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Agreed, it's unfair on any party forced to pay more for overconsumption, and unfair on any party who chooses to underconsume responsibly, so that they're certain they have the money to cover their portion of the bill.
At least we have some common ground.
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No and everyone didn't agree that their income would determine the price they pay for the same government services. The question is who's right?
In a way you did. Are we not represented by three people in congress? Do we elect one representative every two years and two senators every six? It's not like we can claim taxation without representation if you live in one off the fifty states or DC with their sole representative. If you don't feel it is fair, complain to any off the elected officials you can.
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However would you consider it fair to divide a bar or restaurant bill according to the tax code?
If it's fair, then it's fair in all cases. If it's unfair then it's unfair in all cases. It's a simple question.
No but it's not really comparable. As I mentioned with those on welfare, they don't have a way to pay back unless they hit lotto, do they? Another thing is you can say that programs like social security and Medicare you paid in for.
I know it is different but what about schools? Unless your parents sent you to a private school, you went to a public or charter school that was paid for by tax payers abd if you went to a state school, you drained tax payers four or five more years. One can argue that you used them so you should pay for them.
Two girls live together, each had their own bedroom and share common area's
When moving in together they agree to each pay 50/50 of rent and bills
One chooses to go to college and works, the other works but parties, no college,
Girl graduates, gets better paying job than girl that parties,
Girl that parties thinks college graduate with better paying job should now pay a higher percentage of the bills.
I reminded party girl that the agreement was we each pay 50%. If she no longer agrees to that we can go our separate ways.
mkpunk comes up with excuses for party girl. Really?
This just illustrates the retroactive theft that people try to pass off as "fairness and equality" in society. If the roommate was allowed to force you to pay more, she would have been stealing all the time and effort you sacrificed to get that better paying job. The reason people might say you, petch, are the one who is wrong is because they are only looking at the present instead of the entire timeline.
Petch: Chooses to sacrifice the present for the future
Roommate: Chooses fun in the present to the detriment of her future
Fast-forward....petch has already gone through the negatives and her reward is now here. Roommate's fun is over and now her reward is the negatives. The thing is...the roommate could potentially steal petch's reward, but petch can never steal the fun that the roommate had in the past. That's why it's frustrating to see it twisted into "petch is selfish because she won't pay more when she can afford it."
In a way you did. Are we not represented by three people in congress? Do we elect one representative every two years and two senators every six? It's not like we can claim taxation without representation if you live in one off the fifty states or DC with their sole representative. If you don't feel it is fair, complain to any off the elected officials you can.
Oh you were doing so well too.
No I did not agree, nor could I agree before I was taxed. Indeed I wasn't even eligible to vote until after I had to pay taxes.
Sure I can lobby for a removal or a reduction of taxes. However not before I've had to pay tax, or risk the penalties for non-payment.
That's not agreement, and if you think it's agreement then you have a very strange idea of what an agreement is.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
No but it's not really comparable. As I mentioned with those on welfare, they don't have a way to pay back unless they hit lotto, do they?
What does welfare have to do with paying a bar/restaurant tab? Don't conflate the issue. Its simple. Is it fair to split a tab according to the percentage each person contributes to the combined income of that group?
If it's not fair, then taxation based on income is not fair. Man up and state it loud and proud. It's OK I've often said my primary goal in life is to achieve my unfair share.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
Another thing is you can say that programs like social security and Medicare you paid in for.
Social Security and Medicare are insurance are they not? Thus like any insurance they are (should be) managed funds that payout based upon an insureds needs, from the investments financed from the fund, and any additional premiums from the rest of the insured.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
I know it is different but what about schools? Unless your parents sent you to a private school, you went to a public or charter school that was paid for by tax payers abd if you went to a state school, you drained tax payers four or five more years. One can argue that you used them so you should pay for them.
What about schools, look if we determine that expecting people to pay for things based on income is unfair, it's unfair. It's just as unfair to take more from a person for the same service provided for less to someone else to fund schools as it is to do the same to take a 4 week vacation in Grand Cayman with a harem of hookers and a punchbowl full of coke. What you do with your gain has no bearing on whether it was or was not fairly gained.
Two girls live together, each had their own bedroom and share common area's
When moving in together they agree to each pay 50/50 of rent and bills
One chooses to go to college and works, the other works but parties, no college,
Girl graduates, gets better paying job than girl that parties,
Girl that parties thinks college graduate with better paying job should now pay a higher percentage of the bills.
I reminded party girl that the agreement was we each pay 50%. If she no longer agrees to that we can go our separate ways.
mkpunk comes up with excuses for party girl. Really?
You didn't explain the full situation and there can always be issues that weren't brought up or covered up to make it seem more favorable. It does happen. I'm not saying you do but people do try to make situations more favorable on their side of the story. I don't know if your side is the truth or not. It maybe the whole truth, a partial truth, a lie said enough it became the truth, etc.
I agree that if your story is as it you say it is, then I agree that it should have been 50/50. As I said, I honestly wasn't there so I wouldn't know.
You didn't explain the full situation and there can always be issues that weren't brought up or covered up to make it seem more favorable. It does happen. I'm not saying you do but people do try to make situations more favorable on their side of the story. I don't know if your side is the truth or not. It maybe the whole truth, a partial truth, a lie said enough it became the truth, etc.
I agree that if your story is as it you say it is, then I agree that it should have been 50/50. As I said, I honestly wasn't there so I wouldn't know.
Actually I DID explain the entire situation. It's simple, when she realized that I was making more money she thought I should pay more because I made more. Oh and by the way, after she thought about it she said she agreed that it was wrong of her to and continued to pay her 50%. She lived with the consequences of her decision to party hardy until she decided to buckle down herself.
No I did not agree, nor could I agree before I was taxed. Indeed I wasn't even eligible to vote until after I had to pay taxes.
Sure I can lobby for a removal or a reduction of taxes. However not before I've had to pay tax, or risk the penalties for non-payment.
That's not agreement, and if you think it's agreement then you have a very strange idea of what an agreement is.
Part of your consent is living where you live. If are that worried about taxes, one can move. It happened with France. There are countries you can move to with a flat tax or perhaps no taxes at all. These countries do exist.
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What does welfare have to do with paying a bar/restaurant tab? Don't conflate the issue. Its simple. Is it fair to split a tab according to the percentage each person contributes to the combined income of that group?
The analogy of the purchase with government services is where it does have something to do with a bar tab. If you run your tab, you pay for it but taxes isn't exactly like that. As I mentioned in some aspects you used tax money before you could even pay taxes and if you don't make enough to rely on yourself, you get welfare and someone else pays your tab. In the case of a restaurant, you owe and might have to wash dishes or something to make up for it.
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If it's not fair, then taxation based on income is not fair. Man up and state it loud and proud. It's OK I've often said my primary goal in life is to achieve my unfair share.
Then how do we tax if it isn't on income. A behavior tax is highly regressive and a flat tax is still quazi-regressive to lower income makers.
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Social Security and Medicare are insurance are they not? Thus like any insurance they are (should be) managed funds that payout based upon an insureds needs, from the investments financed from the fund, and any additional premiums from the rest of the insured.
In a way they are but the issue is unlike traditional insurance most people are not able to tap into it until they are of age. It is not that common for a person to tap in before getting of age. With traditional insurance, one just have to get hurt and claim it. The comparable one for retirement is a 401k.
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What about schools, look if we determine that expecting people to pay for things based on income is unfair, it's unfair. It's just as unfair to take more from a person for the same service provided for less to someone else to fund schools as it is to do the same to take a 4 week vacation in Grand Cayman with a harem of hookers and a punchbowl full of coke. What you do with your gain has no bearing on whether it was or was not fairly gained.
But how can you say that when you benefitted from a public school and perhaps a public university? That sounds like typical "I got mine, **** you" logic at play. I say this because you benefitted from it but when it is your turn to give to help the future, all of a sudden your tune changes.
Part of your consent is living where you live. If are that worried about taxes, one can move. It happened with France. There are countries you can move to with a flat tax or perhaps no taxes at all. These countries do exist.
People have little choice where they live. Don't believe me, try emigrating to France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Australia. If you're a refugee you might get in (you're not, the US isn't classified as producing refugees), otherwise there is no way you can emigrate without an immediate family connection, even if you did you're still liable for US taxes, and the US has to consent to your renunciation of citizenship (they don't need to accept it if they think it's for tax evasion purposes). How many people could emigrate and not need to work?
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
The analogy of the purchase with government services is where it does have something to do with a bar tab. If you run your tab, you pay for it but taxes isn't exactly like that. As I mentioned in some aspects you used tax money before you could even pay taxes and if you don't make enough to rely on yourself, you get welfare and someone else pays your tab. In the case of a restaurant, you owe and might have to wash dishes or something to make up for it.
The analogy is the same, the only difference is that no one gets to choose what they're having, they get what they're given. Then figure out the bill.
It's the figuring out the bill part that's in question.
Forget welfare because where the money goes after it's taken is irrelevant to whether the taking of the money for the same services one person gets is higher or lower than the money taken from another person based upon their income. How the money is used after it's taken is a justification or excuse for why it was done, it does not now or ever effect the taking of the money.
Yes I'm pinning you down.
Question.
As a contractor would you consider it fair if I charge you $50,000 more than your neighbor for exactly the same work he had done, because your income is 25% more than his, and I charged your neighbor $200K?
If your answer is no then taxation of people based on their income is not fair. Indeed it may be less fair than that, because the very people who pay the greatest proportion of taxes are the people who rely least on government spending. Thus they're underconsuming and paying most of the bill.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
Then how do we tax if it isn't on income. A behavior tax is highly regressive and a flat tax is still quazi-regressive to lower income makers.
We don't
We bill.
Consider the US spends $610B annually on defense, that's around $2000 per person per year. We bill every person $2k, with the ability to reclaim the debt if they fail to pay. Now we can quibble about whether that's sufficient, insufficient or overly sufficient, but you now know on average how much you need to spend for the current level of defense spending (this is not a bad thing to know).
If we charged everyone in the US $2 the government for just administration would have $640M purely for administration costs.
Those are two specific services and costs that cannot be in reality denied are required we can argue if they're sufficient or insufficient but not that they're required.
We can then discuss everything else and the annual cost for that service, and give people the option to not pay certain fees, if they're not using that service. The blind cannot drive, why should they directly pay for road construction? Indirectly they pay for transportation by the fares they pay, or delivery charges levied that are partly used to pay any fees levied against those transportation or delivery companies.
If you want to provide welfare, you can get it discussed and accepted as a line item bill (if congress and senate approve), or alternatively there could just be a "poor bucket" where you can donate $X to the "poor" for welfare, WIC, etc. etc. etc. Once again big benefit is we will know the personal cost of welfare programs.
It would need a restructuring of how funding is achieved, but more transparency, visibility and accountability. When you're paying say $500 to support low income families, and you do the math that says they're receiving $160B per year for those families, and low income families are not receiving support, then you can legitimately ask "where's my $500/year going?", but can't do that with an average 20% federal income tax since you don't know where any of your 20% income is going really.
Every single program can be itemized and billed, with determinations on what is optional, and what is not.
That's at federal level, at state they can figure it all out for themselves.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
In a way they are but the issue is unlike traditional insurance most people are not able to tap into it until they are of age. It is not that common for a person to tap in before getting of age. With traditional insurance, one just have to get hurt and claim it. The comparable one for retirement is a 401k.
Traditional insurance has requirements for access to the benefits of the insurance, SS and Medicare are no different the requirements are just different, but insurance requirements for benefits vary according to the insurance and terms, if you house falls down you may not have benefits from your homeowners policy, because it excludes earthquakes during one of which your house fell down, but would be covered in Earthquake insurance.
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Originally Posted by mkpunk
But how can you say that when you benefitted from a public school and perhaps a public university? That sounds like typical "I got mine, **** you" logic at play. I say this because you benefitted from it but when it is your turn to give to help the future, all of a sudden your tune changes.
I never benefited from public school, I was privately educated (at a school, not home) from age 5 until 12 then received a private scholarship for high school, and college graduating when I was 20. Post Grad studies were paid for by me while working (and one part time fun degree too).
The public never paid for my education, they may have paid for the education of those who educated me, but I'm pretty sure their parents and grandparents paid taxes too, as mine did, however my parents paid taxes for education that neither I nor my sister ever took advantage of. So in fact I'm an example of underconsumption on education, I have no kids (but have paid taxes that fund education), and I never received any public education, nor will my non-existent kids (and I think given I'm at about the half way point of the journey, there aren't going to be any).
Define fair. Is it fair that a person who makes say 12.5K pay 17% of their income as well as costs that they may not be able to shake to someone who makes 125K and mitigates cost?
Did they both pay the same for a McDonalds Hamburger?
That is fair.
Everyone pays in equal, then everyone gets the same rewards.
That isn't the case, now is it.
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