super jealous whenever I stream The Current.
Edit: forgot this part. Fuck you, our cheese is internationally award winning.
It's basically for people who love music from the last 70 years. Anything from Elvis to The Beatles to Prince to Alice in Chains.
I lived in a suburb of St Paul for a year over 30 years ago. It was progressive, but it was the most inbred place I've ever been. If your family hadn't been there for five or six generations you were an outsider.
All I know about the area is this video.
It doesn't look like it would attract a lot of outsiders.
I should have looked into it before posting as I misremembered the breadth of the issue, but when I first started going out there for work this was a recent happening: https://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/13/somalia.americans.killed/index.html
So it wasn't terrorist cells as such, but some guys recruiting Somali-Americans to go to Somalia and fight for some other guys.
Wow, it's almost like what science has been saying about social policies this whole time is actually true
You know, genuinely I have no idea. Especially because due south my GOD is Iowa completely NOT progressive in any way, shape, or form. If you ever drive through Iowa and start flicking through the radio stations it's terrifying. One radio station saying that "so and so democrat is the antichrist" is one too many but there were several.
Because my first thought would be urbanization, but really Wisconsin and Minnesota population distribution is not that different. It's also not bleed over from Canada because we're both about as connected as the other. Large forests and lakes between us. Prince was genuinely propping up the local music scene a TON before he died but... I don't think a single industry could be responsible for it. (it's a difference though) Then we even elected Jessie Ventura Governor, which... maybe scared other politicians to get in line? I genuinely don't know. I grew up in an incredibly conservative town in Minnesota but at the same time I had enough info to go "some of this sounds like utter bullshit". I remember listening to Joe Soucheray as a kid (even showed up on his radio broadcast at the fair once) it's not like conservatives aren't there, but not in the numbers.
It feels like a Springfield/Shelbyville rivalry: both areas were colonized by the same sorts of people, but Wisconsinites wanted to marry their cousins.
As someone living elsewhere in the Midwest I have to say...
(Actually that's a lie, Minnesotans are always super nice to us, but damn do they have their shit together in ways I wish Michigan did...)
i'd be ok if we move income tax onto the corpo side of things.
Would mean that it's the companies responsibility to pay that tax, and no longer forces the IRS to go after joe shmoe, who fudged his finger on a 0 while it was still wet.
Or we could also just remove individual taxes, and tax corpos, that's where all money is anyway.
A company doesn't have a full understanding of your income. Sure, they probably pay most of it, but if you have a side job or investments or something else, they'd have no visibility into that.
Corporations are people my friend, and they should be taxed as such. They should also get the death penalty for criminal acts.
The issue is that we tax labor. Creating a company is a choice. People who survive off trading their labor have no choice. They have to perform labor. Taxing survival is inherently flawed.
You only need a profitable side hustle because you're being underpaid and stuck in the capitalists' system. This side hustle is already taxed like a company, it would be on you to structure it so you are a laborer of the company while also covering the company tax.
Investments aren't labor so they can be tax as they are now.
The main problem is that you can't imagine a system that doesn't have a personal income tax. I don't have the time or patience to go through their history of this so I'll leave that as homework.
This is why I support high sales taxes with exemptions for necesities instead of income tax on wages. Carve out exemptions so that it isn't a regressive tax but 500% tax on yachts, high taxes on alcohol and entertainment with higher percentages for more expensive forms of all luxuries. Tax capital gains at a higher percentage too and make firms automatically withold said tax upon asset sale.
The problem with sales taxes is they are always regressive. Carve outs don't help because the rich will just add loopholes.
The rich always propose this as a flat tax because they understand how they benefit from it.
One possibility might be to a progressive sales tax tied to inflation. For example 0% for the first $100, 5% up to $1000...by the time you get to yacht prices the tax would be 50% -- it's all important that corporations pay this same tax so they don't loop hole their way through having an LLC that owns the yacht and they simply "rent it" from themselves.
The big issue is how corporations are able to deduct the cost of business. If I could do this as a laborer, I would be able to deduct rent, food, vehicles, etc as the cost of supporting the physical entity that performs the labor.
But obviously that's not how any of this is structured because the human body is not a depreciating asset.. Even though it clearly depreciates with time and use.
the company, the one that literally pays me my money, doesn't understand my income? I mean sure, maybe i work at multiple companies, and receive multiple paychecks. But like, let's be honest here.
who cares, 90% of what is moving through the economy is corpo money anyway.
90% of what is moving through the economy is corpo money anyway.
Yes, this is the system we're in by design. The idea is that the private sector can get cheap loans and other handouts (government contracts, private-public partnerships, etc) for organizing the economy and will pass some of that money onto us commoners in the form of wages. It was designed like this because the politicians and their donors believe that it is more productive to organize the economy this way.
yeah, i'm not debating the functionality of the current economic system though. It's definitely up for grabs i suppose.
Mostly just pointing out that even in our current economy we don't really have a good excuse for most of this shit.
Or maybe the world is just a little bit more complicated than "who cares"? Bunch of fucking children in here. Simple solutions generally don't solve complex problems.
simple solutions don't solve complex problems, and complex solutions solve complex problems. But complex solutions are generally pretty shitty solutions.
You should strive to have a simple problem, and then find a simple solution. Otherwise you get BMW cars.
The problem is what it is. Redefining the problem so it's simple is not a solution to the fucking problem.
"You should strive to have a simple problem". Fuckin hell kind of MBA babble is that. Yeah maybe in business where you can make money by inventing "problems" and then inventing solutions to them, but not when it comes to real-life social issues.
The problem exists. It is complex. We need to fix it.
a simple solution is a solution to the problem, it's redefining the problem in such a manner, to make the solution possible. It's called compromise. A thing that exists in either one of these situations. In complex solutions you compromise by making a shitty solution mostly cover a shitty problem, in a simple solution you make it comprehensively cover the problem, and in a simple manner, but it doesn't cover the whole problem, because the problem is simple.
The problem here is that tax is overwhelmingly complex, we just need to forcibly simplify it in a manner that makes it more functional, and more apt, while not losing too much control. It's absolutely possible. It's just scope control.
The problem here is that tax is overwhelmingly complex, we just need to forcibly simplify it in a manner that makes it more functional
That's called a complex solution
yeah which is exactly why i dont want to fucking pay tax myself. Just let the fucking corpo that pays me do it instead.
yeah, that's fine. I don't care, i even advocated from removing individual taxes altogether but i dont think you read that part.
As long as i'm not filing them, and the IRS cant sue my ass, i'm fine and i don't care.
The optimal clearing price for a good or service doesn't map to the tax rate. That's why schemes like a gas tax cut and cuts to real estate rates don't reduce the price of energy or rent. Also why voucher programs and other tax rebates tend to pair with inflationary prices.
Businesses just pocket the gains in the same way they're forced to eat the losses when taxes rise.
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Well, I don't know how it works in US, but tax cuts do result in lower prices here in UK. For example, we have 0% VAT on groceries and they tend to be cheaper than elsewhere in Europe.
And no sane business will eat losses, that's how you run out of business. So every tax penny always comes from your pocket. Always.
For example, we have 0% VAT on groceries and they tend to be cheaper than elsewhere in Europe.
The rest of Europe has some strict protectionist policies on food imports to prop up their own agricultural economies. UK is a net importer, so it gets to buy out of both the US and EU agriculture surplus.
Fly over to the US (which doesn't have a sales tax on groceries) and compare prices to Mexico (which also doesn't have a sales tax on groceries). You'll consistently find US prices to be higher because (a) vendors know Americans have more money so they can be charged higher prices and (b) the US is a net-agg exporter and regularly dumps its surplus into Mexican agg markets. This has destroyed the Mexican agg sector and produced a bunch of north-bound migration as a result. But it also makes food rates in Mexico cheaper, as you can bid between local output (produced at lower-than-US wage rates) and surplus foreign imports (sold at dumping rates, because there's too much of it).
And no sane business will eat losses
Businesses routinely eat losses. Some businesses have literally never turned a profit - Lyft, AirBnB, and Reddit have never shown a profit. Amazon famously took 20 years to show a profit, with Tesla and Spotify coming in close behind.
But even after becoming profitable, firms will periodically gain or lose profit margin relative to the prevailing market. A company with a 10% profit margin in Year 1 that sees the marginal rate fall to 8% in Year 2 can't necessarily raise prices to increase profits, because increasing prices will cut into sales volume.
Companies that rely on large pools of customers and lengthy supply chains can and will periodically operate at a loss on the fringes of their business, if they see those fringes as loss-leaders with the potential for growth in future years. Walmart pioneered this strategy back in the 1980s, building unprofitable storefronts in growing neighborhoods under the theory that stacking a claim early on was easier than acquiring property after a development had been completed and filled in.
So every tax penny always comes from your pocket.
Just the opposite. All tax revenue must ultimately come from business revenues, as businesses fund the salaries of the state's labor force. In a state like Alaska or a country like Saudi Arabia, residents get a negative tax based on the gross exports of the local business interests in a given year.
In states like California and New York, the tax base is entirely predicated on the high incomes of locals. And those high incomes are predicated on tech and finance companies paying out enormous salaries. These are functionally taxes paid by the business to employ high-demand staffers, who predominantly live in these states.
States invest in infrastructure to attract workers (most commonly public utilities, police/fire/EMS, and schools). Skilled workers become a magnet for businesses. And businesses pay taxes - both directly to the state and indirectly through taxation on salaries.
Get rid of the infrastructure and public services (as Kansas tried to do a few years back) and you lose the workers. You lose the workers and you lose the businesses. You lose the business and you lose the tax base.
Because, in the end, all tax revenue comes from business activity. If you have a bunch of consumers who do nothing but eat, your state has no real revenue stream.
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The rest of Europe has some strict protectionist policies on food imports to prop up their own agricultural economies. UK is a net importer, so it gets to buy out of both the US and EU agriculture surplus.
Britain was part of EU just recently and still has the same policies for the most part. And being a net importer it means that prices should be higher. And they actually did increase after Brexit.
Fly over to the US and compare prices to Mexico
There's no point comparing two countries so far apart in economical development. The prices in Mexico are lower because Mexican labour is much cheaper. You should compare US to similar countries like Canada or European counterparts.
Some businesses have literally never turned a profit - Lyft, AirBnB, and Reddit
You misunderstand their business model. You are not a consumer of their product, you ARE the product. And their business model is not to turn profit on intercations with you, but to milk venture capital. The side effect is that their actual profit is not treated as profit from tax perspective, so they have free money essentially.
A company with a 10% profit margin in Year 1 that sees the marginal rate fall to 8% in Year 2 can’t necessarily raise prices to increase profits, because increasing prices will cut into sales volume.
A successful management will think in decades, not years. Just like a good investor. There are good years and there are bad years, but the balance sheet must workout in the end. Also businesses has plenty of other ways to increase profits: redundancies, wage stagnation, debt, etc.
All tax revenue must ultimately come from business revenues
A business is a virtual entity. No matter how you twist it, taxes are paid by people. A business can't pay shit, it's just a record in the Company House.
says who? I said we can tax companies, so let's fucking tax companies, fuck companies.
You will pay far more taxes. These stats are just based on percentages. The rich pay more in taxes each year than most people will make in their entire lives. As someone who makes a ton of money and pays a crap ton of taxes, the people who make these graphics are clueless idiots.
This graphic is based on the percentage of income paid to taxes. A family making $500k a year paying a higher dollar amount than one making $50k a year is expected, but the higher earners should also be paying a higher percentage because 20% to them means a lot less sacrifice than 20% to a low income family. The sacrifice of not buying that third or fourth house is a lot less than whether the low income family goes to the doctor for a checkup.
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Taxes should be treated like insurance. If you're more likely to use social services, then you should pay more taxes. Those who do not require public social services should not pay taxes at all.
So high income people don't use roads, fire, police, the FAA, tax breaks for businesses, etc? They don't indirectly benefit when their lower income employees, people at the store, people that use whatever drives the high income people's earnings, etc. are using these social services including food assistance and Medicaid? Do high income people just live in a magical bubble where people have no interaction and connections to each other and they earn money without the input of anyone else? I'd love to live in this fantasy land with you.
One benefit rich people get from social services is the poors not dragging them into the street and beating them to death.
The rich person is more likely to require more police services. The rich person is pretty much the only sort of person that's ever going to have the FBI seriously in their corner. That rich person is more likely to care deeply about the interstate system and the FAA. If a foreign military is coming, the rich are the people that would most desperately want the defense. The rich have the government acting on their best interests in meddling in world affairs and negotiating trade.
Though you probably think welfare is what most taxes go toward, but that's actually a relatively small piece of the tax funded pie.
Taxes should be treated like insurance. If you're more likely to use social services, then you should pay more taxes. Those who do not require public social services should not pay taxes at all.
Who's more likely to need and benefit from a well funded police force? A wealthy man with a lot of property that needs to be protected? Or a poor man with little property, nothing to lose, and a grudge against the rich man hoarding his wealth?
Clearly you've never done a hard day's work in your miserable life, which I hope doesn't last much longer. People like you disgust me.
I worked my way up from poverty. And I did it the hard way. Heat stroke. Broken bones. 75 hour work weeks. Coming home every day covered in dirt and sweat and too tired to even shower.
Now I make good money and I am honored to pay taxes. Taxes kept me from the brink. Taxes funded the work-study programs, the food banks I visited, the shelters I stayed at while homeless. I pay a TON of taxes and that is fucking GREAT. It's an investment in my neighbors. I want to live in a good place. I want others to have the opportunities I did.
And I don't fucking delude myself into thinking I made it out because I'm just that awesome. I worked hard, but I also got LUCKY. My taxes make it more possible for others to follow in my footsteps.
So you want socialism. No thanks. If I earn $500k a year because I went to college and put in far more effort than someone who makes $50k a year, why should I pay multiples more in taxes than them? Someone earning $50k a year is leaching far more off society than someone making $500k. The $50k per year person buys less and pays less sales tax, they have a far smaller house and pays far less property tax. They will be much more likely to incur medical bills they can't pay. If you have a disability, great, you get assistance (or should), but if you are lazy, why shouldn't you pay the same income tax as me? I pay the tax on everything else that I consume.
They will be much more likely to incur medical bills they can't pay.
Wow, you almost got the point there then got completely lost. Low income people can't pay medical bills because they don't have the money to do so. How will taxing them help that situation? You seem like a student of the "fuck you, I've got mine" school of thought.
Take the Waltons of Walmart fame as an extreme example. They are some of the richest people in America but their Walmart employees include people that are being paid so poorly they also need to collect social services such as food stamps and Medicaid. Walmart pays low wages knowing the employees can't survive and will be assisted by the taxpayers. Paying lower wages means more profits and more money in the Waltons pockets at the expense of the employees. Do you think the Waltons are spending all their extra earnings on things that incur more taxes or are they just putting it away like a dragon on their pile of treasure?
Walmart also uses taxpayer funded services like public roads to move goods, the FAA and ATC for their corporate and private jets, tax breaks when they build new warehouses or stores, etc. So, are the underpaid Walmart employees the ones leaching off society or is it the high earners like the Waltons causing the issues?
I am a "fuck you, I am still working hard every day for mine" kind of person. I have known many people who flake out and try to take short cuts, then blame everyone but themselves for their problems. People who work for walmart are idiots. They go find an easy job, then stay long after they should. If walmart had a hard time employing people they would have to raise the wages and benefits. But they don't, and don't have to. Supply and demand. If I was a dog walker and walked a millionaires dog every day do you think they owe me a livable wage, a 401k, and Healthcare? Hell no, go find a real job. Yes, underpaid walmart employees are absolutely leaching off society. Go find some real work... take off that dumb blue shirt and either make money with your brain or with your muscles.
If someone is underpaid, that means they are working harder/longer than they should for the pay they get, right? Which means they are giving more than they are getting. That makes it the opposite of leaching.
Walmart is the one getting more than they should for the amount of pay they offer. So isn't it Walmart that is the leach in this example?
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While I do agree some jobs are easier than others, those still require a human to do the work, so that human should be able to live from doing that job.
If I earn $500k a year because I went to college and put in far more effort than someone who makes $50k a year, why should I pay multiples more in taxes than them?
Because you are forgetting of the net benefit of taxes that have been paid for decades before you were born, which improved everyone's standing to allow for:
The training of your teachers to allow you to get your education.
The city infrastructure that allowed you easy access to school, and later to your profession.
The social stability for your business to thrive.
The quality of life for your business's customers, allowing them to afford to be customers, allowing the business to afford your $500k a year.
You do not live in a vacuum. If all the people who make $50k a year disappeared it would significantly negatively impact your life. "A rising tide raises all ships", and a society on which everyone can thrive benefits everyone in that society. You can afford to pay a higher % and still thrive, in order to ease the burden on someone who is struggling.
You're argument of "I make more money than I need, I should keep it and let other people starve" isn't very compelling.
Not a liberal. I am a hard working capitalist that wants to earn more for working harder. Just read the wiki page. You definitely want socialism. No thanks. This is a very academic idea that would never work, as we have seen. It just allows the lazy to be more lazy, but the people who would innovate in a capitalist economy to have no motivation to take risks and work harder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Socialist systems divide into non-market and market forms.[15][16] A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system.[17] Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive.[18][19][20] ...
By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.[29][30] By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,[31] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.[32] ...
A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.[334]
—Albert Einstein, "Why Socialism?", 1949
So, high income taxes is the collectivization of the means of production? You wrote a lot of words, but none of them make sense in regards of your original statement.
And yes, I want socialism (though not in the form you probably assume, but this is getting really OT). But we are not talking about socialism here.
the rich pay more in taxes each year than most people will make in their entire lives
Yet even when doing so they also take home more money each year than most people will make in their entire lives.
But you aren't paying the same amount proportional to what you have and that's the main point dude. You are comfortable paying that but people making less than you are using more of the limited resources they have to pay taxes while you are living your best life. At the end of the day it only takes so much money to have your needs met after that it's just extra but these people don't even have their needs met yet. If you are working that shouldn't be the case.
You pay more money total, but you have a lot more left over too. You don't pay more in Washington State unless you own an expensive property, since they don't have income tax. Well I guess you pay more if you buy more stuff, but that's a given.
Even in Washington state you have federal income tax. Why should someone who makes $500k pay 10x more than someone who makes $50k? Just because you think they have more? Someone who makes $500k has worked far harder, likely has lots of student loans, and much higher expenses. This is a capitalist country, not socialist. They say eat the rich... I say eat the lazy.
A family who earned $500k is likely putting lots of money into some sort of savings or investments while a family making $50k is likely living paycheck to paycheck. The $500k earner can part with a little extra to help benefit the greater good.
Also, your ridiculous "they worked harder and low income people are lazy" schtick is idiotic. Do you think someone who grew up in a poor family, went to an underfunded school district, had to work to help support the family, couldn't afford college, and works multiple jobs just to live paycheck to paycheck is lazy? Or are the high income middle managers that grew up in high income families, went to good school districts, had college paid for by their parents, spend weekends at their lake house, have full time child care, and earn money off the backs of the lower income people the lazy ones?
That's unironically how they think and they can't fathom how us poors had to grow up. I work with a privileged (I'm not even being derogatory by saying that) lady who had it all growing up and has a nepobaby job and she was gobsmacked when I told her I had to drop out of college to work more to help my younger brothers survive. Took her a second to get that not all of us have both of our parents and that our parents aren't all rich people who could just give infinite cash. She does straight up live in a rich bubble here in Cali.
She's also a landlady that got gifted houses to rent by her parents so she's part of the reason us poors have to pay so much rent.
When I was living in my car during college I met a girl who had a full ride from her parents and she un-ironically said "why don't you just get your parents to give you an apartment?". She couldn't fathom that one, I have a single parent, not parents, and two, that parent didn't have any money either. Her parents paid for a bad-ass apartment for her, paid her college tuition, gave her a BMW, and a credit card with an unlimited budget. By contrast, I was living in my car, working all night for my money, and going to school during the day, trying my damnedest to improve my situation in life.
Edit: on one hand I kind of agree with what that other guy said. There are plenty of people who never bothered fighting through the type of situation I outlined above, never built any job skills, and never pursued a career. They go to their minimum wage job, clock in, clock out, and don't concern themselves with anything beyond that. But on the other hand I recognize that there are tons of people whose opportunities have been limited due to their position in life, and despite fighting through adversity to build a better life, life kicked them around enough that they never succeeded in fighting their way out. That second group is what those who are more fortunate don't want to acknowledge, since it means they need to acknowledge that they aren't in their awesome situation purely through their own awesomeness.
Replying to your edit, even those people who don't want more deserve to live a happy life with their basic needs met and the other dude just doesn't seem to think so. Not all of us can be doctors and lawyers earning the big bucks. Some need to do the 'lesser' jobs that the rest of us enjoy. We need baristas, grocers, teachers assistants, daycare workers, garbage men (I know they can make decent money in some parts), fast food employees etc. We can't leave some of those jobs to teens, and even for the ones we can our human growth won't be enough to keep this house of cards going.
You've made the claim a couple times that lower earners are just not working as hard, you know that's not how it goes, right? Me and my wife working as teachers put in the time to go to school, put in the mandatory internships of student teaching, and then work our asses off on 80 hr weeks each to do the job and still walk away with less than $100k income. Are we just lazy?
You mean you walk away with less than $100k EACH. Your household income is likely close to $150k to $200k, with full benefits and retirement. You almost never have to worry about layoffs. Many teachers are part of unions and can practically commit murder and keep their jobs. Your household is in the top 10%, and you are exactly who they want to tax more. You have "extra income" because someone making $40k a year earns far less than you. So you have more that you can pay.
You are going to compare yourself to a Walmart employee who couldn't bother to do their high-school homework? Who just clocks in and clocks out every day without a care in the world about their job? They absolutely work less hard than you and are far more lazy. You make more than double what they do. Do you think you should pay far more taxes? While you pay those student loans?
You mean you walk away with less than $100k EACH.
No, I mean total, and that's without full benefits since one of the schools is a small business.
Many teachers are part of unions and can practically commit murder and keep their jobs.
My wife has been fired basically for being autistic more than once and while the union wanted to make a case it was eventually determined to be too unlikely to stick.
It's cool that you think you know my whole situation and also the situation of everyone else earning less than me, but it's just not the case that everyone or even most people making 40k are lazy. Many of them have been working hard their entire lives but didn't have the resources to succeed despite their best efforts, and writing each of them off as
a Walmart employee who couldn't bother to do their high-school homework? Who just clocks in and clocks out every day without a care in the world about their job?
is just pretty shitty. It's not the case that every high earner was handed life on a silver platter, and it's not the case that every low earner is an unskilled layabout content to wallow.
The graphic is about State taxes, not federal. It's lacking in information though and hard to draw conclusions from. It's probably intentionally created to cause anger.
In response to your statements though, the idea is that you can comfortably part with a higher percentage of your money. I'm also in a high tax bracket and I'm not really opposed to a graduated tax rate. Someone's gotta pay for our military, our roads, social services, police, etc. All of that stuff isn't going to get funded by people with low income. Social programs can help people lift themselves out of poverty and give them a chance to make something of themselves. They also help protect our nation's children.
That said, I think the big corporations should shoulder a lot larger portion of that burden than they do. I'm also not keen on the competence and lack of efficiency/effectiveness of our government in a lot of areas.
They say eat the rich, you say eat the lazy, I say don't eat anyone. I'd love to see our country more unified.
By this logic why not just tax high income earners to the point that they make the same as low income earners? After all, they have more money they can part with as you state. Just offering to blindly pay more tax because uncle Sam needs more missiles is a really stupid argument. It leads to gross over spending and negligence. I worked for a government agency for many years and every year they would buy millions of dollars of stuff that never made if off the pallet just because they needed to spend their budget so they got it next year. Not with my money, no thanks.
There's two facets to consider. -Is government spending well managed, and if not, what to do to improve it? You may have some fair points there
-To the extent government spending is reasonably required, how to handle paying for it? On this, you overextend their point about who can afford. Someone making $30k/year and trying to get by can't really spare any money. Someone making $500k/year would still have crap tons of money even paying $200k/year in taxes. No one is proposing that making more should make it so you take home less than the low income person, or even close to the low income person, just that the proportion that can go to government comfortably increases.
It leads to gross over spending and negligence
I don't disagree with you there. I made that very same point. And that's the answer to your question, as well as part of your previous statement. We're still mostly a capitalist society, so you get to reap the rewards of your income. But we have socialist programs too, so those who can bear more of the weight do so.
Point of order, do you mean 10x more proportionally to their total or 10x more in general?
Sounds like you're making money by working hard, which is a silly way to try to make a lot of money in a capitalist system. The hint is in the name, my friend: it's not called "workism".
If only we lived in an economy where your hard work was proportional to your income!
I don't see what the issue is. The graphic shows percentage. In absolute terms you pay more but in percentage you pay less.
The rich consume the most government resources. The balance sheet after taxes for the wealthiest is by the most negative in absolute terms. They cost the rest of us more than any other group.
A poor person with $1000 taxed at 10% is worse off than a rich person with $100,000 taxed at 20%.
How the heck does Oregon manage to have the lowest earners paying more than the median earners without a sales tax?
I'm confused, WA has no income tax, OR has high income tax... As someone who moved from WA to OR, got a raise, and ended up with smaller paychecks I can attest that this doesn't represent everyone accurately
This chart is not displaying income taxes. It is displaying the share of all taxes contributed by income brackets.
For anyone not reading between the lines, taxes like sales taxes and property taxes are designed to disproportionately target those with lower income (i.e., regressive), while income tax is mostly supposed to target higher incomes (i.e. progressive).
And Washington actually has the most regressive tax structure in the US because of these factors.
this is the problem with illinois which has a fixed flat income tax in its constitution.
So the red states actually have a less wealthy 1%, and therefore less inequality.
This is a wildly misleading chart at first glance.
Uh, the thing about percentages, as in "the top 1%", is that they are proportional. It doesn't matter if one state has fewer billionaires than another state, that's not what the chart is displaying.
If the average income tax of the top 1% isn't 20 times higher than the average tax of any of the 20% groups, then they'll be paying less overall tax. Because there's 20 times more people in the bigger group.
Or it could be showing that those states have unfair tax rules, which is undoubtedly the case for some of them.
This chart is honestly completely meaningless, because there's no way to know which of those two conditions exist.
It's lies, damn lies, and statistics, poured into a rage-bait map.
Edit: However, I would be intrigued to know how the middle 20% managed to pay the least tax in Oregon.
This chart is honestly completely meaningless, because there’s no way to know which of those two conditions exist.
You could read the accompanying article.
WA has no income tax, but it does have a state level sales tax. Low income people spend a larger portion of their income on purchases which results in a much higher tax rate.
States like California have both high sales tax and State income tax, so that's definitely a worse outcome.
Ya know. Seems like a good time for another constitutional convention. Governing our country federally with a document written by rich slave owners pre train let alone pre internet doesn't seem max optimization for hamburgerland
I’m not used to seeing my state (NJ) on a discussion about tax where it’s painted in a positive light. I know my taxes are high but I can thankfully afford it
Most new York residents are renters and don't pay taxes directly. The cost gets passed onto them by landlords.
Not true - unless you meant NYC and not all of NY. There’s a lot of NY outside of the City, and that’s mostly homeowners by a slight margin.
Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming all have no state income tax. Am I missing something, or is this graph just misinformation?
The states that rely on sales taxes for most of their income are the most likely to tax the poor the most, since the poor spend more of their income.
I don't buy this, man. Groceries aren't taxxed, and I just don't see how a lower income individual could physically buy the same amount of taxed goods as a multimillionaire
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As a proportion of their income maybe, but X% sale tax of one rich dude's glamour item(s) - expensive cars, boats jewelry, fashion, etc) could exceed the taxes from many many lower-income essentials.
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Yes that's right. This graph is shate and local tax as a proportion of income, which is a much more relevant statistic than absolute dollars when concerned with the impact on the individual's quality of life. There might be other reasons to look at absolute dollars, and percentage of income doesn't tell the whole story when it comes to quality of life, but one is certainly more descriptive than the other for that concern.
Might be factoring in more than just state income tax. There's also sales tax, property tax, etc.
You are in fact just missing something because having no income tax doesn't mean that poor people aren't being taxed. Think of all the other taxes you pay
...sales tax? I don't believe that that would be higher for lower income individuals, seeing as higher income people would purchase more things that are taxeable than lower income people. The only other tax I can think of is property tax, which again, I would expect to disproportionately be played by higher income people as they are more likely to own property. I'm not saying that taxing the rich is bad, I'm just saying that there is positively no chance that rich people pay less taxes even if you exclude state income tax.
Tax burden is the amount of your income you pay as tax. Poor people spend a larger share of their income.
The cited article is for expenses unrelated to taxes. I would like to reiterate that I am not disagreeing that the system is busted, I'm just pointing out that saying that higher income people pay less taxes in literal tax havens is not possible. If they are only paying for sales tax and property tax, the only individuals who will be paying more taxes are property owners, which because of how fucked the system is, will practically be exclusively higher income individuals. Yes, renting costs more than property tax, but we are talking about taxes. The majority of your rent will not be going back to the government through taxes, but all of your property tax will.
Basic example to help you understand since it can be a little abstract: I make $1000 a week and buy a TV with $10 in sales tax. That comes out to 1% of my income on taxes. You make $2000 a week and buy the same TV. In your case you only pay .5% of your income for taxes on the same item.
- Sales tax
- Property tax
- Income tax
Pretty well every state charges a combination of those to fund their state. Some have all 3, some rely on just 1. But they all combine to be part of a person’s tax burden.
I know this is going to fall on deaf but this is an incredibly misleading. I guess we really need to stoke that class war!
Wealthy people dont pay income very much at all, their income is made via capital gains. Also consumption based taxes are the primary thing that this would be so the richer you are the less this will be as a percent of your income.
Capital gains are profits from the sale of assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and antiques. Nine states (Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaiʻi, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin) provide income tax deductions or preferential rates for all long-term capital gains income. Other states—such as Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Oklahoma—offer tax reductions for realized gains from certain assets located solely within state boundaries.[11] These tax subsidies disproportionately benefit high-income and high-wealth families and tend to worsen economic inequality across both economic and racial dimensions.
Oh man, if only the authors of the study had thought about capital gains taxes, then maybe the map above that's only using income to divide the population would have been better somehow.
Of course they do this, capital gains is a second tax on money that people already earned. How does this refute what I said?
Based on your response here, I don't know what you were trying to say.
Wealthy people don't pay income [tax] very much at all, their income is made via capital gains.
Also consumption based taxes are the primary [taxes the rich pay,] so the richer you are the less [taxes] this will be as a percent of your income.
I thought you were complaining about the authors of the study not considering capital gains taxes, but it wasn't very clear.
Capital gains isn't a "2nd tax on money people already earned". If I put my money in a bank account and earn 10% interest (laughable I know) and I earn $10k on the $100k I have in the bank, I pay income taxes on the $10k. If I buy a piece of land for $100k and I sell it for $110k, I pay capital gains tax on the $10k. In both cases I didn't work for the money and I only paid taxes on the profit.
Capital gains tax is NOT taxing money twice, and even if it was, sales tax is a much more direct "taxed twice" tax. There is no such rule as "money can't be taxes twice" in our society. Capital gains tax should be done away with and all profit should just be called "income" and taxed accordingly, just like the rest of us who work for a living.
I fully understand you point, but I disagree, I think its taxing money that you already earned fairly for a second time.