PSA: Tax Cuts Explained

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: KarenMarie
ambitv..

i have to disagree with you... the freedoms (property rights amoungst them) that we have come from a higher power than the government... that is the entire basis of our government system... this is an entire different debate and not one i will get into here... however... Also, if it were true that only with a government can ppl have or earn $$$... then where did the ppl get their riches before the 1700's?

Mankind has formed tribes since before recorded history. In earlier societies there were usually Kings, Chiefs, Leaders, the Alpha Male and Female. Generally, these tribes had some sort of agreement but it could usually be re-written at will. Individuals usually had no "inalienable rights." Eventually we worked our way up to Roman law and English common law, but as late as 1215 AD England needed the Magna Carta to keep English Kings from ruling by whim rather than law.

Without government and law, property and your life belong to the strongest.

 

[Insane3D]

Why is this in OT? Last time I checked, tax cuts were political...

 

[Svnla]

Very interesting discussion so far.

KarenMarie - your b/f situation is very similar to me. I don't have any kids and I pay up to my nose from my full time job, my investments, my savings, and my consulting business. I don't have any government help or break.

Why would a person that doesn't work, sleeping around and having kid after kids with different guys entitle her for welfare/foodstamp/rent assistant/etc.? We are not even talk about the cost when her kids are growing up (crime/prison/out of wedlock, etc.)

Some of you guys are saying we need to cut back wasteful government spending. Based on the latest data, 23% is spent on Social Security, 12% on Medicare, 7% on Medicaid, 6% on other Entitlements, 7% on Other Mandatories. Therefore, 55% of total buget are spend on ENTITLEMENTS. The rest are: 16% for Defense, 19% for Other Spending, and 10% for Interest.

How are we going to cut the waste? Which program shall we cut or eliminate? Since Entitlement programs use the majority of the budget, shall we cut them? The AARP won't let you do that for sure. We can talk all we can about the $500 tool or $600 toilet seat but we all know the majority are spend on entitlements.

Just my thought.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: AmbitVAlso asume that the only reason the wealthy guy makes 1 billion is because of the particular socio-economic structure of the government. For instance, Warren Buffett himself has said if he were born in India, his skills would not have been valued at all.

The question is not whether the burdens imposed on us through taxation are, taken in isolation, just. Rather, the question is whether the society we have created as a whole is a just one - whether there is justice, equality, and fairness in the overall distribution of welfare, of which justice in taxation plays a role.

Oh, stop the socialist PC crap. We live in a capitalist nation, not a socialist nation. There is no equal distribution of wealth in the USA, and we don't care to hear the poor whine about it. Once you start talking about "blah blah socio-economic blah blah equal distribution of wealth blah blah" you really lose me, since I don't live on a commune, I don't live in a socialist nation, and I'm not about to "share" my wealth with someone who doesn't carry his own weight.

What I earn is MINE. Other than paying taxes, nobody else is entitled to my hard work or paycheck.

 

[AmbitV]

KarenMarie, to say that there are no property rights in the absence of government is not the same as saying "whatever they earn belongs to the government". No theory of justice can be complete without notions of desert. Now, of course people are in fact entitled to their AFTER tax income - at least that much is clear. That is what it means to have private property, and we have a legal system in place to prevent others from coercively infringing on that property. What I am disputing is the conservative/libertarian claim that pretax income is deserved and that people have some kind of moral entitlement to it.

And even if you did believe that "whatever they earns belongs to the government", don't forget that government isn't some abstract ethereal entity. In a democratic society, a government is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, for the people". So there is in fact a sense in which that statement means "whatever they earn belongs to themselves".

Look, all I'm saying is that government comes logically prior to private property.

Everyone agrees that the state does not have complete authority over the individual - this is uncontroversial. Individuals retain certain rights - in particular, inalienable rights that cannot be superceded by any state action, no matter how noble. Among these are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and some today might say freedom to act consensually on one's sexual inclinations. The question is whether we include some kind of economic freedom in this protected category of rights. Libertarians think you do; I disagree.

Libertarians like to trump up the outcomes of the market - outcomes of what they say are individuals entering into voluntary transactions with one another. But don't forget that there is no market without government, and no government without taxes. In the absense of the legal and economic system the government has put in place, there would be no common currency, no banks, no corporations, no intellectual property - i.e. none of the things that makes modern day wealth possible.

 

[KarenMarie]

I understand your point a little better, ambitV... but i disagree with some things...

1) it seems that you are portraying it that the government comes first and without it, there would be no such thing as private property and that it is up to the government to decide what it fair. it seems that you are saying that ppl are only entitled to what they earn AFTER the government decides how much of it they want and how much they will let the original earner keep. I do not agree with this, just as i do not believe this to be just. Government does not tell us what is just... we decide what is just and elect our government to carry that out according to the law by which this country was founded.

2) We are not a democracy. We never have been, and try as some might, we never will be. We are a Republic. There is a difference.

3) If there is no market without government, then how did mankind manage to survive for centuries and trade and barter without them?

4) There is no worldwide common currency now... (there is the euro, but look what fun that is turning out to be).

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: sygyzy
LAME. REPOST. BAN!

Yes, my first line said "I thought we should clear up the misconception one more time:" I know it's a repost, I probably am the one who posted it last time. But it hasn't been posted recently, if you don't like it, your welcome to go read another thread.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: AmbitV
What I am disputing is the conservative/libertarian claim that pretax income is deserved and that people have some kind of moral entitlement to it.

Look, all I'm saying is that government comes logically prior to private property.

The question is whether we include some kind of economic freedom in this protected category of rights. Libertarians think you do; I disagree.
.

I find your flawed reasoning scary. You seem to advocate a government being able to spread around a person's income without their consent. This is an extremely liberal view, socialist in fact.

I believe one of our rights is that we get to keep what we earn. If I work and the guy next to me doesn't work, he should not be entitled to any of my money. He cannot profit off my hard work. Money is a direct exchange for work I provide, and since I performed the work, I'm entitled to the money that the company paid me.

You are really using a prying tactic here... you correctly state that the government handles your money by taxing your income before you see it, but then you use that condition as an opportunity to vastly expand the role of government meddling with my finances, trying to justify a socialist state. You seem to believe that the government shouldn't only tax us as they do now, but also see to it that your income is evenly distributed throughout the population. If you want that, move to a communist/socialist country.

 

[91TTZ]

AmbitV, are you a socialist? a communist? What is it, tell me.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: bsobel
Ok, after making the mistake of visiting P&N again (where I was told I should be in jail for voting for Bush). I thought we should clear up the misconception one more time:

Tax Cuts Explained

Should have posted in P&N then

Still a good read though

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

I find your flawed reasoning scary. You seem to advocate a government being able to spread around a person's income without their consent. This is an extremely liberal view, socialist in fact.

I believe one of our rights is that we get to keep what we earn. If I work and the guy next to me doesn't work, he should not be entitled to any of my money. He cannot profit off my hard work. Money is a direct exchange for work I provide, and since I performed the work, I'm entitled to the money that the company paid me.

You are really using a prying tactic here... you correctly state that the government handles your money by taxing your income before you see it, but then you use that condition as an opportunity to vastly expand the role of government meddling with my finances, trying to justify a socialist state. You seem to believe that the government shouldn't only tax us as they do now, but also see to it that your income is evenly distributed throughout the population. If you want that, move to a communist/socialist country.

seems to me that you don't know what 'liberal' means

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: ElFenix


seems to me that you don't know what 'liberal' means

Why do you say that? I do know that the "liberals" of today are nothing like the classic liberals. By definition, liberals should be for less restrictive laws and citizen's rights, but nowadays they seem to have reversed that ideology and are very restrictive. A classic liberal would never try to ban guns, since you'd be taking away rights from an individual.

Also, classic rebublicans were for smaller central government. They wanted individual states to have the power. That has changed also. Now republicans seem to want a strong central government, and are trying to strip control away from the states.

 

[cronos]

Originally posted by: bsobel
Ok, after making the mistake of visiting P&N again (where I was told I should be in jail for voting for Bush). I thought we should clear up the misconception one more time:

Tax Cuts Explained

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this. The first four men -- the poorest -- would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.

that's a good story. but i think your analogy of 'tax' = 'restaurant bill' is flawed. if you want to do that then you should account also that 'income' = 'food ordered/paid'.

on the current system, tax is something that we have to pay back, based on what we make. so in this case the analogy is going to be a lot better if:

the 10 people ordered different meals with different prices (prices = their income), but then they have to leave leftovers on a different percentages based on the amount they ordered. in this case, the poor people can eat all their foods, which is all they paid for, while the richest man could only eat 41% of what he ordered, and have to leave 59% leftovers (note that he might still be eating a *lot* more than the poor people because he ordered a lot more too).

you can go ahead and continue making your point based on this analogy though. i don't see why you can't. i'm just talking about the analogy here instead of arguing about what you're trying to say.

 

[Insane3D]

So, you got frustrated that the people in P&N didn't "understand" the tax cuts, so you came over here and posted it in OT?

Whatever floats your boat I guess.....

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
So, you got frustrated that the people in P&N didn't "understand" the tax cuts, so you came over here and posted it in OT?

Whatever floats your boat I guess.....

Sounds like it. I guess his views were considered too wacky even by P&N standards.

 

[Engineer]

Taxes are theprice we pay for acivilized society.

?Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Supreme Court Justice