I think issue is specifically complaining about it going to the government, where the implication is that it's going to be squandered on "lesser people." With no sensitivity for the fact that the taxes on her raise make an enormous difference to someone on welfare. The complaint in this situation is not "I wish I had made more" but "The government should take less."

Would you make the similar protest if they complained about their tax dollars going to wars and spying?

The people you vote for when you want lower taxes (Republicans) are not going to cut budgets for wars and spying, they're going to cut "redistributive" programs for "welfare queens."

Libertarians might get it done, but there's a serious bootstrapping problem in getting enough people to vote for them that they have a chance. For now, every vote for a libertarian is thrown away to idealism where it could at least be doing something.

I find it amusing that the cracked articles we were pointed to a few posts up talk about the mindset of "poor people think in terms of 'what do we need this instant' rather than 'what will we need in the future' due to scarcity of wiggle room in the budget". Basically one of the problems is people can't securely make smart long-term choices because the risk/reward calculation says if one unexpected thing comes up, the long-term payoff won't ever arrive because of getting hurt in the short term.

If you look at dollars as "lifestyle points", and votes as "societal points", the same reasoning is going on right here: the scarcity of "societal points" is causing the same reasoning about how to vote as poor people have to make for spending.

Not sure what that means - only noticing that there are parallels.

I think his point is 'Some people like wars and spying, some people like welfare.'

My taxes also make an enormous difference to my welfare. There are things that are best done collectively.

That's actually the entire point they are trying to make. They don't make an enormous difference to your welfare. At least not when compared to someone making $15k / year and trying to support a family. You really can't understand what it's like to not know where your next meal is coming from unless you have been there.

I have been there.

I get the that the safety net helps.

My point is that civil society helps every one.

My one criticism of my fellow liberals is their messaging doesn't appeal to their audience's self interest AND their sense of fairness.

I understood the grandparent's point to be that the taxes contribute to the tax-payers welfare in the form of keeping society more-or-less together, which is a huge benefit. Maybe I misunderstood though.

Ah. Good point.

I didn't say that 'she should be happy with what she had', I said that given a windfall, all she could do was bitch about the small part that was taxed. Getting a payrise made her unhappy!

I'm saying 'keep some perspective', not 'don't try to improve your situation'.

I didn't read the post as saying "be happy with what you have!" or "you're lucky you're not poor! I read it as the friend having ambition, and making headway, but demonstrating exaggerated pessimism about the headway.

That said, I mean, I don't know this person or their friend so it could be a flippant comment the friend made that's being overblown.

Who knows

35% in Fed taxes + 10% in state taxes is pretty close to half, buddy.

You're only paying 35% in US federal taxes if you're making over 400K a year. Someone making $100K to $150K is in the 28% bracket.

And you're probably only paying 10% in state tax if you live in California. Most other states' income tax are around 5 or 6 percent, and some are at zero.

35% = 28% income tax + 6.2% social security tax + 1.45% medicare tax

Social Security tax caps out at an income of $113,700[1]. Medicare tax actually goes up slightly at $200,000, though.

[1] http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240/~/so...

It's actually even worse than that, because the employer is paying an additional 6.2% + 1.45% on your behalf. But from the employer's point of view, it's just another cost of having an employee. It's a zero-sum game. The employee is really paying 28% income + 14.4% social security + 2.9% medicare = 45%. (Actually a hair less because the employer's contribution is not considered taxable income, but in any case the effective tax is > 35%)

Well, even if the employer pays the cost on paper, because the supply of labor is relatively inelastic, realistically, employees, at least in a competitive labor market, eat that cost through lower wages. I’m convinced it’s a way for the government to hide half the cost of insolvent social programs from people who don’t know about the employer share and/or don’t understand that they’re likely paying most of the cost.

Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?, Health care tax (yeah since the state forces all hospitals to treat anyone without insurance [every ER at midnight is a pediatricians office for illegals - almost every kid there is literally running around with emergency sniffles and an emergency low grade fever] I get to flip the bill so I consider that a tax). There are plenty more. With all the taxes and double and triple taxes, it is easily 50%.

>Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?...

Wtf? That's not how taxes work, guy.

Well...sure it is. Obviously you can't add up the numbers (like your parent may or may not be implying you can), but if you really want to, you can look at all the dollars you have coming in, and all the dollars you pay to taxes of any kind, and determine a percentage. I have no idea if it would be anywhere near 50%, but I suspect it would be more than 35%.

(Which seems fine to me...)

If you calculate like this you should count the roads and other public infrastructure you are using as income...

...Why? The goal of the exercise is to figure out what percentage of your income really goes to taxes, not the amount of personal value you get from those taxes. That would be a really interesting thing to figure out too, but it's not what I was talking about. (If you read my comment as implying that I think the taxes I pay outstrip the personal value I get from them, you misread it - my only point is that you absolutely can figure out what your real taxation percentage is.)

Who said I was a yank, mate?

> That's not a bad thing. It's just a fact of life. But "you should be happy with what you have" is practically a recipe for sabotaging your ambition.

There's also the ambition to build a better society in (some of) us and part of that is paying taxes. Not all ambitions are of a material nature.

If you value ambition more highly than contentment, at what point does your ambition stop? If you become a millionaire, won't this just lead to your looking to become a billionaire?