Ronald Reagan

[Michchamp]

I reject the premise that the U.S. Government has cause and the right to intercept an arbitrary slice of the money I earn before it gets to me. Or, in my present case, demand that I pay it a portion of what I genuinely earn on my own every quarter.

There's no justification for an income tax, period. It's legalized theft.

we've been over this before... you don't earn that on your own; you earn it as a participant in society, using society's roads, healthcare, power grid, water works, power plants, police protection, national security, fire protection, insurance, etc. etc. etc.

you have to pay taxes to support all these things.

Would be great if we could force all the Tea Party republicans into a cave for a month and see how they like living without the services and conveniences their taxes pay for.

I'm guessing when they all come out, they'd say the same thing:

"Oh. I guess I don't mind paying taxes so much."

 

[redandguilty]

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

This tells the same story. From '83 - '07 the cut of net worth for the bottom 80% dropped from 18.7%-15%. That's huge. That's a loss of 20% of the cut the bottom 80% had. It's small potatoes to the top 20%, but it's a big cut when you compare what the bottom 80% had in '83 to what they had in '07.

It's important to understand the difference between wealth and income, but it's the same data. Whether you look at the position or the slope of the wealth curve, it's still the same story.

 

[redandguilty]

I reject the premise that the U.S. Government has cause and the right to intercept an arbitrary slice of the money I earn before it gets to me. Or, in my present case, demand that I pay it a portion of what I genuinely earn on my own every quarter.

There's no justification for an income tax, period. It's legalized theft.

It's part of an effort to tax that unknowable amount you benefit from the government. Since we cannot know how much each person benefits from the existence of the government, we tax proxies; how much you earn, how much you consume, how much you have...no one of these things is the perfect proxy on it's own so we argue over what combination of these things is correct. What is it about income that makes it a worse proxy than consumption or possession? What do you think is better and why?

 

[Michchamp]

marginal tax rates aren't arbitrary either; they are necessary to ensure our society retains some degree of social mobility and wealth is not concentrated such that a permanent aristocracy arises (may be too late for that...)

the idea that one must be able to retain 99% of your salary or you'll stop working and become "unproductive" is a load of horseshit and the sociopaths who sold that line of crap to the country have been laughing all the way to the bank.

the idea that all wealthy people produce value for society is also FALSE. Some do. Some don't. Doesn't mean they're going to stop trying to make money if they pay a marginally higher tax rate than others...

 

[byco42]

we've been over this before... you don't earn that on your own; you earn it as a participant in society, using society's roads, healthcare, power grid, water works, power plants, police protection, national security, fire protection, insurance, etc. etc. etc.

you have to pay taxes to support all these things.

Would be great if we could force all the Tea Party republicans into a cave for a month and see how they like living without the services and conveniences their taxes pay for.

I'm guessing when they all come out, they'd say the same thing:

"Oh. I guess I don't mind paying taxes so much."

This is such a convenient, contrived argument that it makes me want to barf.

40 percent of the FEDERAL budget is paid for by INCOME taxes. You keep leaving that word out of the discussion. If you culled all the waste out of the budget and eliminated the agencies that shouldn't even exist in the federal bureaucracy in the first place, you'd offset that shortfall easily.

You are also mixing local services and federal funding. My federal income taxes do not fund the local police or fire department.

Aid to internal improvements is an issue as old as the nation, and a lot of roads, bridges and canals were built without federal income tax dollars.

 

[byco42]

marginal tax rates aren't arbitrary either; they are necessary to ensure our society retains some degree of social mobility and wealth is not concentrated such that a permanent aristocracy arises (may be too late for that...)

the idea that one must be able to retain 99% of your salary or you'll stop working and become "unproductive" is a load of horseshit and the sociopaths who sold that line of crap to the country have been laughing all the way to the bank.

the idea that all wealthy people produce value for society is also FALSE. Some do. Some don't. Doesn't mean they're going to stop trying to make money if they pay a marginally higher tax rate than others...

Maybe you might be more comfortable moving to Sweden or England. Where things are so much better.

 

[byco42]

It's part of an effort to tax that unknowable amount you benefit from the government. Since we cannot know how much each person benefits from the existence of the government, we tax proxies; how much you earn, how much you consume, how much you have...no one of these things is the perfect proxy on it's own so we argue over what combination of these things is correct. What is it about income that makes it a worse proxy than consumption or possession? What do you think is better and why?

Several reasons: One was the inversion of the constitution to make it happen. Two is the premise that I'm going to earn income in the first place: where is that law? Three is that the more I earn, the more I am taxed on the margin, simply because government says so. Fourth is that my tax dollars are applied to areas that I have no control over or that I may oppose on moral and ethical grounds, yet I'm being forced to pay them anyway. Fifth is that income is a direct compensation for my value in the marketplace and government assumes that it can intervene and diminish that value precisely because I have earned it to begin with. It has not earned the money I earn; it is the wedge that arbitrarily separates it from me without reason or cause except to fund what is of value to it. Sixth is that there is zero representation of the PEOPLE anymore in Congress, and we all know what Ben Franklin said on that topic. I'll stop for now ... I have to get back to work.

 

[KAWDUP]

This is such a convenient, contrived argument that it makes me want to barf.

40 percent of the FEDERAL budget is paid for by INCOME taxes. You keep leaving that word out of the discussion. If you culled all the waste out of the budget and eliminated the agencies that shouldn't even exist in the federal bureaucracy in the first place, you'd offset that shortfall easily.

You are also mixing local services and federal funding. My federal income taxes do not fund the local police or fire department.

Aid to internal improvements is an issue as old as the nation, and a lot of roads, bridges and canals were built without federal income tax dollars.

This is true byco, and for much of this argument I do agree with you, but even the link you provided has a sobering set of facts as they relate to income and wealth distribution. There is no mistaking the trend, and the fact that it has proportionally gotten worse for the lowest group of wage earners, and gotten a lot better for the 0.1% of the top wage earners and wealth owners, would certainly call into question the need for that upper group to pay less.

The trick, in my opinion is to somehow preserve the social mobility that champ talks about, while minimizing the actual increase in tax burden on the 80-95% percentile of wage earners.

I hear the resounding group a DUH's that will be coming my way, but the plan that is perceived to get closest to that is the one that will end up getting the most votes come November.

Who shapes that perception? That is how the media outlets will eventually get involved and affect the outcomes.

Just my 2 pennies.

 

[redandguilty]

Several reasons: One was the inversion of the constitution to make it happen. Two is the premise that I'm going to earn income in the first place: where is that law? Three is that the more I earn, the more I am taxed on the margin, simply because government says so. Fourth is that my tax dollars are applied to areas that I have no control over or that I may oppose on moral and ethical grounds, yet I'm being forced to pay them anyway. Fifth is that income is a direct compensation for my value in the marketplace and government assumes that it can intervene and diminish that value precisely because I have earned it to begin with. It has not earned the money I earn; it is the wedge that arbitrarily separates it from me without reason or cause except to fund what is of value to it. Sixth is that there is zero representation of the PEOPLE anymore in Congress, and we all know what Ben Franklin said on that topic. I'll stop for now ... I have to get back to work.

1) While I respect arguments of constitutionality, it has nothing to do with whether or not income tax is fair or ethical or practical or different from other forms of taxing.

2) You don't have to earn income. Many don't.

3) For reason number 3, you present a kind of definition of an income tax, but not an argument.

4) This applies to any type of tax and does not distinguish income tax from other taxes.

5) Number 5 is barely different from #3. The fact that you reject the idea that the amount of income you earn is in some way proportional to the benefit you get from the government does not mean there is no reason, you just reject the reason.

6) This also applies to any tax.

 

[tsmith7559]

did any of you guys actually work during the Carter Administration???? or are u to young??

 

[redandguilty]

did any of you guys actually work during the Carter Administration???? or are u to young??

Carter?! I missed out on the Regan administration by several months. Not that that changes the numbers or anything...my own anecdotes don't really impact the national trends we're talking about.

 

[Thumb]

did any of you guys actually work during the Carter Administration???? or are u to young??

Tell us what it was like to work during the Hoover administration tsmith.

 

[tsmith7559]

Tell us what it was like to work during the Hoover administration tsmith.

I have to laugh...guys throwing out stats on Reagan, etc....If you lived during Carter and his 20% interest rates, double digit inflation and then lived through Reagan.....no comparison

 

[tinselwolverine]

This thread kinda got pretty interesting while I was gone...

 

[Michchamp]

I have to laugh...guys throwing out stats on Reagan, etc....If you lived during Carter and his 20% interest rates, double digit inflation and then lived through Reagan.....no comparison

the President doesn't set the interest rates, or determine them in any way. You're thinking of the Federal Reserve Chairman. During the later parts of Carter's term and Reagan's term, rates were set and kept high by the Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, to break inflation.

for the record, while Volcker was initially appointed Fed Chairman by Carter, he was reappointed by Reagan in 1983.

the lower rates & lower inflation during Reagan's tenure were not really Reagan's doing; he benefited from the inflation breaking policies (which were hugely unpopular) of Volcker, and the dramatic fall in gasoline prices which happened in the early 80s

 

[tsmith7559]

the President doesn't set the interest rates, or determine them in any way. You're thinking of the Federal Reserve Chairman. During the later parts of Carter's term and Reagan's term, rates were set and kept high by the Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, to break inflation.

for the record, while Volcker was initially appointed Fed Chairman by Carter, he was reappointed by Reagan in 1983.

the lower rates & lower inflation during Reagan's tenure were not really Reagan's doing; he benefited from the inflation breaking policies (which were hugely unpopular) of Volcker, and the dramatic fall in gasoline prices which happened in the early 80s

cutting the marginal tax rates was the spark for the economic prosperity we had for over 20 years

 

[TheVictors]

I like YouTube.


In fact, it's a lot easier to just sit and watch stuff being shown to you than have to actually seek it out.

 

[redandguilty]

I have to laugh...guys throwing out stats on Reagan, etc....If you lived during Carter and his 20% interest rates, double digit inflation and then lived through Reagan.....no comparison

We're talking about trends over decades. If that's funny in the context of your own experience under Carter's administration, feel free to share. Otherwise you're just publicly laughing over an inside joke.

...or are you trying to say 20% interest rates and double digit inflation are a good thing?

 

[redandguilty]

cutting the marginal tax rates was the spark for the economic prosperity we had for over 20 years

then how do you explain more recent history?

 

[tinselwolverine]

I like YouTube.


In fact, it's a lot easier to just sit and watch stuff being shown to you than have to actually seek it out.

I've never failed to find a Monty Python clip that I looked for on there yet.