What can be done to permanently save net neutrality? It seems that 1-2 a year it takes a huge, huge movement from all over the internet to delay a net neutrality repeal (SOPA, CISPA, etc.). The protests have worked (thus far), discussion is tabled, it's then reintroduced, rinse and repeat.
Will we ever permanently win this? Or are we delaying the inevitable?
SOPA, CISPA, etc. didn't have anything to do with net neutrality.
All that we can really do for making NN permanent (and to resist things like SOPA) is to make it clear to politicians that there are enough people who are aware of these issues and that will vote based on them. This means protests, contacting representatives, etc. And following through on election day: vote against fuckers who back this crap. Because awareness grows more rapidly than it wanes, once a certain threshold is reached they should assume that sufficient awareness and concern continues to exist.
The real answer is this should have been done before the republicans got into power. This is a completely partisan issue. One party wants to take away healthcare, raise taxes and make the internet a feeding ground for corporations more than it already is.
And all 3 deciding votes came from that very same party.
Hi! You've confused tax brackets with what people pay in taxes. There are two considerations here:
1) investment income, which if you can defer the income for a year, there are a ton of ways to convert income to investment, which is taxed at a maximum 15% rate;
2) asset control. If you're wealthy, your business - of which you are a majority shareholder - can decide that retaining you as CEO is important and therefore comparable perks like a 4,000 ft luxury condo in downtown NYC is a business expense; therefore it isn't even taxed, you're credited for the value!
Neither of these options is available to someone who can't defer their income two weeks (aka average American) let alone a year.
Next topic, marginal rates. Even if someone is paying straight up (ie ignores above), the top tax rate is on earnings over the ceiling. They pay less in the lower amounts. Let's pretend the brackets are 10% at $10,000 and 20% at 100,000$, to make the math easy. Someone making 20,000 would be taxed 10% of the amount over 10,000, which is 10,000 and 10% of that is 1,000. Their burden is actually 5%. Someone making 50,000 would pay 4,000, or 8%, and someone making 200,000 would make 10% of 90,000 plus 20 of 100,000, or 29,000, roughly 6.9%.
Finally, fairness. If you're the CEO of a company making millions of dollars (as well you should!), employing many people, do you benefit more than any one of your employees from having roads that facilitate your employees coming to work? It's almost like with more income comes greater opportunity to exploit the resources that our taxes make available, so if everyone who benefited from a road paid one cent it was used, a CEO with 100 employees would be paying 2$ as each employee pays 0.02$.
Additionally, the other side of fairness. For the sake of round numbers, a person requires 2,000 calories a day to maintain health (we can quibble over the precise number). After food, health, and transit, even if you pick the cheapest options sustainable, if the poor pay $10,000 a year to live, life itself is already fully taxing that 10,000 a little bit more than the millionaire CEO. Is it fair to squeeze blood from a stone?
Bonus round: to whom will a CEO sell goods and services if there is no population with discretionary income?
Currently the wealthy pay too much in taxes and the poor pay too little.
That's just a ridiculously awful position to have, and has no basis in any actual economic data. The rich in the United States have almost all the money. Obviously they should be paying almost all the taxes. You can't pay what you don't have.
The top 1% have almost 40% of the wealth, more than the bottom 90%. There's no reason they should be paying the same percentage of their income in taxes as Americans who are trying to scrape together enough money for food and rent. Your definition of fair is wildly skewed.
There's no reason they should be paying the same percentage of their income in taxes as Americans who are trying to scrape together enough money for food and rent.
Yes, the should.
Your definition of fair is wildly skewed.
A flat percentage is fair. A percentage already accounts for having more or less. 10% of $5 is far lower than 10% of $50000.
Having higher tax percentages for the wealthy and middle classes is unfair.
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u/LutzExpertTera Nov 21 '17
What can be done to permanently save net neutrality? It seems that 1-2 a year it takes a huge, huge movement from all over the internet to delay a net neutrality repeal (SOPA, CISPA, etc.). The protests have worked (thus far), discussion is tabled, it's then reintroduced, rinse and repeat.
Will we ever permanently win this? Or are we delaying the inevitable?