I think the original issue discussed was same old, same old—the assertion that the wealthy don’t pay their share in taxes because the tax on capital gains is lower than the tax on income and it’s precisely from capital gains that the super-wealthy get their cash flow.
There was an objection that this argument doesn’t account for corporate taxation (the corporate tax rates in the US are among the highest in the world, by the way).
You countered by handwaving that it doesn’t matter much. You also said “Also, money received as income and then spent, becomes someone else’s income, which is also taxed, and so on.” and it’s precisely the point this statement that I do not understand.
I contributed some numbers showing that it does matter and soon thereafter we ended up here.
The original contention I was responding to was that Walmart paying its employees little enough that they require public assistance is effectively a subsidy from the wealthy to the lower classes. My contention is that, while the wealthy may contribute a significant proportion, possibly even in excess of the proportion of the population’s total income that they represent (although this is highly questionable,) the majority of the subsidy would be coming from the middle and upper-middle classes. In this case, the relevance of my comment about money from sources other than long term investments being taxed more times over the same time frame is that long term investments thus represent a lower rate of money being cycled into the government over time.
In what respect? I don’t see how the content of that article differs from the point I made. The article notes that the effective rates are not as low as one lowball estimate suggested, but they’re still much lower than the nominal rate.
:-)
I think the original issue discussed was same old, same old—the assertion that the wealthy don’t pay their share in taxes because the tax on capital gains is lower than the tax on income and it’s precisely from capital gains that the super-wealthy get their cash flow.
There was an objection that this argument doesn’t account for corporate taxation (the corporate tax rates in the US are among the highest in the world, by the way).
You countered by handwaving that it doesn’t matter much. You also said “Also, money received as income and then spent, becomes someone else’s income, which is also taxed, and so on.” and it’s precisely the point this statement that I do not understand.
I contributed some numbers showing that it does matter and soon thereafter we ended up here.
The original contention I was responding to was that Walmart paying its employees little enough that they require public assistance is effectively a subsidy from the wealthy to the lower classes. My contention is that, while the wealthy may contribute a significant proportion, possibly even in excess of the proportion of the population’s total income that they represent (although this is highly questionable,) the majority of the subsidy would be coming from the middle and upper-middle classes. In this case, the relevance of my comment about money from sources other than long term investments being taxed more times over the same time frame is that long term investments thus represent a lower rate of money being cycled into the government over time.
As an aside, the U.S. has, by the standards of other countries, high nominal corporate tax rates, but low effective corporate tax rates
Not quite that simple
In what respect? I don’t see how the content of that article differs from the point I made. The article notes that the effective rates are not as low as one lowball estimate suggested, but they’re still much lower than the nominal rate.