5 ms·

I'm glad you're adding new info here, but I'm not sure why it has to be couched it divisive left-right rhetoric. I'm leftish and didn't know this. I am however,

I'm glad you're adding new info here, but I'm not sure why it has to be couched it divisive left-right rhetoric. I'm leftish and didn't know this. I am however, for certain kinds of consumption taxes.

rayiner 7y ago
I’m not trying to be divisive—I myself align with the left on having a robust welfare state. But the right doesn’t want a welfare state at all, it’s not incumbent on them to figure out a realistic way of paying for one.
- turk73 7y ago
  I don't think that's a fair statement. It's that I don't want it, but it's that I realize that once you begin the handouts they can never go away and seem to always increase. Now, thanks to perverse incentives here in the US, an illegal immigrant is a more 1st class "citizen" than actual tax-paying citizens are. That is all backwards and on its head. We have given away so many freebies that it has completely broken families, especially black families, where the majority of the time there is no father in the picture and women have children in order to receive payments and thus monetize a do-nothing lifestyle. There has to be some kind of middle ground between the ugly Latin-American form of poverty where no safety nets exist, and the American "let's be Santa Claus and give away lots of freebies" swiped from the Middle Class. We used to manage what is now called welfare at a very local level via churches and other private organizations. Now, we have an army of bureaucrats at all levels, themselves little more than work-for-welfare employees of city, county, state, and most definitely Federal governments. Then our taxes have to go up to pay all those people whose output is so very low. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating machine where those same people vote for more leftist policies because it protects their vested interests. Meanwhile, Main St. America is withering because of the high cost of shifting rewards from the productive class to the most unproductive people in history. Have you looked at starting a small business lately? Might want to check out how much a typical franchise or say, a tire shop, costs to actually start. It is ludicrous. Who said I had to pay for anyone else? It's not your labor or your risk, it's mine. But this is America, where we privatize profits and socialize the losses onto the taxpayers. Were that only the case, that would be one thing. But no, you rub it in by also blaming productive people for everything, taxing us to the hilt, and making us suffer for our own ability to restrain ourselves and plan ahead for the future. But here's the thing: I'm not your cash cow, never was. So yes, let's keep doing it because sooner or later your kind is going to run out of other people's money and then the slaughter begins. I'm going to laugh when Marx's "useful idiots" themselves end up dead because of their galactic stupidity. And hey, if I also end up dead, that's okay, as long as I get to witness the comeuppance. Because living this god damned American taxpayer lie every day is about the most irritating kind of living there is and one day I'm just not going to do it anymore.
- howard941 7y ago
  MMT? With disinflation reigning over most of my adulthood I suspect the fear of deficit spending was and continues to be oversold.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Aren’t consumption taxes generally regressive?
- jsty 7y ago
  If imposed at a blanket level, then yes. But zero-rating some items (e.g. food, housing) and higher-rating others (yachts, private jets, ...) can address that to a certain extent.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Or what Canada does, which is rebate over the year based on your income level and assumed consumption.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  I favor a minimum income and/or earned income tax credit to offset.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  for "regressive" and "progressive" to mean something useful, you need to take into account what the tax proceeds are used for. if a mildly regressive tax is used exclusively to fund healthcare for the poor, it's probably not regressive in the end. if a highly progressive tax is used exclusively to finance wars for the elite, it is probably not progressive in whole.
- consp 7y ago
  The are usually offset by either multiple consumption tax rates (luxury vs necessary goods like food, toilet paper, etc) or income tax deductions in the lower brackets. Either by excluding taxes at lower income or by subsidies for those groups.
humanrebar 7y ago
> ...I'm not sure why it has to be couched it divisive left-right rhetoric The right has been floating flat and simplified tax schemes for decades, including consumption taxes. For example, Hermain Cain made a 9-9-9 Plan a central policy of his campaign. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan
- jeromegv 7y ago
  Floating for decades, but they were controlling the senate, the congress, and the presidency, and I have yet to see it enacted.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    Guess which President Trumps aren't particularly interested in substantial policy reform as much as picking fights on irrelevant cultural issues.
justaguyhere 7y ago
I too didn't know this, not that I have any decent knowledge of economics/business in the first place :( One thing that I wish more people (including me) realize is - these big problems (taxation, immigration, protectionism etc) have multiple angles and many nuances to them, and it is just dumb to reduce them to a simple yes/no type binary question. All this to say, many people including those shouting at each other on television, probably don't know enough to argue one way or the other

rayiner 7y ago

I’m not trying to be divisive—I myself align with the left on having a robust welfare state. But the right doesn’t want a welfare state at all, it’s not incumbent on them to figure out a realistic way of paying for one.

turk73 7y ago
I don't think that's a fair statement. It's that I don't want it, but it's that I realize that once you begin the handouts they can never go away and seem to always increase. Now, thanks to perverse incentives here in the US, an illegal immigrant is a more 1st class "citizen" than actual tax-paying citizens are. That is all backwards and on its head. We have given away so many freebies that it has completely broken families, especially black families, where the majority of the time there is no father in the picture and women have children in order to receive payments and thus monetize a do-nothing lifestyle. There has to be some kind of middle ground between the ugly Latin-American form of poverty where no safety nets exist, and the American "let's be Santa Claus and give away lots of freebies" swiped from the Middle Class. We used to manage what is now called welfare at a very local level via churches and other private organizations. Now, we have an army of bureaucrats at all levels, themselves little more than work-for-welfare employees of city, county, state, and most definitely Federal governments. Then our taxes have to go up to pay all those people whose output is so very low. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating machine where those same people vote for more leftist policies because it protects their vested interests. Meanwhile, Main St. America is withering because of the high cost of shifting rewards from the productive class to the most unproductive people in history. Have you looked at starting a small business lately? Might want to check out how much a typical franchise or say, a tire shop, costs to actually start. It is ludicrous. Who said I had to pay for anyone else? It's not your labor or your risk, it's mine. But this is America, where we privatize profits and socialize the losses onto the taxpayers. Were that only the case, that would be one thing. But no, you rub it in by also blaming productive people for everything, taxing us to the hilt, and making us suffer for our own ability to restrain ourselves and plan ahead for the future. But here's the thing: I'm not your cash cow, never was. So yes, let's keep doing it because sooner or later your kind is going to run out of other people's money and then the slaughter begins. I'm going to laugh when Marx's "useful idiots" themselves end up dead because of their galactic stupidity. And hey, if I also end up dead, that's okay, as long as I get to witness the comeuppance. Because living this god damned American taxpayer lie every day is about the most irritating kind of living there is and one day I'm just not going to do it anymore.
howard941 7y ago
MMT? With disinflation reigning over most of my adulthood I suspect the fear of deficit spending was and continues to be oversold.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

Aren’t consumption taxes generally regressive?

jsty 7y ago
If imposed at a blanket level, then yes. But zero-rating some items (e.g. food, housing) and higher-rating others (yachts, private jets, ...) can address that to a certain extent.
- refurb 7y ago
  Or what Canada does, which is rebate over the year based on your income level and assumed consumption.
humanrebar 7y ago
I favor a minimum income and/or earned income tax credit to offset.
leetcrew 7y ago
for "regressive" and "progressive" to mean something useful, you need to take into account what the tax proceeds are used for. if a mildly regressive tax is used exclusively to fund healthcare for the poor, it's probably not regressive in the end. if a highly progressive tax is used exclusively to finance wars for the elite, it is probably not progressive in whole.
consp 7y ago
The are usually offset by either multiple consumption tax rates (luxury vs necessary goods like food, toilet paper, etc) or income tax deductions in the lower brackets. Either by excluding taxes at lower income or by subsidies for those groups.

humanrebar 7y ago

> ...I'm not sure why it has to be couched it divisive left-right rhetoric The right has been floating flat and simplified tax schemes for decades, including consumption taxes. For example, Hermain Cain made a 9-9-9 Plan a central policy of his campaign. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%E2%80%939%E2%80%939_Plan

jeromegv 7y ago
Floating for decades, but they were controlling the senate, the congress, and the presidency, and I have yet to see it enacted.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Guess which President Trumps aren't particularly interested in substantial policy reform as much as picking fights on irrelevant cultural issues.

justaguyhere 7y ago

I too didn't know this, not that I have any decent knowledge of economics/business in the first place :( One thing that I wish more people (including me) realize is - these big problems (taxation, immigration, protectionism etc) have multiple angles and many nuances to them, and it is just dumb to reduce them to a simple yes/no type binary question. All this to say, many people including those shouting at each other on television, probably don't know enough to argue one way or the other