Senate Blocks Buffett Rule 30% Tax Floor on Top Earners.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

20% is 20%. It's the same for everyone. While the guy making $10,000 a year will not like seeing his $2000 go to the government, the guy making $10 million will not like seeing his $2 million go either.

No, the man making $10,000 is going to miss that 20% a heck of a lot more than the man making $10,000,000 will. If you take $2,000 from a man making $10,000, he may not be able to afford the bus fare to get to work. If you took $2mm from someone making $10mm, he's still got enough to drive a different luxury car to work every day.

And $2 million is a whole lot more than $2000. That rich guy is contributing the same total as 1000 poor guys.

And then there's also the flip side of your argument, which is actually an argument for my side. How much economic activity will 1000 people generate versus one person? A rich man may go out and spend $2000 a year on clothes. How much will 1000 less well off people spend if they spent...oh let's say $200 a year? $200,000. A thousand people spending $200,000 stimulates an economy a lot more, and more broadly, than one person spending $2000. We can lessen the tax burden on 1000 poor guys by increasing it slightly on one rich guy.

And to continue our example - your 20% tax rate on a guy making $10,000 a year may mean that he only spends $100 on clothes because he still has to buy food and pay rent, and have transportation to his job. If you increased the tax rate to 25% or 30% on the rich guy, he's still going to have the ability to spend $2000 on clothes without seriously impacting his lifestyle.

Like Skybird said, there's only so many cars and houses one person can consume. You get more economic bang for your buck by stimulating the middle class (if you believe that lower taxes are stimulative, which is another whole post in itself.) than the fractionally smaller upper class.

People seem to think rich people don't deserve their money and property.

That's a mischaracterization of the argument.

As long as they did not get it by illegal means, it's not your business.

Ah, but then there's the question of legality. Are laws automatically good based on the fact that they're a law? Is it right for the rich to use their wealth lobby Congress to enact laws that favor them at the expense of everyone else? Is it right for B of A or Citigroup or JP Morgan to use their influence to have Congress remove consumer protection laws and oversight? Is it right for them to avoid criminal penalty for outright fraud? Is it right for rich donors in Texas to lobby the state legislature to enact a tax break for a yacht purchase, at the same time we're cutting school bus service and teachers have to use half the light switches in a room to save on electric bills?

If you don't like making $10,000 a year, America gives you ample opportunity to do something about it. No one is stopping you from doing better.

If only it were that easy.

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents' educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

And that's just scratching the surface.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us...pagewanted=all