Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

No America is not ALL about money it also has had a long standing cultural component that wants to reward hard work, pulls for underdogs, rewards those engaging in philanthropy, believes in good sportmanship, thinks families and parents are a good thing etc. etc. All those outdated fuddy duddy ideals that play into whether people are subjectively considered a good ethical person.

As for going to Cuba, why would I move to an even more envious societal culture that has supplanted many of the above ideals with a "state will cover it" mentality?

[Lorizael]

Capitalist. You do not need to add -ic to adjectives to make them adjectives.

You're absolutely right. Thanks.

No America is not ALL about money it also has had along standing cultural component that wants to reward hard work, pulls for underdogs, rewards those engaging in philanthropy, believes in good sportmanship, thinks families and parents are a good thing etc. etc. All those outdated fuddy duddy ideals that play into whether people are subjectively considered a good ethical person.

As for going to Cuba, why would I move to an even more envious societal culture that has supplanted many of the above ideals with a "state will cover it" mentality?

We reward hard work with money, pull for underdogs by giving them money when they succeed, reward philanthropists with money (tax breaks), reward those who are NOT good sports with money (tax loopholes), and support families and parents with money (tax breaks). If there's something in America we value other than money, we might want to reward it with something other than money.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Cynicism is another symptom of the hopelessness that envy breeds.

[Lorizael]

Then tax payrolls or consumption to fund them. (Incidentally, this is largely what we already do.)

Economically speaking, what is the difference between payroll tax and income tax? (I'm asking honestly; I have no idea.)

[Lorizael]

Cynicism is another symptom of the hopelessness that envy breeds.

I don't envy the rich. I don't feel hopeless. And my cynicism comes from my father.

[kentonio]

pulls for underdogs

Since when?

[snoopy369]

Economically speaking, what is the difference between payroll tax and income tax? (I'm asking honestly; I have no idea.)

Companies pay payroll taxes, individuals pay income taxes. Both have different motives, so the taxes have different effects. They would have the same if you assumed companies would raise salaries to compensate for higher income taxes or lower payroll taxes, but they don't (at least not sufficiently immediately).

[Lorizael]

Cynicism is another symptom of the hopelessness that envy breeds.

A better response is this: Envy is the result of a society in which the rich are so much more wealthy than the poor. If you think envy, hopelessness, and cynicism are problems, then you have to attack the root of the problem: wealth inequality. (I don't necessarily think this is a good idea. But it's the end result of your reasoning.)

[Lorizael]

Companies pay payroll taxes, individuals pay income taxes.

I get that. But wouldn't higher payroll taxes just be pushed onto employees as lower wages?

[snoopy369]

I get that. But wouldn't higher payroll taxes just be pushed onto employees as lower wages?

No. They likely would be pushed onto employees with job cuts. It's fairly hard to lower someone's salary, and while you might have reduced raises, those are neither immediate nor necessarily linked. There's a sufficient separation for them to have significantly different effects.

[Jaguar]

No. They likely would be pushed onto employees with job cuts. It's fairly hard to lower someone's salary, and while you might have reduced raises, those are neither immediate nor necessarily linked. There's a sufficient separation for them to have significantly different effects.

Snoopy described the short-term, Lori described the long-term. Any dramatic tax overhaul needs to be phased in gradually or else wonky effects like the one snoopy describes will happen. Over the long term, though, all the demand-side sticky-wages effects don't matter.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

A better response is this: Envy is the result of a society in which the rich are so much more wealthy than the poor. If you think envy, hopelessness, and cynicism are problems, then you have to attack the root of the problem: wealth inequality. (I don't necessarily think this is a good idea. But it's the end result of your reasoning.)

No you have to restore America to a land that is recognized as a land of opportunity and social mobility. That unfortunately is not the case today. Wealth inequality was always a minor cutural driver as by and large people rejected that concept in favor of the opportunity to make it themselves and put their next generation in a position to have it better than they did. That is as long as they thought they had a legit chance to do so if they put in the work and had the persistence.

[Jon Miller]

Not really. You likely would pay less for less.

I still would need the investments, and so it would end up costing me more for a worse result.

JM

[Lorizael]

Snoopy described the short-term, Lori described the long-term. Any dramatic tax overhaul needs to be phased in gradually or else wonky effects like the one snoopy describes will happen. Over the long term, though, all the demand-side sticky-wages effects don't matter.

So, I thought you were arguing earlier that payroll taxes are somehow different from (and better than) income taxes. In the long run, how is that the case?

No you have to restore America to a land that is recognized as a land of opportunity and social mobility. That unfortunately is not the case today.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it's more or less inevitable that a culture that idolizes the rich will also envy the rich. If we were to become a land of opportunity again, it would just reset the envy counter.

[Jaguar]

So, I thought you were arguing earlier that payroll taxes are somehow different from (and better than) income taxes. In the long run, how is that the case?

A payroll tax is a tax on wage income. It's a subset of income taxes. A payroll tax can be paid either by employer or by employee, but in the medium-long run, it doesn't matter who pays; the worker's take-home pay is the same.

[Guynemer]

No you have to restore America to a land that is recognized as a land of opportunity and social mobility. That unfortunately is not the case today. Wealth inequality was always a minor cutural driver as by and large people rejected that concept in favor of the opportunity to make it themselves and put their next generation in a position to have it better than they did. That is as long as they thought they had a legit chance to do so if they put in the work and had the persistence.

How would we restore the social mobility that used to define America? The manufacturing sector is rebounding slightly, but it is still decimated compared to where it was when our parents were young.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why do we need manufacturing to have social mobility? What about the software sector in California, or the new auto manufacturers in the South? What about the booming tech industry in Texas? To a Rust Belt resident such as yourself, you may look at all the crumbling union shops and think mobility is in decline, but down south it's springing back up.

[Guynemer]

We have significantly less social mobility in the US than in many European nations. In large part because we don't make **** anymore.

[Jon Miller]

My understanding is that statistically it is on the decline, and that this is based on data and not anecdotal evidence.

I would be glad to be wrong.

I don't think that social mobility is tied to manufacturing, however it is difficult to have a trade balance without manufacturing. It says something that higher education (where we have a lot of government support/activity).

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

1. Where's your evidence that we don't make ****? Do services and intellectual property not count, or do you only care about stuff that comes in boxes?
2. Where's your evidence that we have less social mobility? The Economist?

xpost

If I may share an anecdote, I can name a number of friends who started with nothing and have made some serious bank out in silicon valley, where all it takes to make it is brains and hard work.

[Guynemer]

Anecdotes = Evidence

[Hauldren Collider]

You want data? Take a quick count of all the silicon valley startups that are valued in the millions that didn't exist just five years ago. Every one of those is an example of someone starting with very little and ending out with a lot, requiring nothing but ingenuity.

[Jon Miller]

JM

[Guynemer]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17036544

Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth. They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries. They conclude that slower economic growth since 1975 and the concentration of that growth among the wealthy have slowed the pace of U.S. social mobility. In measuring mobility, economists tend to look at income and sociologists, occupation. The consensus among those measuring occupational mobility is that the average correlation between the occupations of fathers and sons today ranges from 0.30 to 0.40, meaning that most variation in the ranking of occupations is independent of social origins. Those measuring income mobility tend to agree that the elasticity between fathers' and sons' earnings in the United States today is about 0.4, meaning that 40 percent of the difference in incomes between families in the parents' generation also shows up in differences in incomes in the sons' generation. Beller and Hout show that occupational mobility increased during the 1970s, compared with the 1940s-1960s, but there is some evidence to suggest that by the 1980s and 1990s it had declined to past levels. Existing data on income mobility show no clear trends over time, but increases in economic inequality during the 1980s made mobility more consequential by making economic differences between families persist for a longer time. In international comparisons, the United States occupies a middle ground in occupational mobility but ranks lower in income mobility. Researchers have used the variation in mobility to study whether aspects of a country's policy regime, such as the educational or social welfare systems, might be driving these results. There is as yet, however, no scholarly consensus about the sources of cross-national differences in mobility.

[Hauldren Collider]

JM

What's so funny? Why don't you pull some ridiculous socialist principal out of a left wing blog to show us all how it's better in Sweden, then tell us about the injustice of inequality and ****?

[Wezil]

What about the ditch diggers HC? They might be alright making widgets on an assembly line but not so good at computer code.

[Hauldren Collider]

What about the ditch diggers HC? They might be alright making widgets on an assembly line but not so good at computer code.

What about horse drivers? What happens to them when we make cars to replace them? Let's take this a step further. With all this new farming equipment, what's gonna happen to all the farmers? You think they can just up and become skilled laborers?

[Wezil]

Horse drivers became Teamsters.

No, I don't think all the unskilled can suddenly become skilled. Two reasons:

1) The US education system isn't up to the task
2) Some people are just plain dumb and there isn't a cure for that

I'm sure others can come up with other reasons.

[Wezil]

Going somewhat more OT - Even truck driving is reaching the point of regulation/technology that many can no longer do the job.

[Hauldren Collider]

And when they finish the robotic drivers we won't need them anymore, just like the combine harvester forced farmers to learn a new trade.