Tax cuts aren't revenue neutral and have become a drag on the economy. When government uses the power of spending to bring down the cost of living/doing business, it makes the country more prosperous and compe ive.
The Trump tax cut would raise taxes for all but top 10% earners and blow up the deficit.
The Harris tax cut would only raise taxes on people making >$400,000k/year. Every other bracket would see their taxes go down.
https://x.com/BharatRamamurti/status...67104068108691
Kamala Harris wants to invest and cut the cost of living, says Bharat Ramamurti
Last edited by Winehole23; 10-27-2024 at 05:44 AM.
Lot of angst on red or blue tax proposals. Most on either side are bull pandering and will never become law. Odds are we are looking at a divided house and senate leading to stalemate no matter who is president. One thing we can count on though..2 trillion+ annual deficits as far as we can see. Neither side has the balls to fix it.
One obvious solution is right there on the revenue side. More taxes.
For sure nobody has the balls to do that either.
The whole concept of the "top 1%" is incredibly misleading. It groups together people who make $400k/year with the Bill Gates and Elon Musks of the world. The $400k/year earner is closer to someone making minimum wage than they are to someone who has an 8-figure net worth. From some internet sleuthing (so very rough, raw numbers), 2.6% of all US households make over $400k/year. Households making over $1 million/year total up to 0.5%. So, 2.1% of all US households or 2.76 million households, make less than a million but more than $400k a year - with the majority of those households grouping together closer to $400k than to $1 million.
Those 2.76 million households aren't re ed rich. They shoulder an atronomical tax burden relative to their income, literally paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per household to the USFG. They're shouldering this burden while losing out on assistance like the SALT deduction (capped at $10k now).
Income inequality exists. Billionaires, hundred-millionaires, even tens-of-millionaires should shoulder more of a burden - especially since their wealth is typically tax avoidant. But I'd like someone to explain to me why a dude making $400k should be treated the same tax-wise as Elon.
we talk about the 1%, but it's really the top decile of that -- the top 0.1%
So who is next after you take theirs? That might balance the budget for a year or two. You do know money is mobile, don't you?
Let's do it and find out.
Spoken like a true Socialist.
That's not socialism and I'm not calling for socialism tbh.
Let's just start by letting their Trump tax breaks expire like everyone else's.
LOL, you don't usually back track that soon. Going from confiscating the top .1% wealth to ending the trump tax cuts is a big swing.
sure, it's well known rich people are adept at cheating and shirking their taxes.
btw, I didn't say that others don't need to pay more taxes too.
tax revenue relative to GDP has shrunk 3% since 2000, I'd call that chronic underinvestment.
How has spending grown relative to GDP?
when conservatives talk about the national budget, they act like one whole side of the ledger can always go down and never go up. that's unrealistic, and it shortchanges everyone in the long run -- except for people who make money in their sleep.
don't know, maybe you can provide information about that data point
Just saying there are two sides to that coin. Would love to stay and spar but gotta get ready to go see David Gilmour ar at the Hollywood Bowl tonight. Bye.
I said let's start there and I never said "confiscate" anything.
LOL you're so defensive on behalf of the super rich. I'm sure they appreciate your effort.
every ing time
Your side is "we'd better do nothing!" which is why we are in this situation right now.
https://archive.is/fn2kx#selection-2767.0-2787.278Many Americans are pinching pennies, exhausted by high prices and stubborn inflation. The well-off are spending with abandon.
The top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets.
Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.
All this means that economic growth is unusually reliant on rich Americans continuing to s out. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that spending by the top 10% alone accounted for almost one-third of gross domestic product.
Between September 2023 and September 2024, the high earners increased their spending by 12%. Spending by working-class and middle-class households, meanwhile, dropped over the same period.
“The finances of the well-to-do have never been better, their spending never stronger and the economy never more dependent on that group,” said Zandi, who oversaw the analysis, which was based on data from the Federal Reserve. The analysis runs through the third quarter of 2024 because that is the most recent data available.
Taken together, well-off people have increased their spending far beyond inflation, while everyone else hasn’t. The bottom 80% of earners spent 25% more than they did four years earlier, barely outpacing price increases of 21% over that period. The top 10% spent 58% more.
pinning social mobility to the continual appreciation of one asset class has created barriers to entry
"Buy, borrow, die"
https://data4democracy.substack.com/...naires-legallyWhile most Americans live in a world where income is earned, taxed, and then spent, billionaires operate in an entirely different financial universe:
- They build wealth through assets that appreciate without creating taxable income
- They never sell these assets, avoiding the capital gains taxes that would trigger
- They tap into their fortunes by borrowing against their holdings at rock-bottom rates
- When they do have income, they slash it through sophisticated deductions
- They create "charitable" structures that serve dual purposes of tax avoidance and control
- They pass their empires to heirs completely tax-free through the stepped-up basis loophole
The result is a financial magic trick: enormous wealth growth with minimal tax obligations. It's a system so advantageous that it explains what might otherwise seem irrational—billionaires' willingness to support policies that create market volatility and potentially harm their investments.
meanwhile, everyone else struggles
https://upgradedpoints.com/news/inflation-vs-wages/Key Takeaways
- National Purchasing Power Decline: Real wages declined 3.2% between December 2020 and December 2024 as prices (+21.2%) outpaced nominal wages (+17.3%).
- Regional Differences: Baltimore (-14.0%), Dallas (-12.1%), and Boston (-11.2%) experienced the steepest declines in real wages.
- Positive Outliers: Tampa, Florida (+3.5%) and Houston (+6.3%) were the only major metros where wage growth outpaced inflation.
- Public Sentiment: 71% of Americans say it is harder to get by now than a decade ago, citing rising housing and grocery costs.
"last year" Bide...I mean Obama was President.
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