Corporate Taxes!!!!!!

[BellePlaine]

Remember the President's White House Deficit Commission? Bowles and Simpson proposed lowering the rates while gutting the breaks. I think that we should give that idea a closer look. It cinches the loopholes. The result, I think, would spawn new competition from small and start up companies.

[hippiewannabe]

Chitwnvw does a fine job of showing the painfully regressive tax burden that now exists on us bottom 80% with only 12% of the nation's wealth.

That's simply incorrect. Our income tax system is massively progressive. The top 1% income earners paid 40% of the taxes, and the top 5% paid more than the bottom 95%.



The amount of taxes collected from the rich went up when rates went down, because reasonable rates mean people will make economically efficient decisions, rather than create tax-dodging schemes. As an aside, this also explains much of the increase in income-disparity you reference. All that data comes from income tax returns, and lower rates meant people reported more income and paid taxes on it, rather than hiding it. If you want to argue that the government needs more money, and that scootching the rates up a few more percent on the rich would actually increase revenue rather than decrease it, I would say the empirical evidence supports that. But if you want to try to sock it to them with a big rate increase, it will backfire.

....is it fair that the top 10% holds 63% of our nation's wealth? Is it fair that our "high corporate tax rate" is no burden at all when the truth is that they are paying LESS THAN EVER. Answer this directly.

The wealth disparity is a symptom of global trends, rather than a problem. With technological advancement and globalization, the returns to knowledge and capital are increasing, and the returns to labor are decreasing. I have no problem with wealth. The real unfairness is that far too many Americans are in no shape to compete, contribute and prosper, because our education system is a shambles and our culture promotes the wrong behaviors.

As I said before, corporations don't pay taxes, people do. The global economy has changed everything, and we can't just squeeze our captive corporations and hide the real taxes from the citizens that actually pay them. I'd like to see consumption-based taxes, a value-added tax and, especially, a big tax on petroleum use. Two years ago gas prices were $2, if we had put $.50 a gallon tax on it back then, our prices now probably wouldn't be any higher than the $3.50 we see, but we'd be getting more of the money instead of sending it to the middle east.

To paraphrase the philosopher Jay Z, we got 99 problems, and not enough taxes on the rich ain't one.

[Lanval]

The wealth disparity is a symptom of global trends, rather than a problem. With technological advancement and globalization, the returns to knowledge and capital are increasing, and the returns to labor are decreasing.

Herein lies the problem: you treat the above statement as if it were natural law; it's not. Instead what you should say is this: "In current period, the wealthy are opting keep more of the money they make, while refusing to share with the labor members."

Once you make it clear that the outcome is a choice and not an effect then you can understand Colin's point.

Suggesting that lowering the amount people will pay so they cheat less is silly; If greed is what motivates cheating on taxes, why do you think lowering taxes will somehow eliminate greed? Your argument seems to be (I paraphrase from above) "people will pay more if tax rates are low, since cheating won't be worth their effort".

Greed is a psychological state, not a dispassionate analytical choice. You sound a bit like Greenspan when he told Congress that he thought regulation of the banks was unnecessary since the bank managers wouldn't do anything that would adversely affect the stockholders and the people. Hah! Makes you wonder if Greenspan has ever met people who work in investment banks...

Anyway, my point is that you're treating a choice as a natural outcome. It isn't, and that very much weakens your argument.

L.

[chitwnvw]

Chitwnvw does a fine job of showing the painfully regressive tax burden that now exists on us bottom 80% with only 12% of the nation's wealth.

That's simply incorrect. Our income tax system is massively progressive. The top 1% income earners paid 40% of the taxes, and the top 5% paid more than the bottom 95%.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote. I wasn't talking of the federal income tax alone.

I say, fuck the rich fuckers. Let them rape us until we get pissed and raise up and burn their houses to the ground.

[turk]

If some entity makes money, it will naturally try to keep control of what happens to it. You make something, you are the owner. You want to protect it, nurture it, decide what happens to it, etc.. That's an elementary tenet of freedom. It's also what happens in nature.
Sharing should be up to the maker. It shouldn't be forced. It shouldn't be mandatory that makers share more just because they made more. That's not an incentive to make more. It's the opposite. It assumes there will be always be makers to keep everyone else happy. Why make, if it's not your choice what happens to what you make?
The assumption seems there should be a higher regulatory authority to redistribute wealth according to needs and abilities, i.e. the government. But, as we should be able to agree, we are imperfect, and government is, for all intents and purposes, an extrapolation of that imperfection. It does not transcend it. The examples are plentiful.
So, I agree with the idea "Greed is Good", despite the obvious negative connotation. I don't believe there is a perfect system. There are better and worse.
Most people are good, and want to live in harmony. I think less government is better than more. There will always be bad people.
However, freedom brings out the good more than the bad.
So, I disagree with the idea government should be the regulator to decide who gets what. It should happen without government intervention, and freedom lets the good happen.
The inverse arrangement hasn't proven to be better.
Or perhaps I'm just educated on Underdog cartoons and polarizing the debate with my rigid ideology.

[hippiewannabe]

The wealth disparity is a symptom of global trends, rather than a problem. With technological advancement and globalization, the returns to knowledge and capital are increasing, and the returns to labor are decreasing.

Herein lies the problem: you treat the above statement as if it were natural law; it's not.

But it is. Human nature is natural, by definition. The economic system should gently steer behavior in ways to benefit society, and protect the less fortunate, but can't force people to act against thier rational self-interest. History has shown that utopian attempts to change human nature usually require violence, and always end badly.

[Suggesting that lowering the amount people will pay so they cheat less is silly; If greed is what motivates cheating on taxes, why do you think lowering taxes will somehow eliminate greed? Your argument seems to be (I paraphrase from above) "people will pay more if tax rates are low, since cheating won't be worth their effort".

Where did I use the word "cheat"?

While it probably does apply to the propensity of people to cheat, I'm talking about perfectly legal tax shelters. Really smart people figure out creative ways to use the rules of the tax code to minimize taxes paid. Then smart people at the IRS spend many hours figuring out what they are doing, then Congress tweaks the rules, in a never-ending cycle. The problem is both the unproductive effort by smart people, and wasteful uses of capital and effort. If rates are low, people simply put the money to use to seek the best return, and pay the resulting taxes. The actual amount of tax revenue is higher, and economic growth and employment are better.

[hippiewannabe]

Chitwnvw does a fine job of showing the painfully regressive tax burden that now exists on us bottom 80% with only 12% of the nation's wealth.

That's simply incorrect. Our income tax system is massively progressive. The top 1% income earners paid 40% of the taxes, and the top 5% paid more than the bottom 95%.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote. I wasn't talking of the federal income tax alone.

I didn't read it, I'm an infrequent visitor here. Link? But I have seen all the arguements. While cigarette, liquor and sales taxes are numerically neutral, and perhaps regressive in net usage, taxes overall are hugely progressive.

[Amskeptic]

Chitwnvw does a fine job of showing the painfully regressive tax burden that now exists on us bottom 80% with only 12% of the nation's wealth.

That's simply incorrect. Our income tax system is massively progressive. The top 1% income earners paid 40% of the taxes, and the top 5% paid more than the bottom 95%.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote. I wasn't talking of the federal income tax alone.

I say, fuck the rich fuckers. Let them rape us until we get pissed and raise up and burn their houses to the ground.

Once we the People have decided that greed is not so good, I hope we can at least reset to the National Unity of Purpose evident in Ronnie Reagan's Happy Days of the Halycon 1950's, remember when we had a middle class and a 91% top tax bracket and yet General Motors was strong?
General Motors was not taken down by the wages or benefits or pensions it promised to its workers. It was taken down by crap engineering and piss-poor choices of what to market by an incompetent management that rewarded itself nonetheless with ever more money. We bailed them out and the top management as ever, blames the workers for "bloated" income and "bloated" expectations. The truly Bloated of course do not see themselves as Bloated. I hope I live long enough to see the human spirit prevail past the dark elements of its base inner survival fears.
What a surprise when the pinstriped few discover that they were the uncivilized among us.
Colin

[turk]

History has shown that utopian attempts to change human nature usually require violence, and always end badly.

Thanks. Change has to come from within and not forced by authority. See, that's how I'm an optimist. I don't think the world and civilizations collapse into chaos just because there isn't enough authority regulating it.

[Lanval]

But it is. Human nature is natural, by definition.

Where did I use the word "cheat"?

I'll try to be brief here:

1. human "nature" is a whole can of worms you don't want open; no human interaction today is in any sense "natural" ~ everything we do is as much nurture (read: actions according to social expectations/norms). In other words, my response to you is: "Sorry, this isn't 'natural' in any sense whatsoever". Instead, these actions are done in accordance with a social view promoted by a section of society, but not society as a whole. Simply put, they do it because they've been told it's OK.

The problem with greed = natural is that there are plenty of instance of self-sacrifice at zero benefit. Any anthropologist will tell you that early man (pre-literate) continually had to balance his personal needs against those of the group. In the majority of circumstances the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few such that teamwork and mutual support are the center pole which props up what will ultimately become civilization.

2. As for cheat: your semantic distinction is pointless. Setting up legal tax shelters is nonetheless an attempt to avoid responsibility (to pay taxes in this case). That it might be legal or illegal has long since been understood to be beside the point. MLK argue in Letter From an Birmingham Jail that point rather elegantly:


"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany" Martin Luther King

People avoid responsibility not because it is natural, but because they are told it is OK. For a vastly more detailed (and researched) version, see Arendt's Banality of Evil.

L.

[chitwnvw]

History has shown that utopian attempts to change human nature usually require violence, and always end badly.

Thanks. Change has to come from within and not forced by authority. See, that's how I'm an optimist. I don't think the world and civilizations collapse into chaos just because there isn't enough authority regulating it.

So you two think the American Revolution was a bad idea!?!?!?

[turk]

The colonies wanted to break from authority, rule by the king; so that is coherent with freedom from authority: less government.

[turk]

But it is. Human nature is natural, by definition.

Where did I use the word "cheat"?

I'll try to be brief here:

1. human "nature" is a whole can of worms you don't want open; no human interaction today is in any sense "natural" ~ everything we do is as much nurture (read: actions according to social expectations/norms). In other words, my response to you is: "Sorry, this isn't 'natural' in any sense whatsoever". Instead, these actions are done in accordance with a social view promoted by a section of society, but not society as a whole. Simply put, they do it because they've been told it's OK.

The problem with greed = natural is that there are plenty of instance of self-sacrifice at zero benefit. Any anthropologist will tell you that early man (pre-literate) continually had to balance his personal needs against those of the group. In the majority of circumstances the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few such that teamwork and mutual support are the center pole which props up what will ultimately become civilization.

2. As for cheat: your semantic distinction is pointless. Setting up legal tax shelters is nonetheless an attempt to avoid responsibility (to pay taxes in this case). That it might be legal or illegal has long since been understood to be beside the point. MLK argue in Letter From an Birmingham Jail that point rather elegantly:


"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany" Martin Luther King

People avoid responsibility not because it is natural, but because they are told it is OK. For a vastly more detailed (and researched) version, see Arendt's Banality of Evil.

L.

Okay, then why do people take responsibility? Not because it's natural, because they are told it's OK, right? Or it's not OK not to. This explanation is shallow and no better than saying it's natural to look out for one's self. Self-preservation and self-interest are natural things. So, continue lecturing us, so we are enlightened further by your remarkable superiority.

[turk]

I think Lanval missed the point about "cheating". There is no need for cheating. The rules just divert a lot of precious resources from where they are put to better use.

[Amskeptic]

But it is. Human nature is natural, by definition.

Where did I use the word "cheat"?

I'll try to be brief here:

1. human "nature" is a whole can of worms you don't want open; no human interaction today is in any sense "natural" ~ everything we do is as much nurture (read: actions according to social expectations/norms). In other words, my response to you is: "Sorry, this isn't 'natural' in any sense whatsoever". Instead, these actions are done in accordance with a social view promoted by a section of society, but not society as a whole. Simply put, they do it because they've been told it's OK.

The problem with greed = natural is that there are plenty of instance of self-sacrifice at zero benefit. Any anthropologist will tell you that early man (pre-literate) continually had to balance his personal needs against those of the group. In the majority of circumstances the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few such that teamwork and mutual support are the center pole which props up what will ultimately become civilization.

2. As for cheat: your semantic distinction is pointless. Setting up legal tax shelters is nonetheless an attempt to avoid responsibility (to pay taxes in this case). That it might be legal or illegal has long since been understood to be beside the point. MLK argue in Letter From an Birmingham Jail that point rather elegantly:


"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany" Martin Luther King

People avoid responsibility not because it is natural, but because they are told it is OK. For a vastly more detailed (and researched) version, see Arendt's Banality of Evil.

L.

Okay, then why do people take responsibility? Not because it's natural, because they are told it's OK, right? so we are enlightened further by your remarkable superiority.

If you choose to interpret like a simpleton, then insult like a moron, you might get lectured, until people give up wasting their time. The whole topic of altruism and enlightened self-interest and society and power is fascinating and nuanced, and it does not need to be harangued by a fucking idiot. . . speaking of banality.


The bold highlights above could have been an interesting take-off point had you just shut your ragingly insecure mouth.
Colin