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I think the relevant divide is between homeowners and renters. A homeowner can live sustainably well on a moderately low income, but a renter cannot. (Because the renter cannot stabilize housing costs and has no control over them, while also having no long-term tenure.)
So it is renters who are protesting having their taxes cut?
And homeowners who are in favor of getting tax cuts?
Could be
Quote:
Originally Posted by MLSFan
isn't the divide mostly between renters who have a financial plan and those who don't?
if someone rented for their entire live, they should be able to know in advance that they will likely be renting in retirement as well, and make plans for it. vs the ones who spend their money "now" instead of saving it for later
homeowners when they sign on the mortgage, at least makes a financial plan that spans the years of the mortgage. a 30 year mortgage has them paying for 30 years for a goal. what did the renter do for 30 years as a goal?
if the renter was too poor to buy a house, in what way did you expect them to ever have a good retirement? renter or not, poor people retire poorly
Anyone who fails to plan is planning to fail.
Implement a plan and at least there is a sliver of hope that your plan may work.
I have had many renters whose salary income was greater than my salary income.
The problem is that the waves of tax cuts over the last 20+ years have left no money for infrastructure. The way you grow the economy and be competitive in the global economy is by having good infrastructure and the best education system in the world. That costs money and you need to tax appropriately to pay for it. Easily 75% of the country isn't competitive in the global economy which is why we have the income stratification problem.
Geoff,
What is the tax level you see as appropriate? Before you answer, please consider...
"In 2014, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined"
Do you feel the top 1% should be taxed more? Or, do you think the bottom 90% should be taxed more?
Or, should both be taxed more? Or, are the folks in the 91st to 99th percentile not paying enough?
Do you really feel as though the Government needs even more money to fix the problems?
Obama increased the deficit more than all the Presidents that came before him combined, and I can't name a single thing that got better, other than GM's union pension funding shortfall.
Income flowing in to the federal government is at an all time high, and yet many problems persist, and it seems to many that nothing is getting fixed. This suggests to me that it's not more money that is needed, its something else.
We have thrown Trillions at education, poverty, and healthcare, but the results have been terrible.
It's not that the government is underfunded, its that Government can't fix anything, no matter how much money they spend. We need to figure out how to make Government functional again. Giving it more money is clearly not working. We've been trying that for years. time to try something else.
Told you this was going to get deep into the weeds...
Yes, I see that happening at times. However, the good thing is people are talking and that they are realizing that income inequality is a real thing that is negatively affecting a sizable portion of people. The ideas of how to fix it will vary of course but it is good to see people realize the issue and that we (as a country and humanity as a whole) work towards ways of reducing this inequality in a reasonable manner. For people to ignore the problem or pretend it doesn't exist will not make it go away. It will just further degrade the situation.
Ignorance is blinding us, greed is dividing us, and apathy is killing us.
"In 2014, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined"
Do you feel the top 1% should be taxed more? Or, do you think the bottom 90% should be taxed more?
Or, should both be taxed more? Or, are the folks in the 91st to 99th percentile not paying enough?
It's INCOME tax. Wouldn't you expect people with high incomes to pay most of it?
It's also a misleading stat, if what you are trying to convey is that they can't be taxed more. Check the chart I posted earlier regarding what has happened to the income and wealth at the top relative to the bottom 90% in the last 40 years.
Taxing is just one small part of the problem though. By far the bigger issue is an economic system that is specifically designed for all the gains to go to the top. We suffered one major setback ~1930 because of this, and policies were changed to correct it. They worked magnificently until the late 70's (real median income tripled in that period) when a very different approach was taken. Fiat money, a vast expansion of global trade (trade deficits), and creative finance (escalating public and private debt), were used to create an even larger imbalance (income and wealth disparity) than in the past. Only this time there will be no correction/reckoning. Like in 2008, the plebs will suffer the pain, and creative finance (QE, etc) will maintain the status quo.
Bottom line is that the income distribution is the problem more than anything else. That isn't hard to fix. We just need to incentivize investment in domestic production (rather than cash extraction), and stop pumping the US$ so we can close the trade gap, and get back to the good old days when the rich couldn't get richer unless our incomes rose as well.
The problem is that the waves of tax cuts over the last 20+ years have left no money for infrastructure. The way you grow the economy and be competitive in the global economy is by having good infrastructure and the best education system in the world. That costs money and you need to tax appropriately to pay for it. Easily 75% of the country isn't competitive in the global economy which is why we have the income stratification problem.
If more money yields a better education system, then why dont we have the best? Ours costs more than most... could it be the students or the teachers unions or focusing on safe spaces rather than things that make us better off? If fed tax cuts it the reason we dont have good infrastructure than why do some states have better roads etc than others? Could it be they use what money they have more wisely with less waste?
But the very very few who go on, go on to play for the New York Philharmonic and so forth, making astounding money.
...A competent professional who made the right choices, who is frugal and so forth, can by career's end reach the lower rungs of the 1%. But he/she will never reach the 0.1%, unless he/she becomes a superstar.
"Those raises will lift the base salary at the Philharmonic, which is now $137,644 a year, to $146,848 in September 2016, officials said, which is still less than the current base salary for players at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Of course, top players at all the orchestras can make more than twice their base salaries, and comparing the value of all compensation, including health and retirement benefits, is more difficult.)"
So the top players may make it to the 99%ile. That isn't "astounding" IMO.
Good post, but I think you distort what makes someone a "superstar" these days. Or someone in the top 0.1%. I'm not aware of *anyone* being paid that kind of money for their technical brilliance, unless that brilliance is the "art of making money", either in finance or owning/running a company. And the great majority of people in the top .1% need no talent at all, beyond inheriting it and not being stupid enough to lose it (or extremely unlucky). Investing to obtain gains that exceed the growth rate of the economy has been brain dead easy. The profits accrue to capital more than brilliance.
You have merely listed points highly correlated with poverty. Low correlation rules out cause and effect, but high correlation does not prove cause & effect. We can plausibly declare that each point causes poverty, rather than the reverse:
-use drugs, you probably can't get rich.
-go to jail and you probably can't get rich.
-act violently and you probably can't get rich
-unhealthy people probably can't get rich
- don't integrate with mainstream society and you probably can't get rich.
I don't know what you're trying to prove with that chart. But our inequality was much lower back in the 60s and early 70s and the out of wedlock birth rate was much lower then. Sure, that wasn't the only factor, but it was a big one.
Inequality was much lower back in the 60s and 70s for other reasons as you suggest such as a stronger manufacturing base in the U.S., stronger union presence in the private sector, and less disparity between executive pay vs. worker pay. We also didn't have offshoring to the extent that we do now.
Out of wedlock births can be to poor teenagers or single women or they can be to single women who make good money. There's really no way of characterizing all of them. In general though, I would agree that an unplanned birth outside of marriage is an additional financial burden that puts the woman at a serious disadvantage in terms of earnings. Nothing against women who choose to go the single mom route but personally I would never do it.
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What is appropriate tax?
