World Wars and depressions tend to cause countries to have to change how they operate. Unless you just meant our principles like the freedom to exploit and enslave people. Or maybe you think letting Germany and Japan take over the US was the ideal. I do appreciate you at least pointing out when you think America was last great, unlike the MAGA crowd.
It doesn't need to be defined in order to be relevant. What's your assertion? That the wealthy won't object to minor tax increases? I agree 100%. But that point is so elementary that it doesn't need to be made. The question is, if there were significant tax rate increases, do you think the wealthy would continue to operate exactly as they have been and willingly pay the increased taxes?
I think the larger point is that if you asked most Americans, I bet a lot of them would tell you they don't think they're getting their money's worth for all the government that their taxes underwrite
I bet if you asked a lot of them about the programs that they benefit from, they couldn't name them either.
They would operate differently. They would complain loudly. And then they would pay their higher taxes because they know the system still works in their favor and is way better than the alternatives.
Spoken like someone afraid to engage. You know you'll end up looking bad so you sit on the sidelines and snipe. Frankly though, since Major was responding to a comment that he misread, the onus was on him to ask for clarification.
That would depend entirely on how differently they choose to operate as well as the degree of the tax rate increase. In any case, the devil is in the details. Are you referring to capital gains? W-2/1099/self-employment wages? Dividend/Distribution income? Can you clarify?
Right, and if you asked why that is, I’d bet the top answer would be corruption. If you asked how to fix it, I think that’s when it gets interesting.
I'm a proponent of moving capital gains rates up and ordinary income rates down - ultimately, my goal would be to equalize the rates, but that would be too significant a change all at once. This would mean cap gains rates would have a more progressive structure similar to ordinary income. If we want to reward labor over capital, we should stop taxing it higher than capital, a disparity that is made even worse with payroll taxes. Ultra-rich people will still prefer making money in stocks over actually doing labor and they will pay the higher taxes. Over the long haul, it will reward labor more relative to capital and it will help reduce inequality - it's not a surprise that inequality skyrocketed when we started lowering taxes specifically on the ways that rich people make money.
So what do you envision the maximum cap gain rate to be? Whatever the individual's prevailing tax rate is?
It depends on the math needed to make the overall tax revenue work out to stay fairly flat. Its fascinating that you seem to think it's my job to answer all your questions and yet you have provided exactly zero evidence to back up your initial claims and still have yet to define "significant" or put any numbers to your data, while also trying to claim I spoke out of context. If you want to continue this conversation, you'll have to do much better.
https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-financial-wealth.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm#indicator-chart
https://www.crfb.org/papers/how-high-are-federal-interest-payments Interest Payments Equal a Large Share of Household Income The roughly $300 billion spent on federal net interest payments in FY 2021 is equivalent to over $2,400 per household. That’s more than the typical household spends on major household expenditures, including household furnishings; gas; clothing; education; meat, eggs, and dairy; or personal care in a given year. Interest payments effectively consume more than half of the worker-side payroll tax paid by households and are almost twice as large as total payments received through federal excise taxes and customs duties.
And those numbers consistently go up during GOP administrations and drop when you put Democrats in charge. Reagan was the worst.
