Tim Allen tweet about taxation

Originally posted by whodey
I think it is an important question.

http://www.commonsenseissue.com/obama-s-truly-radical-capital-gains-tax-agenda-2/

Why exactly are we taxing people? Is it to create more revenue for the government or is it to create more revenue for the poor or, in the case of the article above, is it being used as a punitive measure. In the article above, Preside ...[text shortened]... eople in line than a method of redistribution to the poor or even enriching those in Washington.

We are taxing people so we can balance the budget.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
We are taxing people so we can balance the budget.

No, because socialists will just keep on spending and spending, don't you see?

The [Swedish, KN] government budget has improved dramatically from a record deficit of more than 12% of GDP in 1993 [during the Swedish banking crisis, KN]. In the last decade, from 1998 to present, the government has run a surplus every year, except for 2003 and 2004. The surplus for 2011 is expected to be 99 billion ($15b) kronor.[38] The new, strict budget process with spending ceilings set by the Riksdag, and a constitutional change to an independent Central Bank, have greatly improved policy credibility.

From the perspective of longer term fiscal sustainability, the long-awaited reform of old-age pensions entered into force in 1999. This entails a far more robust system vis-à-vis adverse demographic and economic trends, which should keep the ratio of total pension disbursements to the aggregate wage bill close to 20% in the decades ahead. Taken together, both fiscal consolidation and pension reform have brought public finances back on a sustainable footing. Gross public debt, which jumped from 43% of GDP in 1990 to 78% in 1994, stabilised around the middle of the 1990s and started to come down again more significantly beginning in 1999. In 2000 it fell below the key level of 60% and had declined to a level of 35% of GDP as of 2010.[39]

Originally posted by whodey
So if what you say is true, how will increasing the taxes of the wealthy help the little people?

Firstly, this stuff about reducing tax for the wealthy needs a context. The wealthy have seen marginal tax rates slashed since the Eighties to the extent that some, like Warren Buffet for example, comment that their secretaries have a higher marginal rate than they do.

Secondly, rules have been changed in the past thirty years to enable the very wealthy to snatch a steadily increasing proportion of the capital and wealth in the developed economies. In the US, the top 1% increased their share of capital from 30% to 35%, in the UK from 20% to nearly 30%, in France from 21% to 25%. Deregulation and privatisation programmes are two major factors in accelerating this process.

Thirdly, the new (neo-liberal) rules mean that we are moving from an economy in which work and merit are rewarded to an economy in which more is given to those who inherit wealth and hold it as capital.

Fourthly, the class of people who are losing out in this process are the very middle classes who, for a time after WW2, appeared to be the big gainers in modern society. Today, they are the losers and they are not losing out because of programmes to relieve poverty or assist the poor, (the poor are not gaining any ground in this process). They are losing out because their position in the economy is being undermined, their status, their salaries, their conditions and benefits, are all under attack.

The sad thing is that if we see the Tea Party as a voice for the angry middle classes of America, then their anger has been cleverly manipulated and misdirected by the Koch brothers and others. Such a disastrous lack of political education! To take only one example, public spending on education does not benefit the poor in practice even a fraction as much as it benefits the middle class and that is one of many public spending priorities that is under attack in order to enable the very rich to evade yet more of their fair share in taxes. Redistribution generally has always benefited the middle class and it is a shame they are too badly informed to see this.

Tax the rich? What needs explaining is why they are being given such a free ride at the expense of every other section of society.

Originally posted by whodey
Ok. So raising taxes is not an end in itself?

Do you know where your tax dollars are going?

not really. i have a general idea about our local taxes, we get an annual booklet explaining what our local taxes are being spent on, such as police, waste management, roads and so on. it does not explain how efficiently the money is being spent. ive lived all around the uk and i can tell the money is not always used as well as it is could be.

Originally posted by finnegan
Firstly, this stuff about reducing tax for the wealthy needs a context. The wealthy have seen marginal tax rates slashed since the Eighties to the extent that some, like Warren Buffet for example, comment that their secretaries have a higher marginal rate than they do.

Secondly, rules have been changed in the past thirty years to enable the very wealthy ...[text shortened]... g is why they are being given such a free ride at the expense of every other section of society.

So you would say that increased taxation on the rich is merely punitive?

Don't get me wrong, everyone likes to kick a rich capitalist in the balls, but is that all taxation is doing?

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
No, because socialists will just keep on spending and spending, don't you see?

The [Swedish, KN] government budget has improved dramatically from a record deficit of more than 12% of GDP in 1993 [during the Swedish banking crisis, KN]. In the last decade, from 1998 to present, the government has run a surplus every year, except for 2003 and 20 ...[text shortened]... ell below the key level of 60% and had declined to a level of 35% of GDP as of 2010.[39]

Hence the trillion dollar deficits.

Are deficits bad? If so, how high is too high?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
We are taxing people so we can balance the budget.

If you took the wealth of every American and threw it at the national debt it would not even make a dent.

As for balancing the budget, are you saying that the US needs to balance the budget? I thought it was OK to run trillion dollar deficits.

Originally posted by whodey
If you took the wealth of every American and threw it at the national debt it would not even make a dent.

As for balancing the budget, are you saying that the US needs to balance the budget? I thought it was OK to run trillion dollar deficits.

The wealth of every American is over 50 trillion USD (2009 figure). The public debt is around 11.9 trillion USD (2013 figure, 16.7 trillion if one includes other liabilities). Do you ever wonder about the actual data when you make claims such as these?

Originally posted by whodey
So you would say that increased taxation on the rich is merely punitive?

Don't get me wrong, everyone likes to kick a rich capitalist in the balls, but is that all taxation is doing?

No it is not merely punitive but it is corrective to a process of wealth concentration that can only harm the societies we have developed in the past century. Remember this is the very wealthy we are talking about and the people losing out are what we loosely call the middle classes.

Read a bit about Piketty's work.It is now a number one best seller on Amazon in the US so it is not some crazy side show. He demonstrates that we are shifting back in the direction of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries when the top 1% owned 90% of the wealth in Europe (the US was a special case of course at that time and not comparable to anything) and people would marry into wealthy families as their path to security, because without an inheritance it was not possible otherwise to break through.

That is not mad - it is dead serious.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller

If you are not born into wealth to start with, life, for even for the best educated, will be like Jane Eyre without Mr Rochester.

Originally posted by finnegan
No it is not merely punitive but it is corrective to a process of wealth concentration that can only harm the societies we have developed in the past century. Remember this is the very wealthy we are talking about and the people losing out are what we loosely call the middle classes.

Read a bit about Piketty's work.It is now a number one best seller on ...[text shortened]... ith, life, for even for the best educated, will be like Jane Eyre without Mr Rochester. [/quote]

In other words, if you take enough wealth from the rich they will be unable to afford to own large amounts of land and large numbers of companies?

But the US does not tax wealth, it only taxes income. The rich don't need income.

Again, how is raising income tax on the rich going to help the poor?

Originally posted by whodey
In other words, if you take enough wealth from the rich they will be unable to afford to own large amounts of land and large numbers of companies?

But the US does not tax wealth, it only taxes income. The rich don't need income.

Again, how is raising income tax on the rich going to help the poor?

The UK is also evasive about taxing wealth and that is a huge gap.

Also, as you know, a good accountant can ensure that income is reclassified as capital gain (wealth) to evade income taxes and incur only the far lighter capital gains taxes, where these even apply.

So you have a point but you need to notice that the wealthy, while they do indeed enjoy wealth on other forms, also take to themselves a large share of income in our economies and wage inequality has escalated most of all in the US.

The actor who started this particular strand of discussion is certainly not enjoying the type of income associated with the majority of Americans who think of themselves as middle class. His crocodile tears for the middle class are a smokescreen. See this link for example:

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/tim-allen-net-worth/

$80million net worth plus he "earns" $235,000 per episode.

If that is middle class then I am a pauper and I need to get out my begging bowl.

Why can't you see when you are being taken for a ride?

Originally posted by finnegan
The UK is also evasive about taxing wealth and that is a huge gap.

Also, as you know, a good accountant can ensure that income is reclassified as capital gain (wealth) to evade income taxes and incur only the far lighter capital gains taxes, where these even apply.

So you have a point but you need to notice that the wealthy, while they do indeed enjo ...[text shortened]... and I need to get out my begging bowl.

Why can't you see when you are being taken for a ride?

You really don't see what is going on here, do you? Taxing the poo out of income prevents others from becoming better off and does nothing about the 1% other than solidify that there ranks will never swell to 2% or more.

In effect, the current income tax laws favor the modern day plantation owners.

There is, and never will be, any serious discussion about taxing wealth.

Originally posted by whodey
You really don't see what is going on here, do you? Taxing the poo out of income prevents others from becoming better off and does nothing about the 1% other than solidify that there ranks will never swell to 2% or more.

In effect, the current income tax laws favor the modern day plantation owners.

There is, and never will be, any serious discussion about taxing wealth.

There are several systems which use a wealth tax rather than a capital gains tax, although the wealth tax in these systems is arguably quite low. For instance, the Netherlands taxes assets at 1.2% of their value annually (if I remember correctly).

Originally posted by whodey
In other words, i....

Again, how is raising income tax on the rich going to help the poor?

Hang on - is the question about helping the poor or helping the middle class? Tim Allen referred to the middle class.

If I dare risk repeating an exercise which KazetNagorra tried recently, if you are prepared for the moment to make the ASSUMPTION that the total tax revenue is to remain the same, but we wish to change its distribution, then I would advocate that the very rich pay a greater share, more fairly proportionate to their share of the wealth and income in the economy, which (based on the ASSUMPTION made) would enable the middle class and indeed the poor to pay less tax. The trouble is that while the rich withhold their contribution and yet take an increasing share of both income and wealth, that leaves us to pay for government through an unfair burden of taxation on other classes who have a declining share of the total wealth and income. That is not sustainable.

You may say that is fine as we can make do with less public spending, That is missing the point of making the ASSUMPTION above.

It is one thing in a democracy to make a consensus decision that we want less public spending. It is quite a different thing to be told by a tiny segment of our population that they are taking away the resources we need, so we must get by on less. That is not democracy, it is a plutocracy, which of course is what we now have:

a society or a system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens

Originally posted by whodey
You really don't see what is going on here, do you? Taxing the poo out of income prevents others from becoming better off and does nothing about the 1% other than solidify that there ranks will never swell to 2% or more.

In effect, the current income tax laws favor the modern day plantation owners.

There is, and never will be, any serious discussion about taxing wealth.

The need to tax wealth is central to the argument in Pikett's work. Measures like inheritance tax and property tax can help. We are witnessing these taxes being dismantled instead - certainly in the UK.

I think that you are getting your concepts twisted. The 1% will always be 1% and never 2% by definition. You may imagine that more people can join the 1% if you wish.

Just what is it that you are advocating? Should this wnkr Tim Allen be taxed lightly to enable his children to inherit obscene wealth and if so, to what end? Just why will Tim Allen getting even more filthy rich benefit the middle class, for example?