94chem said:

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YouBet said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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I realize that "the employer pays half" of social security taxes. But my argument is that the employer lowers your pay in order to pay their half. So if there was no social security tax, your pay would be 15.3% higher

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Same concept with employer health insurance although that varies from employer to employer, obviously. People who have Big Corp insurance should not take it for granted. It's the best insurance out there. Different topic though.

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One of the best deals for corporate America is late career SME's who make twice what entry level people make, are worth 50 times more, and have to keep working until Medicare kicks in.

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You don't have to. Private insurance exists. I'm on it at 52. It's just more expensive and a little less flexible than your typical corporate insurance plan. And Medicare is not going to be cheap for your example either. Medicare is means tested. I will pay way more for Medicare than I ever did for corporate insurance when I get there even adjusted for inflation.

And government healthcare is not the answer either. Sweden has adopted free market and capitalist principles in the last several years because they finally acknowledged their govt healthcare sucked.

But, yeah, our corporate insurance was primo. Paid $50 per month for about the best health insurance you can find. Very generous plan by the employer.

Logos Stick said:

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I stole this from some poster and its the answer:



Liberals don't understand math, economics or human nature.

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That is awesome! Another blue star for you!

YouBet said:

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infinity ag said:

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1939 said:

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infinity ag said:

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Quote:

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If we confiscated every penny of wealth from Billionaires we would be able to pay off less than 25% of our debt.

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Awesome. So let's do it.

Just kidding of course.

But where I am not kidding is that the rich get richer in this country by not doing proportional work. For example, I had a lot of struggle in my earlier years but now I just invest and can watch my NW grow without moving a muscle. My job brings me a very small % of what I make each year.

I am no billionaire.

Now imagine the real ones, they make money just by having money. I guess this is capitalism and I am lucky I realized early on that working in a job is for slaves, you work for some time (as a slave) and then invest and then get rich like the billionaires.

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I guess we should just abolish the stock market then because to you it's not fair that anyone has made money without doing manual labor.

The most ironic part is that you Democrats are not smart enough to realize that the huge run-up in the stock market and real estate values is due to excessive spending by the government which devalues the dollar.

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Sure, go ahead.
But BEFORE that, you have to stop offshoring, and bring in laws so that CEOs cannot layoff as they please. Fix the system before removing the workaround.

"you Democrats" haha. Someone got triggered.

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The stock market is a "work around"?

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Yes.
It's my work-around to working.

CanyonAg77 said:

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I realize that "the employer pays half" of social security taxes. But my argument is that the employer lowers your pay in order to pay their half. So if there was no social security tax, your pay would be 15.3% higher

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Not really. When some payment goes down, such as a change in an insurance policy that covers employees because the employer increased the deductible or shopped for a better pricing, or the company that provides a uniform service cuts the employer a deal, a note at the bank gets paid off, or any number of expense reductions, few (as in almost none) employers rush out to increase wages. It just doesn't work like you describe it.

I'm no expert but here's Warren Buffet

https://share.google/NipmiCCh9JWiHZQ23

Of course, businesses aren't running salaries up and down due to fluctuating personnel expenses.

But, as a general rule of thumb, they are paying employees 7.65% less, because they know that expense is baked in.

If they can afford $100 a day per employee to produce widgets, they aren't going to pay $100, then fork over another $7.65

They are going to pay $92.35 to the worker, $7.65 to Uncle Sam

WTF does off shoring have to do with capital gains?

#1 obviously "if you taxed them of their entire wealth" it wouldn't make our government debt 0. That doesn't mean they don't need to be taxed more effectively, that the thing that matters most is the trajectory of our government debt, or that the goal should even be to make our government debt 0. Government debt is way more complicated than could be discussed on an Internet forum effectively, but the direction of interest rates is a good proxy for relative supply and demand dynamics for government debt (higher interest rates suggest more supply than demand for example). The goal should frankly be a managed rise in government debt as the tax base rises and American wealth rises. The goal should be a relatively stable interest rate and inflation with full employment. Debt can safely be constantly refinanced in this market type and it becomes another asset competing for capital with thoughtful levers up and down across the business cycles.

#2 why do billionaires need to be taxed more and by what mechanism - because we've made it impossible to to tax equity from billionaires. So for example, because I'm a salaried employee with a healthy stock portfolio, I am still taxed at a marginal tax rate on my income of 37%. Every incremental dollar I am further compensated for my time and labor, I pay $.37 in taxes. This roughly links my likely social cost of using infrastructure decently well and helps keep the American system functioning. Now let's look at the handful of billionaires…. They aren't taxed for their wealth, which I 100% agree with by the way. There is no federal inheritance tax (once you factor in all the million ways they can be avoided). There is capital gains taxes, sure, but they never need to sell their stock and realize capital gains. Often times they also actually have a low income. What they do is take out a loan secured by their equity (effectively turning their wealth into income) at stupidly low interest rates. But the problem is that they will never have to pay this loan back with cash while they are alive and thus realize capital gains. Between no effective inheritance tax and the step up basis on death their liability is solved largely without taxes. So they are backdooring their way into an income without ever having a tax liability. The problem I have with this fundamentally is that they never pay for the social cost of their consumption at any point because their marginal tax rate is 0%. Mine is 37%.

The way to solve this is to create a pathway to treat these specific secured loans as income for taxes purposes. I would even suggest offering a capital gains tax credit to offset any tax paid for this "income" which then still offers them the discretion to sell their stock at the time of their choosing. Effectively what happens here is if they want an AT income of $100MM against a $50B stock portfolio, they should need to withdraw a loan of $137MM. But then they receive a tax credit for $37MM on future capital gains.

This wouldn't be a wealth tax. It wouldn't force people to sell their assets against their will. It helps the government realize tax revenue sooner/at all. It aligns taxes with relative social cost (instead of burdening salaried people purely at the advantage of capital owners).

Ultimately, if you're paid a salary or a wage, I do think you should be upset at the tax structure as it exists today. I don't think the populist rhetoric or the wealth taxes are a reasonable solution to the problem. The solution is to tackle equity as it converts to income the same way that income is taxed.

Ridiculous how few people understand this. And don't forget that these people are so wealthy that it makes far more sense to just bribe the politicians to not change the laws, than to risk exposure to the tax loopholes. The basis step-up alone shelters enough income to easily provide for massive political bribes. Add in the tax free low interest loans, and it makes way more sense to write their own laws by pulling puppet strings. Amazing how many dolts on here think this is legitimate capitalism or conservatism.

Dallas82 said:

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Are you cool with billionaires paying a significantly smaller percentage of their income as taxes than you do? Middle income folks pay around 14%, billionaires pay anywhere from 3.4% to 8.4% depending on who you ask. Shouldn't they pay the same as you?
We won't even get to what percentage they pay in Social Security vs me.

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You're going to have to reference source Einstein.

They shouldn't have to pay any taxes so the wealth will trickle down

Logos Stick said:

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I stole this from some poster and its the answer:



Liberals don't understand math, economics or human nature.

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You're half right about human nature. They do understand propaganda, indoctrination, and how to sell racial and class envy.

For instance, it's clear that AOC isn't particularly smart, but she is smart enough to lead below average intellects down the garden path of socialism.

I'd be all for taxing the billionaires more if that money was spent on nothing other than launching the homeless in to the sun.

1939 said:

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US billionaires hold approximately $8.4 Trillion in wealth, most of that unrealized.

The US is now over $40 Trillion in debt.

If we confiscated every penny of wealth from Billionaires we would be able to pay off less than 25% of our debt.

If we confiscated that wealth, it would do nothing to correct our annual deficits.

Democrats tell us all our problems would be solved if Billionaires paid their fair share. If they paid their fair share, government could spend even more! More freebies for the public

How can people be so gullible?

• Our Main Street News Media is run by leftist progressives, useful idiots and minions.
• Our Federal educational system is run by leftist progress, useful idiots and minions.

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1939 said:

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US billionaires hold approximately $8.4 Trillion in wealth, most of that unrealized.

The US is now over $40 Trillion in debt.

If we confiscated every penny of wealth from Billionaires we would be able to pay off less than 25% of our debt.

If we confiscated that wealth, it would do nothing to correct our annual deficits.

Democrats tell us all our problems would be solved if Billionaires paid their fair share. If they paid their fair share, government could spend even more! More freebies for the public

How can people be so gullible?

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I will take your word for the numbers. The last 50 years of tax policies have been disasterous to the middle class. I will be dead by the time it happens, but if it is not changed politicians will be hunted down and tarred and feathered if not worse, Live in rural America and the feeling is no one really cares about their problems.

Dallas82 said:

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Are you cool with billionaires paying a significantly smaller percentage of their income as taxes than you do? Middle income folks pay around 14%, billionaires pay anywhere from 3.4% to 8.4% depending on who you ask. Shouldn't they pay the same as you?
We won't even get to what percentage they pay in Social Security vs me.

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You are wrong.
I asked AI ,"on average what do billionaires pay in income taxes as a % of income"

answer

• Billionaires in the U.S. pay an average effective tax rate of about 24%, which is lower than the average rate for the general population.

To the feeble minded this 24% seems low, but fails to consider much if not most of billionaires income comes from captital gains taxes.

What the feeble minded people forget is that the top 10% of wage earners pay 72% of the federal income taxes.
from AI

• Comparison with Other Income Groups
  Income Group
  Percentage of Federal Income Taxes PaidTop 10%. PAY 72%
  Top 25% PAY 86%
  Bottom 50% PAY 3%
  This data highlights the substantial tax burden carried by higher-income earners compared to lower-income groups.

It is becoming clearer and clearer why THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP IS adamantly opposed to AI research and development.

[Personal attacks are out of bounds. Apparently shorter timeouts haven't worked to convince you of that, so try a longer break this time -- Staff]