Instead of increasing entitlements or adding yet more taxes - we lower the size of the government spending UNTIL it matches where most people pay for the services received in a more scaled manner.
Source: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
I was looking for the lucky duckies argument to rear its head. The Intercept has an article which does a great job of eviscerating it[1]
> ...when you take all U.S. taxes into account — federal income taxes, federal payroll taxes, federal corporate taxes, the federal estate tax, federal excise taxes, and the plethora of state and local taxes — the U.S. tax system is just mildly progressive.
> If the U.S. tax system were perfectly flat, the share of taxes paid by each group of Americans above would be equal to their share of income.
> Instead, the top 1 percent — with an average income of about $2 million — made 20.9 percent of America’s income, but paid 24.1 percent of America’s taxes. Few people will perceive this as a monstrous injustice.
> Meanwhile, the middle 20 percent of Americans— with incomes between $41,000 and $66,000 per year — make 10.9 percent of America’s income and pay 9.4 percent of America’s taxes. The bottom 20 percent, making less than $23,000, make just 2.8 percent of America’s income and pay 2 percent of America’s taxes. That is, the “lucky duckies” of the right’s imagination who pay little to nothing in income taxes are still paying a significant portion of their income in taxes overall.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics...
From a post transfer perspective, America’s tax system is firmly progressive, but less so than European countries. The other side of that is that in America you have the opportunity to do quite well for yourself if you aren’t in one of the aristocratic elite families. That isn’t really the case in many of these European social democracies. Not only is there a safety net below you, but there is also a net above you as well.
Hasn't this been thoroughly debunked by economic mobility studies? The US regularly ranks below many European countries by this metric, and the nordic countries tend to dominate in this regard.
It makes sense to look at these payments to the extreme low income brackets as insurance against revolution. People will put up with a lot of misery, but there comes a point where they start getting angry about it, and as a bonus they're well armed in the US.
Nearly 50% pay no federal income tax. It's worth making that statement precise in this case, because saying they pay no federal tax is just a lie.
But what matters is income tax (for individuals).
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sourc...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-wher...
As an engineer, I've found there are two types of 'engineering minds'. Literalists, which cannot get too far past the scope fo the statement. They tend to dissect and add detail; and Expanders, who take it far beyond the original meaning. They tend to "yes, and" a solution (in the improv comedy stance) and expand it in different directions - but are remiss with detail.
And good discussions happen with both insights.
How many families/people are wealthy on the basis of the earnings of a regular person in 1870 and their incredibly compounded wealth? The answer is likely none.
So by 2020, based on the savings from a series of people working ‘regular person’ jobs, most of my great grandpas descendants who are in my dad’s generation are very well off, several are millionaires (I’m excluding my dad because he was the smart one in the family and went to medical school, his job pays far more than a ‘regular person’ job). And this story is not at all uncommon across the US. The reason you don’t hear it is because there’s a big (especially in the Midwest) cultural aversion to discussing wealth or showing it off.
I'm suggesting, that everyone can feel empowered, because assets or dollars invested today can be worth considerably more after inflation in the future. This should give EVERYONE hope.
Plus, wtf? Why should I be the grandfather's grandfather? If I work hard, I should be rewarded, if I'm lazy I shouldn't be. What my ancestors did or didn't do should be irrelevant and what I do should be irrelevant to my forebears. That's because this is the 21dt century, we're capitalist and meritocratic and pursue the American Dream. We're not a 10th century feudal system monarchy!?
Per wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2...
Eyeballing this chart suggests that the top 10% have more than 69% of the wealth, so paying 69% of the taxes seems like a good deal for them.
The gap between the rich and poor is growing, and has been doing so since 1980.
r > g is the biggest long term problem facing capitalist democracies.
That should be a lesson in how much of our taxation system is regressive not a lesson on how little Buffet is taxed.
Buffet and his secretary both pay a couple hundred dollars of tax to register their used cars or a couple dollars of tax on a pack of smokes or a couple tens of dollars fee for some government service or a buck here and there for toll roads and those things are a much larger fraction of the secretary's income. The less you make the more these "fixed fee" taxes screw you.
Should we move the goalposts again?
The two adult two child family is not a median american family. It's a much-larger than normal family. Of course if you apply their deductions to an average income, you get a very low tax rate.
It's not typical.
Cutting entitlements and putting MORE of a financial burden on people who have nothing isn't going to fix the problem. AT BEST it'll result in massive social unrest and the end of the American Experiment.
"I know you can't afford healthcare, and can barely afford food, but we're going to need to take away your food stamps, and your subsidized housing because Larry Ellison just can't afford another 1% increase in taxes". That's what you're going with?
Your statement confuses wealth with income.
Money isn't a protected class. Why do you act like it is?