Re:Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth c...
by godelski on Friday December 01, 2023 @02:36PM
(#38491170)
> This is the part where the math never works out.
I think this is a bit naive because you're considering money to be fixed and treating the system as a zero sum game. In terms of revenue, the US government gets ~55% from individual income tax and 12% from corporate, with a total revenue of 403B/yr. But also turning the "dial" on tax doesn't only affect the revenue. Every "dial" turn turns other "dials" but this doesn't result in a constant value across the system, even in a fixed instance of time. There are dial configurations which dominate other dial configurations but the system is insanely coupled. Neither this argument nor the "just increase taxes" argument is great because they do not capture the nuance necessary for an effective strategy. What that is? I'm not an economist, but I can tell you the system is rather complex and there's good reason we're all talking past one another and that's because we're solving different optimization problems and even when we recognize that we generally don't recognize that we're not agreeing on coefficients of terms nor what variables are at play. I think we need to first recognize the complexity of these issues and most of he time should kinda just shut up unless we're being clear that we're discussing to learn rather than teach.
I think this is a bit naive because you're considering money to be fixed and treating the system as a zero sum game. In terms of revenue, the US government gets ~55% from individual income tax and 12% from corporate, with a total revenue of 403B/yr. But also turning the "dial" on tax doesn't only affect the revenue. Every "dial" turn turns other "dials" but this doesn't result in a constant value across the system, even in a fixed instance of time. There are dial configurations which dominate other dial configurations but the system is insanely coupled. Neither this argument nor the "just increase taxes" argument is great because they do not capture the nuance necessary for an effective strategy. What that is? I'm not an economist, but I can tell you the system is rather complex and there's good reason we're all talking past one another and that's because we're solving different optimization problems and even when we recognize that we generally don't recognize that we're not agreeing on coefficients of terms nor what variables are at play. I think we need to first recognize the complexity of these issues and most of he time should kinda just shut up unless we're being clear that we're discussing to learn rather than teach.
[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover...