Quote:
Originally Posted by BentBow
1/3 of tax filers, paid NO income tax. NONE!
People making over 100,000 paid 80% of all taxes.
Now.... Feel the BERN!  |
Do you know what the term "rent-seeking" means?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Think of it like the Middle-Ages. The serfs had to hand over a portion of their production to the "Lord of the land". You can call this taxes, or you can call this rent. And the lords also handed a portion of what they received from the serfs, over to the King. Which you can also call taxes, or you can call rent.
Now, the Lords were technically the only ones who paid the tax directly to the Kings. But where did the Lords get their money or their goods from which they paid? They got it from the serfs. The Lords didn't produce anything.
It is possible to own a thousand acres of land, and then rent that land out to people who will actually farm it. You don't have to lift a finger while having tens of thousand a year in passive income. That income will then be taxed, but in what sense did you actually pay anything?
There are millions of people in this country who produce nothing while having huge incomes. Just think of someone who "lives off the interest" from their investments(often from inherited money). These people may have to pay taxes on those profits, but what did they produce?
And how does our financial-system, especially the machinations of the Federal Reserve, affect the stock-market and asset prices generally? How can the Stock-Market go up so much faster than inflation? Where does all this money come from to keep pushing up asset prices? And do certain institutions get favorable-access to below-market interest rates? And doesn't that give them huge advantages?
The only people who pay taxes are people who produce goods and services. Everyone else merely writes checks.
But even those who do work, government-intervention often drives up the value of their labor far above what the market would naturally-allow. For instance, think of licensing. If there were no licensing-requirements for occupations, the cost of all "professional services" would come down dramatically.
With licensing-laws, a doctor, or an electrician, or a plumber, probably earns two to tens times more than he would without licensing-laws. And for that matter, does government-spending in a sector drive up demand, requirements, and wages?
A perfect example is "education". Most sane people realize that without government subsidizing the education system, education would be dramatically-cheaper. Obviously there are many salaries in places like academia which are being heavily-inflated by government-intervention in the market. Whether those people pay taxes on their income, the income was fundamentally-poached from other parts of the market, or taken by force.
Because in the case of education, most of the funding comes from things like property-taxes. And property-taxes are one of the most-regressive taxes in the entire country. Rich people get all kinds of tax-credits for their property-taxes, the interest on their loans, and even the "homestead exemption". While the poor merely rent housing from a landlord, who gets none of these deductions, but transfers the full cost of property-taxes, and other fees, to the renter.
Another thing you leave out, is that everyone who works has to pay a "payroll-tax". On its face, this tax is paid by the employer, but in reality this tax comes out of the wages of the employee. And then there is the corporate-tax, where a corporation writes a check to the Federal government. But where do they get the money to pay their corporate-taxes? Simple, they take it from their customers.
All of this is a clever way to conceal reality, to pretend that the poor are getting a good deal, and that the rich are being unfairly-burdened, when the truth is exactly the opposite. But most people are too stupid to understand what is going on.
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