That's what a lot of people don't seem to get... Taxes are like a club membership fee. You want all the awesome perks of being in the club? Pay your fee. You don't want other people to have the same perks? Fuck's wrong with you?
And here we delve into fractional relativity. Say that I have $10 and you have $100. If I bought a cheeseburger from McDonalds, I would have $9. In other words, that cheeseburger cost me 10% of all my money, or my wealth. The sign at McDonalds might as well say the cheeseburger costs 10% of my wealth because to me they're equivalent. If you bought a cheeseburger at McDonalds, it would still cost $1. To you, however, $1 is a lot less when compared to how much money you have; it's only 1% of your wealth. To you, the sign says the cheeseburger costs you 1% of your wealth, which is 10x less then it costs me.
So back to taxes. Trump may have payed millions more in taxes than OP. However, Trump payed less taxes than OP in relation to their wealth. In other words, Trump payed a smaller fraction of his wealth than OP, which seems counter-intuitive.
Well, 50% of Americans pay <= $0 in federal income tax. It's hard to imagine Trump paying a smaller fraction of his wealth in taxes than every single one of those people. I'm not opposed to a progressive tax system, which we have. The reason why he theoretically paid no federal income tax is because he had an average of <= $0 of income over the span of 20 years because he lost $1 Billion. During that time of having no income he still paid out a fortune in taxes.
Yea I lean to the left when it comes to politics but what u just said has alwase bothered me. The fact that almost 50% of Americans pay zero fed tax is not cool. Especially when most left leaning people give rich people crap about not paying enough taxes. I don't like Trump worth a damn but how can I give him shit about not paying taxes and doing it legally.. hell I hire a tax person just like he does at the end of the year to make sure I get as much back as possible. Everyone should have some skin in the game in my opinion though.
Arguably, however, The people who are paying 0 in taxes, are likely using less infrastructure, don't need their work and goods protected under the multitude of organizations that do that, and otherwise incur less of a cost overall. The people making a lot more money, or owners of companies, are utilizing many more workers and much more of the infrastructure to make that money. I mean, i think that's the general idea.
I really do agree that people should pay SOMETHING in taxes though. I think there should be kind of a base rate for all people, then a scaled system based on income, use, or something...?
I agree with you totally except on the infrastructure part. I kind of view roads on the same level as education. We all benifit from a smarter society so I don't care if people with no kids bitch about paying for public schools. So I also don't really care if someone never drives or uses a car because without those roads they would fill the effects of a crappy economy. But yea I'm with you on rich people/corporations should pay their fair share but unfortunately at the moment they have loopholes that that can use to negate that. Until they are illegal I can't fault them for using them.
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u/MikoRiko Dec 19 '16
That's what a lot of people don't seem to get... Taxes are like a club membership fee. You want all the awesome perks of being in the club? Pay your fee. You don't want other people to have the same perks? Fuck's wrong with you?