The NEED TO Tax The Wealthy

I guess if you're okay with people's money (as long as it's rich people of course) getting taxed twice, I can't win this argument with you.

 

And you are ignoring that it's a tax on capital that distorts the market by discouraging savings and investment. What we need is more savings and investments, not less.

But I'm sure you'll ignore the economics of it and just think of it as "social justice" or something.

 

I'm not suggesting a return to that. I am saying that increases in tax rate didn't result in concurent decreases in productivity, as Refman suggested it would. If you disagree, provide me some sort of evidence, any evidence, with empirical numbers. As far as I can tell, between 1950 and 2005, the four largest years of real GDP growth occured in the 1950's under that disasterous, burdomsome, initiative killing tax rate. You don't have to like that, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

You can sputter and protest all you like about theoretical models of human behavior, but if the experimental results don't support the thesis, it is the thesis that needs to be discarded, not the results.

 

Again, those people weren't actually paying 90% on their income, unless they were so mentally challenged that they wouldn't hire experts to handle their tax liability. And you are right... those rates didn't harm the economy, because some of our greatest growth accured during that era. I just want to point out that the real tax rate wasn't anything like 90%.

The tax increases being bandied about are nothing. Seriously. They are still low rates and those who would pay them can, in the main, easily afford to. All this bellowing about the "awful" tax increases proposed by the administration, etc., is simply political posturing by the GOP.

 

Go, Yonkers!

Reading this thread makes me understand two schools of thought:

1) Screw the upcoming generations -- let them pay for our fiscal policies. The older one is the less one cares about future debt. I get it. Don't leave the little buggers anything -- they don't deserve money if they themselves didn't earn it. They'd probably waste it on food anyway.

2) Anyone with more money than another is rich and deserves to be taxed without mercy. Anyone making less is "a member of the undeserving poor -- and not worth any less than the widow who got money from six different charities for the death of the same husband. Sure I'm undeserving, and I mean to go on being undeserving." (My Fair Lady) So there, tax someone else.

 

$2500 a week? seriously? hmmmmm. not rich at all. Discount Tire managers make $10k a month. Go try telling them they are rich.

 

No no no no no. That's besides the point. It's not any specific monetary number.
For argument sake let's choose a variable of $X. In which case then the formula is
IF $X > $My Shiz
THEN $X = Rich

 

so, lets put this in laymens terms........

you represent A, and I represent B.

A makes $X a month, B makes less.......gimmie yo shiz?

 

Taxing earned income of those who have succeeded to dole it out to others through entitlement programs doesn't sound very much like an American ideal as the founding fathers thought it out.

 

That comment was about taxing estates. I firmly believe that we should tax the crap out of estates of more than $1,000,000. The world doesn't need more Astors, Pritzkers, or Hiltons.

 

I am not suggesting anything. I am flat out telling you that if, on an after tax basis, there was a minimal economic benefit between going to law school or not and being an accountant with a BBA, then nobody would ever subject themselves to the rigors of law school...or medical school...or anything else that is difficult.

There has to be a real economic benefit in order for it to seem worth it. The "evidence" you pointed to is a nice anecdote, but the IRC is totally different today than it was then. There were a plethora of tax shelters that no longer exist. Conversely, there are now different types of deductions that you can not get over about $55,000 in income that makes a big difference (ie student loan deductions, etc).

 

Please explain how the British, German, and French hospitals manage to staff themselves. Or is it all a clever socialist illusion?

I personally guarantee you that the difference between 33% and 40% on all income in excess of $160,000 will have no effect on the number of medical school aplicants each year. Personally, I would add a new tax bracket at $1,000,000 that taxed in excess of 50%. This would have no effect on the professionals that you speak of. If it resulted in fewer bright-eyed boys applying for Wall St. jobs... I think that would be a good thing.

 

You can't because rich people aren't getting taxed twice. The people who inherit wealth weren't taxed on it before. They didn't even own the wealth before so they couldn't get taxed on it.

 

Nobody has made that argument. Not one person. Why are you acting like that's the argument people are making?

 

Then Discount tire managers are in the top 10 percent of American income earners.

Go try and telling that to the other 90% of American income earners.

 

All money gets taxed multiple times. My already taxed (through FICA and SS withholding) paycheck gets hit by property tax, sales tax, and other forms of tax. No dollar only gets taxed once.