Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Burning another straw man

Not yet.

You might have forgotten that the premise was that businesses and the wealthy pay far more taxes than any direct benefits that only businesses and the wealthy receive.

A few points and tallies from your new list:

I think that the 34% of the wealth figure is a more relevant number on which to judge fairness because the wealthy have so many more opportunities to reduce their tax bill than do ordinary folks.

I still run into people (not here. At least not yet) who are firmly convinced of two things:

1) The rich pay no taxes

2) If you cut taxes on the rich, the budget will be broken.

Brains stay so much cooler when you never use them.

We were originally talking percentage of income taxes, so we were talking income. If you want to talk "wealth," which in the original Federal Reserve report included:

...the sum of financial assets (checking, savings and money market accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, other types of bond, mutual funds, hedge funds, stocks, annuities, managed investment accounts, trusts, the cash value of life insurance, retirement accounts, and miscellaneous financial assets) and nonfinancial assets (principal residences, other residential real estate, net value of nonresidential real estate, businesses, vehicles, and miscellaneous nonfinancial assets) net of the sum of all outstanding debts (loans on a primary residence or other residential real estate, creditcard balances, installment loans, margin loans, loans against cash value life insurance and pension accounts, and miscellaneous debts).


Then we need to talk about ALL taxes that are applied to such wealth, like property taxes, estate taxes, and capital gains taxes, among others.

The NIST budget is $500 million. The Federal Reserve budget is $288 million. UL is a private agency, and proves that the function does not have to be a government one. So far, we're not even up to a billion.

The public education system is funded by property taxes. Big property holders don't get to send their kids to better public schools than those who have less property, or rent, and those who have no kids don't get a discount either.

Police and fire services are paid the same way, and large property owners pay far more than those who own much less, or rent. The latter get the services for free.

This is how the Superfund works. Notice who's paying.

Your numbers on trucks are wrong. The taxes paid by trucks range from 50 to 91 percent of the costs they impose, and the former numbers are for illegally-overweighted trucks. (This "everything you know is wrong" bit is starting to get boring. I recommend you fire your statistics guy.)

Rural electrification was a long time ago, and ask your favorite environmentalist what they think of the TVA, as one example.

If the government had not subsidized centralized power from coal and oil fired plants to rural areas, we might today be looking at a mature and extensive decentralized alternative energy industry.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (91 posts)