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This year, we hit the 33% marginal tax bracket
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But why is it fair for my personal share to be up to TWICE the rate of the fair share of people with gargantuan incomes like Romney and Buffett who will never have real financial worries again in their lives?
Sounds like you are comparing your marginal tax rate to their effective tax rate to get this double share thing.
Most seniors don't have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in "investments."
But my point was more about the rhetoric we use. Poor people who use food stamps or WIC or subsidized housing are lazy bums who are "being taken care of" by the government.
How else is there to look at it? Person A works, earns money, and has a portion of it taken away and given to Person B who doesn't work and doesn't earn anything.
It's one thing to be on disability where you can't work or unemployment where you're a worker who doesn't have a job. But the full on welfare people, able bodied people who don't even attempt to look for work, don't deserve a lot of empathy.
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In real dollars (not only relative dollars), Romney is also "being taken care of" by the government, but somehow we don't see it that way.
We don't see it that way because it isn't happening that way. Romney worked, he earned money, he then invested that money, and now he is earning money from those investments. Government charity is not involved.
You're trying to say that letting Person A keep his own money instead of taxing it away is equivalent to sending Person A a government check paid for by taxing Person B? That's absurd.
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Yes, I do think it's unfair that Romney is paying a relatively low tax rate ON INCOME HE DID NOT EARN BY ANY DEFINITION OF "EARN." His money may have "earned" it, but he didn't. If we value "work" -- which we say we do -- we cannot argue that Romney earned most of what his income is.
Maybe you can't argue that he earned his investment income, but I can. The fact that you don't value investment doesn't change the unalterable fact that investment is one of the foundations of a functioning economy.
Tell you what, set all interest rates to 0. Give it a few years and then see if you still think investment is worthless activity when nobody is willing to loan out any money, economic growth comes to a halt, no jobs are created, and each new graduating class goes straight into the unemployment lines.
Romney earned his money by risking it in investments. It's not really relevant how much physical labor that took or whether he directly produced a good or service. He participated in the economy and received compensation for that. Does a surgeon not earn his money because he doesn't return from work as tired and sweaty as a ditch digger?
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(And honestly, the fact that he sees the few hundreds of thousands of dollars he earned through speaking engagements -- actual "work" -- as "not very much" shows how completely out of touch he is with average WORKING people.)
True. The way he talks, he has no concept of what financial hardship means. But that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve his money.
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Please note, I have no problem at all with taxing investments that are shown to create real jobs in a community at a lower rate. If Romney opens a factory in a town, he can have a tax break because he is creating real jobs for real people in that community. But money put in the bank? Sorry, that is very unlikely to be creating creating real jobs for anyone.
If the money's sitting in the bank doing nothing then it isn't generating any capital gains to be taxed in the first place.
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And to those who say a flat tax would be more "fair" -- aaaaaaaaggggh.
Tax 10% of $50,000 and you leave the tax-payer with $45,000. Tax 10% of $10,000,000 and you leave the tax-payer with $9,000,000. Who is better off with the "flat tax"? $5,000 is worth a LOT more to the first tax-payer than $1,000,000 is to the second.
This isn't a communist country. It is not a function of the government in a free society to equalize incomes. Yes, a rich person can afford their taxes more easily than a poor person. You can have a free country that isn't fair, or you can have a fair country that isn't free.
It's sinful to take 50% of someone's income every year.
Taxes should be cut, not raised.
Cutting taxes was the exact thing that got us into this economic quagmire in the first place. Those who oppose big government and taxes have no right to complain about the national deficit because it's not going to miraculously pay itself off.
This year, we hit the 33% marginal tax bracket - alternative minimum tax and all of that. We don't own a home or have kids, so we don't really get to deduct anything.
I'm grateful for our income, and I'm not fundamentally complaining about having to work hard for it and pay my fair share. I know that we're very fortunate.
But why is it fair for my personal share to be up to TWICE the rate of the fair share of people with gargantuan incomes like Romney and Buffett who will never have real financial worries again in their lives? We're doing well, but unlike those guys, we do depend heavily on our cash flow to generate our critical savings for future needs as well as to cover our day-to-day expenses. We get hurt by the loss of that marginal dollar A LOT more than the multi-millionaires and billionaires ever would be.
And why is it "class warfare" whenever I point this out? How is it not "class warfare" for me to be reamed porportionally so much more than the super rich - many of whose enterprises I also have to pay to bail out of their bad business decisions?
I'm not saying that the Buffett rule is the way to go, but why can't we have a tax system that institutes some sense of consistent fairness relative to income all the way across the income spectrum? Why is this concept so fundamentally controversial and anti-American for conservatives?
Why is the concept of taking what belongs to others to make one feel better about their own shortcomings/inability to earn so acceptable for Progressives?
There is nothing "fair" about our current tax system. No individual can understand the entirety of our tax code. It is a behemoth which is ruthlessly and selectively enforced by the IRS; the nation's thug department. Politicans use taxes to rob Peter to buy Paul's vote so Paul and his friends will keep them in power.
I think the OP will find that Constitutional Conservatives would like to see our tax code as we know it, ended (not reformed) and a new one put in its place which cannot be used by politicians to buy votes via making promises and appealing to the divisiveness by stoking the fires of the "class warfare".
Suggest the OP go to this link Podcasts | The Survival Podcast
and listen to the first portion (skip the first few minutes) of episode 882 (MP3 format).
Last edited by lifelongMOgal; 04-18-2012 at 05:28 PM..
Cutting taxes was the exact thing that got us into this economic quagmire in the first place. Those who oppose big government and taxes have no right to complain about the national deficit because it's not going to miraculously pay itself off.
Sorry, not true.
And cutting spending does help reduce the deficit just like the huge government increases in spending over the past few years has got us to a $15 trillion debt.
No miracle needed. Taxes are too high. Spending is way too high.
Why is the concept of taking what belongs to others to make one feel better about their own shortcomings/inability to earn so acceptable for Progressives?
I didn't say I wanted to take what belongs to people like Mitt Romney. I just want to know why it's justified that the government proportionally takes a hell of a lot more from me than they do from people like him. And it seems that people like you can't explain it, yet expect me to be cool with it. Well, I'm not.
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