Secondly, the entire point of a progressive tax system is that the utility of wealth is not proportional to the amount of wealth. Doubling the wealth of someone below the poverty line can completely change their life, whereas someone with $10 million net worth lives much the same as someone with $20 million.

Progressive tax rates allow us to extract more wealth from the rich (who don't "need it" as badly) for the benefit of society as a whole. You can call that socialist if you like.

[1] http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[1] http://www.visualcapitalist.com/relationship-income-and-weal...

Here's an interesting thought experiment: Temporarily imagine our economy as a barter exchange between the rich and the poor. If the exchange rate between goods and services provided by the rich and goods and services provided by the poor remains constant, then no tax policy could ever possibly change the income distribution.

Much like I'm going to ignore the ad hominem of suggesting anyone who sees the current American economy as less-than-perfectly fair is a member of the "socialist rabble-rousers", you seem to be ignoring the fact annual taxable income represents a smaller and smaller percentage of one's assets as income increases. There are hundreds of exceptions, loopholes and incentives that are tilted toward the better off. Why do I get to write off some of my mortgage payments on my taxes simply because I can afford to take on a mortgage?

A. Because it's popular with swing voters.

B. Because it puts your purchase of a financed house on a more equal footing with a commercial landlord's purchase of that same house from a tax perspective. (Interest expense incurred in a bonafide profit-seeking business endeavor is tax deductible. If your private mortgage were not equally tax deductible, the tax policy would favor for-profit landlords over private homeownership. I believe that there are valid public policy reasons to encourage private homeownership at least to the extent of putting it on equal footing with commercial real estate leasing.)

To be very specific, if tax policy didn't do this, commercial landlords could literally bid more to purchase a given house than a private buyer could for a given projected rent [real or imputed] and investment hurdle rate. You could argue "well, then disallow all interest deduction!", which is a policy change that's been floated somewhat frequently, including recently, but is more complex and needs study [IMO] rather than simplistically eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and assuming that would make housing more affordable or more evenly accessible.

> X increasing is an indicator that Y is increasing. Therefore we need to increase X more in order to make Y decrease.

The issue is that inequality is growing to a point that there is a potential for social, economic, and political destabilization. How do you propose the issue be addressed? Because it should be apparent that trickle-down economics isn't occuring, and I don't see how things can improve without some sort of wealth redistribution.

I would actually recharacterize Piketty's (and the author of this chart) argument as:

"X increasing is a symptom that Y is increasing. Let's implement policy A. This may temporarily increase X, but it will stop Y from increasing, which will in turn stop X from increasing in the long run."

"Percent of income tax burden landing on top 20% of income earners" isn't a figure anyone is particularly interested in engineering or specifying for it's own sake. Where do you think it "should" be, and how can you justify it?

This is an emotional, not a rational appeal: "Won't someone think of the well-looked-after?"

The top 20% of earners earn more than half of the earned income that exists to be taxed. You could increase taxes on the rest quite a lot without actually collecting much.

Honestly I thought my household was in the top 20%. I was going to write that sometimes our financial situation feels tight, but that taxes aren't really the reason. But it turns out I was wrong; in 2015 we were probably third quintile. Should make it to fourth quintile this year.

I suspect a lot of people think they're higher on the ladder than they are. It's hard to percieve just how high the ladder goes.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-q...

An easy way to lower that percentage would be to lower their share of income. If your income share grows disproportionately it's to be expected that your tax burden grows disproportionately too. You are also forgetting that their tax rates have gone down a lot in the last 30 years.

A few years ago I went to a seminar put on by Fidelity about trading options. A person asked about minimizing tax liability. The trader who was doing the seminar said something that stuck with me since: "if I'm being taxed, I'm making money. So I don't worry about the tax burden."

All your stat shows is that the top 20% are making the money, and the rest aren't.

As for an answer to your question, you should know that it isn't as simple as a single number. For instance, why come about October do I no longer make Medicare and Social Security payments? Of all people more capable of taking that hit, I instead get a discount. Everyone else gets taxed on every dollar they make, but myself (a relatively wealthy person in that 20%), I don't pay Medicare and SS tax on about 25% of my income. Why? I make a pretty good sum on capital gains every year. Why is that taxed at a lower rate than income, when all I did (at most) was click a mouse button a few times?

IOW, any single sentence solution for a complex situation, be it the Middle East or taxation, should be ignored.

Income tax is less than half the revenue of the federal government. Payroll taxes are huge, and disproportionately borne by the poor. Excise taxes are huge, and disproportionately borne by the poor. Overall, including state taxes (which are strongly regressive as well) the US has very close to a flat tax system, not progressive at all.

Income tax is not synonymous with the tax burden. The article states it's less than half:

> The individual income tax remains the most important levy in the U.S., providing nearly half of federal revenue.

Many people would say: It needs to be whatever results in roughly equal income growth across all income percentiles.

BTW, your comment is yet another indication that Hacker News is infiltrated by people likely to be paid to post pro-hyper-rich propaganda. I mean, what's in it for you to oppose a more progressive tax rate except to prove your deep misunderstanding of the power of capitalism to push all the money to one corner?

So what if the rich pay for everything. Look, man. The poor have nothing. There's nothing left. They're not going to retire. They'll work until they drop dead. They don't get decent health care. They'll die from avoidable, treatable illness. And if conservative Congress had its way, there'd be less Medicaid. Oh, and now they want to take away the right to sue elderly nursing homes. At what point do you decide that torturing your fellow American is enough?

Be careful here. It's one thing to disagree and to point out percieved logical fallacies. It's another thing to group everyone who disagrees with you into a category that you dismiss. People very easily form an us-vs-them mentality due to our tribal evolution, and this line of thinking has the potential to go down that path.

I'm not thin-skinned enough to consider this a threat, but I do think its inflammatory enough to be in violation of HN's guidelines.

As for the accusations of astroturfing, I don't know what to say, but I hope this paranoia that is increasingly common on the internet goes away. It's downright unhealthy.

I do agree with your point on the astro turfing, your comment didn't come across as one to me, but I have been noticing myself thinking "oh, this must be a paid for comment" more and more. I'm not sure if this is healthy skepticism or not.

On topic. I largely agree with both comments. The top 20% shouldn't be asked to even pay as much tax as they currently are. I like the idea of a progressive tax system, those with the strongest shoulders carry the heaviest burden. But this is clearly, to me, too much.

Additionally this shouldn't be fixed by lowering taxes. The top 20% shouldn't be in a position that they make so much more than the remaining 80%. We need to fix a system of work not paying enough, large companies exploiting workers and poor healthcare and education systems.

I think we're awfully close to agreement here. I'm hesitant to advocate attempting to engineer this by forcing higher pay. I just don't believe we can snap our fingers and collectively decide that the output of our workers is worth more than it is.

I don't know the exact problem or solution, but I believe that our technology has failed us. Our modern technological advancements have been laser-focused on displacing human labor, rather than enhancing it. We're making automated systems where the few human operators left at all are more replaceable and therefore less valuable. We need to find technological solutions where the combined output of automation and expertise of humans are leveraged together. That was what built the middle class in the first place. Not shaking down the wealthy.

Why can't we snap our fingers and decide the output of workers is worth more than it is? We have many many dillusions of value. Value works by people collectively agreeing something is valuable, that's the history of value.

Why are you so focused on the tax burden stat? What is the significance or takeaway from that? Are you arguing that rich people's lives are being too adversely affected by their income taxes? Are you saying poor people should pay more taxes? Are you basically arguing the libertarian/objectivist view that the government shouldn't be meddling in free enterprise?

As others have argued, I would say that relative income tax burden alone is not a great indicator of much.

Oh, please. It would take some pretty thin skin to even remotely take this personally, rather than as a reference to The Revolution(tm). "First against the wall...", that kind of thing. And, personally, it's a statement worthy of a moment's thought or two, as I'm sure there's a breaking point. I just couldn't say where that might be. Perhaps a 95% top tax rate would forestall that for just a little bit.

In general I find these "you're better off poor now than rich in the past" articles really highlight how thick the author's bubble is.

Either way, the justifications are the point of my comment. He starts off with luxury homes being hard to travel between and traveling the world when many Americans don't travel internationally at all or even move out of their state.

I'd throw in that his first point was one I MOST agreed with all things considered. I can't deny A/C is important to all Americans, and basically makes the sunbelt hospitable to humans. And about 80% of Americans do fly so they might miss that (1) (however, should be noted about half fly less than once a year, it might be possible a lot of people only flew a long time ago in better times. I can't find the data though so that's the most I'll say).

For his other points:

Red Curry and Vindaloo Chicken? In a time where popping in the microwave or ordering fast food is at an all time high compared to preparing food or actually going out? A lot of people would be happy just to have a personal chef even if it's only local food.

The internet being gone? What a shame that people lose out on the largest source of depression in their lives! In 1916 you have the advantage of occupying yourself with activities modern society has stamped out, like English fox hunting or playing IRL Sims with a company town! Funny thing about that second part, since paternalism was already dead and towns in general was in decline, it kind of makes the argument that it would be better to be rich even further into the past.

Medicine's a bit of a wash. Modern Medicine is effective but you need to actually afford it in the first place. For a lot of people, it would just be a trade of actually having some treatment for not having as many vaccines. Speaking of which, 1916 was around the time anti-vaccination had lost in the original argument. Now its gaining steam again, so they might not even have that benefit soon. Dentistry is better, but its telling he only mentions the toothbrush. 22% actually floss, and its a bit telling the amount of people that getting a cavity before adulthood is the complement (2). I'd imagine a lot of people would be fine with dentures if it was still socially acceptable like it was in the past. They're already fine spending money to cosmetically have better teeth instead of actually taking care of them.

Overall, its a bit funny that, when you think about it, the article is basically written by a staunch right libertarian, but sounds like it was written for every stereotype of the "liberal coastal elite". Reminds me of that Popehat article where he realizes that while he's libertarian he's probably more "coastal elite" than the left overall.

[1]http://www.gallup.com/poll/1579/Airlines.aspx [2]http://www.statisticbrain.com/dental-hygiene-statistics/

(Also, by spreading the wealth more evenly, society would likely progress faster. Less solid gold iPhones, more standard iPhones. Less Bugatti Veryons, more Tesla Model 3s.)

For example if we set a taxation of 99% over 1 billion dollars, you pay 99% only the parts exceeding that limit

Assuming you earn 1 B and one dollar, you pay 99 c. more taxes, and that's it

It is a simple way to discourage accumulation of improductive wealth

Second: the bulk of state taxes income is not from salaries it's from corporate taxes, but corporation are very good at avoiding them.