Obama vs the Special Olympics

[Ramo]

All of which when smoothed for accuracy of measurement assume a "U" shape.

No.

Not just infinite, but uncountably infinite? That is a lot, then.

Yes. It's a "larger" set than the integers.

I'm mainly a student of urban planning and political science

I don't believe that. I'm pretty sure that your persona is too dumb not to be a troll.

[The Mad Monk]

A perfect fit, then.

[Ramo]

Yeah, but why pose as being a student in the same things that you're actually studying? Seems kind of pointless to me.

[Theben]

Your point? Should you take something away from someone simply because they have it? Are you some sort of commie/socialist? That's not what this country is all about.

It's called simple arithmetic; 80% of tax revenues would, under ideal circumstances, come from 80% of peoples/corp income/wealth.

What does that mean? Who decides who could "use" some assistance right now. Hell, I'd sure love some assistance, I mean, free money, right now.

Are you living under a rock these days or is your daddy so rich that the current economic situation doesn't affect you as much as others?

It's called a Laffer curve, look it up. blah

Yeah, I'm aware of that. But as Imran pointed out, its accuracy is in hindsight.

[rtwinger]

All of which when smoothed for accuracy of measurement assume a "U" shape.

No.

Not just infinite, but uncountably infinite? That is a lot, then.

Yes. It's a "larger" set than the integers.

I'm mainly a student of urban planning and political science

I don't believe that. I'm pretty sure that your persona is too dumb not to be a troll.

Ooh.. I guess the effeminate intellectual comment hit home so you put away the thesaurus. Good for you, pal!

And if you have doubts on my standing feel free to contact me at my UCLA email. PM me if you're intereted. I'll tell you all about how we play Sim City!

[rtwinger]

double post..

[Imran Siddiqui]

As we all know, real men are non-thinking brutes

[Kuciwalker]

Cause there are no tax tables. It's simply a formula. You plug in your AGI and out spits your tax. And its on a sliding scale, so no tax brackets.

The tables are also 'simply a formula'. Taxes / income is also a continuous function. Mathematically they're the same thing.

[Kuciwalker]

All of which when smoothed for accuracy of measurement assume roughly a "U" shape.

No.

And no and no and no and no.

Just doesn't work, guys.

[Kuciwalker]

I was going to play along with rtwinger, but y'all started making math errors

[snoopy369]

The tables are also 'simply a formula'. Taxes / income is also a continuous function. Mathematically they're the same thing.

Imran means linear, of course. Linear functions are easier for people to understand, and have a more clear effect of discouraging additional earning [or encouraging additional income tax dodges ], than does a tiered system, which while continuous is harder for people to understand (why, I don't know, but it is!); and with the high end being ridiculously low anyhow, obviously doesn't work in any event.

I think the bigger problem is taxes on capital gains. They're both the most 'fair' thing to tax (no significant work, and often no work at all, is done to get them, so the 'it is not fair to take away my hard earned money' argument fails on them, and the argument that taxation should take away proportionately to the benefits people get from society also suggests taking more from capital gains, as those are more clearly a benefit of a stable society than labor income) and at the same time the thing you least want to tax, from the point of view of the economy (ie, it disincentives investment). Most of the 'rich' earn far more in capital gains than in normal income, anyhow; so talking about increasing the income tax for the rich isn't really the place to be having the discussion.

I've said before, and I will say again, that I think the CG tax should be a sliding value based on the determination of the Fed (or someone equivalent), and should be raised/lowered similarly to the interest rate. On average it should be (much) higher than it is now, think 45% during average times and up to perhaps 65% during 'boom' times, but with a bit more permissivity of deducting losses (perhaps even across years - if you net lose money one year you can deduct parts of it for up to 3 years, with some decay function, or something, if the accountants want more money ), and (much) lower during times like this (perhaps even 15-20% now). No idea how you'd put this in practice, but it has got to be better than what we have now, with CG (always) taxed lower than regular income (for the rich, anyway).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Exactly. The tables aren't really just a formula anyway. They are a formula and then you have to go through the tables and find between where and where your AGI falls between and that's your tax.

And of course, there are things like tiers that get in the way.

This is what I was referring to in her own words:

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/pay_scales.php

That said, I don't see why brackets top out at a relatively low level of income. Indeed, I don't see why we have tax brackets. They're inefficient, and a lot of them have pernicious marginal effects on those near the ceiling. Why not a continuously scaling function from negative (EITC) to some maximum? These days, people use either printed tax tables or tax software to prepare their taxes; this shouldn't present an undue hardship.

[snoopy369]

I think you'd always have to cap the function off somewhere fairly low, or it doesn't make sense. Say you had a scale of (-5%..45%), where people making at least 5,000 (min. to qualify for EITC, say) up to, say, $5,000,000/yr (no idea if this is a reasonable "maximum", but it fits my math nicely), then you have a function where
f(5,000)=-0.05
and f(5,000,000)=0.45
or f(x) {5000,5000000} = x/10,000,000 -.05 (which actually is not exactly 5m cap, but close enough; and let's say the $5000 minimum is not coded into the function, for simplicity's sake; it's not significant for >100,000 income anyway)

So, for someone making, say, $400,000 (a nice big number, right? capitalist pig, take all his money, etc.), someone being taxed at like 35% right now, their f(x) is
f(400,000) = (400,000)*(1/10,000,000) -.05 = .04-.05 = -.01

Oops, that didn't work too well. Our $400k capitalist pig is getting EITC!

Okay, set it at a lower number. $500k.

f(x) {5000,500000} = x/(500k*2) - .05 or x/1,000,000 -.05
Now our $400k capitalist pig is getting taxed at a measly 35% - hmm, that's just what he's getting taxed at now, and now the other folks making $100k-$400k are paying way less in taxes. Maybe the republicans will vote for this after all...

Okay, let's try one more time.

Set the max at 150k.
f(x) {5000,150000} = x/300,000 -0.05

150k earner gets 0.50-0.05 or 45% tax, yay. 100k earner gets 0.33 - 0.05 ... err, wait, STILL under their present tax rate. Oops...

In fact, there really isn't a solution that's any lower of a cap than the present one, which is the problem. Incomes aren't distributed linearly; so a linear function is unacceptable under any circumstance. Unless you set it ridiculously low - like, at the current cap - it's not going to behave well.

You could do something complex involving logarithms or whatnot (f(x) = log(x)*0.08 is one candidate; taxes 100k earner at 40%, 1m earner at 48%, though that's probably too slow of a climb, maybe use f(x) = (log(x))^2 * 0.02 or something like that) but I'm not sure how much simpler that is than brackets (how many people on the street know what a 'log' is, other than a part of a dead tree), and any other function will have similar problems.

[snoopy369]

Also, Imran, Kuci was trying to point out (badly) that a tiered function is still a function, and still continuous (if defined properly); the current tax is something like
f(x) {x:0,10000} = 0
f(x) {x:10001,25000} = .15
f(x) {x:25001,35000} = .25
etc., which is still a continuous function (over Integers). It's just not a linear one, and not necessarily obvious to a man-on-the-street (mostly because of the difficulty of getting to 'x' or your AGI).

[rtwinger]

You guys should be thinking on how we can reduce government expenses instead of figuring out more effective ways of taking American's money. Just a thought.