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Umm. No. Ultruism doesn't exist.

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‘Disabled’ undercover cop waits for robbers in Vancouver but only finds kindness

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Reality Internet Personality

There are Reasons The Greater Good are Not Getting The Greater Good. 'Cause The

Greater Majority of those Spouting this Good are Hell Bent on Keeping Their

Advantages for Their Good. So, Keep The Fantasies Goin' Good Peoples, The Land

You Inhabit will One Day Be Good for Nothing.

Give 'it' Away, Give 'it' Away, Give 'it' Away Now.

Yep

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May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

I was wondering when you would show up.

Would you like a peach?

Ah well, time to start the backup.

Gary, my friend, isn't that really what this forum is really all about?

Running the weekly offsite backup at work?

First of all, Gary, thank you for the time, effort and energy that you put into your post. I shall try to counter it as best I can.

Lets consider this from the perspective of an employee at Joe's Sole Proprietor. Joe started the company with a cash advance on his credit card. Over his lifetime he has expanded. He brought his two kids in the business 20 years ago and they have held every position in the company. Your work place has expanded from just Joe, you were his second employee, to now having 75 employees. For all this time you could just walk into the office and explain your problems to one of the family. Joe paid tax on every dime of his expansion. Joe has a heart attack and dies today. Angela IRS just showed up. She says the company is worth $20 million dollars. She is here to collect $10 million cash in estate tax. Now Joe was always fair, so he paid his two kids the same as any other employee. They don't have $10 million cash. They have no choice but to sell. Now a week later you are working for faceless megacorp. They don't have an onsite HR department, you have to make a phone call to another state and they already terminated the guy who did payroll as redundant. You have heard their bean counter is screaming about how much money the employees are making, way out of line with their other divisions. You know the house cleaning is coming and you are loosing your job.

Yes, by all means raise the estate tax.

Joe's two hard-working children just got five million apiece after Angela IRS showed up. That is certainly substantially more than Joe had when he started his business. Perhaps those kids will use their store of knowledge and their five million apiece to start their own companies now. Maybe, with their insider knowledge of the business, they will even find a way to compete with Faceless Megacorp. Or maybe they'll just move to Baja. Whatever...

Ah, you missed it. Angela IRS said it was worth $20 million. That isn't the fire sale must be completed in 90 days when the tax is due price it will sell for. Megacorp isn't stupid. They know it has to be sold, a fire sale in fact. They low ball a number of $8 million and hope there are no other bidders. The brothers get nothing and still owe the tax woman $1 million each. So there goes all the family heirlooms on the auction block.

Yes, Joe's valued employee has a less enjoyable job with Faceless Megacorp than she had when working for Joe. Perhaps she might even lose her job when Faceless Megacorp cleans house. This is why we have unemployment insurance.

Unemployment?! Obvious it has been a very long time since you have had to deal with that. How would you like to live on $180/week?! And now she is older and will face age discrimination when she looks for work.

In an attempt to minimize or eliminate entrenched wealth, I cannot think of a scenario in which NOBODY gets hurt, but I think that entrenched wealth hurts all of us more in the long run, so I lean towards eliminating it.

I don't think it is the wealth that hurts, so much as the system allowing so much to be concentrated, which is what raising personal income taxes will help control. Otherwise you end up in a situation where what you own, isn't yours, it is the governments. While your estate tax only takes it upon the event of death, someone will argue that it should be taken upon other events or even every year or even every day. I just not sure about going down that path. And we did start down it with Ad valorem Property Taxes. And lest you forget they tax real estate and they also tax business property, like a laser printer.

Ah, by all means jack that corporate tax rate on the food companies, the toilet paper companies, the landlords, the electric companies, the natural gas companies, the oil companies. Be absolutely sure in your belief that they wouldn't dream of passing on their higher expenses to their customers. After all they aren't greedy bastards out to milk the people for every dime, they are just wonderful altruistic people who will happily pay more tax.

Well, in my tax-and-spend utopia, fortunately, people have more money to spend on toilet paper, rent, electricity, natural gas and oil because wealth has been better distributed. I also haven't eliminated competition. (I hope!!!) All the toilet paper companies still have to compete with each other. Prices may go up, but there should be some natural competition that keeps them from going too high. I'm a tax-and-spend liberal, dude. That doesn't mean I've entirely eliminated capitalism.

Well, the toilet paper companies do contribute to global warming by cutting down those forests to make paper, and we know how terrible the energy companies are. I'm sure those special taxes won't be too much.

I've never quite figured out how a raise in wages does not cause a corresponding raise in prices. There must be some universal liberal assumption that owners are nice altruistic people who will gladly pay out more money and take home less themselves. That hasn't been my experience. Mine is they are greedy bastards out to soak you for every dime, so for a 10% raise in the minimum wage, they raise prices 15%, doing a real number on inflation, and actually making things harder to buy, not easier!

I'm simply pointing out what should be obvious. Raising corporate taxes on companies that provide the necessities is as regressive as raising the sales tax on necessities. Actually it may be more so. Most sales taxes exempt necessities such as food and medicine from sales taxes. But if you raise corporate taxes you will raise taxes on these necessities.

Now if you want to raise taxes on corporate tobacco firms and luxury yacht makers, I don't have an issue.

Absolutely. Start with the mortgage interest deduction and the child care deduction and work outward from there. We are in agreement, all loopholes must end.

Ah but you forget, my friend, that in my tax-and-spend utopia such deductions may not even be necessary. Please remember that I am redistributing wealth. The mortgage interest deduction and child care deductions were put into place to help the middle class, but in my happy little world the middle class is doing GREAT now!!!

There has to be a starting point. Simply pointing out that if you want to get rid of them all, it is all of them.

The USA is not the world's police officer. We can't care how terrible Mr. Dictator treats his loyal subjects anymore. He is free to rape and pillage. He is free to invade his weaker neighbor and engage in empire building and genocide. The USA doesn't care anymore and couldn't stop him even if they wanted to.

Gary please never accuse me, even obliquely, of not caring about raping, pillaging, invading, empire building and/or genocide. I didn't say that the USA should pull out of the United Nations or that we should cease, as a country, to use non-military interventions such as sanctions, investments and humanitarian aid. I just want us to be equal partners with other nations when intervention of a military nature is deemed absolutely necessary.

Oh, Angela, I know you care. I'm just pointing out that in the future the USA won't be able to be the hegonomous bellicose bully forcing its version of morals upon others. I don't think the UN has once in its existence had a unanimous vote, except perhaps after some nation or two has walked out in disgust. It is one thing to get them to vote to do something militarily, and quite another to get them to commit men (lives) and material to a war especially when the enemy will be inflicting some serious causality rates. If the USA doesn't act in the lead I doubt military action happens and we lose a tool in the tool chest due to rust.

I don't disagree that the US military needs to shrink. It is just we are going to have to become much more isolationist in response to the cuts. And the sequester is making the cuts.

Angela, about fire insurance, do you feel the same way about your 401(k)? How about your IRA? Your bank account?

Of course not, because retirement accounts and banking accounts are SAVING DEVICES. I would like us to think of social security as an "insurance policy".

Well, SSDI is insurance. Social Security retirement income is not.

Unfortunately Mr. FDR and those that came after him didn't sell the Ponzi scheme of Social Security as insurance. They sold it as a mandatory government run (defined benefits) pension plan. That is the expectation today. I don't think you will be able to change that perception.

Yes. I know that is the expectation today. I also know that I will be unable to change that perception, but I would like to try. That is why I posted that fire insurance analogy.

However I'm surprised to see you arguing for individualization. Well, 90% anyway. Tracking individuals and their specific contributions with your individual means testing. Individualization is the first step to privatization, or allowing individuals to direct how they want their contributions invested.

Whoa Bessie!!! Whoa I say!!! Bad horsie!!!

Gary, I think you are reading more into what I posted than I meant. I'm not for changing the way we put money into Social Security. I'm just for changing the way we draw it out. If I am lucky enough, at age 65, to not need my social security dollars back, then I think there should be a law in place to keep me from drawing them. Will I want "my" money back in the form of social security payments in my retirement??? Sure!!! As I mentioned in a previous post, self-interest tends to trump altruism. That is why I would like to do the "BIG SELL" to all citizens and change the way we think about social security. After the "BIG SELL" perhaps we can enact a law that changes the way we draw money out.

I don't really understand what you mean by "individualization". I think I need more clarification on what that means before I can argue further on the topic of Social Security.

Clarifying. Today they give you a so called benefits statement. It is actually just a record of your payments and an estimate if the world stays rosy what you might expect to receive. It isn't like say your 401(k) statement that goes on to detail what each of your payments did after the government received it, nor does it tell you the value of your account. If SS were individualized you would get a statement much more like you get for your 401(k). Of course this would fly in the face of your insurance, because the money in the pot would be yours, not the governments, to do with or waste and squander as it sees fit.

You see, once the accounts are individual accounts, so means testing can be accomplished, so called privatization is easy. The only step left is to allow you to decide where to place your money.

Now I realize you want to means test to see if a person should get any. Just be aware the tax code already has a version of that in place. There is a rather small floor amount of other income you can earn before those SS checks become taxable. Taking away some of the payout via taxes is somewhat the same as not giving it in the first place.


Now it is getting towards bedtime and I have to see the dentist tomorrow.

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Corporations do not pay taxes.

The consumer does. By the pricing for the goods or services. The Corporations just 'Collect' the taxes from the consumer.

Some don't pay taxes but that has more to do with tax loopholes.

In any case, its not entirely true that corporations just add taxes to the price of their product/services. I mean, they can, but the resulting price hike may result in lost sales. Depending on the product and price elasticity, adding the taxes to the price can result in greater losses than would be the case if they just swallowed the tax themselves.

If you raise Corporate taxes to an unsustainable level, for the Corporations Profit:

Yeah but the problem is that if you ask corporations what they think are 'sustainable' tax levels they will tell you that the best would be 0%. Buying into the argument that taxes are chasing businesses away will inevitably lead to the race to the bottom I mentioned earlier.

Gary -

Now I realize you want to means test to see if a person should get any. Just be aware the tax code already has a version of that in place. There is a rather small floor amount of other income you can earn before those SS checks become taxable. Taking away some of the payout via taxes is somewhat the same as not giving it in the first place.

I may be mistaken, but I think that only applies to those who are collecting SS but haven't reached full retirement age during that time. In my case, I was forced into retirement at the age of 66 and started collecting SS, along with my VA disability was/is my only income. With any wages that I did/would have earned above x amount, $1.00 for each $1.00 earned was/would have been deducted from my SS check until I reached the full retirement age of 70. After my birthday, this year, if I find suitable employment that would pay beyond x amount it will not affect my SS check in the negative. In other words, any money that I earn via wages, regardless of the amount is mine and does not affect my SS. Of course I will have to pay taxes on those wages. If I so desire I can even have SS taxes voluntarily taken out, which would then affect how much more my SS benefits will increase.

On the other hand if I made enough wages to decrease my SS benefits to much, I could at the time elect to stop my SS benefits until such time as I am no longer employed, then collect SS benefits again. I could to this only once a year. Regardless of which path I did/may have chose/may have chosen, I still paid SS taxes and those taxes would then be applied to my SS account, therefore increasing my monthly SS benefits.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

Gary -

Now I realize you want to means test to see if a person should get any. Just be aware the tax code already has a version of that in place. There is a rather small floor amount of other income you can earn before those SS checks become taxable. Taking away some of the payout via taxes is somewhat the same as not giving it in the first place.

I may be mistaken, but I think that only applies to those who are collecting SS but haven't reached full retirement age during that time. In my case, I was forced into retirement at the age of 66 and started collecting SS, along with my VA disability was/is my only income. With any wages that I did/would have earned above x amount, $1.00 for each $1.00 earned was/would have been deducted from my SS check until I reached the full retirement age of 70. After my birthday, this year, if I find suitable employment that would pay beyond x amount it will not affect my SS check in the negative. In other words, any money that I earn via wages, regardless of the amount is mine and does not affect my SS. Of course I will have to pay taxes on those wages. If I so desire I can even have SS taxes voluntarily taken out, which would then affect how much more my SS benefits will increase.

On the other hand if I made enough wages to decrease my SS benefits to much, I could at the time elect to stop my SS benefits until such time as I am no longer employed, then collect SS benefits again. I could to this only once a year. Regardless of which path I did/may have chose/may have chosen, I still paid SS taxes and those taxes would then be applied to my SS account, therefore increasing my monthly SS benefits.

Cliff, there are two systems. You are quoting one, and it is the one that has the biggest effect if it applies. The other which I mentioned is straight income tax which applies to all no matter their age. Social Security retirement is taxable as income, but if it is your only income likely you won't have over your personal exemption amount and won't owe anything. With just a bit of other taxable income that will push you over that personal exemption amount and you will be paying income tax.

As to paying in to SS (FICA) after retirement age, if the income is work, yes they still deduct it, but if the income is dividends, or a traditional IRA payout, no SS (FICA) tax.

As to it changing how much you get, the formula is very complex. Your payout is based on your highest earnings by quarter and they average it using 30 years IIRC. Not the last 30 years either, the highest. So what you pay in while retired and drawing, may or may not have any effect on what your check will be. [It isn't based on the total you contribute - it isn't an individual account! yet]

(In any case this point was just a reminder to Angela that there was something in place already that operates similar to her means testing. Perhaps she might consider tweaking that rather than inventing more rules. Her proposal would leave the funds in the SS trust fund, where clawing it back as taxes would put the money in the general fund where it could reduce the national debt.)

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Ah, you missed it. Angela IRS said it was worth $20 million. That isn't the fire sale must be completed in 90 days when the tax is due price it will sell for. Megacorp isn't stupid. They know it has to be sold, a fire sale in fact. They low ball a number of $8 million and hope there are no other bidders. The brothers get nothing and still owe the tax woman $1 million each. So there goes all the family heirlooms on the auction block.

First of all, if it is a 20 million dollar business and the kids can't get a 10 million dollar loan with 20 million in collateral, then Joe didn't imbue them with his excellent business sense.

Second, the IRS would probably not hold them to a 90 day sales period. One year is more typical. The kids just shouldn't close the estate and they should get extensions as necessary.

Third, if the business sells for less than the IRS says it is worth, that is the valuation that would be used in determining the taxes.

But what do I know? I'm just the speech teacher...

Unemployment?! Obvious it has been a very long time since you have had to deal with that. How would you like to live on $180/week?! And now she is older and will face age discrimination when she looks for work.

Sad, I'll admit. I wish unemployment paid a reasonable amount for enough time for this employee to find a job. I wish we had a government that would enforce this. I wish we had a government that would prevent age discrimination. I vote accordingly.

I don't think it is the wealth that hurts, so much as the system allowing so much to be concentrated, which is what raising personal income taxes will help control. Otherwise you end up in a situation where what you own, isn't yours, it is the governments. While your estate tax only takes it upon the event of death, someone will argue that it should be taken upon other events or even every year or even every day. I just not sure about going down that path. And we did start down it with Ad valorem Property Taxes. And lest you forget they tax real estate and they also tax business property, like a laser printer.

Am I hearing you say that income is the only thing that should be taxed? I would argue the contrary, that wealth is the only measure of ability to pay taxes. That is why a progressive income tax was instituted because, in general, high income = high wealth. If there were a way to tax, based on net wealth, I would probably favor that over an income tax. The other advantage of a "wealth tax" on individuals is that it removes all business and corporate taxes because every business and corporation is ultimately owned by individuals (for example, stocks). So maybe we have some common ground here? If you don't want me to increase corporate taxes, then let's just tax wealth.

Well, the toilet paper companies do contribute to global warming by cutting down those forests to make paper, and we know how terrible the energy companies are. I'm sure those special taxes won't be too much.

The costs of global climate change are paid by us all out of the general tax fund, or by individuals in terms of medical bills, or by individuals in terms of unreimbursed property damage. So it is in our interest to stop causing it. Personally I favor a revenue neutral carbon tax where the taxes collected on fossil fuel extraction or import are redistributed in equal portions to citizens of the United States. Tax and spend at its finest!!! People who are poor don't use a lot of energy, because they cannot afford it, so they'll probably get back more than they spend. So will people who get off the grid. Win-win!!! (Al Gore will pay more. Poor baby.)

Welcome to my Liberal Utopia!!!

I've never quite figured out how a raise in wages does not cause a corresponding raise in prices.

The conservative assumption is that people who are poor already have all their needs met by their wages and that consumption by people who are poor is a significant part of the economy. This is not true. People who earn minimum wage often get government aid in addition (paid out of our taxes) because of their exceptionally low wages. Raise their wages. Sure there will be some minor price increases in industries where the dominant labor force is earning minimum wages (i.e. fast food) and labor is a large portion of the costs (i.e. not fast food). Since I cannot think of any industries where that is the case, perhaps the effect is not large?

I'm simply pointing out what should be obvious. Raising corporate taxes on companies that provide the necessities is as regressive as raising the sales tax on necessities. Actually it may be more so. Most sales taxes exempt necessities such as food and medicine from sales taxes. But if you raise corporate taxes you will raise taxes on these necessities.

Ok. You've convinced me. Let's replace corporate, business and income taxes with a tax on WEALTH. (See above)


I will deal with social security in a separate post, after I do some errands this morning and visit my mother this afternoon.

Ah, you missed it. Angela IRS said it was worth $20 million. That isn't the fire sale must be completed in 90 days when the tax is due price it will sell for. Megacorp isn't stupid. They know it has to be sold, a fire sale in fact. They low ball a number of $8 million and hope there are no other bidders. The brothers get nothing and still owe the tax woman $1 million each. So there goes all the family heirlooms on the auction block.

First of all, if it is a 20 million dollar business and the kids can't get a 10 million dollar loan with 20 million in collateral, then Joe didn't imbue them with his excellent business sense.

And just who is going to loan the estate that money? Remember the estate owes the tax. Ownership and the ability to earn future profits are things banks take into consideration. You might make for an easy lender like Countrywide.

Second, the IRS would probably not hold them to a 90 day sales period. One year is more typical. The kids just shouldn't close the estate and they should get extensions as necessary.

Maybe not 90 days, but the IRS is rather adamant that the final tax return get filed PDQ, the deadline isn't April 15, there aren't automatic extensions, and there is no extension of the date the payment is due, only the paperwork.

Third, if the business sells for less than the IRS says it is worth, that is the valuation that would be used in determining the taxes.

I wish. They go by the required professional appraisal as of the date of death, not the actual sales price some time later.

But what do I know? I'm just the speech teacher...

I don't think it is the wealth that hurts, so much as the system allowing so much to be concentrated, which is what raising personal income taxes will help control. Otherwise you end up in a situation where what you own, isn't yours, it is the governments. While your estate tax only takes it upon the event of death, someone will argue that it should be taken upon other events or even every year or even every day. I just not sure about going down that path. And we did start down it with Ad valorem Property Taxes. And lest you forget they tax real estate and they also tax business property, like a laser printer.

Am I hearing you say that income is the only thing that should be taxed? I would argue the contrary, that wealth is the only measure of ability to pay taxes. That is why a progressive income tax was instituted because, in general, high income = high wealth. If there were a way to tax, based on net wealth, I would probably favor that over an income tax.

You do realize someone may be extremely wealthy and have zero income. e.g. they had income sometime in the past and bought gold and jewels which they hide under their mattress.

You may also remember the USA used to be funded on consumption taxes, under the assumption that the wealthy spent more.

The other advantage of a "wealth tax" on individuals is that it removes all business and corporate taxes because every business and corporation is ultimately owned by individuals (for example, stocks). So maybe we have some common ground here? If you don't want me to increase corporate taxes, then let's just tax wealth.

Ah, the exact same thing is true of the money a corporation earns as income. Eventually it all is paid out to the owners, individuals, and will be grabbed as income tax.

I've never quite figured out how a raise in wages does not cause a corresponding raise in prices.

The conservative assumption is that people who are poor already have all their needs met by their wages and that consumption by people who are poor is a significant part of the economy. This is not true. People who earn minimum wage often get government aid in addition (paid out of our taxes) because of their exceptionally low wages. Raise their wages. Sure there will be some minor price increases in industries where the dominant labor force is earning minimum wages (i.e. fast food) and labor is a large portion of the costs (i.e. not fast food). Since I cannot think of any industries where that is the case, perhaps the effect is not large?

Ah, you assume that only the very bottom rung of workers will get a raise when the minimum goes up. That is not true at all. I can assure you, especially in California where the minimum wage rate for exemption to overtime is double the minimum, every worker who is under that double minimum will get some kind of raise. If it is dollar for dollar or if it calculated on a percent basis, there will be some raise.

You mention fast food. There, yes, most are paid the minimum. Then you mention other places, and everywhere I've ever heard of, labor is the biggest item on the expense sheet. Of course as each company that sells supplies will have to raise prices, the entire universe of costs to a company will go up, except perhaps the rent bill as that may be a long term contract.

What will happen is it will take about a year to settle out. Everyone will start out with an increase in prices and then as they start getting the new higher bills from the other companies they will go through another round of price increases. Eventually it stabilizes. When it does the person at the minimum is just as far behind as they were before the minimum was raised. All you have done is devalue the currency, and the rich get richer when that happens as they don't keep their wealth in a bank account.

Now as to government assistance. Yes the poor get a good bit of help. Here is the thing though. Right after the raise their assistance will go down because they are making more. Some time later the government will have to adjust rates for the price inflation. They will be back to getting the same percent of their income as assistance as basic costs will have gone up.

I'm simply pointing out what should be obvious. Raising corporate taxes on companies that provide the necessities is as regressive as raising the sales tax on necessities. Actually it may be more so. Most sales taxes exempt necessities such as food and medicine from sales taxes. But if you raise corporate taxes you will raise taxes on these necessities.

Ok. You've convinced me. Let's replace corporate, business and income taxes with a tax on WEALTH. (See above)

Ask Eric how to tax all those computers in his man cave.

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Am I hearing you say that income is the only thing that should be taxed? I would argue the contrary, that wealth is the only measure of ability to pay taxes. That is why a progressive income tax was instituted because, in general, high income = high wealth. If there were a way to tax, based on net wealth, I would probably favor that over an income tax. The other advantage of a "wealth tax" on individuals is that it removes all business and corporate taxes because every business and corporation is ultimately owned by individuals (for example, stocks). So maybe we have some common ground here? If you don't want me to increase corporate taxes, then let's just tax wealth.

Sorry but wealth taxes are extremely difficult to implement and very unfair to everyone. First of all, you would tax people more than once for the same income. Say someone only owns a house and a bank account, a wealth tax would add the value of the house to all the money on the bank and take a certain percentage of that. The next year the IRS comes back, notes that you still have a house and bank account, and taxes it again. A little unfair to be taxed more than once for the same thing. That also makes saving very unattractive because it simply means the government is going to tax your savings over and over again.

Secondly, a wealth tax is rather difficult to implement. Say you rent a house and you don't have a bank account. How will your wealth be determined? Does the IRS have to pay you a visit each year to determine the worth of your possessions? Well that seems rather intrusive no? Not to mention costly. Which makes the system very open for abuse. Simply avoid buying a house and owning a bank account, and try to get paid in cash only and it becomes next to impossible to determine your wealth for tax purposes.

Finally, it doesn't eliminate the need for corporate taxes unless you want to miss out on a lot of money. First of all, taxing shareholders for the worth of their part in the company is ridiculously unfair. Say I own 60 dollars worth of shares, and I gotta pay say 6 dollars worth in wealth taxes based on the shares I own, do you think the company is going to compensate me for that? Taxing like that would mean corporations operate tax free while the shareholders get to pay for their worth. Furthermore, thats unfair because shares do not represent the actual value of the company, only the perceived market value.

And just who is going to loan the estate that money? Remember the estate owes the tax. Ownership and the ability to earn future profits are things banks take into consideration. You might make for an easy lender like Countrywide.

Gary, I think we've beaten this dead horse enough. If the kids can't get a loan, then there is an "opportunity" out there for somebody to make some money. In your world, the "invisible hand of the free market" has clearly been severed. I'm guessing the kids could get a loan and buy a substantial portion of the business from the estate. Let's stop splitting imaginary hairs on this imaginary scenario.

Maybe not 90 days, but the IRS is rather adamant that the final tax return get filed PDQ, the deadline isn't April 15, there aren't automatic extensions, and there is no extension of the date the payment is due, only the paperwork.

I have some passing familiarity (pun entirely intended) with estates. I know the closing of an estate can stretch out much longer than a reasonable person would think, or a strict reading of the law would allow. Again... dead horse. Let's move on.

You do realize someone may be extremely wealthy and have zero income. e.g. they had income sometime in the past and bought gold and jewels which they hide under their mattress.

Gary, you are saying that people can hide assets easier than they can hide income. In general I don't think that is true, because every asset will be converted to income eventually... and that is when the hiders will go to jail. I will defend my wealth tax further in a separate post, later tonight or tomorrow.

You may also remember the USA used to be funded on consumption taxes, under the assumption that the wealthy spent more.

The wealthy do not spend more as a fraction of their income or, more importantly, as a fraction of their wealth. Fortunately the US grew out of that period of our adolescence.

Ah, the exact same thing is true of the money a corporation earns as income. Eventually it all is paid out to the owners, individuals, and will be grabbed as income tax.

Not it isn't. Corporations hoard money, often overseas, in an effort to prevent it from being taxed. Between 1990 and 2008 (when the market crashed) it was virtually impossible to find dividend paying stocks in growth industries.

And the "double taxation" argument is quite tired at this point. Your employer is taxed on what he pays you. You are taxed on your income. When you buy a new computer the business owner who sold it to you pays taxes on her profits and her employees pay income taxes and then they pay sales taxes on the new guitar they bought with their "fun money". That's septupal taxation!!! Not really....

Under our current system we tax economic activity. And like it or not, a dividend is economic activity. Besides which, I'm pretty sure that corporations get a tax break for giving dividends.

Whew!!!

I'll get to the rest later...

Ah, you assume that only the very bottom rung of workers will get a raise when the minimum goes up. That is not true at all. I can assure you, especially in California where the minimum wage rate for exemption to overtime is double the minimum, every worker who is under that double minimum will get some kind of raise. If it is dollar for dollar or if it calculated on a percent basis, there will be some raise.

Good. Anyone who is making less than twice the minimum wage, especially in California, is unlikely to consider themselves rich and will probably appreciate the raise.

You mention fast food. There, yes, most are paid the minimum. Then you mention other places, and everywhere I've ever heard of, labor is the biggest item on the expense sheet. Of course as each company that sells supplies will have to raise prices, the entire universe of costs to a company will go up, except perhaps the rent bill as that may be a long term contract.

What will happen is it will take about a year to settle out. Everyone will start out with an increase in prices and then as they start getting the new higher bills from the other companies they will go through another round of price increases. Eventually it stabilizes. When it does the person at the minimum is just as far behind as they were before the minimum was raised. All you have done is devalue the currency, and the rich get richer when that happens as they don't keep their wealth in a bank account.

Now as to government assistance. Yes the poor get a good bit of help. Here is the thing though. Right after the raise their assistance will go down because they are making more. Some time later the government will have to adjust rates for the price inflation. They will be back to getting the same percent of their income as assistance as basic costs will have gone up.

But it is quite possible that your theory of inflation does not entirely correspond with reality. Inflation does not appear to jump when the minimum wage increases.

Ask Eric how to tax all those computers in his man cave.

LOL!!! Eric knows to the penny exactly what all those computers in his man cave are worth... and "the penny" is the actual worth of many of them.

OMG!!!!!

This is exhausting!!!

How do all you Political Types keep this banter up all day and night???????

I am going to make one final post in this thread, defending the concept of "wealth tax", and then I am passing the torch to any other tax-and-spend liberal out there who wants to argue for me.

Turns out, I simply do not have the time, the energy or the cranial capacity to post regularly in Politics. It was a mistake for me to begin.

Ok.... one more post.

P.S. Just for the record, Gary and I are good friends. We have broken bread together on several occasions. He has been a guest in our home and I even have a picture of him feeding one of my raccoons. I even introduced him to my single sister, in hopes that sparks would fly.

Gary and I will continue to be friends, even though we have some political disagreements.

You do realize someone may be extremely wealthy and have zero income. e.g. they had income sometime in the past and bought gold and jewels which they hide under their mattress.

Gary, you are saying that people can hide assets easier than they can hide income. In general I don't think that is true, because every asset will be converted to income eventually... and that is when the hiders will go to jail.

I think you will find it is very easy to hide small things. I think you will find is very easy to convert small things into cash on some black market. If discovered, it will be trivia to simply claim you "found" the item right after the last tax period closed.

Oh, gold and jewels are a very good way to escape estate taxes. Amazing what happens when your children know the combination to the safe and no one else knows what was in it on the day you die.

You may also remember the USA used to be funded on consumption taxes, under the assumption that the wealthy spent more.

The wealthy do not spend more as a fraction of their income or, more importantly, as a fraction of their wealth. Fortunately the US grew out of that period of our adolescence.

Yes, it was doing rather well growing at the rate of an adolescent. You are aware the majority of the tax revenue was being collected in sin taxes.

Ah, the exact same thing is true of the money a corporation earns as income. Eventually it all is paid out to the owners, individuals, and will be grabbed as income tax.

Not it isn't. Corporations hoard money, often overseas, in an effort to prevent it from being taxed. Between 1990 and 2008 (when the market crashed) it was virtually impossible to find dividend paying stocks in growth industries.

Funny thing. That was the time period when someone played with the taxation of dividends relative to capital gains. I don't suppose that the drop in capital gains taxes and the increase in dividend taxes played any part in shifting how companies paid their shareholders, do you?

As to that overseas stockpiling, as long as overseas charges no income tax on the corporation and the US does, why would any company have one dollar in profit (income) inside the US? As the USA can't control what other countries do with their tax rates, the only way to get the money back in the USA is have a lower tax rate. Oh, let me quote you about that "In general I don't think that is true, because every asset will be converted to income eventually... and that is when the hiders will go to jail" so how does a company get this overseas stockpile back to its shareholders in the USA, remembering it has to cut very traceable checks? And it isn't just the US that faces this issue.

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Мишель, thank you for your thoughtful input to this thread.

Sorry but wealth taxes are extremely difficult to implement and very unfair to everyone. First of all, you would tax people more than once for the same income. Say someone only owns a house and a bank account, a wealth tax would add the value of the house to all the money on the bank and take a certain percentage of that. The next year the IRS comes back, notes that you still have a house and bank account, and taxes it again. A little unfair to be taxed more than once for the same thing. That also makes saving very unattractive because it simply means the government is going to tax your savings over and over again.

In the United States we already do this. Property taxes on a home are assessed annually, year after year, and they only go down if the value of the home goes down. The interest on bank accounts is taxed annually as income. So here, in the United States, we are already used to this.

At least under a "wealth tax" a mortgage counts against the value of a home. Under a property tax it does not.

I agree that wealth taxes are a disincentive to saving. Currently in the USA there is NO incentive to save. We are notorious for our debts, both personal and national. Right now interest paid on bank accounts is typically well under half a percent, which is well under the inflation rate. I doubt a "wealth tax" could disincentivize savings much more. (And our education system is REALLY FAILING if having nothing is considered better than having something.)

Secondly, a wealth tax is rather difficult to implement. Say you rent a house and you don't have a bank account. How will your wealth be determined? Does the IRS have to pay you a visit each year to determine the worth of your possessions? Well that seems rather intrusive no? Not to mention costly. Which makes the system very open for abuse. Simply avoid buying a house and owning a bank account, and try to get paid in cash only and it becomes next to impossible to determine your wealth for tax purposes.

Agreed. But the same is true of income taxes. Cheating happens. That is why we have audits.

Under a wealth tax system, for most people in this country, their net wealth wouldn't be big enough to be worth hiding. Under this same system, for people whose wealth is big enough to be worth hiding, it would be virtually impossible to hide. For example, you cannot hide ownership of large amounts of stock. It is a matter of public record. You cannot hide the value of your home. It's on Zillow.

Since I get to rule this imaginary world, I would have stiff penalties for cheaters. Hide a valuable or large asset, get caught and pay 20% of its value, per year. Hide it for five years, get caught, it's gone. Hide if for longer than that, there is a cell with your name on it. (I am such a b*tch!!!)

Finally, it doesn't eliminate the need for corporate taxes unless you want to miss out on a lot of money. First of all, taxing shareholders for the worth of their part in the company is ridiculously unfair. Say I own 60 dollars worth of shares, and I gotta pay say 6 dollars worth in wealth taxes based on the shares I own, do you think the company is going to compensate me for that?

Playing devil's advocate here, why did you buy shares in a company that doesn't offer a dividend that at least covers your taxes on the shares? If everyone sold their shares in this company, they would start offering a dividend pretty quickly. (Free market to the rescue, once again. Gary will be thrilled!!!)

Taxing like that would mean corporations operate tax free while the shareholders get to pay for their worth. Furthermore, thats unfair because shares do not represent the actual value of the company, only the perceived market value.

Maybe the perceived market value would be closer to the actual value of the company if people had to worry about this.


Ok, ok... it is an imaginary world. I know, you know, Gary knows... ain't gonna happen. But fun to speculate, no?

Ok people, this ends my Political Career.

The rest of the arguments are yours to make and refute.

But it is quite possible that your theory of inflation does not entirely correspond with reality. Inflation does not appear to jump when the minimum wage increases.

Never claimed it happened on the same day. There is lag time. In any case that is a nice graph showing how the small raise in the MW around 63 produced a small raise a year later, the somewhat bigger raise in 68 brought the CPI curve up and the huge raises from 72 through 84 brought the curve up nearly exponentially. Then right at the last raise you notice the CPI curve had flattened because of the long pause in MW increases. Finally you see it has trended back up in response to the last increase.

Oh, as to the last jump in California on July 1, 2014, every restaurant had a new menu with higher prices across the board printed by July 31. Not sure how quick the government would have picked that up in the inflation numbers, but it will be there. Many printed another one in a month or two as they found they didn't jack them enough when they finally got the new payroll numbers and looked at the income numbers. Yet another inflation increase which will show in the numbers.

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P.S. Just for the record, Gary and I are good friends. We have broken bread together on several occasions. He has been a guest in our home and I even have a picture of him feeding one of my raccoons. I even introduced him to my single sister, in hopes that sparks would fly.

Gary and I will continue to be friends, even though we have some political disagreements.

Only friends could have philosophical disagreements like we do and not resort to name calling, but answer with explanation of our thought processes and initial starting points.

We may not be as far apart as it seems. We may agree on the goals, just not which road will get us there.

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Agreed. But the same is true of income taxes. Cheating happens. That is why we have audits.

True, but it is harder to cheat. Its much more difficult to hide income since there has to be some kind of administration on how much you spend. If you pay people under the counter, there can't be much administration on that lest the IRS comes by to do an audit. The bigger and more successful the company, the more difficult it becomes.

Under a wealth tax system, for most people in this country, their net wealth wouldn't be big enough to be worth hiding. Under this same system, for people whose wealth is big enough to be worth hiding, it would be virtually impossible to hide. For example, you cannot hide ownership of large amounts of stock. It is a matter of public record. You cannot hide the value of your home. It's on Zillow.

For homeowners its difficult to hide. But plenty of people don't own homes and a wealth tax would further encourage renting instead of buying a home. That means the value of the house is not something you can tax. And if you don't have a bank account either, well it means the IRS has to physically come to your house to look how much your furniture is worth or if you got stacks of cash hidden somewhere.

On top of that, what happens when you spend all your cash? How are you going to tax 'stuff'? I mean, taking a certain percentage from a pool of money is easy, but how are you going to take 20% worth of furniture?

Playing devil's advocate here, why did you buy shares in a company that doesn't offer a dividend that at least covers your taxes on the shares? If everyone sold their shares in this company, they would start offering a dividend pretty quickly. (Free market to the rescue, once again. Gary will be thrilled!!!)

The same reason everyone else does, to sell em once they have increased in value and make a profit. A lot of companies with shares don't actually pay out dividends. People buy those shares because they either want a say in what the company does or because they expect the company to become worth more in the eyes of the market and then sell their shares again.

And blackmailing companies to pay out dividend doesn't sound like a good idea.

Nobody has ever said that it was easy to run a country, nobody yet has come up with a fair and equitable system for taxes that everybody will buy into. But no, taxing wealth per se is NOT the way to go! Sorry.

Local & national politicians should be closing the loopholes that allow the wealthy to pay less than they should be, rather than just pay lip service while lining their own pockets.