Deep Thought: People hate taxes
Do you hate taxes?
If you hate taxes and you make MORE than $250,000 per year vote for McCain. John McCain will cut your taxes.
I you hate taxes and you make LESS than $250,000 per year vote for Obama. Barack Obama will cut your taxes.
If you don’t hate taxes, vote your conscience.
You know what, this is not about hating taxes — I think that it is axiomatic that no one really wants to pay taxes.
This is about paying for the government that you say you want. We cannot as a nation keep asking for more stuff — whether you are Exxon looking for more subsidies to drill; or a Walmart clerk looking for help with healthcare; or one of the very many who cheered for the war in Iraq — and then be shocked that this is not free. And politicians of all camps need to stop pretending that governments exist in some alternate universe where nothing needs to be really paid for, and the people who run those governments get to help feed the delusion.
The roads don’t build themselves, and police, teachers and other first responders should be paid as vital assets of our society. But everyone always seems shocked that while your taxes don’t go up all that much, government departments can’t get done what the pols promise. Why is that?
The craven and ideological will tell you that there is waste and people who should not be paid rational salaries. They can’t really make a case for either, other than the fact that there are departments, regulations, working groups that they want to eliminate.
All of these folks who are of the government is pretty much free crowd were just delighted to indulge themselves in their moral superiority to the homeowners who were overleveraged and overspent. Your government is in exactly the same position, except they keep spending in stuff we keep telling them that we want.
Taxes pay for services. We have to decide what services we want and how to pay for them. It is that simple. Some people think that if we do not pay taxes we somehow get stuff for free, I guess. No one wants to get rid of the fire department, for example, and it is just not practical to have a “private” fire department.
Okay, I had to look up axiomatic.
It means self-evident or unquestionable. It somes from Greek axiōmatikos, from axiōma ‘what is thought fitting’.
Think axiom.
You forgot one:
If you don’t pay taxes at all, vote for Barack Obama. He will put money in your pocket.
There is no such person that pays no taxes. What about payroll tax and sales tax. I guess Republicans would like to be poor, so they don’t have to pay income tax?
I’m curious–given the arguments here for progressive taxation, why not advocate for a consumption-based tax system, scrapping most of the rest? It’s certainly progressive: those who have more will spend more and pay more taxes. It encourages savings and investment: if you don’t spend it, you don’t pay taxes on it. It eliminates the need for most of the bureaucracy. It’s certainly a lot simpler.
Get rid of the PORK !!
It’s certainly progressive: those who have more will spend more and pay more taxes.
That is not progressive, that is linear.
“It encourages savings and investment: if you don’t spend it, you don’t pay taxes on it.”
Which means that, along with the elimination of the estate tax, the truly rich will be able to pay nowhere near the share they do now, and will be able to reinvest their wealth for generations.
Nice idea, libertarian. Just like all your party’s ideas, it will work about as well as socialism/communism — great in theory, but unworkable in real life, at least as long as we’re talking about something other than human beings.
There are two ways to keep the peons in line: Either rule with an iron fist (totalitarianism) or bribe them to keep them from killing the aristocracy. We are where we are because the vulgarians of the right aren’t studious enough to realize that.
UI:
Taxes pay for services. We have to decide what services we want and how to pay for them. It is that simple.
The argument is over what services should be provided. We were the most literate nation on Earth 150 years before public education. Cassandra’s point is a solid one. Government has far outgrown it’s mandate. Remember Washington’s warning “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
“No one wants to get rid of the fire department, for example, and it is just not practical to have a “private” fire department.”
Do you have any idea how many volunteer fire departments there are?
Private libraries seem to be doing rather well also. (I am not suggesting we get rid of either but they are examples of things that seem to happen without government funding.)
Geezer
It was a rhetorical question, not a proposal. It seems logical given your general proclivities, and I wondered why you didn’t support it. I certainly don’t support it. But you have clarified for me your reasoning: the tax codes exist in your political imagination as primarily a tool for the government to equalize wealth and power in society. It’s been evident here in the dialogue for some time, I just wanted to see somebody say it. Thanks.
But you have clarified for me your reasoning: the tax codes exist in your political imagination as primarily a tool for the government to equalize wealth and power in society.
And you have clarified yours: without progressive taxation, wealth accumulates relentlessly at the top of society until we have a hereditary oligarchy. And that is OK with you.
What redistribution buys us is political stability, without which no wealth would be safe.
The current tax structure is a middle ground which allows wealth to exist alongside a broad middle class with great political stability. This is a remarkable achievement in the history of nations, one which the Bush tax structure has nudged in the wrong direction.
The US is already has a universal consensus and mandate that it will have a redistributive tax system. Eliminating redistribution is not an option.
What is being debated are the funding base, the funding amounts, and the spending priorities. Fortunately we have a safe place to have this debate – the US Congress.
Oliver Wendell Holmes: ‘Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.’
The cavemen didn’t pay taxes. Now that’s a conservative’s dream.
And you have clarified yours: without progressive taxation, wealth accumulates relentlessly at the top of society until we have a hereditary oligarchy. And that is OK with you.
1) I didn’t say that; I asked a rhetorical question.
2) Your assertion that without progression taxation wealth relentless accumulates at the top end of the scale: care to show some actual evidence? I don’t mean the usual talking points about CEO pay; I mean actual studies by recognized economic theorists who conclude that progressive taxation is the only, the preferrable, or even a workable means of keeping wealth from concentrating. My bet is that you can’t, and that you’ll respond either with an ad hominem attack or some personally cherry-picked example. But go ahead: give it a try.
Once you’ve done that, explain how large-scale industrial and post-industrial societies exist in economic terms without concentration of wealth.
“But you have clarified for me your reasoning: the tax codes exist in your political imagination as primarily a tool for the government to equalize wealth and power in society.”
Equalize? That’s exactly the opposite of what I said. An inability to understand how the real world — as opposed to your imaginary utopia — actually works marks people like you, the ideologues, as incapable of functioning in the real world.
The reason is simple: You enter every situation with the answer already defined — all answers must conform to libertarian theory, or else be discarded. You are the one with the sadly closed mind, libertarian.
Jason wrote:
Jason, we all know that is what Senator Obama says he’ll do, but do you honestly, seriously, really believe him?
He has promised over $200 billion in additional federal spending, per year, he has promised some form of universal health care coverage plan, and he has said that he will not just pull out of Iraq “precipitously.” He agreed to the $700+ billion financial bailout.
Now, tell me how he can cut taxes?
If you use your criteria but substitute McCain’s additional spending proposals (the ones he makes when you aren’t looking like buying up mortgages) his intention to keep troops in Iraq for however long an his vote for the $700M bailout, then McCain won’t be in any position to cut taxes, either.
The real difference here are three things:
1. Paygo
2. More money in the hands of the majority of wage earners is undeniably stimulative.
3. The recession. As long as we are headed in this direction, whoever is in office is going to ramp up the spending to try to paper over the horrific economy left behind by BushCo.
I get the impression from the posters here that if all wealth in the nation were equally distributed, it would create a just and balanced society and would largely remain so.
If you have company paid halth insurance John McCain will raise your taxes as this benefit becomes earned income
Now that’s a pretty bold (and incorrect) assumption, Duffy.
Since the wealthy benefit much more than us common folk from tax expenditures, we just want them to pay their fair share….that is all.
Dana – why shouldn’t we believe what he says?
It’s not like Obama’s been lying about his true character for 35 years, like his opponent’s been doing since his time at the USNA.
make that Health Insurance
I don’t think that your impression is correct, Duffy. Besides, just the business of having a government that needs to be paid for is fundamentally redistributionist. It just doesn’t go to people that you don’t approve of.
But that doesn’t get to the basic question of how you pay for the government that most Americans are pretty clear they want.
Cassandra, in the first comment, was getting pretty close: taxes do pay for the services we expect from government. The question then becomes: since people want to pay less in taxes, with what services are they willing to dispense?
For me, it’s an easy call: I’d get rid of all welfare. If you don’t work, then you don’t eat.
But there’s more. If you can just barely pay your rent, are late on your electric bill, and the only meals you can afford are beans and polatoes one night, and potatoes and beans the next, would it make any sense at all to put a nice painting for the living room wall on an already over-extended Capitol One Visa?
No, of course it wouldn’t. Then why do we, as a nation, being unable to pay for our necessities without borrowing, go further into debt to buy luxuries, like the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, and all of the other good things for which we pay but without which we can survive?
Our greatest problem is that we have a culture of profligate spending. When a piece of government furniture gets a bit worn, but is still functional, they don’t use it until it falls apart, but they buy new, at least for the top dogs; no such thing as a steel desk for a real manager!
It seems that everybody in our government has great ideas about how to spend money, a whole list of Things That Would Be Good To Do, but no one ever asks if they really need to be done.
Von Cracker asked:
He’s a politicians, and his lips are moving; therefore, he’s lying.
John McCain won’t be able to cut taxes, either, but he’s a lot beter on the spending side.
Duffy sarcastically wrote:
I can’t speak for the posters, but at least one commenter doesn’t believe that. If we could absolutely, evenly redistribute all of the wealth and income in this country, and then left things alone, within ten years the people who have and make the most now would again be doing the best, and the people at the bottom of the economic ladder now would be there again. It wouldn’t be true in every case, individually, but, generally speaking, that’s what would happen, because the most productive and smartest people today would still be more productive and smarter under said new regime, and their superior abilities would yield superior results.