Is Bidens 62% top tax rate too much?

[holderofhands]

Is Bidens top tax at around 62% for some states too much? I know over-taxing can disincentivize people, while on the other hand it could be a good response to the disproportionate income inequality. I know under FDR it got up to 75% but I'm unsure of it's affects. 

[Forestluv]

@holderofhands That is a combined effective rate on the wealthy, not a statutory rate. The combined effective rate would be more like 50%, which isn't a major increase. Trump/GOP did large tax reductions / exemptions for the wealthy. I'd be in favor of rolling back those reductions, yet it's also important were the money goes. If the increased governmental revenue goes to increasing the military budget and warmongering, I'd be against it. If the money goes to improving schools and health care, I'm for it. For example, when there is a covid vaccine to make it free for everyone. 

As well, I'd like to see actual tax codes enforced. Money is power and money has become so concentrated in the uber wealthy that they have so much power they are essentially writing tax policy and evading taxes without consequence. 

The framing of "If we increase taxes on the rich, the rich will be disincentivized and may leave the U.S." is a framing of plutocrats. We are not talking about high tax rates for someone making $100,000 or less a year. In this zone, yes, making more money is incentive to work hard and be more productive. Yet once we get into people earning and accumulating 100s of millions and billions of dollars - the dynamics changes. This form is incentive to make even more billions of dollars is toxic. It becomes extreme greed and involves exploitation of others to keep increasing profits. That is toxic capitalism. 

[Preety_India]

@Forestluv  would you want it to be lower than 62%?

 

[Forestluv]

3 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@Forestluv  would you want it to be lower than 62%?

I'm not an economist and don't know specific numbers. Yet wealth in the U.S. has become hyper-concentrated and is causing serious problems. Concentration of money is concentration of power and it becomes toxic. And unregulated toxic capitalism becomes more and more concentrated in a hyper competitive, profits first system. There is no variable in capitalism to prevent this. The exploitation and destruction of the earth's resources and societies will get worse and worse. 

I think having spoonfuls of capitalism is healthy and can promote progress, yet too much is toxic. Kinda like adding curry powder to a dish of tikka masala. A couple table spoons spices it up, yet adding a couple cups of curry spice to a dish would make it grotesque and inedible. 

[Reciprocality]

Taxes ought be a communal good, in many countries that is its standard perception. In the US taxation is considered theft, maybe to some extent understandable seeing what it funds.

But who will pay for alternatives to oil and gas in the coming years so it is NOT the bottom who needs to do it? The government, which neccesitates a plan, a plan for proportionate taxation. This is an inevitable ideology called social democracy, and Americans are next in line.

Healthcare, complete education, a green new deal, a judiciary, Police departments.. the list goes on, and workers have already made themselves worthy of it, there will come a day when these are your American rights, to adequate degrees.

edit: As Forestluv alludes to, these numbers of 62% or the likes are by themselves uninteligable.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Reciprocality

[JosephKnecht]

The rich never pay taxes. If you make a lot of money, you pay accountants so that your effective tax rate is below 10%.

If you are billionaire Trump, you pay about $750 per year in taxes.   

In a democratic system, you must promise to take from the few and give to the many. There are a few billionaires and many poor.

Biden is only promising this because he wants to gain the vote of the many poor who believe that they can gain the money from the rich through taxation. 

[Preety_India]

@Forestluv what would you propose then? 

Capitalism is the mainstay of many societies. 

[Forestluv]

20 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@Forestluv what would you propose then? 

Capitalism is the mainstay of many societies. 

I'd prefer a socialist/capitalist hybrid system similar to the Nordic model. This would be progress for the U.S. Yet I know the bigger picture and I'm not an expert in the details of how that system would be engineered.

Other systems like Resource-Based economy has been proposed, yet I think this is too far advanced for where we are now. This is a Tier 2 level and most humans are at red-orange. For example, the majority of humans want to use technology for war and profits - not for sustainability and efficient communication in a holistic system. We need to evolve through Orange and Green first which is a socialist/capitalist hybrid system from my pov

[Reciprocality]

18 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

I'd prefer a socialist/capitalist hybrid system similar to the Nordic model. This would be progress for the U.S. Yet I know the bigger picture and I'm not an expert in the details of how that system would be engineered.

Other systems like Resource-Based economy has been proposed, yet I think this is too far advanced for where we are now. This is a Tier 2 level and most humans are at red-orange. For example, the majority of humans want to use technology for war and profits - not for sustainability and efficient communication in a holistic system. We need to evolve through Orange and Green first which is a socialist/capitalist hybrid system from my pov

If you do not know those details how can you be sure "the bigger picture" is naught but fantasy? Like literally impossible to aquire, just like a million dollar from thin air.

Or rather, for simplicity's sake, how detailed must a "bigger picture" be before it can beforehand be know to represent the actual? The other version of the same question would be: how diffuse will the 'bigger picture' be before it no longer represent what it claims to, beforehand?

[Hardkill]

36 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

I'd prefer a socialist/capitalist hybrid system similar to the Nordic model. This would be progress for the U.S. Yet I know the bigger picture and I'm not an expert in the details of how that system would be engineered.

Other systems like Resource-Based economy has been proposed, yet I think this is too far advanced for where we are now. This is a Tier 2 level and most humans are at red-orange. For example, the majority of humans want to use technology for war and profits - not for sustainability and efficient communication in a holistic system. We need to evolve through Orange and Green first which is a socialist/capitalist hybrid system from my pov

I fully agree with the idea of having a socialist/capitalist hybrid system. In my opinion, it is the best system that so far exists in our world. Don't some countries like the UK have that kind of hybrid system too?

[commie]

1 hour ago, Reciprocality said:

edit: As Forestluv alludes to, these numbers of 62% or the likes are by themselves uninteligable.

The word you were looking for was "meaningless". 62% is quite intelligible, as is the difference between 61% and 62% for instance.

29 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

I fully agree with the idea of having a socialist/capitalist hybrid system. In my opinion, it is the best system that so far exists in our world. Don't some countries like the UK have that kind of hybrid system too?

Considering you're writing on this forum, the UK very likely doesn't have a fundamentally different system than the one you're used to. Certainly it's very similar to the US system.

Depending on how you define "socialist" and "capitalist", every major country today has such a hybrid. But the real issue I think is whether the system serves capitalist ends or not, that is whether it's basically capitalist or not. In that sense, every major country is capitalist. Indeed, the world is.

[Opo]

10 minutes ago, commie said:

But the real issue I think is whether the system serves capitalist ends or not, that is whether it's basically capitalist or not. In that sense, every major country is capitalist. Indeed, the world is.

What do you mean by capitalist ends?

[commie]

Quite simply, the ends of capitalists as a class.

As an illustration, you might look at the priorities underlying the macroeconomic response to this pandemic for instance. An even more topical example might be the way the "movement towards socialism" (which just won the election in Bolivia) is celebrated for having presided over a pretty impressive GDP growth.

Edited October 20, 2020 by commie
fixed translation

[Emerald]

8 hours ago, holderofhands said:

Is Bidens top tax at around 62% for some states too much? I know over-taxing can disincentivize people, while on the other hand it could be a good response to the disproportionate income inequality. I know under FDR it got up to 75% but I'm unsure of it's affects. 

The highest it's every been is 93% top marginal tax rate under the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. This lead to the golden age of economic expansion.

Now, it's important to note how tax brackets work. So, you can never make less by making more. This is because (whether the top marginal tax rate is 62% or 93%), this only applies to every dollar earned after entering that tax bracket.

For example, with a top marginal tax rate of 62% for anyone making over $1 million a year, that means that their first $999,999 is NOT taxed at 62% but at lower levels within the tax bracket. They are only taxed 62% on every dollar made over a million dollars. So, if they makes $1,000,001 dollars, they are only taxed 62% on $1 of their income.

And this also leads to wealthy business owners finding economically stimulating ways to find tax cuts like hiring more people or improving their businesses.

 

 

[Forestluv]

5 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

If you do not know those details how can you be sure "the bigger picture" is naught but fantasy? Like literally impossible to aquire, just like a million dollar from thin air.

Good question. You've got me contemplating which I like. . . 

Imagine little people would view schizophrenia. A molecular geneticist focuses in on the Disc1 gene. A genomicist looks at the entire gene network. A neuroscientist looks at neural networks. A psychologist looks at subjective experiences and childhood trauma. A biochemist tries to develop pharmacological drugs. A sociologist looks at influences of social networks. A "normie" may see a schizophrenic as scary and threatening. A schizophrenic may feel like noone truly understands their condition and there is no place for them. 

Each of those people are contracted into their own limited view. To each of them, it is the complete view. . . . Each view is partial and has value. Someone who sees the big picture can see the inter-relationships. Yet a big picture thinker often lacks skills of details and actual implementation. Let's say I was to set up an institute of integrated research and therapy for schizophrenia. I don't have the detailed expertise in any one area, so I would need to compile a team of specialized experts. Without that, it would be a fantasy. Each sector of my integrated institute would be hollow. 

5 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

Or rather, for simplicity's sake, how detailed must a "bigger picture" be before it can beforehand be know to represent the actual? 

This is a great question of zooming in and zooming out - inter-relatedness of resolutions and what is "actual".

In a practical sense, if someone is too zoomed in or too zoomed out, they may make incorrect conclusions. If I'm trying to figure out why my refrigerator is broken, zooming out to the Big Bang and infinite inter-related causation within a singularity isn't going to help fix the refrigerator. I need to zoom in and find which part has malfunctioned. 

When we zoom in and out, it is what it is at that resolution level and all levels are inter-connected as a whole. The human mind is very conditioned to perceive 3D space at one resolution level - not zooming in and out and seeing continuous resolution levels. For example, we could look at a tree - we could zoom in with high power microscope to view cellular proteins - that is a very different view, a different from of "actuality". We could zoom in even further to the quantum level in which physical laws no longer apply. Material is immaterial - quantum fields of entanglement. Quantum particles are spaced further apart than stars are spaces apart. At this resolution, the actuality of the tree is very different. It's pretty much empty space. 

5 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

The other version of the same question would be: how diffuse will the 'bigger picture' be before it no longer represent what it claims to, beforehand?

I use microscopes a lot and this imagery appears for me: Imagine zooming in and out of magnification looking at a blade of grass. We can zoom from 1X to 1,00X - in and out. The zooming would be continuous. There would be no point in which the blade of grass stops being a blade of grass. There would be no point in which the actuality of the grass disappeared and a new actuality appeared.