People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness

Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by rayiner on Sunday September 10, 2017 @09:56AM (#15212223)

That number just shows why “tax the rich more” isn’t the way to pay for services everyone uses like healthcare. Top 5% isn’t just Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Bay Area engineers will hit that living alone. So will a couple where e.g. one person is a nurse and another is in IT. It’s a very expansive group.

Total spending at all levels of government in the US is almost $7 trillion. So even if you tax the top 5% at 75%, you’re covering 17% of total expenditures. European countries don’t build their welfare states by heavily taxing the rich. In say Germany, an entry level office worker will pay 30%+ of their income in taxes and mandatory insurance.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by AnthonyMouse on Sunday September 10, 2017 @10:33AM (#15212354)

> So even if you tax the top 5% at 75%, you’re covering 17% of total expenditures.

And that's assuming a 75% effective rate, which you can't get at the 95th percentile without also charging high effective rates to the majority of people because it's not possible to charge more than a 100% marginal rate on the difference.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by dmoy on Sunday September 10, 2017 @12:02PM (#15212763)

> European countries don’t build their welfare states by heavily taxing the rich

Idk according to my swedish coworker, there was a marginal tax rate of 70-80%++ from like 1940-1985 or something.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by rayiner on Sunday September 10, 2017 @01:14PM (#15213154)

Sweden taxes everyone heavily: https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the.... The top marginal rate kicks in at 1.5 times the average income. Sweden also relies heavily on the 25% VAT, which is disproportionately borne by the lower brackets.

Here is a hypothetical calculation of someone making $120k USD who is married with two kids: https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2011/12/sweden-inc.... Such a person pays roughly 50% in total taxes. In the US it would be roughly 25% (in Maryland).

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by ztjio on Sunday September 10, 2017 @12:29PM (#15212896)

In the US it went up to 90% in the early part of that timeframe.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by AnthonyMouse on Sunday September 10, 2017 @01:26PM (#15213210)

It's important to realize that nobody really paid those rates in the US. At the time the rules for what could be claimed as a deduction were so lax that people were making $80,000 or more in deductions against $100,000 in income.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by retox on Monday September 11, 2017 @07:47AM (#15217761)

I've heard this argument a lot, does anyone have any good sources to confirm it?

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by ianai on Sunday September 10, 2017 @10:36AM (#15212371)

So don't tax the rich more. Tax the ways by which the inequalities arise. Create counter forces against market concentration. For instance, if there really were alternatives to desktop Windows and Mac desktops (from the hardware through to software levels) then computers would be more affordable and wide spread. That affordability has an income increasing affect on the customer side.

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by paulryanrogers on Sunday September 10, 2017 @12:14PM (#15212808)

How would this be enforced?

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Re:People Don’t Actually Want Equality, They Want Fairness by ianai on Sunday September 10, 2017 @01:46PM (#15213316)

My bet is once you're talking enforcement the markets are already concentrating. Maybe something like UBI? I don't have all the answers.

Maybe the federal government offers lower tax rates based on how many different states the company has a sizeable portion of its labor force. Ie near zero for being spread out everywhere.

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