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I guess I need to start making a lot more money, so I can pay lower taxes.
You will pay far more taxes. These stats are just based on percentages. The rich pay more in taxes each year than most people will make in their entire lives. As someone who makes a ton of money and pays a crap ton of taxes, the people who make these graphics are clueless idiots.
This graphic is based on the percentage of income paid to taxes. A family making $500k a year paying a higher dollar amount than one making $50k a year is expected, but the higher earners should also be paying a higher percentage because 20% to them means a lot less sacrifice than 20% to a low income family. The sacrifice of not buying that third or fourth house is a lot less than whether the low income family goes to the doctor for a checkup.
Taxes should be treated like insurance. If you're more likely to use social services, then you should pay more taxes. Those who do not require public social services should not pay taxes at all.
So high income people don't use roads, fire, police, the FAA, tax breaks for businesses, etc? They don't indirectly benefit when their lower income employees, people at the store, people that use whatever drives the high income people's earnings, etc. are using these social services including food assistance and Medicaid? Do high income people just live in a magical bubble where people have no interaction and connections to each other and they earn money without the input of anyone else? I'd love to live in this fantasy land with you.
One benefit rich people get from social services is the poors not dragging them into the street and beating them to death.
No one needs lower income employees.
The rich person is more likely to require more police services. The rich person is pretty much the only sort of person that's ever going to have the FBI seriously in their corner. That rich person is more likely to care deeply about the interstate system and the FAA. If a foreign military is coming, the rich are the people that would most desperately want the defense. The rich have the government acting on their best interests in meddling in world affairs and negotiating trade.
Though you probably think welfare is what most taxes go toward, but that's actually a relatively small piece of the tax funded pie.
Taxes should be treated like insurance. If you're more likely to use social services, then you should pay more taxes. Those who do not require public social services should not pay taxes at all.
Who's more likely to need and benefit from a well funded police force? A wealthy man with a lot of property that needs to be protected? Or a poor man with little property, nothing to lose, and a grudge against the rich man hoarding his wealth?
The wealthy have their own security. Police is for the poor.
Clearly you've never done a hard day's work in your miserable life, which I hope doesn't last much longer. People like you disgust me.
I worked my way up from poverty. And I did it the hard way. Heat stroke. Broken bones. 75 hour work weeks. Coming home every day covered in dirt and sweat and too tired to even shower.
Now I make good money and I am honored to pay taxes. Taxes kept me from the brink. Taxes funded the work-study programs, the food banks I visited, the shelters I stayed at while homeless. I pay a TON of taxes and that is fucking GREAT. It's an investment in my neighbors. I want to live in a good place. I want others to have the opportunities I did.
And I don't fucking delude myself into thinking I made it out because I'm just that awesome. I worked hard, but I also got LUCKY. My taxes make it more possible for others to follow in my footsteps.
You're such a funny 13 yo kid...
So you want socialism. No thanks. If I earn $500k a year because I went to college and put in far more effort than someone who makes $50k a year, why should I pay multiples more in taxes than them? Someone earning $50k a year is leaching far more off society than someone making $500k. The $50k per year person buys less and pays less sales tax, they have a far smaller house and pays far less property tax. They will be much more likely to incur medical bills they can't pay. If you have a disability, great, you get assistance (or should), but if you are lazy, why shouldn't you pay the same income tax as me? I pay the tax on everything else that I consume.
They will be much more likely to incur medical bills they can't pay.
Wow, you almost got the point there then got completely lost. Low income people can't pay medical bills because they don't have the money to do so. How will taxing them help that situation? You seem like a student of the "fuck you, I've got mine" school of thought.
Take the Waltons of Walmart fame as an extreme example. They are some of the richest people in America but their Walmart employees include people that are being paid so poorly they also need to collect social services such as food stamps and Medicaid. Walmart pays low wages knowing the employees can't survive and will be assisted by the taxpayers. Paying lower wages means more profits and more money in the Waltons pockets at the expense of the employees. Do you think the Waltons are spending all their extra earnings on things that incur more taxes or are they just putting it away like a dragon on their pile of treasure?
Walmart also uses taxpayer funded services like public roads to move goods, the FAA and ATC for their corporate and private jets, tax breaks when they build new warehouses or stores, etc. So, are the underpaid Walmart employees the ones leaching off society or is it the high earners like the Waltons causing the issues?
I am a "fuck you, I am still working hard every day for mine" kind of person. I have known many people who flake out and try to take short cuts, then blame everyone but themselves for their problems. People who work for walmart are idiots. They go find an easy job, then stay long after they should. If walmart had a hard time employing people they would have to raise the wages and benefits. But they don't, and don't have to. Supply and demand. If I was a dog walker and walked a millionaires dog every day do you think they owe me a livable wage, a 401k, and Healthcare? Hell no, go find a real job. Yes, underpaid walmart employees are absolutely leaching off society. Go find some real work... take off that dumb blue shirt and either make money with your brain or with your muscles.
If someone is underpaid, that means they are working harder/longer than they should for the pay they get, right? Which means they are giving more than they are getting. That makes it the opposite of leaching.
Walmart is the one getting more than they should for the amount of pay they offer. So isn't it Walmart that is the leach in this example?
While I do agree some jobs are easier than others, those still require a human to do the work, so that human should be able to live from doing that job.
If I earn $500k a year because I went to college and put in far more effort than someone who makes $50k a year, why should I pay multiples more in taxes than them?
Because you are forgetting of the net benefit of taxes that have been paid for decades before you were born, which improved everyone's standing to allow for:
The training of your teachers to allow you to get your education.
The city infrastructure that allowed you easy access to school, and later to your profession.
The social stability for your business to thrive.
The quality of life for your business's customers, allowing them to afford to be customers, allowing the business to afford your $500k a year.You do not live in a vacuum. If all the people who make $50k a year disappeared it would significantly negatively impact your life. "A rising tide raises all ships", and a society on which everyone can thrive benefits everyone in that society. You can afford to pay a higher % and still thrive, in order to ease the burden on someone who is struggling.
You're argument of "I make more money than I need, I should keep it and let other people starve" isn't very compelling.
Lol on how Liberals have no idea what socialism is. :)
Not a liberal. I am a hard working capitalist that wants to earn more for working harder. Just read the wiki page. You definitely want socialism. No thanks. This is a very academic idea that would never work, as we have seen. It just allows the lazy to be more lazy, but the people who would innovate in a capitalist economy to have no motivation to take risks and work harder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Socialist systems divide into non-market and market forms.[15][16] A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system.[17] Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive.[18][19][20] ...
By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.[29][30] By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,[31] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.[32] ...
A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.[334]
—Albert Einstein, "Why Socialism?", 1949
So, high income taxes is the collectivization of the means of production? You wrote a lot of words, but none of them make sense in regards of your original statement.
And yes, I want socialism (though not in the form you probably assume, but this is getting really OT). But we are not talking about socialism here.
Is this a joke? The wealthy consume far more of the efforts of the government than the poor.
the rich pay more in taxes each year than most people will make in their entire lives
Yet even when doing so they also take home more money each year than most people will make in their entire lives.
But you aren't paying the same amount proportional to what you have and that's the main point dude. You are comfortable paying that but people making less than you are using more of the limited resources they have to pay taxes while you are living your best life. At the end of the day it only takes so much money to have your needs met after that it's just extra but these people don't even have their needs met yet. If you are working that shouldn't be the case.
Sounds like you're making money by working hard, which is a silly way to try to make a lot of money in a capitalist system. The hint is in the name, my friend: it's not called "workism".
If only we lived in an economy where your hard work was proportional to your income!
You pay more money total, but you have a lot more left over too. You don't pay more in Washington State unless you own an expensive property, since they don't have income tax. Well I guess you pay more if you buy more stuff, but that's a given.
Even in Washington state you have federal income tax. Why should someone who makes $500k pay 10x more than someone who makes $50k? Just because you think they have more? Someone who makes $500k has worked far harder, likely has lots of student loans, and much higher expenses. This is a capitalist country, not socialist. They say eat the rich... I say eat the lazy.
A family who earned $500k is likely putting lots of money into some sort of savings or investments while a family making $50k is likely living paycheck to paycheck. The $500k earner can part with a little extra to help benefit the greater good.
Also, your ridiculous "they worked harder and low income people are lazy" schtick is idiotic. Do you think someone who grew up in a poor family, went to an underfunded school district, had to work to help support the family, couldn't afford college, and works multiple jobs just to live paycheck to paycheck is lazy? Or are the high income middle managers that grew up in high income families, went to good school districts, had college paid for by their parents, spend weekends at their lake house, have full time child care, and earn money off the backs of the lower income people the lazy ones?
That's unironically how they think and they can't fathom how us poors had to grow up. I work with a privileged (I'm not even being derogatory by saying that) lady who had it all growing up and has a nepobaby job and she was gobsmacked when I told her I had to drop out of college to work more to help my younger brothers survive. Took her a second to get that not all of us have both of our parents and that our parents aren't all rich people who could just give infinite cash. She does straight up live in a rich bubble here in Cali.
She's also a landlady that got gifted houses to rent by her parents so she's part of the reason us poors have to pay so much rent.
When I was living in my car during college I met a girl who had a full ride from her parents and she un-ironically said "why don't you just get your parents to give you an apartment?". She couldn't fathom that one, I have a single parent, not parents, and two, that parent didn't have any money either. Her parents paid for a bad-ass apartment for her, paid her college tuition, gave her a BMW, and a credit card with an unlimited budget. By contrast, I was living in my car, working all night for my money, and going to school during the day, trying my damnedest to improve my situation in life.
Edit: on one hand I kind of agree with what that other guy said. There are plenty of people who never bothered fighting through the type of situation I outlined above, never built any job skills, and never pursued a career. They go to their minimum wage job, clock in, clock out, and don't concern themselves with anything beyond that. But on the other hand I recognize that there are tons of people whose opportunities have been limited due to their position in life, and despite fighting through adversity to build a better life, life kicked them around enough that they never succeeded in fighting their way out. That second group is what those who are more fortunate don't want to acknowledge, since it means they need to acknowledge that they aren't in their awesome situation purely through their own awesomeness.
Replying to your edit, even those people who don't want more deserve to live a happy life with their basic needs met and the other dude just doesn't seem to think so. Not all of us can be doctors and lawyers earning the big bucks. Some need to do the 'lesser' jobs that the rest of us enjoy. We need baristas, grocers, teachers assistants, daycare workers, garbage men (I know they can make decent money in some parts), fast food employees etc. We can't leave some of those jobs to teens, and even for the ones we can our human growth won't be enough to keep this house of cards going.
I agree with you.
You've made the claim a couple times that lower earners are just not working as hard, you know that's not how it goes, right? Me and my wife working as teachers put in the time to go to school, put in the mandatory internships of student teaching, and then work our asses off on 80 hr weeks each to do the job and still walk away with less than $100k income. Are we just lazy?
You mean you walk away with less than $100k EACH. Your household income is likely close to $150k to $200k, with full benefits and retirement. You almost never have to worry about layoffs. Many teachers are part of unions and can practically commit murder and keep their jobs. Your household is in the top 10%, and you are exactly who they want to tax more. You have "extra income" because someone making $40k a year earns far less than you. So you have more that you can pay.
You are going to compare yourself to a Walmart employee who couldn't bother to do their high-school homework? Who just clocks in and clocks out every day without a care in the world about their job? They absolutely work less hard than you and are far more lazy. You make more than double what they do. Do you think you should pay far more taxes? While you pay those student loans?
You mean you walk away with less than $100k EACH.
No, I mean total, and that's without full benefits since one of the schools is a small business.
Many teachers are part of unions and can practically commit murder and keep their jobs.
My wife has been fired basically for being autistic more than once and while the union wanted to make a case it was eventually determined to be too unlikely to stick.
It's cool that you think you know my whole situation and also the situation of everyone else earning less than me, but it's just not the case that everyone or even most people making 40k are lazy. Many of them have been working hard their entire lives but didn't have the resources to succeed despite their best efforts, and writing each of them off as
a Walmart employee who couldn't bother to do their high-school homework? Who just clocks in and clocks out every day without a care in the world about their job?
is just pretty shitty. It's not the case that every high earner was handed life on a silver platter, and it's not the case that every low earner is an unskilled layabout content to wallow.
The graphic is about State taxes, not federal. It's lacking in information though and hard to draw conclusions from. It's probably intentionally created to cause anger.
In response to your statements though, the idea is that you can comfortably part with a higher percentage of your money. I'm also in a high tax bracket and I'm not really opposed to a graduated tax rate. Someone's gotta pay for our military, our roads, social services, police, etc. All of that stuff isn't going to get funded by people with low income. Social programs can help people lift themselves out of poverty and give them a chance to make something of themselves. They also help protect our nation's children.
That said, I think the big corporations should shoulder a lot larger portion of that burden than they do. I'm also not keen on the competence and lack of efficiency/effectiveness of our government in a lot of areas.
They say eat the rich, you say eat the lazy, I say don't eat anyone. I'd love to see our country more unified.
By this logic why not just tax high income earners to the point that they make the same as low income earners? After all, they have more money they can part with as you state. Just offering to blindly pay more tax because uncle Sam needs more missiles is a really stupid argument. It leads to gross over spending and negligence. I worked for a government agency for many years and every year they would buy millions of dollars of stuff that never made if off the pallet just because they needed to spend their budget so they got it next year. Not with my money, no thanks.
There's two facets to consider. -Is government spending well managed, and if not, what to do to improve it? You may have some fair points there
-To the extent government spending is reasonably required, how to handle paying for it? On this, you overextend their point about who can afford. Someone making $30k/year and trying to get by can't really spare any money. Someone making $500k/year would still have crap tons of money even paying $200k/year in taxes. No one is proposing that making more should make it so you take home less than the low income person, or even close to the low income person, just that the proportion that can go to government comfortably increases.
It leads to gross over spending and negligence
I don't disagree with you there. I made that very same point. And that's the answer to your question, as well as part of your previous statement. We're still mostly a capitalist society, so you get to reap the rewards of your income. But we have socialist programs too, so those who can bear more of the weight do so.
Point of order, do you mean 10x more proportionally to their total or 10x more in general?
I don't see what the issue is. The graphic shows percentage. In absolute terms you pay more but in percentage you pay less.
It's still deceitful to claim that the rich pay less...
The rich consume the most government resources. The balance sheet after taxes for the wealthiest is by the most negative in absolute terms. They cost the rest of us more than any other group.
They do in percentage.
A poor person with $1000 taxed at 10% is worse off than a rich person with $100,000 taxed at 20%.