Reminder that during what many consider America's middle class golden age for a couple decades after WW2 we were TAXING THE EVERLOVING FUCK OUT OF RICH PEOPLE.
Then, surprise surprise, the rich people started buying off politicians to change all that.
EAT. THE. RICH.
They are blood sucking leeches.
we were TAXING THE EVERLOVING FUCK OUT OF RICH PEOPLE.
Tax avoidance during this period was also at historic highs. One of the perks of the payroll tax was that it collected at the point of the employer rather than being paid directly by the employee. This put the liability for missed payments on the business (which is risk averse) rather than the individual (which often is not) and shrank the labor required for administration from "everyone with an income" to "everyone who pays a salary".
Curiously, we choose not to do this for stock transactions and other big ticket revenue generating sales. Rather than demanding Wall Street assume liability for the vast number of brokerage sales the big clearing houses oversee, we politely ask that each individual stockholder report gains and losses at the end of the year. Private businesses are even worse. Rather than assessing their revenues through the major transaction arteries - banks and commodities/wholesale exchanges - we wait for businesses to self-report.
All this creates enormous blind spots in how taxation is accessed and collected in a way that practically invites business owners (especially small and low-volume business owners) to lie, cheat, and steal.
EAT. THE. RICH.
It's a great bumper sticker slogan. But I don't see any blood on your gums.
But I don’t see any blood on your gums.
Neither yours. I have visible, physical scars from fighting against capitalism and fascists. I don't wanna eat them, I want them gone.
I've had the desire to write a satirical swiftian letter to the editor to a national paper talking about how to tax Americans "fairly" where every single American pays the same amount in taxes regardless of age and income. Billionaires and babies owing the same amount, some ridiculous amount like $50k per person. Then I realized some people might take it as an actual suggestion and try to put it into practice.
It was a tactical decision to turn people off of socialism/communism.
I think you'll find it's no longer needed.
The reason this works out that way is because there is a wage base for the social security tax. If you don’t make more than that base then you pay that tax all year long. If you’re making 1m then you pay that tax for like the first two months and then nothing afterwards. The solution to this is just removing the wage base. If you make 1m you should pay the same percentage as everybody else on all your earnings. Magically the social security system will be overfunded.
The other thing to get rid of is long term capital gains taxes and just tax capital gains as regular income.
Explain please? It's about the tax rate between those two? I thought the problem with CGT is that people dodge it by taking loans secured by their capital/stock. This does not seem to fix this problem...
LTCG means that I can 15% or 20% (depending on income) on selling stock even if I'm otherwise in a high tax bracket. Why should I get to have a massive tax break just because I already have a lot of income? There's nothing special about my income from stock vs. my income from employment other than I work a hell of a lot harder for my income from employment than I do my income from stock.
Removing the income cap is the obvious first step to balancing the social security budget, but it's not enough to make the system solvent long term.
There are a number of ways to fix the remaining shortfall, but removing the cap is really the only easy measure and we can't even do that. All others involve some amount of pain. This interactive calculator is worth spending a bit messing with: https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/
With Social Security, the amount you get out is directly related to the amount you pay in. So if the cap is increased, yes, social security will get more income, but they'll also need to start paying out a whole ton more.
It's more of a forced savings/investment account than a wealth redistribution scheme. There is some redistribution happening, but not as much as most people think.
We're talking about a cap and not a base, but yeah... remove the cap and everything gets better.
That’s effectively what it is but it’s called the social security wage base.
TIL - interesting language... even the article goes on to call it a cap multiple times even though the official title is what you listed. Thanks for sharing!
They laugh at us struggling to earn a living off the sweat of our brow while they drink champagne and protect wealthy child rapists and traffickers.
You can thank reagan for that. Before him, the megawealthy were taxed a LOT (i don't have exact figures, but it was something like 60%). Then reagan came in with his bullshit "trickle down economy" and that was that.
edit: just saw this is about social security funds, not taxes.
There is a cap on social security tax so after you earn past the cap you don't pay anything extra.
Elon Musk pays the same amount as a person who makes 190k a year.
Take away the cap and social security would be funded forever and a day.
I learned a lot about this by watching Sam Seder talk about SS. It is one of his hot topics.
i mean social security is taxes tho
oh, I'm not american and not entirely sure. Thanks for the correction.
This is called a regressive tax. The Republican party should embrace the word regression. Their followers are too stupid to understand its meaning anyway.
In America there's a contest to see how out-of-date one's economics can be. If you quote Adam Smith, they'll call you a pinko.
The original name was "Horse and Sparrow" as in if we give the horse enough to eat, there will be enough undigested food in his shit for the sparrow
Anybody voting for "lower taxes" was scammed into creating a class of ultra rich who don't help society and that laws don't apply to.
It'll trickle down.
You know, because the richest people in the United States are for sure known for giving away money and not hoarding it because they feel they have enough.....
Can somebody eli12 it for me?
Social Securiry benefits are paid out based in how much you earned during your working years. If you earned more money while working, you get higher monthly benefits when you retire. Up to a certian point:
These benefits cap out at a certain limit. Accordingly, the social security taxes also cap out at a certain limit. Beyond that income you do ‘t get any higher Social Security benefits and you don’t pay any higher Social Security taxes.
This is because Social Security is not designed to be a progressive tax like the income tax is.
Our tax system overall should be more progressive. Maybe social security should be part of that. But it was never designed to do this.
Social Security is not designed to redistribute a ton of money from the rich to the poor. And it isn't used to fund the government so it doesn't make the rich pay their "fair share". It's intended to force people to save so we don't have a ton of poor seniors around.
Rich people are taxed up to a certain amount. So the rich and super rich pay in the same maximum dollar amount. But on the other side the benefits that they get out are capped in the same way.
It's not supposed to be like a retirement plan where you assume you're going to live on 80% of your income in retirement. It's just there to ensure you have "enough". The most money an individual can get out of social security, the maximum benefit, is $5181/month.
To be a little more accurate, Social Security Disability Insurance is redistributive by design.
There's a cap on how much you (and your employer) pay per SSN / year. So, for particularly high wages or salaries, the percentage goes down, for every dollar made above the cap.
Also, things like stock( option)s often made up a significant portion of compensation for high earners and those aren't subject to SSI tax at all, IIRC.
The richer you are the more you take and the less you pay back into the system that made you rich. But the parasites will argue their smaller percentage paid in taxes is fine cause of their size even though it means they hoard a larger percentage of their wealth.
The taps at the top needs to open less for the trickling down to happen, that's common sense! /$
Regressive tax
This is to pay for retirement. How much do you think a millionaire is going to need to get back for that? Sure, tax the rich, but this one ain't it.
Even on Lemmy, there's always that one guy defending the 1%.
You are a fucking idiot
So, you don’t know how payroll taxes or retirement funds work, but you are very familiar with how boots taste.
Sorry, but this is retarded. It's not about how much you are gonna get back from it. It's about supporting the system equally.
12.4%?!
*cries in dutch 49.5%
They are talking just about social security not full income tax, etc.
Yeah but at least you get something other than murdered brown people half the world away for your tax dollars.
Oh no, do you feel unwell? Do you need to take paid personal leave from work to visit a free doctor?
Looks at the services your government provides you and compare it to America. That should help you feel a little better about the taxes you pay. We end up paying more to private corporations for the same or worse than your taxes pay for.
This is social security,
A big reason US taxes seem lower is because there are so many different taxes and we usually don’t aggregate
Google says you’re specifying the Dutch income tax rate, so it’s not comparable and the Dutch social security tax’s is “only” 27.5%
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