THE U.S. IS A LOW-TAX COUNTRY
- Thread starter NPT
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That will come sooner or later. There's no way the government is gonna let all that Roth money get by without getting some tax money out of it.
To me, the two are not even related. It's like me saying that I have to base my budget based on what my neighbor across the street does.
That's like saying the only way to decrease my debt is to make more money without even looking at what I spend.
More, more more.... that's the answer I ever hear.
Truer words have never been spoken. Most repair people in about every industry comes out and puts their little machine on what's not working and if it doesn't tell them what is wrong they have no idea what to do. I ran into the same problem with a relatively new refrigerator... little machine said everything was fine so the repair people have no idea hos to engage their brain and figure it out... probably because they really have no idea how it works.
If people actually understood Bitcoin the fair value price, in 2025 dollars, is at least 5-10 million.
The irony is Bitcoin solves a lot of the issues you probably have with the current system. The money supply has consistently grown around 7% for the past 50 years. Most of that liquidity eventually flows to scarce desirable assets (land, stocks, art, gold, and etc.). Unfortunately, this causes those assets to far outpace wages and in turn less affordable for more and more people over time.
And as you correctly noted the wealthy get to swoop in and scoop them up when bubbles burst for penny’s in the dollar. Then we start the entire cycle again at a higher elevated level than the previous level.
I’d also add the wealthy are the ones who benefit the most from the growing money supply (newly created capital out of thin air). They can access a shit ton of it, at extremely low rates, and buy up even more scares.
I’m going to be busy coming up for the foreseeable future and won’t be on here as much, as well. Several of my buddies growing up were farmers and some of my fondest memories was going out to their farm and jack assing around. Cheers on future harvests.
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Hopefully you can drop in sometimes. Even though I don't agree with some of your positions I enjoy reading your posts. You always post respectfully .... hate to see you leave.
Thank you, and back at ya. I will pop in every once in awhile, but mainly lurk. This place can get time and thought consuming. Which is a double-edged sword.
I'm a little blue dot in a sea of red. If I got mad everytime I disagreed with someone I wouldn't have any friends, or family.
I'm also not under any illusion that my posts will change the world, but it is gratifying to post something that's not popular, or understood, and see it play out over time. I posted about asset bubbles pre 2008. I posted about the relativity of money, and that if you give everyone something, you've given them nothing pre covid relief, ect.
In the near future, the FFS schedule changes I discussed will be made. It’s so hard to find info/data on it, it may already be changing. Likewise, in the distant future, tax rates will be viwed more by function and less by fairness.
Have a good day, y'all.
No, it is example of something that works just fine in other countries. Obviously the budget isn't under control so why not look at other examples? Better to stick ones head in the sand apparently.
Never said anything about not looking at what was being spent. But there aren't enough cuts to be made to address the deficit on cuts alone. People who think otherwise are living in fantasy land. Neither party is good on the deficit and now that republicans are in charge, they'll ignore the subject because they don't want people looking at it while they destroy the deficit even further.
lol uh huh sure.
Sometimes I don't see anyway out of our mess. I honestly believe that if you could double the government's revenue today at the snap of your fingers without destroying the economy that in 4 or 5 years we'd be running a deficit again.
How people in Trump's last administration treated government money.
www.pbs.org
But now he cares about cutting spending and the deficit? i'll believe it when I see it.
Lavish travel and questionable gifts loom over 6 Trump officials
There are now six current or former Trump cabinet members tangled up in ethics controversies over their use of government resources.
www.pbs.org
But now he cares about cutting spending and the deficit? i'll believe it when I see it.
I've seen the question IUJIM ask about what is their fair share many times and I've never heard a straight answer. The answer is always that they need to pay more. If someone tells me I'm not paying my fair share then tell me what my fair share is....more is not an answer.
No one is going to take the time to come up with exact figures that should be paid mainly because they have no power to implement whatever they come up with anyway. Most people probably also don't have the expertise to come up with an appropriate tax code and know all the factors that go into it (although not that often stops anyone from pretending to be an expert).
I would do away with most (if not all) deductions and make taxes much simpler. I would have different tax brackets still with people making poverty level wages paying little to no taxes and people flying around in their private jets paying more taxes.
If people don't know the facts then how can they say someone should be paying more. To me that is just a copout.
I would support a flat tax. There would have to be some kind of adjustments for low income people. The wealth tax idea thrown around is just plain stupid. If the ultra rich want to hold on to their millions of shares of stock (which is a lot of their wealth) a tax code could be written that would encourage them to sell it so they could collect taxes on the profits. Currently, long term (1 year or longer) capital gains are taxed at a lower rate. Why not make that lower rate a window, say the lower rate applies between 1 and 10 years and anything outside of that window the gain is taxed as normal income. (Note: I just randomly selected 10 years for example purposes)
if you don't know the facts, then how can you say they should be paying less or even the same?
What we do know is we have a ballooning deficit.
What we also know is you can't squeeze revenue from the poor and the middle class is also shrinking.
What we also know is that the wage gap between the wealthy and the not so wealthy is widening at an exponential rate.
Which makes one wonder why some people are delusional enough to think the wealthy are getting a raw deal.
This statement makes no sense.
You may argue that the political will to make sufficient cuts isn’t there. But of course Congress could cut spending as much as they wanted or needed to. That’s far more within their control than is how much they can raise in tax revenue. They literally attach a dollar amount to every spending item.
If you read through one of my long posts above, you’ll see that since 1950 (so 74 years) we’ve only had 1 year where tax revenues eclipsed 19% GDP. And only 10 years where they were above 18%.
A couple things about this:
1) For 12 of the 74 years, the top income tax rate was 91%. For another 17 years, the top rate was 70%. The top rate the lone year we went over 19% GDP was 39.6%.
2) The years above 18% all happened during years with high growth.
What this suggests is that growth has been a better predictor of tax revenues than tax rates. There are a number of reasons for this. One of them is that taxation drives economic decisions - many of them that not only deprive the Treasury of tax dollars, but that also deprive our economy of growth-inducing investment or consumption.
So, to your statement, it would be a lot more in line with history to say that there’s only so much we can hope to raise in taxes. If Congress ever decides to fix the fiscal imbalance, most of it is going to have to come from paring expenses.
This is a zombie lie. No matter how many times it’s debunked, it keeps on coming back.
Here is the World Bank’s chart of our GINI - which measures distribution of income. The higher the GINI, the fewer hands our aggregate income is in (ie, higher is more income inequality).
As you see, it’s been flat since the early 90s. It bounces between 40 and 41.3…on a scale of 100.
This is a zombie lie. No matter how many times it’s debunked, it keeps on coming back.
Here is the World Bank’s chart of our GINI - which measures distribution of income. The higher the GINI, the fewer hands our aggregate income is in (ie, higher is more income inequality).
As you see, it’s been flat since the early 90s. It bounces between 40 and 41.3…on a scale of 100.
GINI is widely used and provides a single simple number which is easy to understand. However, it does not show details about how incomes are distributed. Details which reveal inequality.
This thread is supposed to be focusing on incomes and taxation along with somehow balancing the federal government budget. A task which in my view must be resolved by Congress with input from the Executive branch.
The problem, as I see it, is that Congress and any Executive branch at a given time represents a broadly diverse constituency. We pride ourselves on being a country with a diverse population. But with diversity (including greatly unequal incomes and wealth) comes the problem of having our politicians with constituents whose interests conflict.
Furthermore, our pols today don't seem to get along. The fact they somehow must compromise so constituents with conflicting interests all get a fair shake escapes them.
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Neighbors love to talk about their home values rising..
When I remind them this is a bookkeeping increase and will result in an out of pocket increase in property taxes, they stare at me in silence.
And you don't hear me saying that i should pay less either so what right do I have to say the rich should be paying more. I think there's a lot of envy/jealousy when talking about the rich.
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