I'm going to stay on the same focus as before, sorry.
In the US, a person making $30,000 a year would be in a 15% tax bracket. A person making $300,000 would be in the 33% tax bracket. $3,000 would be roughly 2/3 of the first person's taxes while $3,000 would be 3% of the other guy's taxes. The second guy may barely notice he got a tax cut and wouldn't change his behavior while the first guy would consider that $3,000 to be a huge windfall.
Why would you take money away from the common coffer of society and give it to a rich person who barely notices that he got an extra $30,000 that year? If he doesn't notice that he got more money, why give it to him in the first place? Why not take his extra $30,000 and give it to ten poor people instead? They, after all, will surely notice the extra money they got!
Anyway, I'm unimpressed with your tax rates. So if you make $30,000 a year you are in the 15% tax bracket, and if you make $300,000 a year you are in the 33% tax bracket? Well, I nominally make about $48,000 a year, but I only ever see about $30,000 of it, because I pay 40% tax. So what? I make do on my $30,000 a year, and I trust that the government will put my $18,000 to moderately good use.
Let me tell you about the Alternative Minimum Tax. It was an idea, of course by a liberal, to make sure that all rich people paid taxes even if they qualified for lots of different tax deductions. Basically, you fill out two different tax forms, the regular one and an AMT one. Whichever amount of tax is bigger is the one you end up paying.
It was intended to hit only a few thousand tax payers, total, those uber-rich who use tax deductions to end up paying nothing as a result. Well, those behaviors often include what many people do today. It's hard to find someone who isn't invested in the stock market today, whether it's through a 401K or in mutual funds or directly in their own company's stock. That thing that's intended to hit only a few thousand ultra-rich is projected to hit 23.4 MILLION taxpayers this year. In 2010, AMT is projected to hit 33 MILLION taxpayers. Again you have the law of unintended consequences.
Really? That system is meant to stop people from making all sorts of tax deductions? And it's going to hit 23.4 million taxpayers this year? And 33 million taxpayers in 2010? Well, wow. You know what tax deductions I make per year, Roger? I usually get a $150 rebate because I commute. Okay, I also get a $600 rebate because I save for my pension.
Don't you have any faith at all in your government's ability to put its tax revenue to good use? Let's talk about Medicare. Clearly the system doesn't work very well for America, since a lot of people are either completely uninsured or else insufficiently insured. What can you do to give medical care to those who are uninsured? You can give them care through charity. However, charity is given on a completely voluntary basis, and as far as I can understand, nothing stops the charity givers from making special requirements of those they may consider giving their money to. What if it is a religious charity? I am a non-religious person. Would a religious charity give money to
me to pay for
my medical costs, and expect nothing in return?
I am a non-religious, leftist person. Suppose my taxes were slashed in half, at the same time as the government stopped paying for medical care for Swedes. We would either have to pay for it ourselves or we we would have to rely on charity.
Now suppose that I am willing to give a part of the money I got from my tax cut to charity. And suppose that those in charge of the charity ask me who I want to give my money to. There are two persons who need it. One is a religious conservative, one is a non-religious person with leftist sympathies. Who do I give my money to? Really, there is no contest. I will give my money to the non-religious, leftist person, and if no one pitches in for the religious conservative, he will indeed be left to die.
But do I want such a system? Would I prefer it over the system we have now? NO!!!! I don't want people to be left to die because I don't share their views. I don't want people to be given care in proportion to how "desirable" or politically correct I find them. I want people to be given care irrespective of who they are and what views they hold! I don't want medical care to be allocated to people in accordance to how well-liked they are by charity-givers!
I just don't believe that the only way to stimulate the economy is to give people tax cuts, particularly in such ways that the richest people are the ones that get the most dollars from the tax cut. I don't see why the government can't use the money itself to do good things and make good investments in a society. Remember FDR? If I'm not totally mistaken, he took tax revenues and used them to hire people to build infrastructure in America. Roads, bridges, maybe railways, that sort of things. That was good for America. It was good for America to get infrastructure built, and it was good for the people who got hired to get jobs.
These days, much infrastructure in America is old and in need of repair. I remember that a bridge fell down a few months ago, probably in Minnesota. And a gas main blew in New York, making some people think that the city was under attack again. Instead of cutting taxes and just trusting rich people to put that money to good use, why doesn't the American administration take some of its tax revenue and use it to hire people to repair infrastructure all over the United States?
In Sweden, the government has been running many successful companies. For example, for the longest time it was the government which supplied all electricity to all Swedes. The government used tax money to meet the costs of producing electricity, but it was also absolutely obliged to keep prices reasonably low and to make the supply of electricity
very dependable. And it worked very well.
Then some years ago, the government - then a Social Democratic government, but an unusually right-wing Social Democratic government - decided to sell and privatize the production of electricity in Sweden. Since then the price of electricity has skyrocketed. There is a bewildering array of suppliers of electricity that the consumers can choose between, but one thing is certain - even the cheapest of these suppliers is much more expensive than the government-supplied electricity ever was. Also, they are more undependable. A much-publicized case deals with a community in northern Sweden, where the electricity company has cut electricity for the street lights, leaving the community in pitch blackness during the long dark winter of the north.
Don't you believe that the government can use its tax revenue wisely at all? Don't you think it can do better with that money than just give it back to the rich?
I believe that a government can and should do better than that. That is why I define myself as leftist.
Ann
