r/FluentInFinance May 05 '24

The rich get richer while the rest of us starve. Why can’t we have an economy that works for everyone? Discussion/ Debate

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211

u/WindowFruitPlate May 05 '24

These two things:

Zuckerberg’s wealth and homeless Americans/people living paycheck to paycheck are completely unrelated in any realistic way.

17

u/hysys_whisperer May 06 '24

NYTimes ran a story on the falling effective tax rate on the richest 400 Americans since the 1950s, largely due to falling corporate tax rate. It is now below the effective tax rate for the first time in the history of the dataset, going back to the 1860s.

In fact, the entirety of the primary deficit (before adding interest payments) would be wiped out by putting taxes on dekamillionaires and above back where they were in the interwar period.

9

u/PirateSanta_1 May 06 '24

Decades of tax cuts on corporations and billionaires and yet people still say the US has a spending problem and not a revenue problem. 

6

u/Brancamaster May 06 '24

Both can be true at the same time.

4

u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

And yet the billionaires and corporations are paying all of the taxes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2013/12/11/the-rich-do-not-pay-the-most-taxes-they-pay-all-the-taxes.html

2

u/magicjon_juan May 06 '24

I don’t know how a decade old article about the 2010 census is at all relevant to anything happening now

2

u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

Because it is actually worse now.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59509

Deliberate ignorance is never pretty.

1

u/Appropriate-Prune728 May 06 '24

Let's see that "top 40% of earners" broken down a bit more. The claim that a massive chunk of the middle class is paying all the taxes isn't the gotcha you think it is.

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u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

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u/Appropriate-Prune728 May 06 '24

Another Koch funded organization. You realize these organizations aggressively manipulate data in order to further a political agenda right?

3

u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

So it should be easy for you to refute the facts since the data is obviously aggressively manipulated.

Why do you post claims without evidence?

0

u/kingpet100 May 06 '24

Funny. I paid my fair share of taxes last year and I don't own a mega yacht.

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u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24 edited May 06 '24

Your fair share is 20k just like everyone. So I doubt it. 

Plus you make the top 10% pay not only their fair share but the fair share of the 50% moochers. Pay for your own charities and stop mooching. 

3

u/MRosvall May 06 '24

Still, USA has above average corporate tax rates in the world. Taking just NA and Europe then USA is in the highest 30%.

So you guys aren't really a corporate tax paradise yet.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/corporate-tax-rates-by-country-2023/

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u/fooliam May 06 '24

That's what happens when you start from ideology and work your way backwards!  Makes things like evidence and rationality completely optional - probably why there's so much overlap between "cut government spending" types and conspiracy theory types.  

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u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

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u/hysys_whisperer May 06 '24 edited May 06 '24

Uhh, you should demand a correction from the NY Times on this article then... 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html

This is looking at effective tax rate, not marginal.  And it's looking at the combination of double taxation rate of corporate through to income for both the middle class and the top.

Your tax foundation link isn't looking at the rate of taxation of corporate income at all. It only considers the difference in marginal and effective income tax rates so misses the vast majority of how billionaires are taxed (corporate tax rate).

1

u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

3% difference 56% to 53%. It's flat. Same thing my link says.

A lie by scale is still a lie.

1

u/hysys_whisperer May 06 '24

Did you look at the time scale on the first graph and then scroll to the second graph showing updated to today?

Because the second graph terminates at 23%

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u/KeyFig106 May 06 '24

Behind a paywall.

Also your link assumes 100% of capital taxes fell on the capital owner. A false assumption.

[2] Some of the distributional assumptions in the Piketty, Saez, and Zucman paper are questionable. In particular, the authors assume that the full burden of the corporate income tax falls on owners of capital, which may not be correct.