Poll: Should the U.S. expect to have a Value Added Tax? EDIT 1

[Bendon]

I just think it's wrong to punish someone just because they have more than you or I do. Should I punish married couples because they are in love and together? Should those with children have their "extra" taken away and given to those who have none? Should those who have no jobs be allowed to take money from everyone who has a job, no matter the income.

I really don't see how having a bunch of money and being in love relate. Comparing money to kids is a little scary too...

If paying a little more to your country because you can afford it is equivalent to having a child taken away, we're not doing good lol

 

[Oldmanwillow]

NO NEW TAXES.

the government needs to spend way less money. WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT THIS OUTRAGEOUS SPENDING THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING RIGHT NOW. The government needs to spend less starting with the military and then going down to social issues.

For all you people yelling sock it to the rich i have one question for you. when has taxing the rich created a better economy? name one spot in human history and you will not be able to find one. (if you say the great depression you are proving your own ignorance).

so if you want to fix the economy you need the government to spend less and for private enterprise to do more. that simple.

 

[asinann]

EDIT 1: Apparently, some people are in favor of taxing the rich more. I don't like the idea myself.

Since they don't pay nearly what I do in taxes anyway, I think they need to pay some.

I lose some 35% of my income to various taxes.
My dad clears 200k a year and pays LESS than what I do a year total and as a percentage (last year me:$1200 him: $2700 REFUND.)

The rich just donate money to a charity (getting up to $10 per dollar donated in write offs) and don't have to pay squat.

Social security and medicare taxes both stop at around 110k.
It's not so much that the rich need to be taxes MORE, it's that they need to actually PAY taxes.

i dont get it, this would be a flat tax. exactly what everyone wanted.

This isn't a flat tax, it would tax the poor a larger portion of their income than it would the rich. A flat tax would tax the same percentage off of everyone.

It may take the same percentage but it would take a different portion.
E.G I make $1,000,000,000 per year and get taxed 10%. I now make $900,000,000 per year, big woop I can still buy whatever I want and spoil my kids rotten.
Alternatively I make $10,000 and get taxed 10%. I now make $9,000 per year and that is alot of stuff I can no longer afford.

He said a value added tax was a flat tax, I said it wasn't. Lose 1,000 when you only make 10k and your car breaks down, you walk everywhere.
Car breaks down when you make 1 million and lose 100k to taxes, you buy a new car. Not a new to you car, a brand new car.

NO NEW TAXES.

the government needs to spend way less money. WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT THIS OUTRAGEOUS SPENDING THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING RIGHT NOW. The government needs to spend less starting with the military and then going down to social issues.

For all you people yelling sock it to the rich i have one question for you. when has taxing the rich created a better economy? name one spot in human history and you will not be able to find one. (if you say the great depression you are proving your own ignorance).

so if you want to fix the economy you need the government to spend less and for private enterprise to do more. that simple.

Government cuts military spending, it will just have to put the cash back into it in emergency spending bills later. And for anyone that thinks government doing less and private enterprise doing more is a good idea, it is. One problem though, private enterprise only does what it's forced to do for society. Abolish minimum wage laws, suddenly people that aren't in unions are making a quarter an hour. Prices won't go down, but people will make less.
Corporate America will take everything they can and give NOTHING back. Like they did before the government stepped in and FORCED them to pay fair wages and give something back.
Take away aid to the disabled, the disabled will die in droves.
Let's lower corporate taxes even further since they're already a hair under 2% and see how things go.
Keep in mind also that the US pays far less in taxes than EVERYWHERE else in the western world, so stop bitching about high taxes and be happy to pay a few hundred more a year to make sure that life in the US doesn't have to be like third world countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is so massive that the poor can't afford to eat.

 

[timmytom1]

Us Britons don't have VAT any more.

*Extremely smug smile.*

Yes we do,it`s just not as much as it used to be (i think it`s 15% now?)

 

[gabx]

Seriously, there's no reason for so much hate of the rich. The vast minority of the top 10% actually make enough money to pay for an average American college for two children (since 'rich' people get no financial aid.)As for socialism and communism, why would any person be motivated to try if they will make the same amount of money regardless of effort or level of success? Of course, there's a lot of dirty backdoor crap going on in Wall Street all the time, but the truth is that we need these people because we haven't found anyone better to run the country. Every time the US gets a "non-elite" president, like Jackson and Carter (the first of which started a full-fledged genocide, and nearly a century of economic instability which ironically ended with the Great Depression,) things do not go well. The point of capitalism is equal opportunity- that every person has an equal chance to be successful in life, which in my opinion if much fairer than making everyone equal, despite what they did with their lives. As for the argument that capitalism doesn't actually work exactly the way it should, nothing ever does in the real world. Just look at the failed experiments of communism and you can see how well that worked out in the real world.

PS. Except for the people that are actual entrepreneurs, you almost certainly work for someone richer that you. In capitalism, wealth eventually trickles down to the bottom, and never stops circulating. There's a reason why all the richest countries in the world are capitalist (China has a stock exchange, it is NOT communist, just a freak combination of laissez faire and dictatorship.)

 

[Ancientgamer]

this, im a rich person, but i pay my taxes. i pay upwords of 10,000 a year not including holdings. yah i dont like it. but i do it.

Didn't you say you and your parents weren't rich in your first post?
And the US has some of the lowest taxes in the western world, whine to people about your 30% to people that pay 75-80 and see how they laugh at you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Netherlands
"The Netherlands has a partly progressive tax rate. In the past the highest income bracket in the Netherlands was 72%, but in 1990 the highest income bracket was changed to 60%"

just wish I could find a site with the tax rates added together other than this one.

sorry bout the double.

So because another country has a fucked up tax system, means I should just let our own taxes get screwed up? I don't see the logic there. I think the neatherland's taxes are awful too

 

[asinann]

this, im a rich person, but i pay my taxes. i pay upwords of 10,000 a year not including holdings. yah i dont like it. but i do it.

Didn't you say you and your parents weren't rich in your first post?
And the US has some of the lowest taxes in the western world, whine to people about your 30% to people that pay 75-80 and see how they laugh at you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Netherlands
"The Netherlands has a partly progressive tax rate. In the past the highest income bracket in the Netherlands was 72%, but in 1990 the highest income bracket was changed to 60%"

just wish I could find a site with the tax rates added together other than this one.

sorry bout the double.

So because another country has a fucked up tax system, means I should just let our own taxes get screwed up? I don't see the logic there. I think the neatherland's taxes are awful too

Actually most of the world runs on a tax system similar to the one in the Netherlands, the US has taxes that are just stupidly low. There are some areas that the US could cut some spending without too much damage, but if you cut the largest part of the budget enough to made a dent in spending, you have to start cutting loose soldiers and closing bases again. That will send the unemployment rates up even higher and take even more cash out of the economy just when we need people to be employed the most.
People with money flipped out when the new deal was put together too, but when 1% of the population holds 95% of the money something needs to change.
We need to move to some other form of health care in the country, corporate greed has ruined private health care. $1 of every $700 spent on health care went to fund one man's salary a few years ago, tell me how the hell that's ok.

 

[AdamAK]

NO NEW TAXES.

the government needs to spend way less money. WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT THIS OUTRAGEOUS SPENDING THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING RIGHT NOW. The government needs to spend less starting with the military and then going down to social issues.

Oh really? So, the US' (- and other countries' -) population was able and willing to spend more than they had, leading to poorly backed securities, and now that the bubble has burst, you "simply don't have any money"? Took you a while to figure that out. You should know that the US' PPP is stupidly high, so saying you don't have any money is actually a big fat lie.

Reducing government spending would be rather nasty right now, unless you want the recession to become even worse.

Stock-Trading, however, does neither. It does not stimulate demand (save for stocks, which have no intrinsic value) or supply (for the money cannot be taken and loaned out). In essence, money in the stock market is literal dead weight - doing fuck all.

Not quite. There's a thing called dividends and capital gain, which is how some people make their money. We all know what happens to money, don't we? It gets spent. Simply because it was spent in the stock market does not suddenly reduce the velocity of money. One way of explaining what I mean would be to link you to the circular flow model. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_flow_of_income] While this model doesn't directly include the stock market, it should be clear what happens to the money spent on stocks.

 

[Link Kadeshi]

Should those who have no jobs be allowed to take money from everyone who has a job, no matter the income.

It's already happening, my friend. Unemployment, social security, welfare, disability, and so on. I see far too many people abusing the system, for instance, women used to have kids just so they could get more welfare. It was a disgusting thing, especially when those welfare....Somethings.... had used the money for extravagent things, not essential. I have a reletive who has 3 kids all with different parents who she had just for the money.
Some people abuse their "disability" in order to collect without work. Sadly, a lot of the times, they have no real reason not to be working, other than greed, and lazyness. How do you punish those who abuse the system, without hurting those that need the system? The justice system is kinda useless now-a-days, isn't it? The old days, you could be stoned, drowned, or hanged just on the off chance you may be a witch... Ahhh, the old days.

 

[Cerebreus]

America simply needs to spend less and tax more. Or rather, tax the super-rich more. 40% income tax is absurdity.

Oh, and there is a need for a reformed capital gains tax. A man earning money on the stock market is not producing anything for the nation, so why should he pay less tax than a farmer, who is?

There's been something I've been meaning to ask you. What exactly do you mean by "40% income tax is absurdity"? Do you mean it's too low, cause I think that's what the super-rich may already be paying, or close to it. The rich are the highest taxed, and I get annoyed by the whole "fair share" thing when I remember that.

I also don't like the stereotyping in this thread either. Should I believe ALL black people are violent criminals or gangsters? No, because I know that isn't the case.

There are some rich who do cheat on taxes, true, but not all. We shouldn't lump'em all together. After all, there are crime lords who are rich, and they get their stuff by violent means.

Getting over stereotypes ain't easy when pervasive. I just have to remind myself of a simple statement: "There are exceptions to every rule, including this one".

...Isn't it a bit odd that when we think of evil rich people we think of the higher-ups in a corportation and not the violent gang leaders who could be considered rich?

 

[Trace2010]

If the rich don't pay their taxes, take the money by force. That's all I'm gonna say. They should not be allowed to use loopholes to keep their money. They're gonna pay like all of us. I despise people like that.

And if they don't, throw them off a cliff and hand out the dollar bills ya'll.

So when they invest money in private militia with advanced weaponry and butcher all the peasants running around with sticks and rocks, you would have no problem with that, would you?

What are you talking about?

Sorry, it took a while for me to respond...
What I just described above happens when people try to take money from the rich by force. I believe the most recent case of this was the initial organization of labor.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Stock-Trading, however, does neither. It does not stimulate demand (save for stocks, which have no intrinsic value) or supply (for the money cannot be taken and loaned out). In essence, money in the stock market is literal dead weight - doing fuck all.

Not quite. There's a thing called dividends and capital gain, which is how some people make their money. We all know what happens to money, don't we? It gets spent. Simply because it was spent in the stock market does not suddenly reduce the velocity of money. One way of explaining what I mean would be to link you to the circular flow model. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_flow_of_income] While this model doesn't directly include the stock market, it should be clear what happens to the money spent on stocks.

I'm sorry, but that's just insulting. Let me explain:

Stock Trading, since it functions as neither Y (Consumption) or S (Saving) in macroeconomic terms, is a dead-end.

Y, Consumption, has the macroeconomic effect of increasing demand for goods and services, increasing their prices, and thus causing the overall supply of the market to increase as more capital is acquired by suppliers.

S, Saving, functions to supply this capital. In essence, much of macroeconomics is a balancing act between promoting saving or consumption. Too little Saving, and capital becomes extremely expensive due to the fact there is a low supply of money in the financial sector, thus causing an increase in the price of capital (liquid or otherwise). Too little Consumption, and supply shrinks simply because aggregate demand is insufficent to keep all the producers in the market.

Stock Trading is neither of these things. Stock Trading, in essence, functions as saving in terms of consumer demand stimulus (i.e. does not stimulate aggregate demand), but in terms of monetary supply, it fails to provide a supply of capital for the expasion of aggregate supply by entrepreneurs. In essence, even in the most expanded monetary flow systems, stock trading is a leakage in the flow of money.

The advantages it does provide are:

1. A company may sell it's stocks on the market to gain a great deal of liquid capital immediately, thus permitting it to expand itself. However, excessive stock trading may encourage companies to do so even when it is not, in economic terms, viable for them to do so. In essence, in a bull market, a company may chose to sell more of it's stocks even though it has no need of the excess financial capital, weakening the company.

2. Dividends provide a source of revenue for people investing.

 

[Bibliomancer]

i dont get it, this would be a flat tax. exactly what everyone wanted.

Not everyone wants a flat tax. In fact, I'd say that most people don't. The reason is that it is more of a burden on the poor than on the rich, and is fundamentally unfair.

 

[stormcaller]

They don't have GST in the US? I thought everywhere had it...

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

I voted yes purely because im vindictive. If we have to have so should you

Taxes have always been a case of the rich paying more. If you ask me its much fairer that way. It reduces the gap between rich and poor reducing class boundries, it helps the government raise more money and it preents the poor from being crippled by taxes to the point where they cannot afford to live anymore