Re: Reject the Welfare/Warfare State

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Karl <[email protected]> wrote:
> With the Bush cuts, lower income people ended up paying less and
> contributing less over all.   The rich also paid less by individual percent
> but ended up paying more overall by combined percent.

Of course they are!  Have you seen the income distribution curves?
Even if we instituted a (highly regressive) flat tax, the wealthiest
20% would still be paying about 50% of our taxes, the top 6% would pay
33% of our taxes, and the top 2% would pay 12%.  That's just how the
math works out when you've got such tremendous income inequality.  (Or
perhaps I'm misunderstanding your complaint.)

> The point I was making there was that the meme that the Bush tax cuts were
> only for the wealthy is false.

Agreed.  Obama has gone on record many times during his campaign and
his term, saying that he only wants to allow the tax cuts for the
wealthy to expire.  He'd prefer to extend the tax cuts for the
remaining 98% of us.  I'd prefer it too, for my own selfish reasons.
;-)

> I am not even saying they should not pay more, I am just saying that the
> overall situation is far more complicated than most people admit and
> thinking that we can tax the rich and make everything better is not
> feasible.

Agreed.  If taxing the rich is the only thing being offered up, then
it's not going to solve much of anything.

Now corporate taxes... they just puzzle me.  It's trivial for
corporations to play with accounting loopholes and "cheat" the system
entirely; there are far too many perverse incentives.  Ultimately it's
people, the shareholders and employees, who are easiest to tax and
ought to be taxed.

-- 
Nick

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