Alright Democrats, you are dropping the ball. Yesterday, I asked you to tell me what level of taxation is enough for you to call off the nasty rhetoric. We only had a few responses. So, we will try this one more time:
At what level of taxation will Democrats agree the rich are no longer greedy? Answers should be a percentage, rather than “when the budget is balanced and our needs are met.” Should a person making a million dollars be forced to give 5 out of every 10 dollars he/she earns to federal, state, and local government?
6 out of 10? When will you stop calling them greedy- just give me a number, please.
Once you have figured out what percentage of their income is enough to stop calling them greedy, then tell me what level of taxation would just be downright unfair and immoral. I am curious.
Tiger
I am not rich and my tax burden is killing me. I say get rid of the Income Tax, enact a National Sales Tax, limited to 20%, by Constitutional Amendment (which can or cannot include the repeal of the Constitutional Amendment authorizing the Income Tax.)
barney gumble
My uninformed opinion, after the Reagan era and the Clinton tax increase of 1993, is that the Laffer curve peaks around 33%.
As far as calling off the crazy rhetoric, there is no number. It’s a perception of being screwed, being taken advantage of, etc. I got in a fight (when I was a teenager) over $20.
JKC
John- forgive the double post. I don’t know the answer to your question. As I said on another thread, a tax rate of greater than 40 to 50% strikes me as a screamingly bad idea. I’m fairly well off: I can afford to pay more in taxes than the gal working in the check-out line in the local Wal-Mart.
Let me repost a question and turn it around for everyone reading here: What are YOU willing to give up for lower taxes? I don’t want to hear from well-off young, healthy twenty- or thirty-something members of the Federalist Society spouting off about doing away with Medicaid or Social Security. What ox of YOURS are you willing to see gored?
As I said before, I suspect your answers will be enlightening…
John Cole
JKC- Let’s make that a question for tomorrow rather then let the thread get jacked. I will pose that to readers tomorrow morning. For tofay, let’s stay focussed on what percentage of income paid in taxes (federal, state, and local, as well as sales and hidden taxes), crosses the line.
Again, we will ask that tomorrow.
JKC
Fair enough, John. I’ll stick with the answer above, with the caveat that it’s an uneducated guess. God knows I’d love to pay fewer taxes; I just feel that the trade-off (adequate defense and public services) are worthwhile.
BTW, I don’t think the “rich” are greedy per se: that’s an unfair characterization of a lot of people who worked damned hard for what they have.
Mason
Elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
That is a huge problem and *always* a consequence of wanting “the government” to solve social ills.
Skeejin
You frame it this way, Kevin frames it that way.
It’s all so confusing! :-)
Skeejin
Oops. I guess you don’t have html in the comments. Sorry… Here’s the link I meant to post…
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001313.html
RHJunkior
I’m no Democrat, but I’ll venture this.
I agree with Ray Stevens: “If ten percent is good enough for Jesus, it oughta be enough for Uncle Sam.”
And as to “what are you willing to give up”—
1)When taxes are reduced, government revenue goes up.
2)Something like 90 cents out of every dollar in a government social program goes to paying the bureaucracy. Where, oh where, shall we trim the fat?
3)We could eliminate the income tax entirely… *without* replacing it with another confiscatory program. The income tax only produces 1/3 of all government revenue. It was not all that long ago the government managed to get by *somehow* on 1/3 less than it spends now.
At the very least, we could chop a percentage off the budget of everything across the board— say 10 to 15 percent— and tell the administrators to get off their fat butts and make it fit. Option? Choose between making your new budget work, or browsing the “help wanted” ads for a new job next year.
The only exceptions to this across-the-board cutshould be national defense and law enforcement…. just about the only two legitimate jobs government has.
Ricky
I guess your idea is good for starting a topic at Drum’s site, but not good enough for a link, eh? C’mon, Kevin!
Randolph Fritz
Ah, didn’t like the answer you got…
But lefties don’t usually measure things that way.
In my view, greed is not measured by the tax rate that people are willing to accept. Greed is desire without limit, that will accept no satisfaction. For the truly greedy, any tax is too much, and the truly greedy will see others die rather than contribute even a small portion of their wealth. It’s that, in my view, that defines greed. Not wealth. Not the desire to accumulate wealth or preserve it. But the setting of personal wealth above all else.
Last time I looked, economists believe that the Laffer curve peaks at around 70%. I would resent a tax rate that high, I can tell you, but of course as Buffet points out, the rate isn’t that high; only part of income is taxed at the top tax-table rate.
Or does the expertise of successful capitalists only count if they are Republicans?
Some history may be perhaps clarify my concerns here. During World War II, the national debt as a percentage of annual GNP rose to 100%–the highest, I believe, that ratio has ever been. Would the decision to continue that war best have made on cost alone?
And as a leftie, I am more interested in paying for properous peace than war, even (apparently) successful war.
bg
40%.
maybe 35%
that’s enough. i’m a lib.
ruprecht
2)Something like 90 cents out of every dollar in a government social program goes to paying the bureaucracy. Where, oh where, shall we trim the fat? – RHJunkior
The Feds cannot even account for $1 of every $4 they collect so either your stat is wrong or things are really, really bad.
John Yuda
It irritates the hell out of me when people who don’t work for the government think they understand how much overhead there is and/or how much they should be.
Discussions to that effect also never consider the number of people employed by the government. Flooding the labor market with unemployed isn’t particularly good for anybody, except maybe anti-labor wingnuts.
Fooey
Do you want a percentage of taxable income or a percentage of newly-available personal wealth?
The wealthy aren’t making all of their money through plain old W-2 income, while most Average Joes are. So, to bitch about the fact that Warren Buffett pays z% on his W-2 income ignores the fact that he’s paying something much less on his dividend and capital gains incomes.
John Yuda
Of course, discussing “fair” taxation levels isn’t particularly worthwhile until we first consider whether or not top-tier compensation levels are fair.
Do most CEOs earn the insane salaries they pull in? Not on your life.
So, for people like… I dunno.. Michael Eisner, I think 90% taxation is perfectly acceptable. After all, that would still leave him with several million dollars a year to do with as he pleases. How much does the man need?
Randolph Fritz
L’esprit d’escalier spoke up, and added a few thoughts.
If there could be a plan which would lower everyone’s taxes and provide reasonable domestic and international policy, I would be for it–I think most of us would be. That was, of course, what the Reagan administration promised us, and it’s been what tax-cutters have promised us ever since. We have learned that the policies we are able to agree on cost more than the taxes the current admistration is willing to levy at the national level, and more than most states were willing to levy during the past decade. The problems were obvious very early on, when Stockman published *The Triumph of Politics*.
So why have the policies continued? They are justified by lies, but why keep lying? The basic answer seems to be that these policies accelerate, perhaps even entirely cause, the vast increase in wealth of the richest. These economic policies and the rhetoric that justifies them are, in other words, a vast scam; “voodoo economics.”
There’s very few econmists who believe that the current federal tax proposals are going to do what is claimed for them. What the proposals are expected to do is (1) continue to increase the wealth of the very wealthy and, (2) in conjunction with increased government spending and borrowing, promote dramatic inflation, which will continue the impoverishment of people who cannot afford the riskier investments that will keep up with inflation.
There is very little doubt that the basic motivation at work here is greed; protestations of ethics and freedom ring hollow when the main result of the policies is the enormous increase of the wealth of a few at the expense of the vast majority.
And so there is you answer; it’s not particular tax rates that makes the left call the rich greedy (and it isn’t only the rich) it’s the support of policies that expand the wealth of the richest while impoverishing almost everyone else.
If taxes were lowered to some rate acceptable to the right, but policies continued this unhappy outcome, the left would continue to call the rich “greedy.” Conversely, if the wealthy promoted policies which lowered taxes and improved the lot of the rest of us as well–and if you tell me that is what current policy will do I will snicker muchly, there is not even a fig-leaf of economic justification left for them–I, at least, would call that “generosity.”
And I must, I am sorry, leave this discussion; I have already spent more time on it than I now think wise.
Mason
John Yuda, the government does not exist to provide jobs or to ensure that public sector employees will remain in their jobs until the end of days.
Yuda, how much do YOU need? I think you can get by on $10k a year to do with as you please.