Friday, October 18, 2019

Who pays more taxes

A retired guy and a carpenter walk in to a bar, and they each order a beer. When they pay, the fashionable progressive economist asks them, "how much tax did you pay today on the money you got to buy that beer?" The carpenter answers, "Well, I just got my paycheck today. So, that's 30% federal income tax, 5% state income tax, 15% social security and other payroll taxes." The retiree says, "I took the money out of my bank account at the ATM on the way over. There isn't a tax on taking money out of banks so I didn't pay any taxes today."

"The shame, the horror, the inequality!,"  proclaims the progressive economist, sending the preprint of his study in the New York Times. "Retirees, who have a lot more in their bank accounts than working folks, aren't paying any taxes! All the taxes are being shouldered by poor workers! We need to tax money people take out of banks!"

"Wait a darn-tootin' minute," says the retiree, having spilled half his beer. (Old people talk like that.) "I worked my whole life.  I paid Federal income taxes, state income taxes, city income taxes, and payroll taxes on that money. My company paid sales taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, mitigation fees and so on out of every dollar I billed made for them. I paid vastly overinflated health insurance to cross subsidize medicaid, medicare, and indigent care. I saved for my retirement, rather than blowing it all when I was young. Then every year I paid taxes on interest and dividends, and capital gains when I rebalanced my portfolio. It's a miracle I still have this lousy $5 left to buy a beer. No, thank goodness there is not a take-it-out-of-the-bank tax.  But I paid a heck of a lot of taxes on this money!"

I think this little story captures the essence of one of the  many little -- well, Phillip Magness in in the AEIER, reflecting a little traditional conservative politeness,  calls them "fibs" --  in the latest Saez-Zucman effort to prove that rich people pay less taxes than you and I, an equally ardent effort to prove that despite everyone else's numbers the rich really did pay a lot more taxes in the golden 1950s, reinforcing the trope cited even in the Democratic debates* with lightning speed.

Others have torn the numbers apart, including Magness,  David Splinter at the Joint Committee on TaxationLarry Kotlikoff in the Wall Street JournalRobert Verbuggen in the National Review, Michael R. Strain at Bloomberg and many others. To usually sleep-inducing results. Hand it to Saez and Zucman to know how to tell the big fib and get your name in the headlights. So let me focus on two very simple problems that my little story highlights.


Income taxes: Really the problem starts by defining the question as income taxes -- what is the tax rate on this year's income -- and defining income to include "capital income," dividends, interest, and capital gains.  Once you allow that definition, much of the game is lost. Yes, old and wealthier people tend to have more capital income, and young and less wealthy people tend to have more earnings. We tax earnings at a way higher rate, so duh.  The fact that this "capital income" comes from savings, which comes from earnings that were taxed at the most progressive rates in the world then vanishes in this accounting.

"Income" is really a fairly meaningless concept. We do not live in the Ancien Regime, or a Jane Austen novel in which people are described for life by the annual income they receive. Income varies a lot over a lifetime, and ebbs and flows for many. And "capital income" is not the same as earned income. The broad consensus theory of taxation states that capital income -- the rate of return you get to induce you to save some income for future consumption rather than to blow it all right away -- should not be taxed at all. It really isn't "income" in any meaningful sense.

Consumption is a meaningful concept, and lifetime consumption in particular. A progressive consumption tax makes a lot of sense. But as the many commenters above point out, very rich people tend to consume much lower fractions of their wealth than the rest of us. They take this "income" and plow it back into businesses and mortgages, where it is out there hiring the rest of us and producing products for us.  The horror of it all. So if you look at lifetime taxes paid as a fraction of lifetime consumption... the rich are paying much higher rates than the rest of us.

Corporate taxes: Of all the other heavy thumbs on the scale, let me point to the other biggest one, the treatment of corporate taxes.

To assess the progressivity of the tax system, in any sensible way, we have to include all taxes, and as many transfers as we can. It makes no sense to include only one tax and say A pays less than B, if B pays more than A of some other tax. If A pays $10 in tax but gets back $5 in cash benefits, he or she is really only paying $5. We also have to figure out who bears the tax, not just who pays it.

It is painfully obvious that "corporations" bear no tax. Every cent of corporate tax is paid by people, either from higher prices, lower wages, or lower payments to bondholders and stock holders. By and large most estimates find it's mostly higher prices and lower wages. Corporate taxes are not paid by lower electric bills -- you either pay that or they turn off the lights. For the same reason, corporate taxes are, in the usual accounting, not much paid by stock and bondholders. They just invest less or abroad until the after tax rate of return is the same.

Into this interesting economic debate wade Saez and Zucman and assume all corporate tax comes out of shareholders' pockets. And since the corporate tax rate has been coming down over the years, and since wealthy people hold more stocks, aha, the wealthy are paying less tax. (Despite higher statutory rates back then, there were lots more deductions, so even they grudgingly admit that wealthy people did not pay higher income tax rates in the halcyon 1950s.)

Note they do not assume all sales taxes come out of shareholders pockets. (Actually, I'm assuming here -- if someone has read in detail let me know if I'm right on this.) It's painfully obvious that sales taxes, though "paid" by corporations, are "borne" by you and me via higher prices.

But sales taxes and corporate taxes come equally out of the bottom line of a company's profits. Why does a company make up for its sales tax payments 100% by raising prices, but makes up for its corporate tax payments 100% by lowering interest and dividends (somehow, magically, without that lowering of payments also lowering the stock and bond prices so rates of return remain unchanged)?

Well, there is no reason at all to make such an assumption. Except that sales taxes, which are indeed borne by all consumers, have risen over time, while corporate taxes, which they alone assume are borne by the wealthiest, have gone down over time. So if you treat the taxes equally, you get the "wrong" answer.

Yes, figuring out the incidence of taxation is hard. The tax system is deliberately complex and opaque so that people can't figure out what they really pay, and can't figure out that indeed rich people don't pay nearly as much as the headlines say -- even if it is still quite progressive.

Economists should be spending their time studying the disincentives of the tax system, not its "fairness," on which we have little professional expertise. Yes, you heard it here, economics really has nothing to say about whether "the rich" should pay more or less taxes -- but we have a lot to say about what happens to economies that tax away the incentive to become rich, to study, move, start businesses, innovate, hire others, and produce great products along the way. But the (dis) incentives of the tax system are even more opaque, again deliberately. Not even every tax economist I have ever asked the question of can answer "what is your all-in marginal tax rate?" If it were clear, I suspect a lot more people would stop working!

* From the Transcript
Biden: Why in God's name should someone who's clipping coupons in the stock market make -- in fact, pay a lower tax rate than someone who, in fact, is -- like I said -- the -- a schoolteacher and a firefighter?  It's ridiculous. And they pay a lower tax.
[Poor Joe: I won't belabor that stocks pay dividends, not coupons, and "they pay a lower tax" is absolutely false. At least he said "rate" the first time.]

By the way, a tiny ray of common sense in that debate:
"YANG: ... The problem is that it's [wealth tax] been tried in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and all those countries ended up repealing it, because it had massive implementation problems and did not generate the revenue that they'd projected."
"If we can't learn from the failed experiences of other countries, what can we learn from?  
We should not be looking to other countries' mistakes. Instead, we should look at what Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden still have, which is a value-added tax. If we give the American people a tiny slice of every Amazon sale, every Google search, every robot truck mile, every Facebook ad, we can generate hundreds of billions of dollars and then put it into our hands, because we know best how to use it."
Well, "we [the Democratic party, when it takes over the Federal Government -- I presume he does not think President Trump needs 22% of GDP to spend!] know best how to use it" might be a bit open to question, but I'll take rays of sanity where I can find them.


Update: A good point from Matthew Lilley via Marginal Revolution What about sales taxes? They seem almost too regressive in Saez and  Zucman. Why? Because  SZ calculate the tax rate as tax paid / pre-transfer income. So if you pay $1000 in sales tax on $10,000 of purchases, based on a $1,000 income and $9,000 transfers, you have a 100% tax rate. That's nonsense. SZ drop those people from analysis rather than correctly define taxes on post transfer income. Once you do this, more transfers (the solution) just make tax regressiveness (the supposed problem) worse!

The real lesson though is not to quibble with the answers, it is to quibble with the question. To me, it emphasizes the central point -- it's not about the numerator (taxes paid), it's about the denominator -- relative to what? Once you think "income" is a meaningful concept, you give up most of economic common sense. I guess SZ don't want to count transfers as "income" because they want to show how ruthless the pre-transfer market is, and one can sympathize with that sentiment. Sentiment does not excuse skulduggery however.


45 comments:

  1. Not only are all types of income taxes (including payroll) horribly complicated in theory (ascertaining long-term impact), they are then infernally complicated in practice.

    Add on, income taxes have become a domestic and international shell game Gong Show.

    I think the answer is migrating to a system of property taxes, fuel taxes, a national sales tax, and import tariffs.

    But there seems to be a stake, a great deal of inertia in maintaining the present income tax system. The cynical view is that elites are largely able to evade income taxes.

    But when viewing Washington DC, why would anybody become cynical?

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    1. The idea you are proposing (without the import tariffs) is so good that you can be sure it will never be implemented.

      If politicians could not "play" with the tax code any more, what would they be doing half (or more) of the time?

      Property taxes, pigouvian taxes and a national sale tax plus a pay check to every american citizen as the (only) mean for redistribution/welfare will expectacularly simplify the tax code and the welfare system, send the right signals for workers and investors, increasing growth in the way and will leave the politicians idle most of the time (by far the best state a politician can be in)

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    2. Jose--- thanks for your comment, but I contend there are plenty of reasons for import tariffs. In the Far East and Europe the line between government and enterprise is often blurred. This results in subsidized Industries. This results in US consumers buying subsidized goods which are actually produced inefficiently compared to domestic goods.

      There are many other reasons as well, including the fact that the IMF has advocated that the US reduce its current account trade deficit in half, due to resulting financial instabilities that generate. Too much capital chasing too few assets in America, then the Hyman Minsky moment. See 2008.

      But thanks again for your comment.

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    3. Benjamin, I don´t really see the point in preventing the Fart Eastern and the European tax payers subsidizing our consumption. That's good for us, isn`t it?. If they want to send this products for free I would not opposse that at all.

      The more, the better. We can always sell them back, IOUs which are basically worthless if we are not getting ahead and overpriced shares in american companies (or both).

      Thanks to you for the interesting discussion.

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  2. This link is not good:

    https://aier.org/article/the-big-fib-about-the-rich-and-taxes/

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  3. At the risk of sounding like a Liz Warren supporter of wealth taxes, the wealthy do pay proportionally much less in taxes vis a vis their own net worth. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing and more importantly, what exactly to do about it are separate questions.

    For example, imagine citizen A with a $100K/year household income, but who also has a net worth of $1 million (sans primary residence & personal vehicles) The individual is taxed on his property, his consumption, his labor, his dividends, and his distributions. Citizen A is not taxed, however, on any unrealized capital gains so long as he does not sell his assets.

    Now imagine Citizen B with the same $100K/year houshold income. The difference is that B has zero net worth due to credit card, student loan, and other debts. In Citizen B’s case, the percentage of her total taxes paid in relation to her net worth is going to be significantly higher.

    All of which support the claim that the rich (investor class/top 10%) get richer, while everyone else is expected to pay more and more...if that makes sense?

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    1. You totally miss the point. What you are missing is that the $1 million networth of your example does not came out of thin air. To accumulate that wealth Citizen A has had to pay, historically, a very significant amount of taxes (close to 90% if you account for it properly). This net wealth was first a salary Citizen A paid taxes on and the income is coming (one way or the other) from companies that pay an array of taxes, corporate taxes included, that you can "allocate" to the same Citizen A.

      When you properly take into account the NPV of the taxes paid thru the whole live of Citizen A and Citizen B you will realized Citizen A has paid a significatn bigger amount: you can not accumulate net wealth without paying a lot of taxes!! (except if you work for the government in Atlantic City). I don´t understand why comparing the taxes paid "this" year should be the right method to asses the amount of taxes paid by Citizen A and B.

      The last sentence of your comment is not only irrelevant, it is just plainly wrong. Not for being widely used is any less further from the real facts.

      http://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequality.pdf

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    2. So people who live prudently and save money ought to pay more in taxes, Than the grasshoppers who live over their heads and never get out of debt. That is not a prudent way to structure an economy. Thrift and prudence are virtues that ought to be rewarded.

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    3. Yes, but why would you want to divide by wealth — that's what they put into the system. A better divisor would be consumption — what they take out of the system — and as John points out by that measure the rich pay proportionally much more in tax.

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    4. Yes, if I spend every dollar I earn the minute I earn it then my taxes will be a higher percentage of my wealth. I'm not sure what that represents though, that people should save more?

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    5. I'm not disagreeing (at this point), however, 1) is citizen A leveraging their unrealized capital gains to accumulate additional unrealized capital gains; and 2) Citizen B, in my opinion, makes the case from "The Millionaire Next Door", especially credit card and other debt. Onerous sales tax and property tax payments are by and large a choice.

      I've had many students over the years "choose" not to return to California after college and to build lives in more affordable states.

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    6. Ignoring, of course, that they have already paid taxes on their accumulated wealth when it was earned, which is really the first point Cochrane made. What about asking this question forty years ago when citizen A was just starting his/her career and also had no net worth?

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    7. @Roger Barris; unless of course their accumulated wealth was accumulated over the years through tax-favored capital gains, carried interest, public subsidy (e.g. mortgage interest rate deduction), or a protected oligopoly (as is the case for any property owner renting out their property or any military contractors).

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  4. I object to the social engineering of the income tax. Examples are the deduction for buying a house and capital gains.

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    1. All taxes are social engineering. They're a means of collecting revenue to supply public goods.

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  5. "We have a lot to say about what happens to economies that tax away the incentive to become rich, to study, move, start businesses, innovate, hire others, and produce great products along the way," Cochrane says.

    Notice the hypothetical structuring. Cochrane injects edgewise a standard assertion of the ideological right-wing: liberal taxation plans would weaken our society, without the burden of an explicit stand on the matter.

    More clever rhetoric from a master polemicist.

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    1. Absolutely! "Liberal" - that is Leftist Marxist "progressive" control freak hubris-infused individuals with savior complexes - have already injured America with horrendously punishing and disincentivizing pocket theft schemes, and simultaneously created actual generations of young people who demonstrate the reality of the rare straight answer to the question, "What do you want to do when you grow up, Johnny and Sally?" ... the new Government serf answer? "Get me a check like my ol' lady do, and a free place, and a free phone and EBT card". Your clever rhetoric belies a bubble existence - go visit an elementary school in walking distance of a "Project" housing development. Witness the WEAKNESS you have not seen.

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  6. The problem is in the question, not the answer. The retired guy paid just as much tax, but he paid it "yesterday". It's post-tax money. The right question is more like: "How much money did you have to earn to buy that beer?"

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  7. Yes, Yang occasionally displays relative common sense, but it is important to remember that this is only relative. He repeatedly claims that value added tax is a tax on corporations instead of a tax on consumers, which is about as economically ignorant (or duplicitous) as you can get.

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  8. I believe there is another worthwhile point to be made with respect to the implementation of taxes on wealth. Bernie has said his goal is to tax billionaires out of existence within 10 years. Lizzy has the same goal just over a longer time frame.

    How do Bernie and Lizzy plan to pay for all the free stuff they are promising when we run out of billionaires by taxing them out of existence?

    Those footsteps you hear are those of the tax man sneaking up behind you.

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    1. They would be the first to preach "Equity", as well. Equity is the newspeak buzzword for Marxist leveling of previously free individual Citizens into Subjects of a Big Brother Dear Leader and an oligarchy of Party Bosses. Even they will never live under a truly equitable taxation, which to me would be Every Adult Pays $____.00 per day, no exceptions.

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  9. Let's try this. Assume that A and B are about the same age, and have both been earning the same income for the same amount of time. In general, and without even saying one word about taxes, do you still want to be an unqualified advocate for B, who has reached this age and finds himself with no savings? But beyond that, do you want to be a critic of the tax code which taxed all of A’s savings along the way (or at best gave him a choice to defer some of these savings in exchange for paying higher ordinary income rates on his IRA’s 401K distributions in the future) including the eventual taxation on that portion of the increase in his capital simply due to inflation?
    There is also no reason to add yet an epic, retroactive tax like a wealth tax (which adds insult to the sacrifice on savings by taxing it de novo when it becomes wealth) to address the impatience of the revenue authorities to get a hold of unrealized gains before they are realized. Some have proposed instituting a mark-to-market tax on accumulated gains, which would accelerate the taxation of these accounting gains. This is less invidious than a wealth tax, but is not a way to encourage long-term savings, nor to simplify the typical taxpayer’s life. Furthermore, if applied to the existing stock of gains, and not new gains, it would still strike me as reneging an important part of the quid pro quo through which we were encouraged to save. But worse, most of these proposals go beyond tax impatience: they propose taxing the gains at rates that would further exacerbate the disadvantage of savings versus consumption; and they would introduce tails I win, heads you lose treatment of sequences of MTM gains and losses.

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  10. The Green Party of Canada has just proposed a 100% inclusion rate for capital gains. That would make Canada unique in the world. The Canadian inclusion rate is 50% which is higher than the USA and many other rich developed countries. France's inclusion rates are higher.

    The Green Party of Canada also supports lower dirty fuel taxes for both First Nations and farmers. The Green Party of Canada appears to be indifferent to farmers and ranchers trashing watersheds.

    It would all be highly entertaining if it was not so pathetic.

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  11. Unfortunately, people don't have a clue on taxes. If Trump released his taxes, few would even understand them because of all the permutations in the tax code. Corporations pay 0 tax no matter the rate. Warren Buffett rails against the current tax system and wants to pay as much as his secretary but he pays at the long term cap gains rate and she pays at the highest personal income tax bracket.

    Flat tax and consumption taxes are the only way to even the system.

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  12. "...pay less taxes than you and I..." is incorrect. It should read "...pay less taxes than you and me..."

    You're welcome!

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  13. It's fairly obvious and simple that a consumption tax, which can be made progressive, is the way to go. But it won't come until there's a crisis, maybe when the capital markets require high interest for rolling over the gov't debt, or don't lend at all. Then it will be time for a capital levy! It will be a while, I guess, but good luck to everybody! :-)

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  14. "Into this interesting economic debate wade Saez and Zucman and assume all corporate tax comes out of shareholders' pockets."

    If this is true then it's impossible that billionaires only pay 23% tax rate. Because to get that low a rate it has to be capital income - dividends and capital gains - but without adding the corporate income tax rate to the personal one.

    Both things cannot be true. That billionaires pay low rates and also that they carry the corporate tax burden.

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  15. "Really the problem starts by defining the question as income taxes -- what is the tax rate on this year's income -- and defining income to include 'capital income,' dividends, interest, and capital gains. Once you allow that definition, much of the game is lost."

    U.S. income tax is highly progressive relative to all logical points of comparison (other developed countries, prior years, etc.), EVEN WITH CAPITAL INCOME INCLUDED. Saez-Zucman achieved their results only by excluding the EITC from the definition of "taxes." That is where the "game is lost."

    The more you (and others) try to argue Saez-Zucman's more interesting positions (e.g., corporate tax incidence, income definition, temporal matters, etc.), the more you distract from the underlying absurdity of excluding the EITC and fall into their straw-man. The EITC is a tax credit. Saez-Zucman are pretending it's not. Full stop.

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  16. Flat tax rate? Too simple or too complicated? Accounting/Tax companies too big to fail?

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  17. A tax is a government-mandated surrender of resources (definition, okay?). Resources need not pass through the treasury to qualify as a tax. Class action lawsuits which generate court orders that corporations pay, for example, environmental groups impose taxes. Resources need not be dollar-denominated to qualify as taxes. Corvee labor is a tax. Slavery imposes a 100% tax on the slave's time. Compulsory unpaid labor is slavery (definition, okay?). In the US today, fifty million children work, unpaid, as window dressing in the massive make-work program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel that many speakers of American English call "the public school system". Poor people pay exorbitant taxes in the form of compulsory attendance at wretched "schools".

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    1. I give you an A- for imagination, at least. Can you contribute equally on the root problem of the THEFT of property, including currencies, by Governments for dubious purposes far outside the purview of the original Constitution?

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  18. Inspired by James Buchanan (e.g. The ethical limits of taxation), IMO the only system that makes sense is a flat tax on non-saved income coupled with a national dividend (what some people call basic guaranteed income). The combination results in an increasing average tax rate that asymptotically approaches the constant marginal tax rate as income rises. It can be justified ethically, it is simple and therefore cheaper to implement, and creates few distortions. Together with taxes on negative externalities and an elimination of most deductions, unjustifiable subsidies, welfare programs and the federal minimum wage, it would constitute great improvement over the current system.

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    1. A flat tax on non-saved income? .. that sounds like a consumption tax to me. Which should be much better.

      It does not make any sense taxing income since total income is something we want to increase. Seems incoherent to me taxing the CO2 emisions to reduce them and not expecting a reduction in total income when taxing income.

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    2. Taxing consumption is still a tax on a portion of income. Every tax produces a distortion unless it is either on negative externalities or on something with a perfectly inelastic supply or demand. This is unavoidable. But given that taxes are necessary, the issue is which is the best system.

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    3. HMMM .... OK, except for the handout euphemized as GBI or "National Dividend".... I want private, voluntary, free-will charity as my "contribution" to the Great Society. That is most efficient, most fair, most moral, and actually Scriptural.

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  19. As Orville Faubus said (or was it Huey Long?): Don't tax you; don't tax me. Tax that man behind the tree.

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  20. Nop apologies. I have to reject the premise of the entire commentary - that income tax in general is acceptable to any free Smith style Capitalist Citizenry. In 1850, Karl Marx laid out plans for his soldiers to conquer free countries: in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

    Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
    A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
    Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
    Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
    Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly." So far, with neo-liberal "progressives" from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Hussein Obama and their subeversives such as Austyn Goolsbee and Robert B. Reich, they have done SUCH DAMAGE to the real wealth of productive, hard-working, God Fearing Americans that there should be a New Revolution here, now. The FAIR TAX PLAN may be the answer. But soft-peddling the absolute abuse of America's best Citizens for over a Century now as just some annoying "Economics" exercise is appalling to me.

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  21. We are losing to the infiltrators, and have been for over 150 years. "in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

    Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
    A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
    Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
    Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
    Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly."..... Ignorance is worst among the "educated".

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  22. Not even every tax economist I have ever asked the question of can answer "what is your all-in marginal tax rate?" If it were clear, I suspect a lot more people would stop working!" Actually it really takes a producer or trader, in my case, to answer this question.It dovetails with incentives and disincentives. A few years ago I was offered a seven figure package to manage a derivatives desk in NYC. I calculated my personal marginal rate at nearly 75%, which included the present value of estate taxes. I declined the offer as it didn't seem reasonable that I work for twenty-five cents on the dollar. That disincentive kept my human capital out of the market.

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  23. This post reminds me of your earlier climate change post. As someone who's not versed in climate science, it's damn near impossible to get an agnostic view of the facts. I was hard-pressed to understand how politics could corrupt the scientists themselves. Then I remembered, economics is exactly the same way... Well epitomized by Robert shiller's statement that the single best policy a country could follow is just to tax the rich more. I was beyond flabbergasted by his statement.

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  24. Read Frederic Bastiat - THE LAW. A very readable, concise essay, THE LAW presents a solid understanding of our voluntary transfer of power, beginning with self-defense for our property while we are going about our business, and through the concept of taxation for "public goods". However, the corruption of that power results in what we have suffered since 1913: People voting to take money from the Treasury for personal benefits, over and above any amount they have put in (welfare, cronyism, so-called grants to much agenda items, etc.) have become the majority in America. Bastiat is the man.

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  25. I would never support any National "dividend" or GBI scheme. Such ideas only undermine an already pathetic acceptance of Personal Responsibility in America. I have watched it wither in my lifetime, and the more I learn about attempts at Government "philanthropy", the more I realize it was a trickle (down) started in the Marxist circles and certain politicians (so-called "progressives") gave it a swift kick once they swindled the public into accepting tax on real productivity. We subsidize sloth and foolish behavior; How is it that this relationship is not obvious and being reversed? Pay people to make excuses to not support themselves, to breed children they can not support, and to remain ignorant - Guess what??? You get MORE , not fewer, lazy & promiscuous & ignorant persons you pledged to support.

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  26. All we know every citizens have to pay their tax for their duty and living. Great article. Many Thanks

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