Here's my thing with taxes. If you want to pay lower taxes, you always have the option of making less money. If you want to make more money you have to pay higher taxes. If you want to make lots of money and pay low taxes (or no taxes) then you are a douchenozzle.
Got into a fight with another lawyer the other day who assured me that my taxes would go up with Obama. I told him I had crunched the numbers already and that he was right, my family stands to pay something between $100 and $2,500 in extra taxes per year with Obama. And we would get something like a $5,000 tax cut with McCain [Ed.: in return for our son' being drafted to die in Iran [Ed. Ed.: or live out a comfortable life with his parents in Canada]]. I told him we didn't really care about paying more if the money was put to good use, to which he called me an idiot. He suggested that I didn't care about making money and I generally agreed with him. In my best jobs, I served as a volunteer. But then I really sent him for a loop and told him we were making lots of money and are doing okay and that as long as I know my taxes ahead of time, I can adjust accordingly. Again names - of course this time he was a little reluctant - because his worldview was that people who make more were superior and I could see he was a little concerned about whether I made more than him. I told him I really only care about my net income not my gross, and he didn't know what to do with himself.
Then I got to thinking about this. I mean seriously - If I offered to give you $100, taking a $95 percent processing fee - would you turn it down? If your boss offered to pay you $1 million a year gross, and your net after taxes would rise by only $10,000 - would you turn it down? How? Now - I support Republicans and fiscal conservatives in their effort to end graft, fraud, etc. but all this crap about govt. standing in you way - ugh. How the hell is government standing in your way if you are making like $19,000 a year. That was how much I made in my first job out of college. I wasn't worried about the govt. hurting me - but I was kind of pissed at my boss.
I kind of liked Biden's answer about taxes and fairness but he can only get out half the story. I liked Sarge's take on it - if I am remembering correctly. The self made man is dead. When you make your money using government education, roads, water, power, policing, fire protection, the government is entitled to its cut. The more you make, the more you have to thank the government for not allowing your bank accounts to be electronically drained, for not allowing your mansion to go up in flames, for having police watch the roads your limo drives on and for firing/beating all the union members who threatened to put you out of business. (too far?). There is no way you would have made the money without the system you are operating within. Try making some money in a country without a government. Now there's a self made man. This is why I support a 0% tax rate on all entrepreneurs in Somalia.
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I very strongly agree and I thought Biden kind of blew the "paying taxes is patriotic" challenge, though you knew the minute you saw that quote that it was going to get thrown in the Dems' faces in commercials, debates, and generally whenever possible. But I sort of knew what he meant when he said it because the hostility of the rich to paying taxes has always struck me as an insult to the country that made their good fortune possible, and the whole “self-made man” thing as utterly self-delusional.
We’re talking about the wealthiest people in the wealthiest society in human history, and a group of people that has done very well especially over the last quarter to half a century. Nobody has ever lived more comfortable, secure lives. And the conditions that made their comfort and security possible had nothing to do with them – a good educational system (especially if you grew up in one of the specially-designated plutocrat-spawning zones) and a vibrant and diverse economy supported by the most advanced techonolgy ever created – they didn’t do that, they basically piggy-backed on it, however talented and hard-working they may have been. Equally talented and hard-working people in other societies don’t go nearly as far or live nearly as well. And hey, all that stuff is actually pretty expensive, and a bake sale isn’t going to pay for it. So for the plutocracy to whine about taxes say "I did all this myself, phokk you for stealing it from me" is kind of like taking a yoooge dump on the country that gave them the opportunity to become plutocrats.
I wish Biden had said something like that. I wish he had specified "yoooooooge dump."
Sure, government deserves its cut and rich people should pay their share of the total burden. But the arguments you both offer, standing by themselves, would seem to justify any level of taxation -- while surely there is some limit beyond which taxation should not go. Maybe rich people are hostile because of what they see as an unreasonable rate of taxation. Neither of you make any argument to support a 50% rate as opposed to a 10% rate.
It would be more interesting to hear your arguments for why a tax rate of X% would be unreasonable, since those arguments are necessary (and would actually be novel from an LoC reader's perspective). Government may be responsible for some of our society's successes, but limitations on/resistance to government are responsible for some of those successes too.
[Private to Sgt. A. D.: I didn't want to make this or any such comment, but Fungster relentlessly pressured me into it. I'm sure you love him all the more for that.]
Well now... I'm not smart enough to re-write the tax code (though possibly just dumb enough to suspect that if we could chop several thousand pages off it it would probably be a lot more fair). My concern comes from a much more visceral America-hating place that fuels my suspicion that if a handful of fabulously wealthy people keep getting richer while everyone else falls farther into debt, it's only a matter of time before the whole thing unspools and screws everything up for everybody. Assigning an X% rate would probably not even begin to tell the whole story anyway, in a system where what you pay depends not only on how much you make but also on how clever an accountant you can afford to hire.
Let's just say that the fact that as recently as two years ago we were still debating whether we should repeal the estate tax tells me that there are a lot of rich folks out there who don't feel any sense of responsibility toward the country - sorry, the Nation - that helped them get rich, and I'm with Joe in thinking that smells unpatriotic.
LoC has "readers?" Puzzling... I mean, I knew BDB was "following," but that doesn't necessarily pre-suppose the ability to read.
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