Article: State Orders 2 Subcontractors On UConn Basketball Facility Off Job

[BigErnMcCracken]

In any event, the notion that somebody should pay more in taxes because they make more money is one of the silliest, envy-driven notions I have ever come across.

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." - Noted socialist Thomas Jefferson.

 

[metsfan2323]

In any event, the notion that somebody should pay more in taxes because they make more money is one of the silliest, envy-driven notions I have ever come across.

.

I don't think you have put too much time into really thinking about what this would do to the country.

 

[Strummer]

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." - Noted socialist Thomas Jefferson.

Wow.
Now there's threads getting out of hand and then there's [begin JJ Walker voice]threads getting OUT OF HAND! [/end JJ Walker voice].
I thought that the previously posted alien thought that Americans making more money don't spend more money could not be topped for king contemptible non sequitur.

But it was topped. By none other than Big Ern, caster of blowhardy aspersions.

The concept that TJ was anything other than the greatest individualist and libertarian who ever walked this earth has made my night. Thank you.

The quote you took from the letter to Madison is a reference to land, and only land. Prior to your quote, he wrote: "The property of this country is absolutely concentered in a very few hands." He recognized that the feudal system of Europe had infected the new world, and his desire was to break up the hegemony of the elite. Hardly socialist, but merely egalitarian.

His thought was to take a radically tilted playing field and attempt to move it closer to level, while recognizing it could never be there.

But to take that anti-legacy elitist thought and equate it was socialism is, supra galactic. Well done. Thomas Jefferson a socialist! Nice!

Blow that hardy son!

 

[Strummer]

I don't think you have put too much time into really thinking about what this would do to the country.

Not sure what you mean. The net economic benefit to dumping the current tax code would be huge. People who like the current tax code tend to be govt. employees or people who don't pay much or any taxes. That is, if you file a 1040ez and you don't pay more than a few grand in taxes each year and you itemize, what's not to love? Somebody else is carrying you.

In any event, this thread is dropping into the cesspool, with rich people not spending more money than poor people, and Thomas Jefferson the patron saint of Leninists everywhere, so I'm out of this bomber.

 

[CL82]

@Strummer A National Sales Tax, which I think you are purposing, would still require auditing.
Sure, but only a fraction of the amount. Don't forget, Walmart is 40% of all retail sales in the United States. You throw in Target, Costco, KMart, Sears, Amazon and Ebay and all of the gasoline and nat gas distributors, and you're probably over 95% of all retail in the country. There will be zero cheating from those vested interests, so you're really talking about a very small portion left to worry over, and most of it would be small shops whose owners would be very afraid of 10 year minimum sentences for black market sales. You are mistaken first in assuming that Walmart, Costco, KMart etc. do not receive sales tax audits. They do. You are also grossly underestimating the underground economy. Ever get a receipt from an adding machine rather than a register? Ever get no receipt at all? That's pretty much all going unreported. By the way if you've ever asked a vendor or contractor "how much if I pay in cash?" you are a participant in the underground economy.

Going to a pure sales tax system would be just as prone to cheating as the current system, if not more so.
Disagree completely. As I noted above, most retail shops are already collecting tax. It would be trivial to have them collect 40% tax rather than 6%, and they'd have no incentive to cheat. A 40% sales tax would be devastating to the economy. Devastating. It would drive an enormous amount of big ticket purchases off shore. In any event as noted above States do a huge amount of sales tax audits currently. Raise the tax amount and you raise the incentive to avoid it.

, and is potentially disproportionately burdensome on the poor, unless you modify your "all goods sold" position.
This gets down to fundamental tax theory.
Fundamentally, the fairest system is that everybody pays the same share, as we are all citizens with equal rights. 10 of us go on a camping trip, we all throw in 20 bucks for canoe. We don't charge Chuck more because he's the richest.
But if you want a system where "fair" means that people who have more pay more, then this system is perfect. People who make 20k a year only spend about 5-10 a year on retail. People making 100k a year spend a lot more. The 20k guy eats at McDonalds and pays X% of a 6 dollar meal. The 100k guy eats at SnobbyJoe's Grill and pays X% of a 30 dollar meal. If that's still not enough socialism for you, reduce or eliminate the tax on fundamentals - Milk, basic foods, basic cloth - and increase it on the more expensive items. 1$-100$ it's X%, 100 to 1000 it's 1.3X%, 1000 to 5000 it's 1.5X%, and so on. That's the beauty of it - very simple to target whatever you want using a single collection system.
Straw man argument. "Fair" was your term not mine. I said it would be disproportionately burdensome and it would be. The percentage of income not spent on discretionary items is far higher for the poor or middle lower middle class. Raising the cost of milk, bread and diapers 40% would have a greater impact on these families than the impact of an additional tax on luxury items. Effectively you'd eliminate the working poor. Thinking that that isn't a sound idea isn't 'socialism' it's economics. In any event, it seems that you are now prepared to abandon your "all goods sold" approach. Once you decide to do that you have to think about where to draw the line. That becomes complicated.

Eliminating property tax, which is inherently regressive, sounds good until you realize that it is the funds for home rule and local government.
No problem here. Home rule and local governments get their checks the same as the Feds. I'm not sure what you are proposing multiple "40%" sales taxes? Would the Fed number drop so to provide for State and local taxes? As noted above your 40% number isn't realistic.

A big centralized government making all the decisions isn't likely to be received well in this country.
Not sure what this means. The system I proposed eliminates a tremendous amount of Federal largess and involvement in our lives. No longer would the Feds be able to give tax breaks to special interests and the like. This is the main reason that this sort of thing would never get through - the fed govt. has gotten bigger every year for 230 years - there is no way they'd agree to shrink. Nothing in your proposal suggests the shrinking of government. In fact your "single collection system" would result in a transfer of power to the Feds. He who collects the money decides how to pass it out. That's a huge stick and likely would not pass constitutional muster.

Keep in mind as well that eliminating deductions, at least without a very gradual phase, in would be enormously destabilizing to things like property values, charities and R and D expenditures.
Time to get rid of artificial govt incentives that are scattered throughout the tax code. If the country felt that it simply could not get by without having the govt meddling in mortgage loan interest, than the govt could simply give out grants, outside of the tax code. Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and everyone's homes take a 30% + plunge. What do you think that would do to the economy? (Here's a hint the 1987 crash was precipitated by the addition of passive activity loss restrictions to the federal tax code.) Eliminate the charitable deduction and charity giving will plunge. You suggest switching a system where everyone gets the same break to one where the government decide who gets money doled out to them? Do you truly believe that reduces federal power?

BTW - this is nothing like a VAT tax, Never said it was which tacks a tax on services and goods at virtually every stage of production and distribution. Mmmn, no. VAT stands for Value Added Tax. It taxes only the increase in value at each stage of the system. Tax the raw materials cost at stop 1, tax the processing cost at stage 2 and the manufacturing cost at stage 3, etc., but you always get credit (similar to the way 'basis' works in computing the amount realized in a transaction) for the prior taxed value. In many ways a VAT makes more sense than a sales tax. This is simply a retail sales tax. That's it. Of course, it goes without saying, that the attitude of anybody supporting this would have to be that the point is to eliminate the 100 different tax systems and sources that exist. If a retail sales tax were implemented, it would be only if no other tax existed - otherwise it's just one more silly way to squeeze the same money out of people. I think we can agree on this last point. I don't particularly like VATs because they are invisible to the end user and thus easier to raise than an income tax.

Again I am in favor of rethinking the US tax system, but the answer won't be easy because the problem isn't.

 

[CAHUSKY]

A National Sales Tax, which I think you are purposing, would still require auditing.
Sure, but only a fraction of the amount. Don't forget, Walmart is 40% of all retail sales in the United States.

[/quote]

The only stats I can find say only 11% of retail sales occur at walmart. Do you have support for your 40% figure

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/0928/Are-Wal-Mart-s-shoppers-disappearing

 

[Danzz]

"Again I am in favor of rethinking the US tax system, but the answer won't be easy because the problem isn't."
This is the basic problem with simplistic solutions. They don't work for 95% of the people and are usually some form of trickle down economics. It is the rehashed theory that if you give rich people more money it will make things better for everybody.
As a retired former business I would support revising and simplifying the annoying tax code but it is extremely arrogant to propose that we should make rich people richer.

 

[SubbaBub]

Personal spending does not have a straight line relationship to income.

Wealthy spend more because they can, but only up to a point. Poor people spend everything because they have no choice.

Therefore, if you want more money in circulation, give more of it to poor people, as in raising the minimum wage.

 

[Danzz]

The only stats I can find say only 11% of retail sales occur at walmart. Do you have support for your 40% figure

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/0928/Are-Wal-Mart-s-shoppers-disappearing[/quote]
No, he doesn't have support of that figure because it is inaccurate by a wide margin.

 

[Husky25]

Wow. Never seen that sentiment expressed before by anybody anywhere. It's completely opposite to what I've experienced in life, both personally, through friends and family, and through many, many clients. I am assuming you are American. If you are Chinese, then your point would seem less alien. But in America, as a general rule, the more money people make, the more money they spend. The personal savings rate in the U.S. is currently about 4%, which means that people, on average, spend 96% of their disposable income.
On average, people making 100,000 a year, of course, spend more than people making 25,000, and by a lot. They buy more expensive homes, more expensive cars, more expensive vacations, braces for their kids, sweaters for their dogs, yoga balls, and so on. This is so plainly obvious, I can't even imagine that anybody who was born and raised in the U.S. would dispute it as a fact.

Then you must either be 6 years old, just completed an idealistic economics class, or both.

Personal savings rates cannot and does not prove your point in the least bit. In fact, the low PSR is a key factor in the cause of the Great Recession of 2007-09. A low rate indicates higher consumption on credit and/or dipping into past savings. It is a simple calculation and the floor is not zero. In 2006, when all was good with the economy, the average American PSR hit -1.01% at one point and was under 1% for the year. But unemployment was in the high 4s and people who had taken on debt, generally expected to catch up with it. Be that as it may, with a negative PSR, they were kicking the can down the road. As the recession took hold, unemployment increased, personal cash flows-in decreased to near zero, while personal obligations stayed what they were. The legs were literally taken out from under the economy, thereby leaving it without the figurative ability to kick the can any further.

At the end of the day, a significant number of people who couldn't afford to do so were living above their means (Yes, it happens) and some by a significant amount. You're scenario assumes that no one lives above their means, has any debt, and the cash outflow/inflow is static among all income levels. That just is not true. In reality, those who are better-off have a higher personal savings rates because the margin between income and cost of living (i.e. disposable income) is wider. They were better equipped to weather the GR storm and they make up for those living above their means, on a PSR basis.

Real world example (numbers changed for obvious reasons.): My wife (then girlfriend) and I were in the market for a house in 2007 and we were/are not financially rich by any stretch of the imagination. Prices were coming down but foreclosure rates hadn't begun to spike and ARMs were still a being pushed. Our mortgage originator approved us for a $600,000 mortgage. The both of us being CPAs, we knew full well that we could not afford even half that much, even though a reputable bank told us we could. We were lucky. For every family like us, there are 100s that were/are so uninformed of their own finances that they take the money. Then the interest-only or 5 year ARM converts and all of a sudden they are underwater. You may have heard of a few over the last 4 years (You know the ones that got government assistance while you are still paying full freight?). It's the proverbial purchase of a Ferrari with no money for gasoline.
Does it happen at every income level? Sure, but it's far more prevalent at the lower levels, where far more of the population operates.

The Median income for the United States in 2012 was just over $51,000 (and decreasing. whichmeans there is just as many households making under $51K as those making more than that amount (Highest by state = MD at $71K, Lowest = Arkansas at $40K, CT is $67k). Think about that for a minute. If there are 75 million households in this country (300million people divided by 4), that means 32.5 million earn between 0 and $51,000, while 32.5 million households earn between $51K and $infinity. On top of that, far more people are closer to the $51,000 than they are the infinity side. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider $51,000 to be a tremendous amount of money for any household greater than one (even then, it’s not), especially as disposable income decreases.

In simpleton terms, no one forces the 32.5 mil above the line to spend 96% of their annual income as you claim and the vast majority does not. The rich stay rich for many reasons, and not one of them is because they are spending on that level.

Release all the people who are in jail for minor drug crimes and give them jobs tracking down the black market folks.

I'm glad you know what emoticons are for. Someone would be bound to think you are serious.

In any event, the notion that somebody should pay more in taxes because they make more money is one of the silliest, envy-driven notions I have ever come across.

There are many theories on how to fix the tax code. Doing away with income tax (which, as an amendment to the Constitution, will be near impossible to repeal) and pumping sales tax up to 40% or whatever level you choose is not one of them. Neither is a flat tax. This is not 1935 anymore. those who can afford to so, will be mobile. They don't have to purchase good and services in the U.S., which returns the tax burden to the middle class, which won't exist anymore.

I had two neighbors at one point, same neighborhood, same school. One guy chose to work part time, live very simply, and play lots of video games. His wife worked part time as well. The other guy worked 60 hours a week, as did his wife. I never understood why most people in America thought that the "progressive" or "fair" method of taxing these two families was to charge the latter couple four times as much as the first for the same privilege of being citizens. Ah well. It's been a good ride for us, for sure..

They don't. That's not the way tax brackets work...and what *$k do video games have to do with it?