Nearly half of US households pay no fed income tax

[guerilla]

While I agree with everything you just said, some people also benefit from inflation. Like anyone who is in large debt and has no cash. Or nations in the same situation as a whole.

They benefit at the expense of someone else. Every debtor who pays off his debt easier with inflation, has a creditor who is receiving less real purchasing power than he deserves. Someone is always taking the loss, with inflation it is shifted around (inequitably in my opinion).

And the debtor, who may now be debt free or have his debt under control, is still stuck with diminished purchasing power in the long run. He's traded immediate relief for long term growth prospects.

So yes, nations can debase their currency to make the national debt easier to manage, but what they are doing is engaging in a cycle of capital consumption (eroding the value of savings) which will make it very hard for the private economy (tax base) to recover.

That's why free market people get so pissed off about inflationary monetary policy. It is just digging a bigger hole in the long run, while fixing none of the problems in the present that are used as its justification.

 

[guerilla]

All the people saying stop outscourcing, stop buying foreign, etc, do not understand a god damn thing about capitalism and think that protectionism will help the US. What will actually help the US is education and entrepreneurism. If you want the US to recover, you need to help our members compete in a global economy. And that certainly doesn't mean by being less efficient by hiring people for higher wages than is necessary.

Thank you. You made my day.

 

[kingofsp]

Guerilla you make me want to cheers your punk rock ass avatar.

 

[kingofsp]

Also, I've decide to become a Tax Protester.

 

[ricdes]

No one is going to be better off by going back to working in factories or by doing their own social bookmarking.

The only way for an economy to get out of depression is for the too big to fails go bankrupt (releasing resources to the healthy firms to use), government slashes spending, and interest rates rise.

I'm gonna hate myself for this: You are 100% right.

 

[kingofsp]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZl6202HJGQ"]YouTube - Ron Paul on CNBC 2004 - UnConstitutional Income Tax[/ame]

(Youtube's embedding feature is apparently all fucked up today. Hopefully this video appears soon).

 

[Refrozen]

Personally, vice taxes are the way I'd do it.

Legalize weed, tax it at 100%
Make a flat rate $10/pack tax on all nicotine products (Except my ecigs, stay the fuck out of that arena!)
Tax booze through the roof.
Increase the tax on fuel (jet/car)

This is a terrible idea. You move towards minimizing happiness by doing that; anone who values smoking/week/booze gets screwed and people who don't get huge rewards.

If you want to talk about ideal taxes, you need to tax each commodity at the inverse of how much you're willing to substitute it for other things. Equalize the marginal losses.

That said, this totally ignores the moral and implementation problems with it. In reality, your flat tax scheme proposed in your first post is a much better design, but remember any tax system that isn't "optimal" will result in distortions, often very large ones. I also feel there's a moral issue with stealing from people, but that's sort of irrelevant here.




Also, wtf is up with protectionists. Maybe guerilla can fill me in on some of their motivations. I don't understand why anyone would be against getting things for a cheaper price (outsourcing, also sometimes called "getting things on sale") and therefore producing more stuff... More stuff = more wealth... don't people want more stuff? Same deal with "buy local", except that that might just be an environmentalist movement (pollution isn't properly internalized in to price?) that I don't know about.

Sometimes people who don't study economics confuse me.

Edit: Also, Guerilla is right. As usual. The central banking system is a much bigger problem than income tax, because it is completely unauditable, you can't watch it, you can't measure it, you can't revolt against it, you can't even pretend to vote it out of power.

 

[megatabbers]

EDIT: Disclaimer, not that I don't agree with the article, but the problem isn't people, it's congress who makes these laws..

FIXED:


"We have 50 percent of VOTERS who are getting something for nothing, thanks to the guys/gals they elected to congress." said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

~350M people in the USA, flat tax based on income, no credits.

20K == $500 tax
40K == $1200 tax
$80K == $2000 tax
150K == $5K
300k+ == $10K per 300K earned.

Simple, fair, and would save us BILLIONS in IRS expenses.

That would be awesome. I wonder if we can figure out how much that would add up to in total tax revenue generated. It would be interesting to see how it compares with the current revenue generated.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

Nearly half of US households pay no fed income tax

In a possibly related note, nearly half of all US households have no money to pay taxes with.

 

[svakanda]

has anyone ever read 'Spent'? I'm curious what you think about consumption taxes? Taxing Retail products & consumptive products(gasoline, oil, energy)..and purposefully leaving taxes off of 2nd hand & local products.

 

[BigWill]

freeloading pheasant pieces of shit

if you pay more than 10k/year in taxes you should be allowed to kill / shoot unproductive members of the society for fun

-2cents

 

[BigWill]

has anyone ever read 'Spent'? I'm curious what you think about consumption taxes? Taxing Retail products & consumptive products(gasoline, oil, energy)..and purposefully leaving taxes off of 2nd hand & local products.

Thats how it should be. You should not be punished for being successful. I should not have to pay for people who are unable to take care of themselves.

 

[uplinked]

if you pay more than 10k/year in taxes you should be allowed to kill / shoot unproductive members of the society for fun

i agree with this so much, it's going in my sig.

 

[negro2k]

how the fuck do people not pay taxes? they must be making 2 dollars a year and have 6 kids to claim as dependents. where do they live to get free housing i cant even live with my parents unless i pay $600/month

 

[turbolapp]

EDIT: Disclaimer, not that I don't agree with the article, but the problem isn't people, it's congress who makes these laws..

FIXED:


"We have 50 percent of VOTERS who are getting something for nothing, thanks to the guys/gals they elected to congress." said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

~350M people in the USA, flat tax based on income, no credits.

20K == $500 tax
40K == $1200 tax
$80K == $2000 tax
150K == $5K
300k+ == $10K per 300K earned.

Simple, fair, and would save us BILLIONS in IRS expenses.

Fuck I would buy into a flat rate system just to save me the headache come tax day. It will never happen because the IRS/government enjoys the fear and confusion they perpetuate with their ridiculously complicated system.

 

[keeper33]

All the people saying stop outscourcing, stop buying foreign, etc, do not understand a god damn thing about capitalism and think that protectionism will help the US. What will actually help the US is education and entrepreneurism. If you want the US to recover, you need to help our members compete in a global economy. And that certainly doesn't mean by being less efficient by hiring people for higher wages than is necessary.

^^^^^^^^

Protectionism screws the country. Higher wages from protected jobs get passed on to the consumer in the form of higher costs. Higher costs on protected output erodes the purchasing power of consumers over time and thereby increases the unemployment rate.

Protectionists, please go play in traffic. Kthxbai.

 

[keeper33]

Wouldn't a federal sales tax instead of income tax be a better idea?

There is a proposal based on this idea, it's called the Fair Tax. It's basically a 23% national sales tax, but it's gathered controversy over whether it's inherently regressive or progressive and has been sitting in committee since 1999.

Fair Tax

 

[Sharksfan]

I'd be down with flat tax like white on rice.

The very fact that I could potentially pay fines or worse because my "taxes are wrong" mystifies me. I do not do my taxes. I hire professionals because it is too god damn complicated. Right now my 2008 state taxes are in round 3 of revision because no one can agree on how to apportion my income when I moved between states.

 

[Jsmith]

Fuck I would buy into a flat rate system just to save me the headache come tax day. It will never happen because the IRS/government enjoys the fear and confusion they perpetuate with their ridiculously complicated system.

Not to mention their so called "jobs" that the irs would want to protect.

 

[Moxie]

Also, wtf is up with protectionists. Maybe guerilla can fill me in on some of their motivations. I don't understand why anyone would be against getting things for a cheaper price (outsourcing, also sometimes called "getting things on sale") and therefore producing more stuff... More stuff = more wealth... don't people want more stuff? Same deal with "buy local", except that that might just be an environmentalist movement (pollution isn't properly internalized in to price?) that I don't know about.

"...when the Constitution was adopted, to say that protection of American labor and industry, was not a leading, I might almost say, the leading motive, for the formation of the new government. Without that provision in the Constitution, it never could have been adopted." - Daniel Webster

"The people of this country demanded a union stronger than the confederation, for the very purpose of shielding home industries from the prostrating assaults of foreign competition, through the regulation of commerce with other nations..." - George "Father of the Bill of Rights" Mason



Tariffs were the main source of money for the federal government for many years. Today they get it more from other ways, but these other ways don't directly impact a shoe factory in China, while they do one in the USA.

A factory in an American town is forced to help pay for the roads, the military, the flowers in front of the post office, etc. They also have to deal with environmental regulations and whatever else that the foreign factories might not have to. Imagine Major League Baseball saying that only American born players couldn't use steroids.

Ron Paul is against tariffs, but I believe he has said that it is the least intruding way for the federal government to get their money.