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Culture of Dependence Much?

WakeandBake said:
Skin in the game. That is some funny shit. Funny insomuch as the right has been hoodwinked into thinking that collecting more taxes from people who have little to no money will what, wake them up and make them become something? more informed about government, is that it? harder workers? I don't even know what they expect to happen.

These people have had low paying, stagnant wage jobs for 30 years. The banking/financial sector has exploded in that time - swallowing up a huge percentage of GDP once held by manufacturing - which is not a job creator. So these asshole bankers who don't create anything and don't create jobs are making huge salaries, dwarfing the working class'. Then the right clamors to lower taxes for them to "create jobs" which doesn't work because a huge % of these wealthy people are in finance/banking - and raise/add taxes on the working class. So you are left with a stagnant working class who don't have the income to hang with the major expenditures - energy, education, health care, food - and all the right proposes is making them pay more taxes to have "skin in the game", all for some nebulous result. What is supposed to happen with all this skin in the game again? can someone educate me on what the skin is supposed to do?
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Judging from the posts here, the "skins" argument is that people who "don't pay taxes" vote Democrat so they can keep sucking from the government teat. Once these people actually pay taxes, they'll hate paying taxes and want to be Republicans.

Of course, that logic makes no sense for a few reasons.

They do pay income taxes. They just receive more than those taxes in deductions. Most regular working folks probably don't know exactly how much they pay in taxes or how much they'll get back when they file. If you asked people if they pay net negative taxes, far fewer than 50% of people would say yes.

Also, they pay a much larger percentage of their income toward other taxes like sales taxes for necessities, gas tax, the little phone taxes, and all the other nickle and dime taxes that don't hurt people making a lot of money but shred the meager paychecks of the poor.

And don't forget necessary transportation costs to hold on to a job. That adds up. By the end of a regular work week, somebody whose car gets around 20 mpg who works 20 miles from home is paying around $40-50 on gas (and gas tax). That may not mean much to most people, but if that Friday check is only around $500, that's a good chunk of the check.

The idea that closing loopholes and lower tax rates will result in more revenue is complete BS. First, Republican don't want the government to raise revenues. Revenues = taxes. So any plan that would actually raise revenues is something they'd be against unless the increase in revenue came from the poor and middle class. So if Republicans come out for a plan they say would increase revenues, be wary. They know it's not actually going to increase revenues unless it's a tax hike on the poor and middle class.

Anybody with half a brain knows that after some loopholes get closed, people will just lawyer up to find more loopholes. As long as it's cheaper to find loopholes than pay taxes, people will find loopholes. If it is cheaper to pay taxes, it's not going to increase revenue and it will essentially be a tax cut.

Get rid of deductions and the poor and middle class will pay more in taxes while those with the resources to figure out how to get out of paying taxes will do so.
 
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PhDeac said:
It is what they think. Convince me otherwise. I haven't seen many Pubs here or publicly come out against deductions. Yet I have seen the argument that everyone needs to have some "skins in the game".

Do that math. That means according to your plans, someone's deductions could only be as high as their income taxes. That means people who pay more taxes would get their full deduction while those who pay fewer taxes would only get a portion of their deduction.
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But now it is the opposite. Not only do those with lower-middle and lower incomes get to use their deductions to fully eliminate their tax obligations, but those with lower incomes get more money back than they paid in through the EITC. To the contrary, those with higher incomes do not get to utilize their full deductions, because the Alternative Minimum Tax kicks in and requires them to pay a certain level of tax based on their income, regardless of whether their full deductions would otherwise cause them to pay less.

So what I think you are arguing as an unfair system (some people getting the full benefit of their deductions while others only get a portion) already occurs, it is just that those making more are the ones not getting the full benefit. And the AMT has never been permanently and accurately adjusted for inflation since 1969, so those making "more" for AMT purposes have become a greater portion of the middle class.
 
The unfair system is the huge income gap. Solve that and more people will pay taxes.
 
Our individual tax system is set up to reward unearned/passive income.

We are becoming an ownership society and it isn't good.

We need to restructure corporate income rates down and top personal income rates up.
 
Good point. Earned money gets taxed at a higher rate than money that's just sitting around growing from the hard work of others.
 
PhDeac said:
Good point. Earned money gets taxed at a higher rate than money that's just sitting around growing from the hard work of others.
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And we wonder why our economy is dominated by bubbles and paper trading.
 
ChrisL68 said:
And we wonder why our economy is dominated by bubbles and paper trading.
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Well the pencil pushers run our private sector and our government and our pencil pushers (along with actors, entertainers, and athletes) are probably our most profitable exportable human capital.
 
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