<i>Epistemic status: wildly overconfident. "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!"</i><p>This is naive on two counts. You can't raise taxes without affecting people's behaviour. If someone's tax burden goes from 35% to 45%, they'll put more effort into avoiding taxes, and you're not going to see the increase that the obvious calculation says you will.<p>But let's ignore that for now. The highest number here is $276 billion. That's a bit less than 10% of the $3 trillion tax receipts collected in 2014. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Major_receipt_categories" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#M...</a><p>That's a significant amount, but it's not really earth shattering unless you can use it effectively. And if you can use it effectively, you probably could have used the previous $3t effectively as well.<p>In reality, when you collect an extra $X billion, you don't get to go "oh great, we can spend $Y billion of that on paying for college tuition, $Z billion on a child tax credit, and the rest can reduce the national debt". What actually happens is the same thing that happened to the rest of your money. It goes to the military, it goes to subsidies for entrenched interests, it goes to pork barrels, and a fraction of it goes to actually improving things.<p>What could an extra $276 billion do? Surprisingly little.
This needs to happen.<p>Not only do removing tuition fees or enacting universal healthcare remove systemic inequalities, they actually make everyone wealthier. We will have a stronger economy if we take care of the social infrastructure we need. These measures lead to growth.<p>Imagine a world where a startup entrepreneur doesn't have to be terrified of their health insurance status - it's the same one where a working class family isn't bankrupted by illness. Imagine a more highly educated workforce with more potential hires domestically - it's the same one where a high school graduate can afford to be the first person in their family to get an education. The things that help the poorest in society help all of us. Even if you don't care about what happens to poorer members of your community, you can rest easy in the knowledge that these things benefit <i>you</i>. Social infrastructure works.<p>The <i>only</i> detrimental effect this would have is that the very richest people don't get to keep quite as much money, on the face of it. But they would make more money overall.<p>I would like to see a fairer America, where more people have opportunities, and fewer people are living harsh poverty conditions. It's exciting to see these topics finally get the air time they deserve.
One reason why the 1% pay less taxes is b/c they make their money on investments rather than income. The yearly capital gains tax (tax on investment gains) is ~15% while income tax in that bracket is 30-40%. Those in the 99% pay somewhere between 10-28% income tax. So it would seem obvious that we should simply raise capital gains tax to 30-40%. However, investments and income are not equivalent. Making an investment is correlated with a certain amount of risk. For example an investment in a General Motors corporate bond has a risk of default (very apparent in 2008). So if we raise taxes on investment gains, we dis-incetivize investment activity (b/c it therefore lowers expected gains). So it makes places like GM less able to finance things like payroll or build factories that employ regular people.<p>I'm not saying we should or should not raise taxes on 1%'ers. But we should keep in mind that there is no free lunch. What we do has unintended consequences that we should keep in mind.
It's beyond naive to expect American politicians to do anything remotely responsible with increased tax revenue. There are countless examples throughout recent and age-old history that show what happens when you give government money to spend like drunken sailors but we don't ever seem to learn from any of them.<p>And if Hillary Clinton was serious about any of this, she would return donations from all of these people.
> That would more than cover, for example, the estimated $47 billion cost of eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed<p>I would be in favor of this proposal if it could be demonstrated that college costs could actually stay somewhat stable (i.e. not increase faster than inflation) for even a relatively short period of time. Otherwise the cost of this could spiral out of control in short order.
There seems to be quite a bit of FUD and a lot of apparent guessing in these comments. Regardless of politics, are there any studies or evidence to back up or even discount any of these claims?<p>How does one separate the politics from the rest?
The idea of a 'fair share' isn't so important here, because the numbers are huge and have to come from somewhere. It isn't like $100 billion sits under a mattress, it will already be out in the economy, invested in something.<p>Raising tax is one part of the people getting what they need. The other questions that are just as important are how to provide services as cost effectively as possible and is it worth the loss of investment in the economy. Also maybe is existing investment channeled effectively by the existing tax structures.
I think a reasonable metaphor for thinking about this issue is to consider a grocery store, where is aisle represents a different kind of income and each store represents a different country. If prices get too high in one aisle, shoppers that spend a lot of time in that aisle will switch stores if they can afford the drive. It seems like both people and politicians tend to focus on the "earned income" aisle because that's what people are familiar with. That serves as a nice area for politicking because they can "tax the wealthy" without actually hitting the real donors in any meaningful way since most of their income comes from other sources. At the same time corporations and high net worth individuals are more than capable of leaving, hence the double-irish, etc. If they go, tax revenues go to 0 rather than small, so it would seem to be in the strategic interest of the United States government (assuming we want to maximize revenue which is probably not the goal but will work for this purpose) to be the lowest tax domicile for that kind of income, but just barely. That way we attract wealthy individuals but still "extract" the maximum feasible wealth from them. I really don't like the adversarial nature of this kind of thinking, but you have to at least admit that people are corporations do venue shop. If that's not brought up at all, someone's being naiive, or more likely, disingenuous.
Because its america - there is a chance it might work.<p>But the reality is capital flees whenever a country tries to impose higher taxes.<p>The solution is a global taxing regime - something that Thomas Picketty advocated.<p>Taxes fundamentally is an business expense - and likes all business expenses companies will try to reduce it as much as they can - naturally due to the freedom of the market - companies that do not have to pay higher taxes will produce cheaper goods while maintaining quality and destroying their competition.<p>Its a prisoner's dilemma problem. With countries playing off each other to welcome businesses in their countries - the UK, US, etc.<p>The solution is for all countries to co-operate and create a global system to keep a close eye on the flow of capital. A change in america might actually lead to it, since america is good at bullying other countries to get its way.<p>Btw the same thing happened with China - its not that the Chinese are somehow inherently more capable - its just that they did not have the same level of obligation to their workers - health, pension, etc - as industrialized nations.<p>This is why its important to create a even and common playing field before talking about the "magic of the free market".
Not entirely related, but progressive taxation schemes make me extremely uncomfortable. It's a shame so many people want to continue even farther down the rabbit hole.
No idea why we're still not doing this.<p>Just tell the 1% that if they want the government to provide them security from the marauding masses (we're getting there), they need to pay up their fair share.
No, just no. Taxation (of individuals at least ) is theft. If one person puts a gun in your face, or threatens to, and demands your money, you would have no problem seeing it so. But because of the societal construct we call "government" some people are deluded into believing that "many men with guns" have some innate authority that "one man with a gun" lacks. But being robbed by many men is no less robbery than being robbed by an individual.<p>Now, if you want to talk about corporate taxes, that's a somewhat different story. Corporations owe their existence to the State (whether they should exist or not is a separate question) and since they derive benefits from the special status granted to them by the State, I can see a reasoned argument that they should pay for that special status. Of course there are potential, negative, unintended consequences to raising corporate taxes, but the concept is more palatable than the individual income tax (which needs to be completely eliminated).