• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Distributions of Federal Income Taxation

I wouldn't consider "need" the right word. It's human nature to get as much as we can for our labors.

Can you explain to us how wealth is a zero sum game? It isn't.

Luck and other circumstantial variables pay a role, but in general, people who are wealthy, earn it by work ethics. Generally, people who are at the lower rungs of the wealth ladder, are irresponsible in ways that are important.

Look at the achievers vs. the slackers from school, and consider what they have become when you see them at various high school reunions.

Blaming the rich for the problems of the poor is nothing but a lame excuse.
You can do everything right, but if you land a chronic disease that costs $10, 000 out of pocket every year for the next 30 years to treat, you're gonna be broke.

One could point to student loans as well. If you signed on the bottom line at 17 and took on $100,000 in debt to land a good job, you're paying about $10,000 per year ($6000 in interest) for the next 20 years to pay it off.
 
Yes, because monopolies are known far and wide for both their efficiency and quality of service.
No one can **** up healthcare more than private insurance. People just don't realize how bad they are being ripped off because most don't know the facts or how cheap healthcare is in other countries. They simply believe the lie: "We have the best healthcare in the world."

Newsflash: we do not. We have something completely different. We have the most profitable healthcare system in the world.
 
We need to eliminate it.

Certainly, health insurance needs to be decoupled from employment. It's nuts, when you think about it. Private industry spends billions administering health plans for their employees. And, they spend 10X as much more subsidizing it for each eligible employee.

My company pays 2/3 of my premium. And, this is the norm. Most people do not even realize that they are paying that much for insurance because they only see 1/3 of the bill on their paycheck stub. The only way they find out the true cost of their group plan is when they quit, get laid off or fired and receive the COBRA premium bill in the mail. It's rather sizable: $1500 minimum per month for a family plan.
My employer pays more like 80% of the premium.
 
I wouldn't consider "need" the right word. It's human nature to get as much as we can for our labors.

Can you explain to us how wealth is a zero sum game? It isn't.

Luck and other circumstantial variables pay a role, but in general, people who are wealthy, earn it by work ethics. Generally, people who are at the lower rungs of the wealth ladder, are irresponsible in ways that are important.

Look at the achievers vs. the slackers from school, and consider what they have become when you see them at various high school reunions.

Blaming the rich for the problems of the poor is nothing but a lame excuse.
Sorry, I don't subscribe to the dualistic notion that "I must be a better person; after all, I'm rich." Therein lies Ayn Rand's quasi-fascism. Some of the rich are indeed to blame for some of the problems of the poor. Among his first actions as president, for example, Trump removed the requirement that when granting federal contracts, the government consider among other factors the injuries and deaths on the job. Not a deal breaker, just one factor among several. That was the action of a rich man causing problems for poorer people. He also around the same time permitted use of a pesticide that causes birth defects, one withdrawn for review under Obama. Also causing problems for the poor, in this case farmworkers who might have deformed kids.

I worked with poor people and refugees for close to 50 years. To do the work well, has to hold two seeming contradictory notions at the same time. First, one preaches individual responsibility to one's clients. Second, one works to end the structural problems that put certain folks at a disadvantage.
 
Withholding is the only way it could work. You don't give a slightly stupid child his entire annual allowance on one day, do you?

Sure you would, if you were training him or her to be a grown up, instead of a larger, older, child (though I don't think "Allowance" is a great model).

Withholding was a WWII invention to maximize quick fund raising for the federal government. We didn't have it before, and we didn't need it when we got it - it was for the governments' convenience, not our own.

Getting rid of transparency would increase the felt pain of taxation because it would increase its transparency; which would be most beneficial for good governance. You'll get a LOT more people asking a LOT more pointed questions about what the government is spending their money onb once they see how much they are spending.

Do you even know how much your pretax paycheck is? I'd bet a mortgage payment 90% of Americans don't.

I keep hearing about this overreach, but I've never actually seen it.

That's their incentive structure 🤷 and one of the several reasons why we end up with a federal registrar the size of ours.
 
Meh. Withholding is easier than dealing with a great big bill at the end of the year.

And I know exactly what my gross and net earnings are. It's right there on my tax return.
 
Capitalism and taxes.
Businessmen remove three skins from the workers, and then each, according to the law, gives a piece of the stripped working skin to the state. From these pieces, they build one kindergarten, fifty government offices, and the rest go in state contracts, that these same businessmen receive.
 
Back
Top Bottom