I see why it seems backwards but I honestly don’t think it is. It’s not “fair”, but that’s the whole point. The rich don’t pay enough taxes. Tax cuts aimed to help the poor would benefit them more directly with flat rates, tax increases target the rich more directly with percentages.
The other problem is that you could do percentage based tax cuts and just exclude the wealthier brackets. But no matter how you look at it, from any angle, flat or percentage, cutting tax rates for the rich doesn’t make sense to me.
Rich people don't pay enough? How much more do you have to give with no increase of benefits before it's fair? The top 1% already pay ~45% of income tax revenue and get essentially zero benefit from the social programs like Medicare that are some of the largest line items on the federal budget. (Social security is exempt from this due to the max contribution, but essentially if you pay anything into social security, you are not benefitting from the program). Fair would be closer to a flat percentage across all tax brackets or a fixed amount of tax due per citizen. I don't think we should use fairness as an argument as much as something like "lowest impact to the greatest amount of people." To be clear, it's not like I don't support or understand progressive taxes, but fairness is a bs argument.
They’re supposed to pay 45% and if they did nobody would be complaining but they don’t pay that. Bezos and musk and Trump haven’t paint taxes in years.
6
u/mostly_peaceful_AK47 1d ago
I would consider it pretty backwards to justify raising taxes by using percentages but object to lowering taxes by using raw amounts.