I know... I know... they do deserve some pay but it's probably about 100% more than it has been historically. Starting in 1978 all the top compensation has skyrocketed from 50 times what the workers in the company makes to over 400 times what the workers in the company makes.
I'm with a company with unlimited voice and data for both mobile and landline.
a) lacked the time for it b) the constant privacy violations and promises to 'never do it again' c) several news reports on the very real risks to current and future employment of facebook posts. d) at the time, nothing like google circles so I couldn't keep the different parts of my life really separate. Also see b) - similar violations of cross friend discussion privacy in the past. I'm sorry- I just don't want to share every aspect of my beliefs with everyone. e) They are thinking of charging us? WE ARE THE PRODUCT. Without US, they are NOTHING. f) It was just taking too much time to keep up with "friends" that I really barely knew. I've started living life for real in the time that's been freed up. Seriously- it was something like 1.5 hours a day to keep up with facebook. I use that time to play board games in person, go on dates, take classes, walk, ride a bicycle, exercise.
I'm back to email, text messages, and personal phone calls. I've made new friends in real life who i see in person and do real activities with.
Facebook is a virtual experience lacking in reality.
Final reason I stopped hanging out in facebook... They wanted my personal mobile phone number to play the games. I hear since then, I could now play the games without facebook. Oh yea.. and CONSTANT spam to join "games" and events in "games" which I didn't give a darn about.
Clearly you feel much stronger on the issue that I do. Is it philisophical or are you an artist of some kind?
I want a reasonable relationship between copyright holders and the rest of society.
I currently think that anything past 28 years is unreasonable on the part of copyright holders. I think it stifles new derivative work. For example, if the descendents of the original creators of the Snow White story back in the middle ages still had copyright, it would have not been collected by Grimm. It would not have been as popular, and Disney (Julia Roberts, 20th century fox, ABC, Many independent comic book makers) would not have been able to tap in to the cultural Meme of Snow White and tell us an interesting new story about it. (Once upon a time, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Hunter, etc. etc.)
Yet here they are insisting on keeping the stories locked up for the next 100 years or more (life of author plus 70 years) or as Jack Valenti said "Forever less one day".
Copyright exists to encourage creation of works for the public. Those creations can then be used by other creators in a reasonable time period (28 years or even 14 years) to make new entertaining stories.
However, the problem is somewhat self correcting given the current incredible glut of entertainment, my main mitigation is to watch the least expensive entertainment first. By the time I get to the other entertainment, it's usually a dollar or less.
If there is no harm to the copyright holder, then I'm not bothered. I get that you are. Your opinion is reasonably legitimate tho miserly and harsh to people too poor to afford the entertainment anyway.
I can't justify denying them happiness when it does no harm. It's different if they have money and rip off the material anyway.
I know for sure i will watch the movie again within 5 years.
This is a very short list of movies/Shows for me and I own these on DVD. Moulin Rouge (19), Silverado (15), Inception (3), Circle of Iron (15ish), Band of Brothers (3), Dead Like Me (2), and a dozen more.
Ironically--- Starwars did not make the cut.
Renting is cheap. Owning takes space. And is expensive.
Lol but not peter jackson or many other actual performers who invested a year of their lives in a multi billion dollar grossing but unprofitable film.
---
But seriousy... is it worth it to..
Surrender our privacy as a nation and go under constant surveillance, be forced to rebuy the same content multiple times because we have no way to legally buy the content and then watch it on our tv/computer/mobile device, suffer unjust penalties ($150k per movie vs a more reasonable fine of $500 or $1000), and have our devices crippled all so one group of people can make between 0% and.5% more profit?
Is the cost to society to protect the oligopoly worth it?
What it does have is mind piercing volume. We are talking 120db, nearly weaponized volume you can hear outside the building.
We asked that they turn it down last night and they did. We stopped doing business with the theatre which will not lower the volume.
And that was a for a light romantic comedy. Not even an action film. For some ungodly reason it was set to 7th row rock concert volume.
---
You can't duplicate the huge screen.
You can't duplicate the crowd effects of mass laughter, mass "ooing", mass "screaming"-- i.e. the crowd interacting with the film as a group.
I can see a comedy at home and its... okay. I see the same thing with 20 other people (much less 300 other people) in a theatre and it's hysterical.
For action films, the huge screen has an impact that my 55" at home lacks.
If you put cam quality dark, with theatre noises and occasional random shakes up against a real DVD 3 months later and the theatre during 1st run, it's no contest.
Cam is a novelty and helpful to poor students.
My problem with DVD's (and entertainment in general) is that there is more than I can watch. I'm overwhelmed. So I usually go with the cheapest. But for Avengers, I did go see it in 3d. The 3d sucked and the glasses were uncomfortable after 2 hours.
Take a moment and consider the effects of automation over the last 10 years.
The retiring boomers will help but real jobs are being destroyed at a terrific rate right now.
Amazon and Diapers.com each both recently "hired" several hundred robotic warehouse workers. So you have Amazon replacing tens of thousands of retail jobs to begin with... and then they are going heavy into not having human workers on top of that. It's not just robots- it's also automated receptionists (I work for a huge corporation, we haven't had receptionists for about 8 years).
We have a new kind of corporation-- few employees and high income. Google is the obvious example- but there are other corporations which have multi billion dollar income and under 2000 employees. The relationship between labor and income has been broken.
We also have a new kind of investor-- local money invested overseas instead of locally.
So-- you want people to work- got it. I want people to work too. What do you do when there are less jobs than there are people and it's going to be that way for the next 20 years?
I would be more of a hard ass if the fines were more reasonable- in line with shoplifting.
Someone downloads a song- sure- fine them $50 bucks a song. And actually do it.
But when you are talking $150k fines- we are treating copyright infringement worse than capital crimes. It's not justice so I can't support it.
Now, as far as the "why I don't let my friends connect to wifi", even the most secure wifi can be broken in under 24 hours at this time. The only true security is hard wires.
And someone sitting with a laptop in the next yard over can put you at a lot of legal risk.
So there isn't really a good scenario out of this. You can be made to look guilty of crimes and it's very hard to prove your innocence.
Sanest solution is for the studios to charge a reasonable amount to download songs. Preferably something "unlimited per month for $xx" like a cable subscription.
So putting it accurately... they taxed the wealthy of 92% of everything over 4 million dollars. So if they had a high income (20million plus per year), then they were paying much higher taxes than Buffett does today.
Agreed they did have tax loopholes and shelters but they didn't have "more" than today. Our tax law is labyrinthine compared to the tax law back then.
I view any tax rate over 49% as ethically "too high". And I view any situation where a higher income person is paying lower tax rates than poorer people as a bad one as well. However, I favor high estate taxes to prevent the growth of oligarchs and danger to our democracy plus to keep our country as a meritocracy where the best excel- not the lucky children of last generation's best get to keep all the good jobs and stuff.
I like a flat % (25%) of everything over half the median national income.
Currently at $52k so everyone would pay 25% of everything over $26k.
Your basic points are sound tho--- not sure how to google for what total rates people actually paid back in the 50's.
The total tax load on the lower income (minimum wage) is about 28%. The total tax load on the middle income is about 42%. The total tax load on the upper income is about 23%. The total tax load on the top.5% is about 19%. And the total tax load on the wealthiest (.1%) is about 17% and will be until taxes on dividends and income go up or we flat out tax wealth.
Homeless people are dead on average by 47. Homeless women are dead on average by 43. In first world countries.
They clean the bodies up quickly.
"Total tax load" is state and local taxes + excise taxes + property tax (which is in your rent too- just hidden). Really have to watch out for the republicans latest "pay no FEDERAL" taxes. Because it really ignores the total tax people pay by income.
There are about 50-70 Excise taxes depending on your state. Electricity, water, cigarettes, booze, gasoline, car, bicycle, etc. etc.
And total taxes were above 90% on the wealthy in the 1950's. The peak was 92% on income over $400,000 per year in 1952. That was too far in one direction. But 17% is too far in the other direction.
The things Google and other companies are going makes me wonder why we allow them to stay in business. Just discorporate them or make their product illegal if they are not benefiting your society. It would be trivial for Australia to basically ban Google in Australia until they payed a fair tax on Australian income.
They'll either break Google (10% tax on gross income) or force Google to make massive political contributions (aka blackmail) like they did for Microsoft.
But you do realize that your opinion puts you personally on the hook for $150k per song fines if someone else uses your IP address.
The judge is basically saying, "IP address is not a finger print, not a unique identifier".
I don't follow the rules as much as I used to, because the rules are no longer as fair and reasonable as they were 30 years ago. You may have heard that the average citizen commits 3 felonies a day now without being aware of it.
Lol. True, the way they overloaded the "fair" term means it can be confusing which I believe is their intent.
The closest you could come to a consumption tax on the wealthy would be a wealth tax. They have that in some countries. Essentially 2% of your total wealth is taken even if you didn't earn a penny. Basically a property tax on money.
The only reason I want estate taxes is not raise wealth but to break up concentrations of wealth so at best we get 1 or 2 generational oligarchs. Since that's fairly unavoidable under any system, I can accept that.
It's not good for the country to carry it on too long. American done the right way is harsh but a meritocracy so that the best and the brightest are running the show and productive.
America done the wrong way is the less competent children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren (often out right idiots) inheriting judgeships, goverment elected offices, CEO jobs, movie star jobs, doctor jobs, etc. while excluding competent people who simply have less money because their grandfather had less money.
It is ultimately destructive to us as a nation to proceed down this nepotistic path.
And yet, it's still a substantial increase than what people are paying now.
Currently the highest total tax rate falls on the $60,000 to $100,000 bracket.
And the wealthy pay much lower taxes than I'm proposing.
Yes- I am proposing that they should pay federal income tax on every dollar they earn - dividends, salary, etc. Since I'm proposing it, I don't see how it can be "wrong". It's the proposal.
It sounds like you are proposing something with a higher rate on the wealthy?
As a person making around the $100k tax bracket, I can say that's similar to my tax load now under the current system and I'm doing fine. Living on about 60% of my income and saving the rest.
Okay, let's talk about a "same flat dollar amount per person".
Each citizen's share of the current federal tax bill is $10,000. But that includes children and retired people with no income.
Each working citizen's share of the current federal tax bill is $30,000.
So right at the start, you destroy the incentive to work at any job which pays less than $30. And effectively any job that pays less than $55k.
Now, we could reduce the size of government by 80% and get that down to $6k. Still- no point in working minimum wage jobs. The government takes almost everything you make after you add in state and local taxes.
So I don't think it would be "fair" and more importantly, i don't think it would be feasible to charge the same dollar amount to every person. Your thoughts?
--- Now, about the second point. Yes, a fair tax with a 25% rate with a $26k deduction would actually increase (by 2 to 7%) the rate paid by the people who benefited the most. The top.1% pay about 16% federal taxes and about.03% state and local taxes. Their total tax load is about 17%. It scales from there to the middle income folks who pay a total tax load of about 42%, then "down" to the impoverished who pay about 28% total tax load of their income.
--- I agree... "fair" is tough and more to the point- there are different "fairs". But in my opinion, the wealthy are starting to be pigs at the trough and if they are not careful they are going to push this too far. I think they already have but the abortion issue and their ownership of both "conservative" and "liberal" media is helping them maintain control.
At some point, folks who haven't had a job for several years are going to start to get riled up. We can't imprison 20% of the country. If we remain democratic at all, there will be much higher taxes on the wealthy. At least we could have a simple tax system to reduce compliance costs.
Say I drive 10 miles to and 10 miles back from a retail store.
I just paid a 30 minute tax on my time, a $4 tax in gasoline, a 20 mile tax of usage on my car. Plus- the product I want is not in stock sometimes.
Likewise, the 5 retail stores in my town are all stocking 2 units each. As a town, we buy 6 of them and 4 go unsold. Each store has at least 2 employees.
Amazon stocks at most 6 and probably stocks less and uses direct shipment from the vendor to the customer. They use 1 employee to service a hundred different "stores" a day and have robots to pull the items they do stock in their warehouses.
so their inventory costs are lower, their labor costs are lower.
Retail business for a lot of items just doesn't make sense any more.
No ones fault. And in general the customers should benefit from lower costs.
Problem... if you can't find a job, it doesn't matter how cheap things are.
Slashdot Mirror
Metering is a way to sell less bandwidth to more people.
For any provider who actually builds out infrastructure instead of giving the CEO & his top 9 cronies: $137,476,794 (in 2010)
http://www.companypay.com/executive/compensation/at-t-inc.asp?yr=2010
They can probably offer service without metering.
I know... I know... they do deserve some pay but it's probably about 100% more than it has been historically. Starting in 1978 all the top compensation has skyrocketed from 50 times what the workers in the company makes to over 400 times what the workers in the company makes.
I'm with a company with unlimited voice and data for both mobile and landline.
I did some testing and adjusting the radio takes me about 3 seconds.
But I can control when I adjust it.
I'd be more concerned about people reading a text that arrived at a risky time than scanning the road, then texting.
I could not text and drive safely.
I think your point is very interesting.
I've read articles about companies doing this kind of thing in the past.
They want to build revenue streams and customer lockin.
So solving the problem costs them money.
It's not no cancer.
Some other methods increased youthfulness but increased the cancer rate as well.
This one doesn't increase the cancer rate- but you can still get cancer.
a) lacked the time for it
b) the constant privacy violations and promises to 'never do it again'
c) several news reports on the very real risks to current and future employment of facebook posts.
d) at the time, nothing like google circles so I couldn't keep the different parts of my life really separate. Also see b) - similar violations of cross friend discussion privacy in the past. I'm sorry- I just don't want to share every aspect of my beliefs with everyone.
e) They are thinking of charging us? WE ARE THE PRODUCT. Without US, they are NOTHING.
f) It was just taking too much time to keep up with "friends" that I really barely knew. I've started living life for real in the time that's been freed up. Seriously- it was something like 1.5 hours a day to keep up with facebook. I use that time to play board games in person, go on dates, take classes, walk, ride a bicycle, exercise.
I'm back to email, text messages, and personal phone calls. I've made new friends in real life who i see in person and do real activities with.
Facebook is a virtual experience lacking in reality.
Final reason I stopped hanging out in facebook... They wanted my personal mobile phone number to play the games. I hear since then, I could now play the games without facebook. Oh yea.. and CONSTANT spam to join "games" and events in "games" which I didn't give a darn about.
Clearly you feel much stronger on the issue that I do. Is it philisophical or are you an artist of some kind?
I want a reasonable relationship between copyright holders and the rest of society.
I currently think that anything past 28 years is unreasonable on the part of copyright holders. I think it stifles new derivative work. For example, if the descendents of the original creators of the Snow White story back in the middle ages still had copyright, it would have not been collected by Grimm. It would not have been as popular, and Disney (Julia Roberts, 20th century fox, ABC, Many independent comic book makers) would not have been able to tap in to the cultural Meme of Snow White and tell us an interesting new story about it. (Once upon a time, Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Hunter, etc. etc.)
Yet here they are insisting on keeping the stories locked up for the next 100 years or more (life of author plus 70 years) or as Jack Valenti said "Forever less one day".
Copyright exists to encourage creation of works for the public. Those creations can then be used by other creators in a reasonable time period (28 years or even 14 years) to make new entertaining stories.
However, the problem is somewhat self correcting given the current incredible glut of entertainment, my main mitigation is to watch the least expensive entertainment first. By the time I get to the other entertainment, it's usually a dollar or less.
If there is no harm to the copyright holder, then I'm not bothered.
I get that you are. Your opinion is reasonably legitimate tho miserly and harsh to people too poor to afford the entertainment anyway.
I can't justify denying them happiness when it does no harm.
It's different if they have money and rip off the material anyway.
I used to buy a lot of DVD's.
Then I realized I was only watching them once.
So I rent or wait for it to come on TV.
Unless...
I know for sure i will watch the movie again within 5 years.
This is a very short list of movies/Shows for me and I own these on DVD.
Moulin Rouge (19), Silverado (15), Inception (3), Circle of Iron (15ish), Band of Brothers (3), Dead Like Me (2), and a dozen more.
Ironically--- Starwars did not make the cut.
Renting is cheap. Owning takes space. And is expensive.
I can see the entitlement...
But if they have no money to pay for the movie anyway, then the studio loses nothing anyway.
Cinemark Theatres in Houston on Sunday afternoon. $8.50 for Friday nights.
It's much less for 2d. I think $7 (friday) and $6 (sunday) respectively.
Lol but not peter jackson or many other actual performers who invested a year of their lives in a multi billion dollar grossing but unprofitable film.
---
But seriousy... is it worth it to..
Surrender our privacy as a nation and go under constant surveillance, be forced to rebuy the same content multiple times because we have no way to legally buy the content and then watch it on our tv/computer/mobile device, suffer unjust penalties ($150k per movie vs a more reasonable fine of $500 or $1000), and have our devices crippled all so one group of people can make between 0% and .5% more profit?
Is the cost to society to protect the oligopoly worth it?
I see the overpriced food and drink.
The rest don't happen at our local theatre.
What it does have is mind piercing volume. We are talking 120db, nearly weaponized volume you can hear outside the building.
We asked that they turn it down last night and they did. We stopped doing business with the theatre which will not lower the volume.
And that was a for a light romantic comedy. Not even an action film. For some ungodly reason it was set to 7th row rock concert volume.
---
You can't duplicate the huge screen.
You can't duplicate the crowd effects of mass laughter, mass "ooing", mass "screaming"-- i.e. the crowd interacting with the film as a group.
I can see a comedy at home and its ... okay. I see the same thing with 20 other people (much less 300 other people) in a theatre and it's hysterical.
For action films, the huge screen has an impact that my 55" at home lacks.
If you put cam quality dark, with theatre noises and occasional random shakes up against a real DVD 3 months later and the theatre during 1st run, it's no contest.
Cam is a novelty and helpful to poor students.
My problem with DVD's (and entertainment in general) is that there is more than I can watch. I'm overwhelmed. So I usually go with the cheapest. But for Avengers, I did go see it in 3d. The 3d sucked and the glasses were uncomfortable after 2 hours.
I paid 7.25 which seems very reasonable.
Take a moment and consider the effects of automation over the last 10 years.
The retiring boomers will help but real jobs are being destroyed at a terrific rate right now.
Amazon and Diapers.com each both recently "hired" several hundred robotic warehouse workers. So you have Amazon replacing tens of thousands of retail jobs to begin with... and then they are going heavy into not having human workers on top of that. It's not just robots- it's also automated receptionists (I work for a huge corporation, we haven't had receptionists for about 8 years).
We have a new kind of corporation-- few employees and high income. Google is the obvious example- but there are other corporations which have multi billion dollar income and under 2000 employees. The relationship between labor and income has been broken.
We also have a new kind of investor-- local money invested overseas instead of locally.
So-- you want people to work- got it. I want people to work too. What do you do when there are less jobs than there are people and it's going to be that way for the next 20 years?
Keep in mind that we have tried the other way where we let the rich have everything and let the poor starve too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donghak_Peasant_Revolution
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_factors_led_to_the_1949_Communist_Victory
I would be more of a hard ass if the fines were more reasonable- in line with shoplifting.
Someone downloads a song- sure- fine them $50 bucks a song. And actually do it.
But when you are talking $150k fines- we are treating copyright infringement worse than capital crimes. It's not justice so I can't support it.
Now, as far as the "why I don't let my friends connect to wifi", even the most secure wifi can be broken in under 24 hours at this time. The only true security is hard wires.
And someone sitting with a laptop in the next yard over can put you at a lot of legal risk.
So there isn't really a good scenario out of this. You can be made to look guilty of crimes and it's very hard to prove your innocence.
Sanest solution is for the studios to charge a reasonable amount to download songs. Preferably something "unlimited per month for $xx" like a cable subscription.
So putting it accurately... they taxed the wealthy of 92% of everything over 4 million dollars. So if they had a high income (20million plus per year), then they were paying much higher taxes than Buffett does today.
Agreed they did have tax loopholes and shelters but they didn't have "more" than today. Our tax law is labyrinthine compared to the tax law back then.
I view any tax rate over 49% as ethically "too high". And I view any situation where a higher income person is paying lower tax rates than poorer people as a bad one as well. However, I favor high estate taxes to prevent the growth of oligarchs and danger to our democracy plus to keep our country as a meritocracy where the best excel- not the lucky children of last generation's best get to keep all the good jobs and stuff.
I like a flat % (25%) of everything over half the median national income.
Currently at $52k so everyone would pay 25% of everything over $26k.
Your basic points are sound tho--- not sure how to google for what total rates people actually paid back in the 50's.
Actually, you are mistaken.
The total tax load on the lower income (minimum wage) is about 28%. .5% is about 19%.
The total tax load on the middle income is about 42%.
The total tax load on the upper income is about 23%.
The total tax load on the top
And the total tax load on the wealthiest (.1%) is about 17% and will be until taxes on dividends and income go up or we flat out tax wealth.
Homeless people are dead on average by 47.
Homeless women are dead on average by 43.
In first world countries.
They clean the bodies up quickly.
"Total tax load" is state and local taxes + excise taxes + property tax (which is in your rent too- just hidden). Really have to watch out for the republicans latest "pay no FEDERAL" taxes. Because it really ignores the total tax people pay by income.
There are about 50-70 Excise taxes depending on your state.
Electricity, water, cigarettes, booze, gasoline, car, bicycle, etc. etc.
And total taxes were above 90% on the wealthy in the 1950's.
The peak was 92% on income over $400,000 per year in 1952.
That was too far in one direction. But 17% is too far in the other direction.
The things Google and other companies are going makes me wonder why we allow them to stay in business. Just discorporate them or make their product illegal if they are not benefiting your society. It would be trivial for Australia to basically ban Google in Australia until they payed a fair tax on Australian income.
They broke Amazon.
They'll either break Google (10% tax on gross income) or force Google to make massive political contributions (aka blackmail) like they did for Microsoft.
It's a fair point.
But you do realize that your opinion puts you personally on the hook for $150k per song fines if someone else uses your IP address.
The judge is basically saying, "IP address is not a finger print, not a unique identifier".
I don't follow the rules as much as I used to, because the rules are no longer as fair and reasonable as they were 30 years ago. You may have heard that the average citizen commits 3 felonies a day now without being aware of it.
Lol. True, the way they overloaded the "fair" term means it can be confusing which I believe is their intent.
The closest you could come to a consumption tax on the wealthy would be a wealth tax. They have that in some countries. Essentially 2% of your total wealth is taken even if you didn't earn a penny. Basically a property tax on money.
The only reason I want estate taxes is not raise wealth but to break up concentrations of wealth so at best we get 1 or 2 generational oligarchs. Since that's fairly unavoidable under any system, I can accept that.
It's not good for the country to carry it on too long. American done the right way is harsh but a meritocracy so that the best and the brightest are running the show and productive.
America done the wrong way is the less competent children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren (often out right idiots) inheriting judgeships, goverment elected offices, CEO jobs, movie star jobs, doctor jobs, etc. while excluding competent people who simply have less money because their grandfather had less money.
It is ultimately destructive to us as a nation to proceed down this nepotistic path.
And yet, it's still a substantial increase than what people are paying now.
Currently the highest total tax rate falls on the $60,000 to $100,000 bracket.
And the wealthy pay much lower taxes than I'm proposing.
Yes- I am proposing that they should pay federal income tax on every dollar they earn - dividends, salary, etc. Since I'm proposing it, I don't see how it can be "wrong". It's the proposal.
It sounds like you are proposing something with a higher rate on the wealthy?
As a person making around the $100k tax bracket, I can say that's similar to my tax load now under the current system and I'm doing fine. Living on about 60% of my income and saving the rest.
You crossed up federal tax with state tax.
Current top tax load is about 17% federal + .03% state and local.
I'm proposing essentially 25% federal tax on all income (investment and salary) for the top and the state and local taxes would still be .03%.
17.03% increased to 25.03% would be an increase.
You missed the deduction.
$30,000 - $26k = $4k.
You pay 25% of $4k or a tax of $1k.
If you make $26k or less, you pay no federal tax.
By setting the deduction at the national median income, it will scale with inflation.
<quote>
Income Tax Owed SSI Take Home
$26,000 $0 $1,950.00 $24,050.00
$30,000 $1,000 $2,250.00 $26,750.00
$50,000 $6,000 $3,750.00 $40,250.00
$100,000 $18,500 $7,500.00 $74,000.00
$1,000,000 $243,500 $7,500.00 $749,000.00
$100,000,000 $24,993,500 $7,500.00 $74,999,000.00
</quote>
Okay, let's talk about a "same flat dollar amount per person".
Each citizen's share of the current federal tax bill is $10,000.
But that includes children and retired people with no income.
Each working citizen's share of the current federal tax bill is $30,000.
So right at the start, you destroy the incentive to work at any job which pays less than $30. And effectively any job that pays less than $55k.
Now, we could reduce the size of government by 80% and get that down to $6k. Still- no point in working minimum wage jobs. The government takes almost everything you make after you add in state and local taxes.
So I don't think it would be "fair" and more importantly, i don't think it would be feasible to charge the same dollar amount to every person. Your thoughts?
--- .1% pay about 16% federal taxes and about .03% state and local taxes. Their total tax load is about 17%. It scales from there to the middle income folks who pay a total tax load of about 42%, then "down" to the impoverished who pay about 28% total tax load of their income.
Now, about the second point. Yes, a fair tax with a 25% rate with a $26k deduction would actually increase (by 2 to 7%) the rate paid by the people who benefited the most. The top
---
I agree... "fair" is tough and more to the point- there are different "fairs". But in my opinion, the wealthy are starting to be pigs at the trough and if they are not careful they are going to push this too far. I think they already have but the abortion issue and their ownership of both "conservative" and "liberal" media is helping them maintain control.
At some point, folks who haven't had a job for several years are going to start to get riled up. We can't imprison 20% of the country. If we remain democratic at all, there will be much higher taxes on the wealthy. At least we could have a simple tax system to reduce compliance costs.
A true "fair" tax.
Give everyone one deduction equal to half the national median income. (Currently $26k).
Then tax everyone at 25% of all income (including investment income) over that deduction.
It's simple.
It's very similar to our current progressive tax with a lot less rules.
Say I drive 10 miles to and 10 miles back from a retail store.
I just paid a 30 minute tax on my time, a $4 tax in gasoline, a 20 mile tax of usage on my car. Plus- the product I want is not in stock sometimes.
Likewise, the 5 retail stores in my town are all stocking 2 units each. As a town, we buy 6 of them and 4 go unsold. Each store has at least 2 employees.
Amazon stocks at most 6 and probably stocks less and uses direct shipment from the vendor to the customer. They use 1 employee to service a hundred different "stores" a day and have robots to pull the items they do stock in their warehouses.
so their inventory costs are lower, their labor costs are lower.
Retail business for a lot of items just doesn't make sense any more.
No ones fault. And in general the customers should benefit from lower costs.
Problem... if you can't find a job, it doesn't matter how cheap things are.