No, you are wrong. Your first dollar will always be taxed at the exact same rate, no matter how much you make. That is how tax brackets work.
This is factually incorrect, and you know it. At the end of the year, when you actually file your taxes, you pay the higher rate for all of the money you earned, if you earned enough to put you in the higher bracket. Of course you know this, but you're pretending not to for some inexplicable reason.
Your taxes are based on the totality of your earnings. And if you earned a lot later in the the year, you'll also be fined for not having payed more in taxes early in the year. But again, you know this, much as you hate to admit it (why is that?).
Yes, they work to make it so that next week, when you work harder than you did this week, more of each dollar you make is taken and used to pay someone else's share of the cost of having a government that everyone uses.
Life is hard, and unfair
And so your solution is to make two people who are standing right next to each other doing the same job pay different taxes on a given dollar the earn, because one of them also works a second job?
that doesn't mean the government needs to pile on and make it worse
Don't you see that that is exactly of what you seem to approve? The system you like - the one that you say is fair - specifically, expressly piles on a higher tax rate burden for those very people who personally choose to do extra work, take risks to start new businesses and hire people, etc.
You don't just want people to pay more dollars in taxes as they work harder, you want them to pay more of every dollar. Your reward for a person who pulls himself up from a lower income is to punish that act by giving more of his labor each day to other people. Your reward for people to not reach for a higher-paying job is to give them more of someone else's paycheck. Yeah, life's not fair, and you want it that way.
Your preferred system punishses the very actions necessary to get oneself out of poverty as well doing things (like starting a business) that help other people to do so.
Unfair, because the poor guy you mentioned is paying a fifth as much in sales taxes? Unfair because the tax doesn't leave everyone with exactly the same amount of cash at the end of the year? You really don't think it's fair until the guy who makes $1 million is also left with no money at the end of the year?
What - specifically, in real numbers - is your standard of fairness for a sales tax, if not to apply it evenly, thus collecting more from people who consume more? And more to the point, why are you so desparate to avoid the main issue, which is that all the costs of life, including taxes, are - by your use of the word - regressive when someone make less cash? Taxes are one of the least among those costs, but they're the only ones you personally think someone else should carry for some other people?
Why are you picking this one cost of living, and ignoring the other, larger ones? What about regressive gas prices? What about regressive spahetti prices? Shouldn't someone who makes a hundred dollars more than someone else chip in to buy the other guy's fuel and pasta, so that it will be "fair?" If not, why not? Please be specific. Not that you will even address the matter, because you're a hypocrite on the subject, just like everyone who trots out the ol' "flat taxes are really higher taxes on poor people even though the actual rate is the same for everyone and rich people will still pay far more dollars than anyone else, but please don't bother me with the facts, we have rich people to hate!"
Regardless, the reason you and some other people deliberately mis-use the term "regressive" in this context (to the point where it is widely used by those with a specific political agenda) is because using it correctly (which would be to not use it all, since nobody is proposing any actually regressive tax rate), would take away a favorite tool of those who think that actually progressive tax rates are appropriate. Rather than try to justify the punishment of hard work on plainly twisted moral grounds, the tactic is to paint a picture of a higher tax rate on poor people as the only alternative. Which is a BS false dichotomy.
You're making the mistake of thinking that morals exist right along side gravity and hydrogen, like some sort of natural resource to be picked up and measured. You really can't imagine sitting down and, using reason, deriving a code of ethics that's based on reality, instead of imaginary magical beings? Morals are rules, and those rules are based on a value system. The value system is based on what you value. A value system that values death and ignorance is a dead and street. It's self destructive. A value system that's rationally derived from observing the fact that you're alive and have the capacity to reason... that's not self destructive. One is inherently superior to the other, because adherents to the death-and-destruction framework cannot sustain themselves. Failure to exist is built into such a twisted system because it values its own destruction.
If you can't understand that, then the need for "proof" is the least of your worries. You should worry about your ability to engage rationally with any concept placed in front of you. Your convoluted concept of being amused by imaginary straw-man atheists is a good case in point.
What I would or would not do if I was in situation X is irrelevant to whether or not my current arguments are right or wrong.
Your disinterest in applying a discussion about value systems to real-world examples is a solid indicator that you know you're wrong.
that a moral system that stones women to death for teaching their daughters to read... I wouldn't say it's "objectively" bad or "inferior."
Really? You can't wrap your head around the built-in inferiority of a moral code that mandates death for one gender doing something that the other gender is allowed to do?
unless someone can present evidence of absolute morals
Being killed isn't absolute enough for you? You get to learn to read, and she gets killed for learning to read. There can hardly be a more glaring, plain-as-day distinction. I feel pretty badly for you that you can't, personally, connect the dots between that stark contrast and the moral code that embraces it. Would you only be able to find the "absolute" in the immorality of such a value system if, perhaps, you were a girl about to be killed for having been able to read this paragraph? What would it take for you to grasp the irreducible evil of a value system that values ignorance and death over knowledge and life? I thought I just give you a no-brainer of an example, but I can see that your notion of "objective" doesn't include evaluating the state of being of objectively, measurably dead for doing something that doesn't harm someone else.
Really? You can't summon the perspective to see that a moral system that stones women to death for teaching their daughters to read is fundamentally, objectively inferior to a system that doesn't do so?
Who cares if moral systems are based on different things? When they're based on death worship, for example, they are inherently, irrationally self destructive. When a moral code is based on lies (say, about the nature of the world around you) it is a code that embraces untruth as its foundation. Do you really find no means, in your own reckoning, to separate such a value system from one that seeks and acknowledges reality?
Unless you have a way to show that one moral system is better than another, you can't say one country's laws and preferences are better than another.
Luckily, it's actually very easy to compare laws and judicial systems, and find one - as informed by specific philosphical/moral tenets, and codified in a constitution - to be, in fact, plainly superior. That is, if rationality plays any role in the mechanisms by which you evaluate such things. I don't fee any urge to use crazy magical thinking as a standard by which to compare systems, so I have none of the trouble that some people - strangely, toxically - have with the need for moral relativism in order to remain politically correct and not hurt anyone's feelings.
I said, "If poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes, then it's regressive."
You keep saying that, but you keep skipping over pointing out the part where anyone has proposed a higher income tax rate for someone making, say, $20k a year than for someone making $55k or $250k a year. In what scenario, current or proposed, are you seeing anyone propose such higher (than someone else pays) income tax rates for lower income people?
Poor people tend to spend all of their money just to survive (or because they don't know how to save). Which is why they have a higher burden, as a percentage of their income.
What are you referring to, here? The services they pay for in the form of, say, natural gas service to heat their apartment? The costs of getting a haircut? The cost of running the government they also use? The cost of a grapefruit or a loaf of bread? When you make less money, everything represents a higher percentage of your income. Everything, that is, except a flat tax rate. Which is a percentage of your income, period. It goes down when your income goes down. The cost to heat a two-bedroom apartment is roughtly the same for a guy making $25k and a guy making $50k. Is that regressive, then?
You seem to be very comfortable saying that the guy making $50k should be forced to work part of every day to subsidize the cost of government on behalf of the guy making $25k. Why aren't you saying that the guy making $50k should be forced pay for part of the other guy's heating bill? That's much more of an issue (for the poor guy) than the tax bill, which is smaller in actual dollars for the guy who makes less money.
Which is it? Should someone who makes more money be forced to subsidize those who don't, or not? If not, then what are you arguing about? If so, then why aren't you proposing things that really take that concept and run with it? Where's your intellectual and moral integrity? The guy next door to you who makes less than you, who you're so worried, about would probably much rather have you pay his heating bill than his tax bill. Please explain why that's not on your government-should-make-that-happen list. Be specific.
Passing along the paperwork doesn't oppress anyone. The paperwork is completely meaningless if the country receiving it elects to throw it out on perfectly reasonable moral grounds (such as finding death-for-apostasy to be the sign of a sick, medieval-minded, throwback of a culture).
If poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes, then it's regressive
How is paying 10% of your income regressive (relative to someone else, who makes more, who also pays 10% - but a lot more dollars)? You're still not being the least bit clear on this. 10% is 10%. A regressive tax rate would be a higher number the less you make.
Do you understand how tax brackets work?
Yes, though you seem to be avoiding the topic. If you work harder and make more money, more of every dollar you make is taken as taxes. That is a progressive tax system. The rate per dollar of income goes up as a function of the number of dollars you earn. A regressive tax plan would do the opposite, increasing the per-dollar rate as income goes down. A flat income tax does neither of those things. You pay exactly the same rate regardless of your income (though as a side effect, high earners pay wildly more taxes in actual dollars).
Both people pay the same amount of tax on the first part of their income.
What absurd sophistry. There is no "part" of your income. You pay based on your entire annual earnings. Period. The guy who worked the extra hours pays a higher rate. With a flat tax, he would pay more dollars than the guy who worked less, but they would still be paying the same rate. Just like they would if they were paying a flat rate consumption tax. The difference there is that the guy who chooses to consume less pays less taxes.
My point is consumption taxes are regressive.
If that's your point, then your real point is that the cost of living is regressive. Which is nonsense. Consumptions taxes that deliberately target something that only poor people buy? That might be considered regressive. But consumpation taxes that collect the same fee per dollar spend no matter who spends that dollar? That's flat. It neither favors nor punishes anyone. What it does do is include everyone - as opposed to our current system, which for political reasons rewards millions of people with having their taxes paid by other people who are punished for their ability to pay more.
He's just a confused right wing nut. He thinks it was lefties that wanted the death of people making cartoons depicting Allah.
No, I wasn't thinking of that at all, actually. Though it's ironic that the Crusaders For Tolerance types actually give moral support to people who hate them for their tolerance. I'd enjoy that sort of irony if it didn't involve religious crazies being murderous and destructive.
I think that you are a moron for thinking that poorer people should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.
I don't. I think they should pay exactly the same rate on the dollars they earn as everyone else. But since you insist on looking at it in terms of their overall cash pulled in, rather than as a function of each dollar earned... do you think it's fair that a set of tires costs poorer people a greater portion of their annual income? Be specific.
I think those who make more money should pay an equal or higher percentage of their income in taxes
Which is it? Address the scenario I described. Should we two people, working the same job and generating exactly the same pay from that job, get different amounts of money taken as taxes from the SAME amount of income from that job, because one of us has chosen to work a second job, also? Please provide your moral reasoning for making the guy who works an extra twenty hours a week subsidize (through paying a higher rate per dollar) the lower tax rates of the guy who chooses to work only forty hours a week. Be specific in your justification for taking more of each dollar that the harder worker earns.
people associate it with regressive sales tax
Except that there's nothing regressive at all about a flat tax. It's flat. The only reason people falsely trot out that word ("regressive") is because in their desparation to leverage the politics of class envy and villanizing anyone who makes more money, they use that cartoonish nonsense (including the "anything not Progressive is Regressive meme) to fuel the irrational vitriol they use to buy votes from the don't-pay-taxes demographic.
I can't tell if you're being ironic, or moronic. The GP is dead on. There are Warm and Fuzzy Progressive countries in Europe that make saying certain opinion-related words a crime. We're not talking about fraud, or inciting a riot, or anything like that. That's lefties for you! Peace, harmony, equal rights and free stuff for everyone, as long as they don't say certain naughty and un-Progressive things, or paint Incorrect Pictures, etc. In which case it's off to jail.
So it doesn't bother you that poor people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes?
You mean right now? They do not, because they don't pay any income taxes. Do you mean in flat tax scenario? No, it doesn't bother me any more than the fact that they also continue to pay (as they do now) a higher percentage of their income for shoes and socks, would also pay a higher percentage of their income for the services of a plumber, and would pay a higher percentage of their income for the services of their government. This is also true if you compare somone making $100k a year to someone making $200k a year.
The situation is that the less money you make, the bigger a percentage of your income that all of your costs represent. Period.
So, let's talk about what you're really complaining about: you don't like the fact that some people make more money than other people.
You're ok with that?
Let's turn is around. Let's say that you and I have the same job, work the same number of hours, earn the same paycheck, and pay the same taxes. So far so good, right? Now, let's say that I like to take my weekends to enjoy time with my family, pursue a hobby, relax, etc. Great! But let's say that you spend your weekend putting in 20 hours towards a second job or running a small business on the side. Maybe you sell hotdogs on the street, maybe you're a fine artist producing expensive paintings - doesn't matter. But all the sudden, your tax bracket jumps (to satisfy those who think that progressive rates are a good thing).
Now, you go back to work on Monday, right next to me. We continue to earn the same paycheck. But now, I get to keep more of that paycheck than you do. Why? Because you're working harder, and you are punished by the progressive tax code for doing so. You take it on yourself to generate extra income and put in the time to do so, but out of every dollar you earn standing right next to me doing the same thing, you must surrender more of it indirectly to me because your higher tax rate is being used to subsidize my lower one. Thanks for working extra hard, phantomfive, so that you can pay some of my taxes for me!
Sounds good? Because it really sounds like that's what you're saying.
Real regression would be poorer people paying more tax per dollar they earn (we call today's "progessive" tax rates progressive because the rate goes up per dollar earned). A flat tax is not regressive, it's flat. There's nothing regressive about everyone paying, say, the same ten cents on every dollar they earn or spend. No more than there is something regressive about everyone paying the same price for a gallon of skim milk.
Only after it has been substantially taxed. Regardless, your image of a cadre of cartoon-like rich-kid tax-evading villains is completely at odds with where most "rich" people come from. All of those Eeeevil people that the left says are the source of the deficit (by virtue of being under-taxed) are mostly dual-income professional families who did earn their way into Hated Rich People territory by making over $250,000 year.
But if it will make you feel better, how about we line up everyone who makes a million bucks a year or more. There are a lot of them. And to slake your thirst for these shiftless, non-working aristrocrats' blood, let's confiscate ALL of their earnings. A tax rate of 100%, to make things The Way It Ought To Be. Guess what: A complete seizure of all of their income wouldn't even cover the federal deficit through April of this year. To say nothing of touching the debt, or covering the inherently bankrupt entitlement programs.
Without income, wealth goes away. Most wealth is tied up in non-liquid assets. Things have to be sold to turn it into spendable cash.
A wealthy person only spends a tiny fraction of their income.
And when they do, it's on stuff that is taxed much more aggressively than things like rent, food, and utilities. The rich guy is also paying, usually, mammoth amounts of property tax, and will usually have a very large chunk of his assets gobbled up as a death tax.
If you're worried about percentages, why aren't you proposing that all of the other things in life - not just the cost of having a government - are also "regressive" in the way you've chosed to describe things? A bag of chips at the store is also regressively priced, relative to income, isn't it? Outrageous! Unfair!
i didn't know there were that many people living on capital gains.
OK, so you hate people who've risked money making investments. We get that. But do you really think everyone else is so stupid to think you're saying anything of substance? Roughly 50% of the population earns money below the rate that the Congress has set as meaning they owe incomes taxes, and many of them receive "refunds" on money they don't even pay. They don't pay income taxes, they pay negative income taxes. A small number of rich people pay the vast majority of the country's income taxes, and middle class people pay the bits that are left over. The other half of people pay none. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.
Slashdot Mirror
Please stop providing perspective and insight into the situation. You might hurt someone's feelings.
No, you are wrong. Your first dollar will always be taxed at the exact same rate, no matter how much you make. That is how tax brackets work.
This is factually incorrect, and you know it. At the end of the year, when you actually file your taxes, you pay the higher rate for all of the money you earned, if you earned enough to put you in the higher bracket. Of course you know this, but you're pretending not to for some inexplicable reason.
Your taxes are based on the totality of your earnings. And if you earned a lot later in the the year, you'll also be fined for not having payed more in taxes early in the year. But again, you know this, much as you hate to admit it (why is that?).
Have you figured out how tax brackets work yet?
Yes, they work to make it so that next week, when you work harder than you did this week, more of each dollar you make is taken and used to pay someone else's share of the cost of having a government that everyone uses.
Life is hard, and unfair
And so your solution is to make two people who are standing right next to each other doing the same job pay different taxes on a given dollar the earn, because one of them also works a second job?
that doesn't mean the government needs to pile on and make it worse
Don't you see that that is exactly of what you seem to approve? The system you like - the one that you say is fair - specifically, expressly piles on a higher tax rate burden for those very people who personally choose to do extra work, take risks to start new businesses and hire people, etc.
You don't just want people to pay more dollars in taxes as they work harder, you want them to pay more of every dollar. Your reward for a person who pulls himself up from a lower income is to punish that act by giving more of his labor each day to other people. Your reward for people to not reach for a higher-paying job is to give them more of someone else's paycheck. Yeah, life's not fair, and you want it that way.
Your preferred system punishses the very actions necessary to get oneself out of poverty as well doing things (like starting a business) that help other people to do so.
Unfair, because the poor guy you mentioned is paying a fifth as much in sales taxes? Unfair because the tax doesn't leave everyone with exactly the same amount of cash at the end of the year? You really don't think it's fair until the guy who makes $1 million is also left with no money at the end of the year?
What - specifically, in real numbers - is your standard of fairness for a sales tax, if not to apply it evenly, thus collecting more from people who consume more? And more to the point, why are you so desparate to avoid the main issue, which is that all the costs of life, including taxes, are - by your use of the word - regressive when someone make less cash? Taxes are one of the least among those costs, but they're the only ones you personally think someone else should carry for some other people?
Why are you picking this one cost of living, and ignoring the other, larger ones? What about regressive gas prices? What about regressive spahetti prices? Shouldn't someone who makes a hundred dollars more than someone else chip in to buy the other guy's fuel and pasta, so that it will be "fair?" If not, why not? Please be specific. Not that you will even address the matter, because you're a hypocrite on the subject, just like everyone who trots out the ol' "flat taxes are really higher taxes on poor people even though the actual rate is the same for everyone and rich people will still pay far more dollars than anyone else, but please don't bother me with the facts, we have rich people to hate!"
Regardless, the reason you and some other people deliberately mis-use the term "regressive" in this context (to the point where it is widely used by those with a specific political agenda) is because using it correctly (which would be to not use it all, since nobody is proposing any actually regressive tax rate), would take away a favorite tool of those who think that actually progressive tax rates are appropriate. Rather than try to justify the punishment of hard work on plainly twisted moral grounds, the tactic is to paint a picture of a higher tax rate on poor people as the only alternative. Which is a BS false dichotomy.
In other words, you're BSing, and you know it.
the US sends people to far away places to be tortured for no reason at all
[citation needed]
Please be specific, especially on the "for no reason at all" part.
If you can't understand that, then the need for "proof" is the least of your worries. You should worry about your ability to engage rationally with any concept placed in front of you. Your convoluted concept of being amused by imaginary straw-man atheists is a good case in point.
What I would or would not do if I was in situation X is irrelevant to whether or not my current arguments are right or wrong.
Your disinterest in applying a discussion about value systems to real-world examples is a solid indicator that you know you're wrong.
that a moral system that stones women to death for teaching their daughters to read ... I wouldn't say it's "objectively" bad or "inferior."
Really? You can't wrap your head around the built-in inferiority of a moral code that mandates death for one gender doing something that the other gender is allowed to do?
unless someone can present evidence of absolute morals
Being killed isn't absolute enough for you? You get to learn to read, and she gets killed for learning to read. There can hardly be a more glaring, plain-as-day distinction. I feel pretty badly for you that you can't, personally, connect the dots between that stark contrast and the moral code that embraces it. Would you only be able to find the "absolute" in the immorality of such a value system if, perhaps, you were a girl about to be killed for having been able to read this paragraph? What would it take for you to grasp the irreducible evil of a value system that values ignorance and death over knowledge and life? I thought I just give you a no-brainer of an example, but I can see that your notion of "objective" doesn't include evaluating the state of being of objectively, measurably dead for doing something that doesn't harm someone else.
I hope you don't vote.
How can you judge yours to be better,
Really? You can't summon the perspective to see that a moral system that stones women to death for teaching their daughters to read is fundamentally, objectively inferior to a system that doesn't do so?
Who cares if moral systems are based on different things? When they're based on death worship, for example, they are inherently, irrationally self destructive. When a moral code is based on lies (say, about the nature of the world around you) it is a code that embraces untruth as its foundation. Do you really find no means, in your own reckoning, to separate such a value system from one that seeks and acknowledges reality?
Unless you have a way to show that one moral system is better than another, you can't say one country's laws and preferences are better than another.
Luckily, it's actually very easy to compare laws and judicial systems, and find one - as informed by specific philosphical/moral tenets, and codified in a constitution - to be, in fact, plainly superior. That is, if rationality plays any role in the mechanisms by which you evaluate such things. I don't fee any urge to use crazy magical thinking as a standard by which to compare systems, so I have none of the trouble that some people - strangely, toxically - have with the need for moral relativism in order to remain politically correct and not hurt anyone's feelings.
What a difference a decade makes.
What, because the US also now executes people for being insufficiently deferential to the state religion?
Or is this just yet another misdirected, fuzzy-minded Julian Assange fanboy thing?
I said, "If poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes, then it's regressive."
You keep saying that, but you keep skipping over pointing out the part where anyone has proposed a higher income tax rate for someone making, say, $20k a year than for someone making $55k or $250k a year. In what scenario, current or proposed, are you seeing anyone propose such higher (than someone else pays) income tax rates for lower income people?
Poor people tend to spend all of their money just to survive (or because they don't know how to save). Which is why they have a higher burden, as a percentage of their income.
What are you referring to, here? The services they pay for in the form of, say, natural gas service to heat their apartment? The costs of getting a haircut? The cost of running the government they also use? The cost of a grapefruit or a loaf of bread? When you make less money, everything represents a higher percentage of your income. Everything, that is, except a flat tax rate. Which is a percentage of your income, period. It goes down when your income goes down. The cost to heat a two-bedroom apartment is roughtly the same for a guy making $25k and a guy making $50k. Is that regressive, then?
You seem to be very comfortable saying that the guy making $50k should be forced to work part of every day to subsidize the cost of government on behalf of the guy making $25k. Why aren't you saying that the guy making $50k should be forced pay for part of the other guy's heating bill? That's much more of an issue (for the poor guy) than the tax bill, which is smaller in actual dollars for the guy who makes less money.
Which is it? Should someone who makes more money be forced to subsidize those who don't, or not? If not, then what are you arguing about? If so, then why aren't you proposing things that really take that concept and run with it? Where's your intellectual and moral integrity? The guy next door to you who makes less than you, who you're so worried, about would probably much rather have you pay his heating bill than his tax bill. Please explain why that's not on your government-should-make-that-happen list. Be specific.
Passing along the paperwork doesn't oppress anyone. The paperwork is completely meaningless if the country receiving it elects to throw it out on perfectly reasonable moral grounds (such as finding death-for-apostasy to be the sign of a sick, medieval-minded, throwback of a culture).
If poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes, then it's regressive
How is paying 10% of your income regressive (relative to someone else, who makes more, who also pays 10% - but a lot more dollars)? You're still not being the least bit clear on this. 10% is 10%. A regressive tax rate would be a higher number the less you make.
Do you understand how tax brackets work?
Yes, though you seem to be avoiding the topic. If you work harder and make more money, more of every dollar you make is taken as taxes. That is a progressive tax system. The rate per dollar of income goes up as a function of the number of dollars you earn. A regressive tax plan would do the opposite, increasing the per-dollar rate as income goes down. A flat income tax does neither of those things. You pay exactly the same rate regardless of your income (though as a side effect, high earners pay wildly more taxes in actual dollars).
Both people pay the same amount of tax on the first part of their income.
What absurd sophistry. There is no "part" of your income. You pay based on your entire annual earnings. Period. The guy who worked the extra hours pays a higher rate. With a flat tax, he would pay more dollars than the guy who worked less, but they would still be paying the same rate. Just like they would if they were paying a flat rate consumption tax. The difference there is that the guy who chooses to consume less pays less taxes.
My point is consumption taxes are regressive.
If that's your point, then your real point is that the cost of living is regressive. Which is nonsense. Consumptions taxes that deliberately target something that only poor people buy? That might be considered regressive. But consumpation taxes that collect the same fee per dollar spend no matter who spends that dollar? That's flat. It neither favors nor punishes anyone. What it does do is include everyone - as opposed to our current system, which for political reasons rewards millions of people with having their taxes paid by other people who are punished for their ability to pay more.
That's a workable example, sure.
He's just a confused right wing nut. He thinks it was lefties that wanted the death of people making cartoons depicting Allah.
No, I wasn't thinking of that at all, actually. Though it's ironic that the Crusaders For Tolerance types actually give moral support to people who hate them for their tolerance. I'd enjoy that sort of irony if it didn't involve religious crazies being murderous and destructive.
I don't know where are you going with that "Incorrect Picture" thing.
Sure you do. Just think a little bit harder, and try to imagine something politically incorrect enough. You can do it.
I think that you are a moron for thinking that poorer people should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.
I don't. I think they should pay exactly the same rate on the dollars they earn as everyone else. But since you insist on looking at it in terms of their overall cash pulled in, rather than as a function of each dollar earned ... do you think it's fair that a set of tires costs poorer people a greater portion of their annual income? Be specific.
I think those who make more money should pay an equal or higher percentage of their income in taxes
Which is it? Address the scenario I described. Should we two people, working the same job and generating exactly the same pay from that job, get different amounts of money taken as taxes from the SAME amount of income from that job, because one of us has chosen to work a second job, also? Please provide your moral reasoning for making the guy who works an extra twenty hours a week subsidize (through paying a higher rate per dollar) the lower tax rates of the guy who chooses to work only forty hours a week. Be specific in your justification for taking more of each dollar that the harder worker earns.
people associate it with regressive sales tax
Except that there's nothing regressive at all about a flat tax. It's flat. The only reason people falsely trot out that word ("regressive") is because in their desparation to leverage the politics of class envy and villanizing anyone who makes more money, they use that cartoonish nonsense (including the "anything not Progressive is Regressive meme) to fuel the irrational vitriol they use to buy votes from the don't-pay-taxes demographic.
So they're "just following orders"? I seem to remember that being a bad thing.
They're just a communications mechanism. That's like saying a FAX machine is a "bad thing" for having been involved in transmitting an Evil Document.
Interpol has nothing whatsoever to do with what really matters: arrest and extradition. That's up to the nations involved.
I can't tell if you're being ironic, or moronic. The GP is dead on. There are Warm and Fuzzy Progressive countries in Europe that make saying certain opinion-related words a crime. We're not talking about fraud, or inciting a riot, or anything like that. That's lefties for you! Peace, harmony, equal rights and free stuff for everyone, as long as they don't say certain naughty and un-Progressive things, or paint Incorrect Pictures, etc. In which case it's off to jail.
So it doesn't bother you that poor people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes?
You mean right now? They do not, because they don't pay any income taxes. Do you mean in flat tax scenario? No, it doesn't bother me any more than the fact that they also continue to pay (as they do now) a higher percentage of their income for shoes and socks, would also pay a higher percentage of their income for the services of a plumber, and would pay a higher percentage of their income for the services of their government. This is also true if you compare somone making $100k a year to someone making $200k a year.
The situation is that the less money you make, the bigger a percentage of your income that all of your costs represent. Period.
So, let's talk about what you're really complaining about: you don't like the fact that some people make more money than other people.
You're ok with that?
Let's turn is around. Let's say that you and I have the same job, work the same number of hours, earn the same paycheck, and pay the same taxes. So far so good, right? Now, let's say that I like to take my weekends to enjoy time with my family, pursue a hobby, relax, etc. Great! But let's say that you spend your weekend putting in 20 hours towards a second job or running a small business on the side. Maybe you sell hotdogs on the street, maybe you're a fine artist producing expensive paintings - doesn't matter. But all the sudden, your tax bracket jumps (to satisfy those who think that progressive rates are a good thing).
Now, you go back to work on Monday, right next to me. We continue to earn the same paycheck. But now, I get to keep more of that paycheck than you do. Why? Because you're working harder, and you are punished by the progressive tax code for doing so. You take it on yourself to generate extra income and put in the time to do so, but out of every dollar you earn standing right next to me doing the same thing, you must surrender more of it indirectly to me because your higher tax rate is being used to subsidize my lower one. Thanks for working extra hard, phantomfive, so that you can pay some of my taxes for me!
Sounds good? Because it really sounds like that's what you're saying.
Real regression would be poorer people paying more tax per dollar they earn (we call today's "progessive" tax rates progressive because the rate goes up per dollar earned). A flat tax is not regressive, it's flat. There's nothing regressive about everyone paying, say, the same ten cents on every dollar they earn or spend. No more than there is something regressive about everyone paying the same price for a gallon of skim milk.
In the real world, wealth is passed on.
Only after it has been substantially taxed. Regardless, your image of a cadre of cartoon-like rich-kid tax-evading villains is completely at odds with where most "rich" people come from. All of those Eeeevil people that the left says are the source of the deficit (by virtue of being under-taxed) are mostly dual-income professional families who did earn their way into Hated Rich People territory by making over $250,000 year.
But if it will make you feel better, how about we line up everyone who makes a million bucks a year or more. There are a lot of them. And to slake your thirst for these shiftless, non-working aristrocrats' blood, let's confiscate ALL of their earnings. A tax rate of 100%, to make things The Way It Ought To Be. Guess what: A complete seizure of all of their income wouldn't even cover the federal deficit through April of this year. To say nothing of touching the debt, or covering the inherently bankrupt entitlement programs.
Without income, wealth goes away. Most wealth is tied up in non-liquid assets. Things have to be sold to turn it into spendable cash.
A wealthy person only spends a tiny fraction of their income.
And when they do, it's on stuff that is taxed much more aggressively than things like rent, food, and utilities. The rich guy is also paying, usually, mammoth amounts of property tax, and will usually have a very large chunk of his assets gobbled up as a death tax.
If you're worried about percentages, why aren't you proposing that all of the other things in life - not just the cost of having a government - are also "regressive" in the way you've chosed to describe things? A bag of chips at the store is also regressively priced, relative to income, isn't it? Outrageous! Unfair!
i didn't know there were that many people living on capital gains.
OK, so you hate people who've risked money making investments. We get that. But do you really think everyone else is so stupid to think you're saying anything of substance? Roughly 50% of the population earns money below the rate that the Congress has set as meaning they owe incomes taxes, and many of them receive "refunds" on money they don't even pay. They don't pay income taxes, they pay negative income taxes. A small number of rich people pay the vast majority of the country's income taxes, and middle class people pay the bits that are left over. The other half of people pay none. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.