Thread in which the world laughs at America

[Jon Miller]

The wealthy get more out of society so they should pay a greater percent.

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

They already pay a greater percent.

[Tupac Shakur]

The public's lack of interest in economic efficiency and obsession with "fairness" (ie. protecting their handouts and tax breaks) is really killing this country.

[Jon Miller]

I don't take much consideration of the poor paying anything when the bottom 50% of america owns like ~2% of the wealth. They really are not getting near as much out of society as the wealthy, and to have a small tax change (like reversing the bush tax cuts) would create as much revenue as taxing 50% of the poors wealth.

It really is just stupid to tax the poor in a capitalist society.

JM

[Jon Miller]

The public's lack of interest in economic efficiency and obsession with "fairness" (ie. protecting their handouts and tax breaks) is really killing this country.

Has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with what is reasonable.

I mean, the poor don't have anything to give really. How can you make them pay? Enslave them and start factories to out compete the vietnamese?

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

The poor are being ****ed over by the middle class, Jon, not the wealthy. You're blindly buying into the fiction that it's the evil wealthy that aren't paying their fair share rather than the sainted middle class, the most pampered and spoiled segment of American society.

[DaShi]

It really is just stupid to tax the poor in a capitalist society.

Or even to tax the middle class heavily when 70% of your GDP comes from consumption. We need to those sheep shopping.

[Jon Miller]

Without a middle class, we have no way to make efficient use of social capital.

Additionally, the middle class very easily drops back down to the poor 50%. I just recently saw this with my mother and her husband due to the recession (I guess they just got jobs and are starting to claw their way back out of debt, but they are old and definitely lost all their retirement). So in a way, the safety net/etc for the middle class is actually just providing support for the lower class.

Finally, the middle class pay a larger percentage of their total incomes than the wealthy.

I wouldn't mind dropping some of the things though, like the mortgage interest deduction/etc.

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

Without a middle class, we have no way to make efficient use of social capital.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Finally, the middle class pay a larger percentage of their total incomes than the wealthy.

No, they don't.

[Jon Miller]

It is a waste of social capital for intelligent people to spend time washing dishes when they could be doctors/engineers/bankers/etc.

They do this when their families are poor, but not when their families are middle class.

Just look at what has happened historically, and you can see this.

A simple discussion of the middle class paying more than the wealthy (doesn't even include capital gains which it should):

http://www.economics-finance.org/jefe/econ/Allenpaper2.pdf

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

The middle class does not pay more federal tax than the wealthy. I'm not going to let such an obvious falsehood slide.

[Guynemer]

Threadjack:

Tupac, get your ass over to the Sports forum and join the College Football Pick 'Em before the season starts on Thursday.


EDIT: Nevermind, probably should've checked that thread first.

[Tupac Shakur]

Guynemer's lack of interest in checking threads before *****ing about people not participating in them is really killing this country.

[Jon Miller]

The middle class does not pay more federal tax than the wealthy. I'm not going to let such an obvious falsehood slide.

If you include other forms of tax (not even including capital gains tax) that are federal, they do.

If you include FICA, Medicare and the employer shares as well as state income tax the middle class pay 47% while the top tier only pays 45%.

JM

[Asher]

The middle class does not pay more federal tax than the wealthy. I'm not going to let such an obvious falsehood slide.

This is from 2000. What exactly did the Bush tax cuts entail?