It's not bad to question authority and part of authority entails collecting taxes. As citizens, it is our duty, in turn, to ensure the state doesn't squander our money.
I don't accept and outright reject people who assert it's "whining." I call it responsible citizenry. I don't advocate "no taxes" (although I do consider money confiscated by the state that is subsequently squandered to be immoral since I didn't consent to them blowing it). I demand the state spends it wisely.
Simple.
I'm glad organizations like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation exist or else we'd be left with the assumption all taxes are fair and just.
Wah wah wah... it must be so hard to have so much money you can't even count it all for tax purposes...
ReplyDeleteSeriously, people who make te msot money in America have zero sympathy from me. Americans ought to be pissed off about their taxes, because they aren't enough and my generation is burdened with debt that will likely never be paid off.
I can't even begin to pretend I know the first thing about what's going on in Canada, but here in America it's whining over taxes, because we have the lowest in the world.
Why do you keep doing that? Always only look at the rich? I'm looking at the entire population.
ReplyDeleteOur corporate tax rates are pretty good and the poor pay nothing.
The bulk is paid by the middle and upper classes.
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ReplyDeleteBecause income beyond a certain point needs to be heavily, heavily taxed.
ReplyDeleteThere's several reasons for this. Here's a good summary. If those who pocket outrageous amounts of money are taxed properly, the lower and middle classes are able to thrive.
The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world.
ReplyDeleteAs for taxes in general, of course they're nothing but theft, and that includes ALL taxes, so they should all be abolished (even Ayn Rand, no anarchist, believed this).
And any tax rate of 90% or more is confiscatory, and completely evil, and Ginx can whine all he wants to about that, but it's fact; those kind of tax rates are what led George Harrison to write the Beatles classic Taxman.
On the problem of capital accumulation, it's mostly a problem that exists because of Ginx's favorite criminal organization, The State (see the case made here).
Also, by 1960, near the end of Ike's term, the economy had gone through a recession and was still sluggish, leading to President Kennedy's proposal to cut taxes, finally enacted shortly after his assassination, and lowering that top 91% rate to 70%.
ReplyDelete"Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate."– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963.
I'm glad you brought that up because the 50s were marked by periods of recessions.
ReplyDeleteI do consider excessive taxes as evil and have no idea how Ginx has come to conclude it's perfectly fine to confiscate 90% of income someone has EARNED.Does he assume all moneys earned is somehow immoral or achieved by screwing others?
There's also an assumption that Canada is some sort of haven where we manage poverty and social issues better.
Not really. We sweep things under the rug. We don't have the extensive and in-depth research of our society Americans have. For example, concentration of urban poverty in the U.S. has been on the rise in the U.S.. We know this because scholars examine it.
Here, because our academics haven't tackled it (until the research I link to) people assume all is fine and dandy.
I can't tell you how many times my friends in the system say, "you can't change people" and "unless you take over society with the state you can't beat poverty."
It's funny. Ginx said, at some point we have to tax heavily (now there's a way for the state-mob to get an ok to rob you). The reverse is true in a social-welfare state: At some point we just have to realize the limits of it. How many times have we heard, "We simply don't have the resouces!"
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cjscopy/articles/hajnal.html
Read it carefully.
Come and live in Montreal and see the scandals that break out each year. Our money somehow ends up in brown paper bags exchanged between the mob and the state.
Again. I accept taxes. Take a flat tax (the state has no business to more than 30-35% of MY income no matter what I earn. They say higher taxes discourage scamming. Well you know what? The reverse is true. The government should be capped as well as to how much they can take since we know they scam as well) and bugger off.
Don't effen increase them each time a pet project to save some turtles is hatched or to enhance a failing program (gun registry) or to fund some a-hole who will make art out of shit - literally.
My money should go to: maintaining the state (including BASIC health coverage, universal public education (with little state intervention), public facilities like museums (because kids benefit from that), defense (police force and military), unemployment insurance because (some) people deserve a break, some form of pension (even though that's become a major issue hence why RRSP's were born. The government is FORCING people (rightly) to save money) and a couple of other things that escape me at the moment.
The people shouldn't be subsidizing privileges like university education or activities that enter the moral realm like abortion and definitely shouldn't prop up dead-beat companies and their cronies. The last bit especially pisses me off.
People think we should because they feel entitled to it. They're not. Entitlements have gone out of control.
How 'bout we start cutting off the unnecessary excesses instead of taxing people in times of recession and weakening wages?
Heck, even Obama recognizes it as he's moving to KEEP the Bush tax cuts in place save for TWO income brackets.
People who hated Bush cannot say Obama is "better." Obama basically copied him.
Oh my God! One of the Beatles hated taxes, that cancels out decades of proven economic success... oh boo hoo, I'm sorry you and your guitar are gently weeping.
ReplyDeleteAnd corporate taxes combined with income taxes still end up allowing the richest Americans to loot their companies for more money than any other nation. Personally, if I had my way, there wouldn't be a corporate tax because the money a corporation takes in has not been distributed to individuals, and the tax ought to be singular income tax once the money has been paid to workers. But again, even if you add the 15-35% corporate tax, the richest Americans are still taxed less than any other billionaires in the world.
Capital accumulation occurs because people can take whatever they want at the top and then bequeath it to their bratty children.
And again, if you knew how taxes worked, you'd know that income up to a certain point is not taxed at all, for everyone, and income over that is taxed at the increased rates. If you honestly think someone who earns over a million dollars a year can't get by on 90% taxes on income over, say, 250k, I have to wonder... what are they buying?
Oh right, our politicians...
And again, if you knew how taxes worked, you'd know that income up to a certain point is not taxed at all, for everyone, and income over that is taxed at the increased rates.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you assume we don't? A 90% tax is confiscatory regardless at which point the stealing begins.
If you honestly think someone who earns over a million dollars a year can't get by on 90% taxes on income over, say, 250k, I have to wonder... what are they buying?
Oh right, our politicians...
It doesn't matter what I honestly think someone can or can't "get by" on. Frankly, it's none of my business. Most of us could "get by" on very little, but I don't want someone else deciding that. What if I was making $50,000 a year, but you decide I can get by just fine on $25,000? I probably could, but I might have my own plans for the extra income, and it's simply tyranny and outright theft to take whatever the state feels is excessive from what belongs to me. You're nothing but a collectivist and all collectivism has it's ultimate expression in the gulag.
As for the rich buying politicians, of course they do, but the real question is, why? Because we have a massive state that supports the already privileged! Cut the state down to a minimal size (or better yet, abolish it) and there are no politicians to buy favors from.
And think for just a second about high tax rates and what they do to prevent new individuals and companies from entering the realm of those already at the top. They make it difficult to accumulate the funds to offer competition to the already established.
That's not to say that I disagree with everything you say, just that you have the wrong solutions to the problem.
The capitalist system is laughing at you, Ginx, and you don't get the joke.
"If you honestly think someone who earns over a million dollars a year can't get by on 90% taxes on income over, say, 250k, I have to wonder... what are they buying?"
ReplyDeleteThere's so much wrong with this. I'll just name a couple of obvious ones.
One, it's none of my business.
Two, to me, it's supreme paternal arrogance to legislate against people who act and think differently from you because you believe it's wrong or not good for the greater good.
I've heard this repeated among leftists especially and quite frankly it's presumptuous mumbo-jumbo. To each his own for f-sakes.
Who are we to decide what people can and can't live on?
Aww, cry me a river for the poor, oppressed nobility.
ReplyDeleteDid ever occur to you non-nobles can actually make it and earn a lot?
ReplyDeleteDid it ever occur to you that 1% of the population controls over half of everything, and that you are clearly not grasping what or who I'm talking about?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do.
ReplyDeleteBUT.
Here's what I don't quite get in your position.
Tax the super rich because they control everything (and I agree there's a concentration of wealth) but what about those who aren't part of that "elite" but honestly make the kind of money we're talking about?
Or does everyone get clipped regardless?
*sigh*
ReplyDeleteYou mean like only taking income over a certain amount? Less than 2% of households in the US earn over 250k. That might be a good place to start. Only about 1% earn over 500k, which might be another benchmark.
If you earn 260k or 510k, and the income over 250/500k is taxed at 90%, it will have little effect on you while it will have the desired effect on people pulling in billions (though I imagine we would see less people looting the operating capital of their companies for these obscene salaries and bonuses if you had !90% tax rates).
I do not understand what is so complex about wrapping your head around reality: a very few people are making large amounts of money, and they aren't special or deserving, they are just getting away with it.
Are you saying tax people 90% earning 250-500k?
ReplyDeleteAND,
You're last paragraph is crazy. You assume,because of the low amount of people earning high incomes, everyone doesn't deserve it?
I know quite a few people earning over 300k and lemme tell you, not only do the work like dogs, they're honest to the bone.
This mentality that people who make a lot of money are somehow crooks is for losers.