What matters is America's relative tax rate as compared with the rest of the industrialized world. And, as far as I can tell, America still has the lowest overall tax rates in the West.
True, at present. But it could change because of two factors:
1. If we elect a government that believes more firmly in forcing income equalization.
2. If some other nice (with western areas and politically stable) country's government figures they could make more by reducing their tax rate and having the brain drain into their economy rather than ours.
I was responding to the claim that it's obviously the tax system's purpose to tax the rich the most and the poor the least.
You're right, I forgot that FICA (the social security tax) is capped. Supposedly rich people won't get higher benefits, but in reality probably nobody of my generation will get those benefits anyway.
You don't get twice as much service, but you do get twice the benefit. Should someone pay the same amount to protect their $25,000 as you do to protect your $50,000?
Is their life worth half of mine? Do they get half the benefit from the schools that educate their children, or the roads used to bring the groceries we eat?
Besides, by this reasoning they are getting exactly half the benefit I get. This argues for a flat tax rate.
Some very productive people work as unskilled labor. Your productivity may increase demand slightly, but a shortage of supply is a sure way to earn more.
How do you define productivity? If it's working hard, then you're right. If it's providing something of value that people will pay for, then you're not. A shortage of supply makes being part of that supply more valuable.
Even with tax cuts, we are still talking about charging the rich a higher percentage of the cost of government than the poor than is currently the case. Supposedly, as taxes will creep up (and they will, politicians have uses for your money), that percentage difference will stay.
I agree that the US is nowhere near the "drive the productive ones away by high taxes" point. Our major competitors for people who want a western style country, such as Canada and West Europe, are the ones suffering the brain drain.
Well no, it would tax them the same, because taxes are a per-unit thing. The fact that rich people have more units doesn't mean they're taxed more (on a flat-tax system, our current progressive one actually does tax them more).
Is there a logical reason for taxes to be per-unit (of income), instead of per person? The government services they finance are not per-unit, I don't get twice as much DEA enforcement, or USCIS (= INS) prevention of competition for my job from Mexicans, than somebody who makes half my income.
There is no necessary correlation between a person's income and their productivity.
No necessary, 1:1 correlation. But unless the market is really messed up more productive people can negotiate higher salaries. They can also change jobs to higher paying ones a lot more easily than people without a track record of productiveness.
Regardless, it's been shown [washingtonpost.com] that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do.
A flat tax rate would tax the rich more than the poor (same percent of a higher income is more). Our system with a higher tax rate definitely taxes the rich more than the poor.
At what point does it stop being obvious that you need to take even more money from rich people and even less from poor people? When your tax rates get so high you're starting to cause your most productive workers to leave the country?
Of course they're going to push it on us. They want us to buy Blue-Ray players, and hopefully replace our DVD movie library with brand new Blu-Ray discs. That would bring in a lot of revenue.
But we consumers are not the mindless drones that marketing execs would like us to be. Usually when we buy something, it provides us with a benefit. In this case, the benefit isn't big enough to qualify.
DVDs have quick seek and are computer readable (with the right software). These two factors make them better than VHS. Blu-ray does not have anything comparable, and picture quality with DVD is more than adequate for more people.
Depends on how close is the substitution. If Ford was the only company making cars, and the other options were walking and horses, they'd be a monopoly. If Ford ward the only company making SUVs, but you could buy cars and minivans from other sources, it wouldn't be a monopoly in any meaningful sense of the word.
Apple is the only company making Macs, but they don't have a meaningful monopoly because you can always use a PC.
Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it?
You mean, outside of the congresspeople who voted for it, the telecom executives who authorized co-operation with the government in the first place, and the intelligence agents who ran the thing?
Probably people who think this is a crime committed to prevent a greater crime, a second terrorist attack on the US. You can argue this is not true, or that the cost wasn't worth it. But do you honesty think that people who believe this appeared necessary do not exist?
You probably won't find such a country. Which makes my original question even starker - do you believe this matter is bad enough you'll die to try and fix it?
I can think of few things that would have made a French Revolutionary government less popular than relying on foreign troops.
Louis XVI spent money he could not afford when he was already heavily in debt. The early US federal government was also heavily in debt from the war. It probably could not afford to return the favor without going bankrupt itself.
I agree however that moving out of the country might currently be the easier plan. I was looking at Sweden and Denmark. I'd have to the learn the language though, and also, by not storming the castle, I feel I may be shirking my civic duty as a huge fan of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
I'm pretty sure any well educated Swede or Dane would know English. I wouldn't worry about that. I would worry about other things such as their ability to keep their economies reasonable with an aging population. Also, check to see if it's easier to open a business there. They might have more regulation, and they certainly have higher taxes.
Storming the castle only works when you have at least a significant minority of the population on your side. If former US colonels(1) were calling for armed rebellion, it might be different. As it is, most of the population doesn't see this as enough of a big deal to die over. Therefore, you are absolved of any civic duty that would be a meaningless gesture.
Rhetoric aside, do you believe this is bad enough you're willing to die to fix it? Or even suffer the inconvenience of moving to a different country(1) so it won't affect you?
It would take a lot to get the military to rebel against the civilian government. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but wiretaps to gather intelligence about what most of the military believes to be enemy agents embedded within our civilian population isn't it. It would probably take something like institution a state religion or outlawing private ownership of weapons.
(1) I've done it when I ditched Israel for the US. It's not easy. But it's a lot easier than staging a successful armed rebellion.
If they try to behave violently afterward, they go to jail. No different from any other thug.
No. If they try to behave violently afterward, you call the police. The commissioner of police, however, is from the ruling party you voted against. The cops are too busy and the D.A. doesn't think it's in the public interest to press charges.
This is more of an issue with votes than anything else because we vote for control of the system that stops thugs. Therefore, elected officials have the power to keep their thugs safe.
Let me quote another part of the same article you cited:
Richard Overy, professor of contemporary history at King's College London, notes that after the war, Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop listed three main reasons for Germany's defeat:
* Unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the Soviet Union
* The large-scale supply of arms and equipment from the US to the Soviet Union, under the lend-lease agreement
* The success of the Western Allies in the struggle for air supremacy.
Two out of those three reasons require the US to be there, at least as a safe place industrial production.
But lets assume the US stayed out of WWII and the USSR won in Europe without it. Russian soldiers had conquered everything until the Atlantic. West Europe would have "enjoyed" the same communist regimes that East Europe had until the late 1980s.
Maybe you see things differently, but I'd say that still constitutes being broken:
I'm going to take the high road and avoid ad-hominem attacks on your sources of information. In case you're wondering, I went to school in Israel, and WWII was taught as background to the Holocaust - including the Russian liberation of East Europe. But also including the American part you seem to ignore.
The Pacific Rim was also badly broken - the Japanese empire was not a good place to live. Of course, significant portions of it are still broken. But not all.
As for Europe, the American forces conquered everything west of the iron curtain. That's the reason is didn't end up as part of the Warsaw pact. If you have sources that prove the opposite, please cite them.
We tried that. Seemed to work from 1918 until December 6th, 1941. But by that point the rest of the world was so broken it needed to be fixed with a crowbar.
That's why the second amendment isn't worth the paper it's written on.
You mean because not enough people think that Corporate Personhood and the level of big brother we have now (still a long way away from Orwell's, BTW) are worth fighting to the death?
I didn't mean that British rule was comparable to the gulags and the Gestapo. Merely that it caused the kind of violent opposition that today we'd only see for something like the gulags and the Gestapo.
I think people were more willing to get themselves killed back then, either because early death was a lot more likely anyway or because more of them believed in an afterlife.
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What matters is America's relative tax rate as compared with the rest of the industrialized world. And, as far as I can tell, America still has the lowest overall tax rates in the West.
True, at present. But it could change because of two factors:
1. If we elect a government that believes more firmly in forcing income equalization.
2. If some other nice (with western areas and politically stable) country's government figures they could make more by reducing their tax rate and having the brain drain into their economy rather than ours.
I was responding to the claim that it's obviously the tax system's purpose to tax the rich the most and the poor the least.
You're right, I forgot that FICA (the social security tax) is capped. Supposedly rich people won't get higher benefits, but in reality probably nobody of my generation will get those benefits anyway.
The cap is about $102,000 this year, BTW - http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/cbb.html#Series .
You don't get twice as much service, but you do get twice the benefit. Should someone pay the same amount to protect their $25,000 as you do to protect your $50,000?
Is their life worth half of mine? Do they get half the benefit from the schools that educate their children, or the roads used to bring the groceries we eat?
Besides, by this reasoning they are getting exactly half the benefit I get. This argues for a flat tax rate.
Some very productive people work as unskilled labor. Your productivity may increase demand slightly, but a shortage of supply is a sure way to earn more.
How do you define productivity? If it's working hard, then you're right. If it's providing something of value that people will pay for, then you're not. A shortage of supply makes being part of that supply more valuable.
In what industry do you work?
I'm a course developer in an IT company.
Even with tax cuts, we are still talking about charging the rich a higher percentage of the cost of government than the poor than is currently the case. Supposedly, as taxes will creep up (and they will, politicians have uses for your money), that percentage difference will stay.
I agree that the US is nowhere near the "drive the productive ones away by high taxes" point. Our major competitors for people who want a western style country, such as Canada and West Europe, are the ones suffering the brain drain.
Well no, it would tax them the same, because taxes are a per-unit thing. The fact that rich people have more units doesn't mean they're taxed more (on a flat-tax system, our current progressive one actually does tax them more).
Is there a logical reason for taxes to be per-unit (of income), instead of per person? The government services they finance are not per-unit, I don't get twice as much DEA enforcement, or USCIS (= INS) prevention of competition for my job from Mexicans, than somebody who makes half my income.
There is no necessary correlation between a person's income and their productivity.
No necessary, 1:1 correlation. But unless the market is really messed up more productive people can negotiate higher salaries. They can also change jobs to higher paying ones a lot more easily than people without a track record of productiveness.
Regardless, it's been shown [washingtonpost.com] that Obama's tax cut plans would help the lower income brackets more than McCain's, and tax the rich more. This is obviously what a tax system is supposed to do.
A flat tax rate would tax the rich more than the poor (same percent of a higher income is more). Our system with a higher tax rate definitely taxes the rich more than the poor.
At what point does it stop being obvious that you need to take even more money from rich people and even less from poor people? When your tax rates get so high you're starting to cause your most productive workers to leave the country?
Of course they're going to push it on us. They want us to buy Blue-Ray players, and hopefully replace our DVD movie library with brand new Blu-Ray discs. That would bring in a lot of revenue.
But we consumers are not the mindless drones that marketing execs would like us to be. Usually when we buy something, it provides us with a benefit. In this case, the benefit isn't big enough to qualify.
DVDs have quick seek and are computer readable (with the right software). These two factors make them better than VHS. Blu-ray does not have anything comparable, and picture quality with DVD is more than adequate for more people.
Have you considered immigration to Canada as an alternative treatment method?
Depends on how close is the substitution. If Ford was the only company making cars, and the other options were walking and horses, they'd be a monopoly. If Ford ward the only company making SUVs, but you could buy cars and minivans from other sources, it wouldn't be a monopoly in any meaningful sense of the word.
Apple is the only company making Macs, but they don't have a meaningful monopoly because you can always use a PC.
Which means our military is increasingly seeing it's own populace as being the target, not an enemy nation.
Either that, or they expect to fight enemies that embed themselves in civilian populations and use human shields. You know,
Are there any American citizens (who understand what FISA is) that actually support it?
You mean, outside of the congresspeople who voted for it, the telecom executives who authorized co-operation with the government in the first place, and the intelligence agents who ran the thing?
Probably people who think this is a crime committed to prevent a greater crime, a second terrorist attack on the US. You can argue this is not true, or that the cost wasn't worth it. But do you honesty think that people who believe this appeared necessary do not exist?
You probably won't find such a country. Which makes my original question even starker - do you believe this matter is bad enough you'll die to try and fix it?
I can think of few things that would have made a French Revolutionary government less popular than relying on foreign troops.
Louis XVI spent money he could not afford when he was already heavily in debt. The early US federal government was also heavily in debt from the war. It probably could not afford to return the favor without going bankrupt itself.
I agree however that moving out of the country might currently be the easier plan. I was looking at Sweden and Denmark. I'd have to the learn the language though, and also, by not storming the castle, I feel I may be shirking my civic duty as a huge fan of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
I'm pretty sure any well educated Swede or Dane would know English. I wouldn't worry about that. I would worry about other things such as their ability to keep their economies reasonable with an aging population. Also, check to see if it's easier to open a business there. They might have more regulation, and they certainly have higher taxes.
Storming the castle only works when you have at least a significant minority of the population on your side. If former US colonels(1) were calling for armed rebellion, it might be different. As it is, most of the population doesn't see this as enough of a big deal to die over. Therefore, you are absolved of any civic duty that would be a meaningless gesture.
Rhetoric aside, do you believe this is bad enough you're willing to die to fix it? Or even suffer the inconvenience of moving to a different country(1) so it won't affect you?
It would take a lot to get the military to rebel against the civilian government. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but wiretaps to gather intelligence about what most of the military believes to be enemy agents embedded within our civilian population isn't it. It would probably take something like institution a state religion or outlawing private ownership of weapons.
(1) I've done it when I ditched Israel for the US. It's not easy. But it's a lot easier than staging a successful armed rebellion.
I'm thinking its time we start looking at the French Revolution for advice.
Just remember, it ended with a Napoleon that was every bit as authoritarian as the old kings.
I guess you missed the part in school about how violence begets violence and it never solves anything, only creates new problems.
I was sick that day. But here are some things I learned after I got better:
1. How the Romans dealt with Carthage, and after the Third Punic War were never bothered by the Carthaginians again.
2. The 30 years war and how Catholics and Protestants stopped killing each other over religion afterwards.
3. How Cromwell and the threat of a repeat performance caused the Glorious Revolution and turned England into a constitutional monarchy.
4. The reasons the US became independent prior to the decolonization that started in the late 19th century.
5. The reason that slavery got abolished.
Violence is not the ideal solution. But sometimes it's the only solution - and historically it did solve some problems.
If they try to behave violently afterward, they go to jail. No different from any other thug.
No. If they try to behave violently afterward, you call the police. The commissioner of police, however, is from the ruling party you voted against. The cops are too busy and the D.A. doesn't think it's in the public interest to press charges.
This is more of an issue with votes than anything else because we vote for control of the system that stops thugs. Therefore, elected officials have the power to keep their thugs safe.
Let me quote another part of the same article you cited:
Richard Overy, professor of contemporary history at King's College London, notes that after the war, Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop listed three main reasons for Germany's defeat:
* Unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the Soviet Union
* The large-scale supply of arms and equipment from the US to the Soviet Union, under the lend-lease agreement
* The success of the Western Allies in the struggle for air supremacy.
Two out of those three reasons require the US to be there, at least as a safe place industrial production.
But lets assume the US stayed out of WWII and the USSR won in Europe without it. Russian soldiers had conquered everything until the Atlantic. West Europe would have "enjoyed" the same communist regimes that East Europe had until the late 1980s.
Maybe you see things differently, but I'd say that still constitutes being broken:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechoslovakia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Poland
I'm going to take the high road and avoid ad-hominem attacks on your sources of information. In case you're wondering, I went to school in Israel, and WWII was taught as background to the Holocaust - including the Russian liberation of East Europe. But also including the American part you seem to ignore.
The Pacific Rim was also badly broken - the Japanese empire was not a good place to live. Of course, significant portions of it are still broken. But not all.
As for Europe, the American forces conquered everything west of the iron curtain. That's the reason is didn't end up as part of the Warsaw pact. If you have sources that prove the opposite, please cite them.
We tried that. Seemed to work from 1918 until December 6th, 1941. But by that point the rest of the world was so broken it needed to be fixed with a crowbar.
I forgot to add, either emigrate or keep very quiet for medical reasons, to avoid lead poisoning.
Most people here think Bush is Stalin.
No, most people here use hyperbole. If they truly thought Bush was as bad as Stalin, they'd do the prudent thing and emigrate while they still can.
That's why the second amendment isn't worth the paper it's written on.
You mean because not enough people think that Corporate Personhood and the level of big brother we have now (still a long way away from Orwell's, BTW) are worth fighting to the death?
I didn't mean that British rule was comparable to the gulags and the Gestapo. Merely that it caused the kind of violent opposition that today we'd only see for something like the gulags and the Gestapo.
I think people were more willing to get themselves killed back then, either because early death was a lot more likely anyway or because more of them believed in an afterlife.