Fireblossom wrote:
Antrax wrote:
Fireblossom wrote:
Arganger wrote:
I said "Sometimes" because while everyone has a right to an opinion, those directly affected need to have the loudest voice.
Exactly.
So you would agree that income tax policy should primarily be decided by the rich since it affects them the most?
Actually, it
doesn't affect them much more than others... not here, at least. I'm not completely sure how the collected tax money is used in the USA, but here it's used for health care, education, taking care of public places etc. stuff that's used by everyone. If the income tax would be cut a lot from the rich people, it would also affect the ones with smaller income since the services they get that are paid with tax money would have to be cut as well. This is why the poor has an equal right to vote about those who decide these things as the rich do.
But sure,
if the rich people's taxes could be cut without it affecting the lives of the people who earn a lot less,
then it'd be their business alone.
You are conflating
Tax Collection Policy, with
Government Spending Policy. In the U.S. the U.S. federal income tax was established in 1913. At the time the income tax was 1% of incomes over 3,000 dollars with an additional 6% on incomes over 500,000 dollars. From the very beginning income tax has had a direct effect on persons with higher income greater than that on persons of lower income. Prior to that there was no income tax, and yes the government still spent money.
Now tax collection and tax spending is related as governments typically increase taxes to pay for more government programs, but there are many schemes of taxation, and few if any governments 1 to 1 raise taxes in according with spending, hence the deficit/debt crisis. Thus, we can safely say that income tax policy has a DIRECT effect on the people it is collected from, but an INDIRECT effect on the persons receiving the benefits of government programs. For equivalency, we can say that abortion has a DIRECT effect on the woman getting the abortion, but an INDIRECT effect on the people who would later pay to care for the child (the father or state).
In the U.S. in 2017 the top 10% of income earners paid 70.6% of federal income tax. The bottom 90% paid 29.4% income tax. The top 50% paid 97.2% of income tax, while the bottom 50% paid 2.8%. This means that the top 10% of the country paid more than twice as much as the rest of the country combined, and the top half paid 25 times what the bottom half paid. The DIRECT effects of income tax policy affect high income owners more than anyone else.
Personally, I think those two are so directly linked that they can be talked about like this. It's true that high taxes for the rich have a huge effect on the lives of the rich,
the effect is huge on the poorer people, too. It's not as direct, but it's not far behind, either.
Then again, I'm not familiar with USA's systems so maybe there's something here that you're trying to say but I just don't get because of that.
05 Apr 2019, 4:59 pm
