King Awesomolocity
Jace Quin
King Awesomolocity
So, Jace....for my Junior research paper that we have to do, I was considering two things...
1. Gaia Economy. (Most interesting to me)
2. Rockefeller. (Rich people are cool)
But, as I was looking up things about rich people, I got sorta curious and decided to look up on that "rich people should pay more taxes" thing that Obama started.
Out of curiosity, what is your opinion on that?
~King Awesome
Uhm, I realize I went on for a while. But you can ask whatever about whatever. I personally prefer Gaia Economy over Rockefeller, though.
See, I was liking the idea of like...a flat rate income tax across everyone. However much that would be, everyone pays that percentage. And that was one of the arguments that I found online. Rich people would pay more money, but it would be the same rate, which seems more fair, in my opinion. I actually haven't had to live on my own and pay taxes yet, so I don't know, but...it sounds like a more fair way of doing things.
As for the government spending, one of the things that irritates me the most is one of the things that the government always complains about is kids becoming less intelligent in school, but one of their default tax cuts is...cut education spending. It's stupid. And some people bring up the argument that the US spends more on education that other countries...but the amount we pay per student is less...I think. I haven't looked that up, but it seems to be so.
And another thing that bugs me is seeing our state workers doing anything.
1 guy digs a hole, 7 people watch. They're all getting paid. I think most things that the state does can be done better and cheaper by private business. A lot of projects should be outsourced to private business. Helps the private sector get more money; helps the government save more money; helps tax payers save money; helps just about everyone.
~King Awesome
I mean, on the surface it sounds nice and fair but in reality it isn't really. Let's say you made 20,000 dollars in 2012. This is, keep in mind, a couple thousand dollars above the poverty line. I personally have never made that much money. 12,000 is about as much as I've ever made in a year living on my own and I've managed to pay for food, shelter, entertainment and even saved some money (one of the huge reasons I have substantially less liberal views of welfare than I did as a highschooler). I didn't need a credit card nor did I receive any sort of monetary support from my parents and neither did I get any sort of support from the welfare system.
So if you made 20,000 in 2012 you fell into the 15% tax bracket. So you paid in about 3,000 dollars in taxes and ended up with 17,000 in take home pay.
Now let's say some other dude made 1,000,000 in 2012. He falls into the highest tax bracket of 35%. He pays 350,000 in taxes and takes home 650,000.
At a glance this seems grossly unfair. Obviously the millionaire paid a whole lot more in taxes than you did at just above the poverty line.
But let's consider your bracketless tax scenario for a moment. You have to pick a percentage that seems fair. Average per capita personal income was, let's say, about 42,000 dollars last year which would ordinarily fall into the 25% bracket. A quarter of everyone's income should seem fair, right? So at 20,000 dollars you pay 5,000 dollars in taxes and the millionaire pays 250,000 dollars. So your taxes went up by 2,000 dollars and his went down by 100,000. But at least it's 'fair' right? But you have to consider the fact that even though the millionaire lives in a nice house and eats expensive dinners he still pays a
much smaller percentage of his income on food and shelter than you do. He also saves a much higher percentage of his income than you do (if, indeed, you save anything at all). If you spend 7,800 a year on rent (which is relatively decent for an apartment in my area), and 6,000 on food that leaves you just 1,200 to spend on anything else you might need or want. The millionaire on the other hand has a house worth a few million dollars and let's say he's a pretty modest millionaire and pays 36,000 dollars a year on his mortage and let's say he eats fancy dinners all the time and also spends 36,000 a month on food. So you pay 69% of your 20,000 dollars on just food and shelter while the millionaire spends just .07% of his income on food and shelter.
But since you might argue that 25% of everyone's income does seem grossly unfair to the really poor let's say everyone who makes under 10,000 a year pays no income tax (much like we do now). That gives the poor an incentive to... stay poor. I got a raise after working at my new job for four months. If we were in the flat-rate scenario there would have been negative incentive for me to take the raise. I could have quickly calculated that a fifty cent raise would put me over 10,000 dollars for this year so it would actually hurt me financially to accept. I might ask them to hold off on giving me a raise until next year when the fifty cent raise would bring my pay up enough above 10,000 to actually be worth it to me.
So do you think it's more fair to pay 15% tax on your 20,000 income and have someone else pay 35 or even 40% on their million dollars when you consider that 69% of your income goes to food and shelter and they pay just .07% of theirs on the same?
I think that education needs to be restructured. The whole concept of a college degree needs to be rethought for one thing. I don't know if we necessarily need to spend more money on it but the system we have in place definitely needs to be changed.
I have never really understood why the people who fix the roads have to be state workers. They'd probably do a better job for a lower price if it was contracted out. We certainly wouldn't be paying for that much 'labor'.