Trickle Down?Follow

This is a highly oversimplified statement.

How do you measure who consumes national security, homeland security, utilities, infrastructure, resources, research, etc etc.

The guy with kids paying fewer taxes could just as easily be said to be saving tax dollars because if he wasn't supporting them they may be wards of the state. Children are an investment.

The homeless dude that lives on food stamps and a monthly ss check and pays NO taxes is less of a drain on the system than the million dollar exec living in a gated sprawled well-lit highly accessible community with his multiple vehicles, communication gadgets, weekly garbage pick up and shopping forays, and raising his with his 2.4 kids in like fashion and who DOES pay taxes.

Er? There are just over 100 million households (112 million actually) in the US. Assuming each is at least one adult (kinda part of the definition), that would bring the total in yearly government services to 7.6 Trillion Dollars.

Nope.


Simple math is simple.

Yup.

See if you can riddle out where you went awry.

Edited, Jan 26th 2009 5:21pm by Smasharoo

Some of those can be said to be "consumed" equally (like national security stuff). Utilities are paid for by the end customer, as are most infrastructure (via property taxes at the local level).



This is only true if those children grow up to produce more than they cost. Also, given that the act of having children was taken by the individual, the idea that the cost for that act should be spread across everyone else, while reasonable to some degree, shouldn't constitute a valid argument in a discussion about whether or not we should increase, decrease, or keep the same the taxes on the wealthy. Rich people's children are just as much of an investment, right?



This bit is just absurd. How on earth to you come to this conclusion?


Let's start with some facts that can't be refuted. If the total pool of funds collected via taxation is spread back in such a way that some people receive benefits in excess of what they paid in (ie: "cost more than they pay"), then it's a mathematical certainty that some others must receive less than they pay, right? Has to be. So if there's even one person who pays nothing, but is provided even a single penny in government assistance money then someone had to have paid more than he got. This isn't speculation, it's fact.


Since we know that many people do take in more than they pay, then who exactly do you think is paying more than they take? Has to be someone, right? And while I know that this is something that many people don't like to talk about, I think it's pretty obvious that the people who do that are what we classify as "the rich".


Yet, among those who claim to care the most about the greater good for society, that very group gets demonized the most. They are called "greedy". Strange use of the word, isn't it? Heck. You seem to want to insist that the wealthy guy somehow actually costs us more than the poor guy. That can't be true, but you said it anyway. At what point do we recognize that many of our assumptions are based, not on an assessment of facts, but as nearly Pavlovian responses programmed into us somewhere along the line? Cause that's the only explanation I can think of for your post...

Edited, Jan 26th 2009 7:34pm by gbaji

You seem to want to insist that the wealthy guy somehow actually costs us more than the poor guy. That can't be true

Of course it's true. Were it not true, taxation would move wealth from the wealthy to the less wealthy. The opposite occurs. Ergo, the wealthiest benefit the most from government in a financial way, QED.

Discussion over, thanks for playing. Try again in a week or so and you may win a valuable prize.

Given that we were talking about the real cost of dollars put into the government via taxes and the proportion of those tax dollars taken out, using inflated value assessments of the government services is utterly irrelevant. Since those aren't real dollars paid by anyone, then what does it matter?

It won't matter when you can buy the 20 miles of road you drive on per day for the same cost per mile as the Eisenhower Interstate system was built for, or hire a private army to defend your property for the same cost per dollar value of property as the US Army does it for.

Economies of scale are very real, and the fact that Samsung spends $100 to manufacture a 50 inch HDTV doesn't mean it has an identical value to you. That's the benefit of government spending tax dollars to provide services, it's much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more efficient than you spending money for your individual needs. The value proposition is inarguable. You benefit tremendously in excess of your paid taxes.

Now, there are other completely valid arguments to make. I get great value on the money I pay to incarcerate marijuana dealers. I get great value on the money I paid to invade Iraq. These are things I'd likely not pay for at all on an individual basis, but in terms of price, I did really well. If you'd care to make the argument that you don't benefit from enough services to make your tax payments a negative personal proposition: have at it.

Yeah, we gotta provide relief for those poor, poor Millionaires, it's not like they have anything we don't have except millions of dollars. and It's not like we can't trust millionaires, after all they have millions of dollars, so they don't want any more! excluding all those CEO's and rich people charged with embezzlement, tax evasion, corruption and the like.

We should totally give more money to the rich, because they'll logically reinvest it and give it away, I mean it's not like rich people ever obtain huge sums of money by hoarding it. Except when they do.

Edited, Jan 27th 2009 7:46pm by RunawayFive

I had heard about that Citibank thing at work, but only in passing during lunch.

Do you not understand what a flat tax rate will do? Everyone, will pay the same percentage of their income. You make more, you pay more. Simple as that. It *will* solve the problem, because then the rich *will* pay more.

This is why their is a certain minimum income. Obviously, anyone under the poverty line, would be exempt from taxation. My only issue, is that the rich can afford to hide their income and take advantage of certain loopholes, whereas someone in the middle class cannot.

No, a flat tax is not reasonable, nor is it fair or sufficient. The wealthy must pay more in taxes, not only because they can, but because they, more than lower and middle class folks, reap the benefits of a well funded government.