What if the rich provided all the federal income tax revenue?

[MessiahDecoy123]

They have 90% of the wealth anyway.

And they already provide most pf the federal income tax revenue.

Also I feel like Democrats could easily win the working class vote with this idea.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Either that or keep the minimum wage up with inflation and give workers a 20 dollar minimum wage.

 

[KevanG]

Then they'd 'donate' to the politicians to change it so they paid nothing and ship all their money offshore so they wouldn't have to pay anything anyway. Kind of like now.

 

[Aximili86]

They already provide a pretty huge chunk of it.

Who decides what the cut-off point is with something like that, anyway? You? Is there a distinction made between some self-made businessperson who's spent 20 years doing 18 hour days and putting in the genuine hard yards, eventually finding themselves worth 5 million bucks or whatever, and a spoiled trust-fund baby?

This is why this stuff doesn't actually fly when people vote on it. It's vague, and just comes off both totally arbitrary and sort of pie-in-the-sky type of stuff.

And this is coming from someone who thinks the rich generally should pay a little more than they do, and is against the Trump tax plan.

Just...you can take it too far in the other direction, too. Something like this is never going to fly with the public.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I dunno, what part of "the rich own 90% of the wealth" don't you comprehend?

If you think they work 90% harder then the WORKING CLASS, you're delusional.

They're good moving money around mostly but to assume they work harder than 90% of the population?

No just no. Sure there are quite a few workoholics who came from nothing and now pull in over 5 million annually but let's be honest, alot of the mega rich were born wealthy and connected. And the chances anyone you know joining their ranks is slim to none (despite working themselves to the bone).

And a billionaire needs tax loophole and tax cut like a fat kid needs chocolate cake.

Most Americans make under 40,000 and live check to check. Why are they giving most of their potential net worth to the government instead of Paris Hilton giving 1 percent?

My tax plan would probably end up giving the bottom 80% 15 percent of the wealth instead of only 7 percent, maybe less.

How is that an injustice? We're talking about the vast majority of Americans.

The rich have kept the minimum wage lower for 30 years while increasing the price of goods and services.

Do you realize how much wealth that sucks away from the working class?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Doubling how much of the wealth most people have from 10 percent to 20 percent would be life changing in many cases.

The top 10 percent richest Americans going from 90% to 80% of the wealth is a fart in the wind for them relatively speaking.

And most of that lost wealth will be spent by the working class and given back to the rich anyway.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

With widespread automation around the corner we need to really consider a new way of thinking.

Cause the rich taking and/or keeping 90% of the wealth is about to get ugly when most human workers become optional.

 

[Mike5575]

They have 90% of the wealth anyway.

And they already provide most pf the federal income tax revenue.

Also I feel like Democrats could easily win the working class vote with this idea.

I make about $50K a year and I could give two ****s about how much the top 1% make. This is because I am not a bad person. If you spend so much time complaining about how much rich people make and you're doing fine, then that makes you either jealous or greedy. What makes you deserving of their money?

CEOs are forward thinking. Why do they need so much money? Maybe they use some of that wealth to expand their business. Open up a factory or two. They'll need workers to fill up those factories. This would have the effect of increasing their capital and creating more jobs. Capitalism is not evil. It's forced entrepreneurship.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I make about $50K a year and I could give two ****s about how much the top 1% make. This is because I am not a bad person. If you spend so much time complaining about how much rich people make and you're doing fine, then that makes you either jealous or greedy. What makes you deserving of their money?

CEOs are forward thinking. Why do they need so much money? Maybe they use some of that wealth to expand their business. Open up a factory or two. They'll need workers to fill up those factories. This would have the effect of increasing their capital and creating more jobs. Capitalism is not evil. It's forced entrepreneurship.

Your brain is scrambled.

So the 65% of the population that makes under 40,000 per year are greedy for asking millionaires and billionaires who have 90% of the wealth to pay a fraction of their net worth for things like the military, infrastructure, universal healthcare, a minimum wage consistent with inflation, education, etc.

Um,

1) They have virtually all the wealth

2) They would only be required to give a fraction of their net worth.

Do you even know what the word greed means? It's when someone with alot wants more. Not when the someone with little wants a fraction of the total.

Lmao, your brains are scrambled.

I guess rationalization and confirmation bias aren't just a river in Egypt.

 

[Sithborg]

I make about $50K a year and I could give two ****s about how much the top 1% make. This is because I am not a bad person. If you spend so much time complaining about how much rich people make and you're doing fine, then that makes you either jealous or greedy. What makes you deserving of their money?

CEOs are forward thinking. Why do they need so much money? Maybe they use some of that wealth to expand their business. Open up a factory or two. They'll need workers to fill up those factories. This would have the effect of increasing their capital and creating more jobs. Capitalism is not evil. It's forced entrepreneurship.

Did you not hear about how a lot of CEO's were planning on using the tax cuts to pay dividends or buy back stock?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Also trickle down economics don't work.

The rich do not raise wages even after experiencing record Wall Street profits.

They pocket the money.

Want to create jobs? Increase the working class' income and watch them spend most of the money and energize the economy.

 

[Sithborg]

I would also suggest strengthening unions as a way to get wages back up.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I would also suggest strengthening unions as a way to get wages back up.

I don't think that does the trick at this point.

We're looking at robots replacing workers more and more and corporations have sabotaging unions down to a science by now.

I think Democrats need better bargaining chips like...

We know you have virtually all the wealth. Give us an inflation consistent 20 dollar minimum wage or you guys pay the entire federal income tax burden.

But they have the working class jumping through hoops to stop tax cuts on billionaires. It's so backwards.

Economic gas lighting.

 

[Aximili86]

A 20 dollar minimum wage? t:

You're a funny one, ol' Messiah. Yeah, 'cause the $15 minuimum wage went over so well when Seattle trialed it last year or the year before.

Also, none of the more extreme notions you're putting out in some of these posts are new ideas. It's tried & true, it's called communism. Mandated handing of stuff over to the state in higher-than-reasonable levels "for the greater good". You're never going to implement that stuff in 2017 America, hell, you won't even get it to the extent you're talking about in the Scandinavian countries, there's a cut-off point here.

Should the ultra-rich provide a higher ratio of the overall tax burden than they currently do? Sure, probably. I'm with you there in the broad general sense.

You've gotta get into the nitty-gritty and be specific though. Who's considered a "fatcat" and who's just "done well for themselves"? What's the cut-off point for a, say, 50%-of-your-earning-goes-to-Uncle-Sam system? $5 mil a year? $10? $50? $200?

What's your plan regarding the corporate tax side of things when the tech firms just pack up their **** and take their HQ to Dublin or Hong Kong or Sydney or wherever else?

What's the moral level in a free democratic society for a maximum of your earnings you can pay to the government? 40%? 50%? 70%?

Everyone's going to differ on this stuff, there's no agreeable consensus. The hardcore "no guvmentz at all!" libertarians are going to say ultra-low, the revolutionary Berkeley commies are going to say ultra-high, and the vast majority of the country is going to be somewhere in-between, more or less where we are now.

But that's politics, right? There's no easy fix, you can't just mandate stuff from on high because "greater good" and it's all fine & dandy.

If it were that easy, and if that were the right way to go, it'd have been done by now.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Washington Post article defends Seattle minimum wage increase.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wa...r-minimum-wage-is-actually-working-just-fine/

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Communism, lol.

No differences between the Nordic model and Stalinism?

Okay.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

This is how you stop tax dodging companies from leaving the US.

You ban them from doing business with the US government.

It would work if congress had the balls to close all the loopholes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...he-u-s-to-avoid-taxes/?utm_term=.d86b6ff6d1bb

 

[Aximili86]

*Laughs* The Post might be defending it, sure. The fast-food worker kids in Seattle sure as **** aren't, now that stuff's automated and the Big Evil Corps are hiring fewer kids.

And banning giant multinational conglomerates from doing business with the Feds doesn't exactly sound too "western civilization" to me. Regulation is one thing, outright market-closing is a step into that dreaded big "C" word you take such exception to.

Also, Denmark and Sweden don't simply charge regular working class peeps no income tax. I looked it up to clarify. The rates are different, but your working stiffs pay tax. But yeah, of course there'a difference between the USSR/Venezuela/Cuba or whatever and the Scandinavians. Thing is, what you're proposing here is not-at-all remotely Scandinavian, it's a good deal further left on the spectrum, way into centralized control territory. With best of intentions, totally. That doesn't make it right.

You know, the stuff that'll never fly in an actual democracy. This type of thing has to be forced from on-high with no public recourse, for it to actually happen, nobody's going to vote for it. Because there are repercussions to moves that drastic.

 

[SV Fan]

While it's to late, my 2 cents in regards to how the Government collects money is they should basically claim they own 100% of the natural resources in America and never sell it off, then take a cut of all companies that use those natural resources

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

*Laughs* The Post might be defending it, sure. The fast-food worker kids in Seattle sure as **** aren't, now that stuff's automated and the Big Evil Corps are hiring fewer kids.

And banning giant multinational conglomerates from doing business with the Feds doesn't exactly sound too "western civilization" to me. Regulation is one thing, outright market-closing is a step into that dreaded big "C" word you take such exception to.

Also, Denmark and Sweden don't simply charge regular working class peeps no income tax. I looked it up to clarify. The rates are different, but your working stiffs pay tax. But yeah, of course there'a difference between the USSR/Venezuela/Cuba or whatever and the Scandinavians. Thing is, what you're proposing here is not-at-all remotely Scandinavian, it's a good deal further left on the spectrum, way into centralized control territory. With best of intentions, totally. That doesn't make it right.

You know, the stuff that'll never fly in an actual democracy. This type of thing has to be forced from on-high with no public recourse, for it to actually happen, nobody's going to vote for it. Because there are repercussions to moves that drastic.

The Washington Post actually cites legitimate studies and statistics to debunk the "minimum wage increase failure" myth.

Banning any major corporation is mostly a semi-bluff because any CEO with half a brain would rather pay corporate income tax than lose the biggest consumer market on the planet.

But it's a strong semi-bluff and America should use it.

The idea that no concepts from Scandinavian socialism are plausible in the states needs to be backed by hard evidence. Right now it's pure speculation.

 

[Aximili86]

Those "legitimate studies" are Berkeley groups, to be fair. Some of the article made sense to me in the criticisms they're making, but pretty clearly the organizations they're citing are pretty pro-union and progressive-leaning in the first place.

Whereas the study being critiqued is at least local, from the state university there, which seems like something. Methodologically, I don't know, maybe the criticisms hold weight, but I wouldn't exactly take Berkeley's word on it, unless it's corroborated by other studies too, who don't have some pretty serious ideological skin in the game.

 

[Chance Jackson]

The gradual concentration of wealth from workers to the donor class is not an accident if this kind of thing was corrected for in terms of taxes the donor class would have less incentive

 

[Thundercrack85]

I am curious what all this will lead to. Because every big business threatens employees and unions with automation. You know, the old "if we have to pay them more, we'll just replace our employee with automated self-check out machines."

I guess that works fine if you replace a couple of bank tellers or cashiers at Walmart, but if you keep doing that, what jobs will be left for the working class? If they have no purchasing power, who is going to buy all that crap?

Are the rich going to start building robots to buy stuff? Or are we just going to go back to feudalism?

 

[Chance Jackson]

I am curious what all this will lead to. Because every big business threatens employees and unions with automation. You know, the old "if we have to pay them more, we'll just replace our employee with automated self-check out machines."

I guess that works fine if you replace a couple of bank tellers or cashiers at Walmart, but if you keep doing that, what jobs will be left for the working class? If they have no purchasing power, who is going to buy all that crap?

Are the rich going to start building robots to buy stuff? Or are we just going to go back to feudalism?

Once enough automation occurs there will either have to be sufficient guaranteed income or a new French Revolution

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Good luck with a revolution after the rich establish a advanced robotic security force.

Going against them will be recognized a futile suicide mission within the first day.