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I don’t mind if my taxes feed and house people, even people who just moved here. Those are good goals and produce real products.
I do mind if all my taxes are used for unaccountable military organizations that are used to violate people’s rights and harrass the poor and the vulnerable. Those are stupid goals and produce nothing of value.
The only reason I want more money is to pay more taxes. I wanna walk around the city like “Yea, you like that park bench? Me too! You’re very welcome! Hey, check out that bus! Looking good, right? Guess who paid for one 200000th of that? [points two thumbs at self like a total douche] THIS GUY!”
I hate taxes - in the current form. I would gladly pay more of my paycheck if it meant I’d get something tangible - not another fucking almost-free toast bread manufacturing line for a billionaire that he can use to sell us toast bread while making millions. No, I want a nicer park, road repair, bike trails, modernizing community buildings, better education and school supplies. Moving to Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, or Denmark would sure move me much closer to the goal.
My county arranged for school lunches to be free. Free for all the kids. It’s a pittance to pay in taxes and it scales all the way up to but not including the 1%ers. If you’re poor enough to need it, chances are you’re paying very little for it.
The right-wing shitheads in the county are citing that as overreach and trying to get it cut down.
I feel like tracking these people down and cementing the words “Starving children makes me happy” to their cybertrucks or whatever would be appropriate.
That would be truly satisfying, but i doubt they’d get it. So deep in the brainwashing they’d prob say it would force their parents to get out and find better work.
62% of American voters support higher minimum wage, for example.
It doesn’t matter.
There’s no money to be made off of feeding the homeless. If Amazon doesn’t want it, it won’t be done. They sign the checks.
Just thinking hypotheticals, but what would happen if people could vote the percent of their own taxes would go. So you could choose the buckets where your own tax would go…
Then things that weren’t acceptable by people who can’t think of priorities in a large system would be left aside. The point of voting in representatives is you vote in people who can have a better idea of what is needed in various areas.
Mean that’s not always the case but way better than Joe Blow deciding all his taxes go to the military rather than education.
Mean I see the appeal but that voting has to come from informed voters with proper reasoning skills. Since we’re in an age of propoganda nothing essential would ever be funded, people are too easily swayed.
I know it’s just theories, but I wish I was a much better writer. I don’t know reading this I has this idea of a dystopian world where we get something like this, with technology people would be able to decide where there tax goes, at first would be considered really democratic, but people holding more money would have much more influence where money goes, more than today… and the class would be even more accentuated
I’d like my taxes to help people in need. Unfortunately my taxes go towards skeletonizing brown children.
And abducting local brown people and unmarked vans.
I don’t even mind if my taxes go to people that don’t contribute back and just watch tv and drink beer all day if that keeps them off the street. I’d rather they don’t contribute than anti-contribute.
go to people that don’t contribute back
you mean billionaires?
No, those are the anti-contributors
Yus.
Sensible anti-degeneracy approach.
And gets better than that… especially when ceasing blocks to them bettering themselves and their ability to help others however they can. Then the support given to them proliferates to benefit each and all.
Fuck up part your taxes could go down and we still could feed everyone. The military and now ICE get a majority of our tax dollars.
Ive only experienced 1 homeless shelter, and it wasnt even “government funded” it just didnt pay taxes
Are you sure you don’t want your taxes going to subsidizing billionaires and bankers instead?
Israel needs tens of billions to commit genocide and war
CanIthinkaboutitnothanks
A top marginal tax rate of 94% for people making over $1,000,000 USD per year is just common sense under capitalism. Spending it on those who need it instead of genocide is what’s controversial.
Very few people have income (salary) that high. What’s needed is higher capitals gains and wealth taxes, to avoid loopholes and living from credits against stock.
Fixing capitalism is a lost cause. What’s needed is a feast where we eat the rich.
And by rich, everyone means those with a dollar more than themselves, right?
No.
Eat the top 1%.
Rinse and repeat until there’s no longer a top 1%.
My day will come.
I think a better loop terminating clause would be until the top 1% hold less than 2% of total wealth… Or something like that, you may want to adjust the percentage to your use case 😅
You’re saying I might live after all?
You could still die if you inherit some wealth from the first few rounds of feasting and hold onto it …
So until the populations hits 99 people? Until the next baby is born.
Sounds about right.
I’d love a wealth tax but stashing your wealth in tax havens is super easy so idk what the point is
That’s why you don’t tax income, you tax net controllable assets.
I’m not an accountant but here’s how that might go
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institute a family fund to hold all of your assets for you, registered in tax haven
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don’t actually own part of the fund, so that it doesn’t count as an asset, but find a wag to keep control of it
Of course people will always try to get around things, but as part of something like this you would make that wire fraud and prosecute anyone found doing it.
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How does that work in practice? Let’s say we want to tax people like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg. Let’s say for convenience we want to set the tax at 10% of their total net controllable assets.
Take Musk for example. He has an estimated net worth of $500 billion so we’re going to tax him $50 billion a year. To pay his taxes in the first year he’d have to sell 10% of his shares in his companies (since his wealth is concentrated almost entirely in stock).
What would happen if he offered 10% of his shares for sale on the open market? It would cause the stock price to tank since there aren’t enough buyers out there willing to pay the current price for those shares. As the stock price tanks, his net worth plummets along with it, say to $400 billion. Now he has to sell 12.5% of his shares to pay his $50 billion tax bill. But that means offering even more shares on the market which cause the stock price to drop even more.
At the end of the day, just forcing Musk to pay his tax bill could completely wipe out his company. Maybe that’s actually your goal, but it’s not clear how that will raise money to help people.
And that gets to the point I actually want to make: stock prices as a form of wealth are somewhat fictitious in nature, not unlike the way money is created by banks through fractional reserve banking. Trying to tax all those shares of stock is similar to creating a bank run. Rather than unlocking a bunch of wealth you can use for other purposes, you just end up destroying the wealth altogether.
Here’s a video by an accounting professor that explains what stock prices really mean by way of an analogy with baked beans (yes, he’s a British professor)!
I would argue he should be forced to divest from those shares as part of the tax, no one person should control that much of anything. If that crashes the price of his stock, so be it. It didn’t deserve that price if it does crash from that. The wealth was imaginary in the first place, so there’s no true loss from its destruction.
There is a loss though. By instituting this process, even if it was only applied to Tesla, you would crash the entire stock market because investor confidence would be lost.
You could say nothing would be truly lost in a stock market crash, but real people would still be severely impacted. The market crash would lead to bank runs which would topple the banking system, and then ordinary people wouldn’t be able to buy food or other necessities. It would be a disaster that would cause people to demand the old system be restored.
because investor confidence would be lost
If investor confidence would be lost by appropriate taxes, then it must be unjust confidence. If the shares can’t be sold without impacting the stock price, then clearly they’re overvalued.
Their value is based on confidence in the current system. Change the system and the confidence is lost.
It’s like tickets to a movie. They’re valuable before the movie starts. After the movie’s over they’re worthless.
Put a total wealth tax on the stock market is like throwing sand into the gears. The whole system will fall apart. You can argue that it shouldn’t be that way but you’re currently in the system. The challenge is not to imagine how it ought to be, it’s how to get there without the whole house of cards crashing down around you.
And (to those who don’t get the margin thing) that’s only on the amount above the amount taxed at lower rates.
What is this image from
Reverse image search yielded this.
I knew the style was familiar. Norman Rockwell is iconic.
I feel like I’ve seen this on my Lemmy frontpage at least 4 times in the last month
Now in your comments too
Well most people don’t mind. It’s just the vocal minority who really care. But they tend to be who governments pander too because they are the ones who pay the
bribescontributions.Consistent messaging, nicely done everyone!
That silly
communistsocialistjust being a decent member of societynot an assholecompassionate human beingregular ass member of society is at it a again.The best way to abolish all those poor people is actually giving them a richer future.
Poverty is expensive for us all.
Best end it.
They will have a richer future in the mines!
