Tax Rates and ER Decision

[haha]

It is unclear to me why the board is so hard on Phil 1 Ben. Jealousy perhaps?

His success might well be able to teach us things, a lot more than one more member who hates his job and spends all his time figuring out ways to get a little more at the public feeding trough. Perhaps Phil1Ben is a little tired of providing the fodder? It is hard for me to see why he should be castigated for paying for the subsidies that other millionaire but non-working members very carefully secure on their government mandated health insurance policies.

Not many millionaires are making unusual demands on public budgets, but plenty are making outsized contributions to these same budgets.

Are we mostly communists here? Our country began in protest at taxation that was perceived to be unfair and outrageous.

Be careful about helping people, they will often hate you for it.
If I were Phil, I would pack up and spend my time with other rich people who don't despise the rich at his country club.

Ha

 

[karluk]

I started this discussion with the concept that this result was never intended by the founders.

It is a perhaps inevitable but unfortunate debating tactic to invoke the names of a bunch of dead guys who are no longer capable of expressing their own opinion by putting words in their mouths that they never uttered. As far as whether the founders would have been outraged by a 39.6% tax rate on multimillionaires, I guess the jury is still out on that one. My guess is that there would have been a mixture of different positions on the issue, just as there typically are on any issue. George Washington, for example, not only supported the whiskey tax, but even personally led the army sent to enforce it. And all this in spite of the fact that it was a patently "unfair" tax, levied only on the oppressed class of whiskey distillers and no one else.

even John Kennedy who said " he was committed to "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes." which was actually passed by Congress a few months after his death.

Sure, the tax cut of 1964 lowered the top marginal tax rate from 91% to 77%. Let's all take inspiration from John Kennedy's inspiring example and reinstate the 77% rate on upper incomes. I'm sure we could all get behind that proposal.

 

[Rustic23]

Ha +1

 

[brewer12345]

Ha, whether the system is "fair" or not is beside the point. And we can only speculate what the founders would think about a world where your false teeth could be something other than a piece of wood.

More to the point, I can't fathom why OP wants to waste his time squealing about the tax system. Just about all of us here are "price" takers when it comes to taxes, wages, and just about everything else. I am sure those that can afford their own PACs, offshore vehicles, tax lawyers, etc. may be other than price takers, but I suspect there are few or none of those here. The game is what the game is, so play it well. If OP is really in the 39.6% bracket either he is making substantially more than $1MM annually or he is playing the game wrong. He, you and I cannot change the system and we can change the laws of gravity, so why waste time and energy caterwauling about it? Figure out how to best play the game to suit you, respond to incentives, and get on with life. If you want to change the system, either go fund that PAC or try a grass roots campaign among all those with million dollar plus annual incomes.

 

[MichaelB]

This thread is closed after multiple complaints that some posts are too disrespectful of the views of others. A reminder from our community posting guidelines (here)

Do not engage in personal attacks. Challenge others' points of view and opinions, but do so respectfully and thoughtfully.