PhDeac
PM a mod to cement your internet status forever
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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- 155,687
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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?
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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