patrick.net

"because you can't tax income that will not be forthcoming -- which is exactly what happens when you tax rich people at high rates."

So when rates are high, people stop working? Really? So under that assumption, people must work harder in tax free Nevada than they do in high tax New York. But to assume that would be false.

If rich people stop working, that would be a good solution too. It would open up jobs and reduce the wealth disparity.

Here we go with the Roads again. It's the United fucking States, you pay taxes and you drive on the road. Now sometimes you pay again to drive on roads you're taxes should have already covered. But that's not the point. The point is you pay you're fair share of taxes, and the government makes sure the roads used the most are paved the best, and they'll send a guy in a pick up truck, with a bucket of asphalt and propane torch to fix pot holes in the roads that are least important.

What's so hard to understand about that? It behooves all States, Counties and Cities to make sure the roads to and from their towns are suitable for transportation.

A flat tax would be a lot more fair than this.
I'm a contractor, and from time to time, I'll work on concurrent projects for different companies. Since I get paid from the same company, during those pay periods. I'm taxed as if my income was in 230K range. Those checks are double of working on one assignment, but I'm not taxed double. I end up paying $700 more in taxes, than if I were billing to separate companies.

Talking about "fairness" in taxes is an utter load of heaping bullshit.

Nothing -- nothing -- about anyone's financial position in this world is "fair".

It's not "fair" that one guy is born the son of a wealthy business man while another guy is born the son of a janitor.

It's not "fair" that some kids go to school in dangerous neighborhoods with overworked and under skilled teachers.

It's not "fair" that some people are in the right place at the right time when an opportunity comes along.

So to talk about "fairness" in the tax code is absurd.

Progressive taxation has a proven track record. Even when we had practically no taxes, they were progressive. Learn something...anything...about macro economics to find out why.

The truly absurd thing about this entire post is that you're just advocating for a different form of progressive taxation. Every dollar spent on social programs is another dollar that needs to be added in taxes. Since rich people won't get those benefits, their net contribution is greater than the poor people who do.

When we had no taxes, most land owners had hundred of acres, to which they would let squatters share crop and work the land.
We didn't have market forces we have now. This is not apples to apples comparison.

Our economic paradigm does not compare to anything that precedes it. I think more people have more access to the ABILITY to make money than ever before.

I think ultimately you get to hung up on the idiosyncrasies of the fundamental differences we derive the same conclusion.

Sure I think we need a fair tax system, and one that taxes rich and corporations more of their share. We differ as to why, and how we should use that money.

I think like the taxes, the services they pay for should also be a flat usage across the board. Meaning you use the roads or use the healthcare, your fair share was accounted for in your fair tax.

How ever, I'm not in the camp, of taxing people that make more a premium to pay for services that only poor can use. It's just to easy for one party(I wont mention any names) to manipulate that demographic to keep them in their current social status, dependent on the services they provide.

It does nothing to better our society but creates a culture of entitled bums, like we have now, in all socioeconomic layers.

Taxes should provide Infrastructure, Postal, Education, Health all in house, with nothing to game and rig. No chance of fraud because it's not outsourced or contracted to the highest bidder, or no bidder as it normally were.

We should not be writing any class checks other than Social Security for the seniors or those that honestly earned it.

If you are poor and can't afford food or shelter, then there should a work pool for companies that need cheap labor. This would end the need for illegal labor. There would be no such thing as a job nobody in America wants.

That was the poor can work and pay their fair share of taxes too. Of course this would ultimately create a nation of day laborers, and large corporations would still win, because they wouldn't be hiring high earning skilled people. But picking up day laborers from the Federal jobs pool.

But hey it would all be Fair and on the up and up.

See how this works. In order to fix one thing to make it Fair, you skew it somewhere else and make it unfair for someone else. That someone else is almost always the middle class. Even if you tax the rich more, they'll find away to either make the middle class pay for it, or cut them out all together.

Why can't we just go back to the model that worked?
Where we use the road map that worked and was laid out for us decades ago. But this time, not talk about "Accountability" but "Accounting" and we hold people liable for those breaches.

"Accountability" is just a word, politicians use to misplace, until they need a scapegoat, in which that person gets a golden parachute after an admonishment and a wink from either a Senate or Congress committee.

Like Congress investigating Soylendra now, I don't expect anything to come out of that, but the key principals coming out even better for the effort.

The DOJ and the AG should be investigating these matters.

Fix the breach of the tax payers trust, with our government to spend our money in our best interest.
Then it would be a hell of a lot easier to get everyone on board for a conversation about how much to tax who. The way most see it now, we'd rather nobody pays any taxes, that's just crazy talk. But you know, it's better to take your chances than to bust your ass, so Bank CEO's can get your tax dollars.

So you want to make it a thankless task for anyone to get a head.
That's not very appealing.
As for your chart, I told you what that represents, that represents the top 1% that is going to be where they are regardless what the over all economy does. Their number stay constant, the problem is the lower lower make less money. Your graph does dick all to explain how taxation was administered to correct those trends. Any suggestion would be pure speculation that coincided with underlying social ills being corrected. Like monopoly busting, and Anti trust laws, that corrected the problems in the 20's.

We're experiencing the same problems now because those laws were laxed and regulation is non existent. It has nothing to do with taxes.

Now I know why you love graphs so much. You can use them for your choosing to assert any claim you want. With data and facts missing, it's just a pretty picture you can use to illustrate your disconnected point.