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A comment on In the Beginning, There Were Taxes. Parent comment

Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by newacct583 on Friday April 16, 2021 @08:54PM (#26840698)
...you're right. I was figuring a marginal tax rate of about 40% and dividing by 15%, then rounding up. In practice the number is closer to 2x, as you said.

Why does that change the analysis?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by sokoloff on Friday April 16, 2021 @09:35PM (#26840896)
If the magnitude of the difference doesn't change the analysis, why mention it in the first place?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by newacct583 on Saturday April 17, 2021 @10:19AM (#26844458)
"Income tax is significantly higher than capital gains, and that clearly contradicts the contention that we preferentially tax things we hate."

Do you actually disagree with that statement? If the essence of the argument doesn't change, why argue with numbers in the first place?

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Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by sokoloff on Saturday April 17, 2021 @01:13PM (#26845804)
The second half of that statement is purely argumentative and as stated can neither be falsified nor proven true.

The first half of the statement is also not obviously true to me, given the large amount of wage income that is federally marginally taxed at 22 or 24% and the large amount of long-term capital gains that are taxed at 23.8%.

Is some wage income taxed higher than some investment income? Obviously, yes. Is that done specifically to disincentivize work? I don’t think so. Are long-term capital gains and qualified dividends taxed lower in order to incentivize long-term investing? I think so. Do we conclude from that that politicians hate workers more than investors? Exploring that requires looking at facts not yet in evidence here.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by newacct583 on Saturday April 17, 2021 @09:55PM (#26849132)
> The second half of that statement is purely argumentative and as stated can neither be falsified nor proven true.

OMG. I was paraphrasing YOUR COMMENT! Precisely because it's irrefutable nonsense.

[And the fact that you came back after nine hours to edit your comment to make it look like you had more to say is just... <chef's kiss>]

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:In the Beginning, There Were Taxes by sokoloff on Sunday April 18, 2021 @05:21AM (#26851030)
The edit window for comments on HN is 2 hours, so I most certainly and provably did not do the thing you have accused me of doing.
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