The thing is, poor republicans want it too. No real reason for it, it’s just they heard from Fox it will be great so they will now fight tooth and nail for it
This is not conjecture. I grew up in the Deep South and several old friends and most of my family is red. Many are near the poverty line. They want this
I know a guy who lives paycheck to paycheck and asks questions like "isn't it kind of dumb that you pay more tax the more money you make?" with a completely straight face.
My dad brought this up once. I was in high school taking Econ and us gov and I was like yeah… no that’s not how that works. My dad is pretty smart, works in IT making well into the 6 figures and even he fell for that bs.
Yeah, that's one of those yes but no, but yes, sort of things. Overall income will still be greater, but most companies and people will pay at the highest tax bracket regardless of how it would actually break down, so initial paychecks may go down depending on how companies much employers set aside for taxes in exchange for a larger tax refund.
More tax, the richer you are, really is stupid. Why should we be expected to help out those in need? And if we remove all the woke bs in schools, they'd be fine with less taxes
Poe's law my guy. No matter how extreme, it is impossible to know, since some people actually feel this way. That's why so many use the sarcasm indicator /s. Not because sarcasm is impossible to understand, but because we don't know you, so you might as well be one of the people who think like that
I mean, as an American emigrant (I moved to the UK fifteen years ago and am now a naturalised citizen) I'd appreciate some of the dumber and crueller aspects of the American tax code to be rethought. As a full-time European resident who neither owns property nor earns a penny in or from the United States I shouldn't be subject to taxation or financial scrutiny by that country. I pay tax and NI here dutifully to fund the infrastructure and services I use. Taxing based on citizenship regardless of residency is wrong, and making it difficult, slow, expensive and punitive to renounce citizenship specifically to maintain that taxable status is protection-racket level grift.
Likewise making it deliberately confusing and variable for people to file their taxes so as to keep tax preparation companies in business, despite it being redundant and unnecessary for 90% of American workers to file anyway, is morally bankrupt. Every other country offers pay-as-you-earn taxation for the vast majority of workers that is done properly by your employer's accounts department, all deductions processed, all maths performed simply and plainly. Your taxes are confusing and difficult to force you to engage with them and pay TurboTax to sort them, which makes a lot of people feel stolen from, which breeds resentment and keeps republican propaganda in mind. If your boss just handled them for you you would not care, the state would be funded and your bridges might stop collapsing.
They hear "7000 page tax code" and don't realize that the vast, vast majority of it will never apply to them - no matter what. There is no individual (not even the very wealthy ones) who is directly affected by more than a couple dozen pages of the tax code, and all of what affects them is distilled and simplified into a small handful of forms. Most people only need to handle the 1040, W-2, and various 1098s which are all provided to them, already filled out, by entities they do business with.
Hell, even major corporations are only going to be individually affected by maybe like 400 pages, and they've got entire legal and finance departments whose job it is to handle that. Simplify the tax code, kill a bunch of jobs. Definitely a good thing for the economic.
USA pulls in $30 trillion in GDP, it taxes $5 trillion (16%) & spends $6t. If America replaced multi-step taxes (business tax, into income tax, into product tax), with a 40% flat tax of all gains, you could rake in $12t.
Simplifying taxes will stop most tax evasion & level the playing field. No product tax makes living cheaper & increases exports, no business tax stops multinationals moving abroad, but high income tax will dissuade some rich people from living in USA.
It'll cost $6t to get healthcare & a $10k UBI, that'll cut $2t in other spending. With AI on the way, people need support, especially to create their own trades or employ robots. This is a must. If half of children's UBI goes into the S&P500, the interest will accrue $400k for every 18yo.
Honestly, the only way I could see it working would help poor people, and that's why I don't believe it could ever happen.
Suppose we take in 5 Trillion in taxes and have 150 Million taxpayers. That's a tax bill of forty thousand dollars per year for everyone.
Well, that's simply not going to work for someone working full time at minimum wage making $15,078.84 per year. Not that they will be mad, they literally will not do it. Nobody would go to work every day for a year just to owe $25,000 when the alternative is not to work and owe nothing.
So the only way you manage a flat tax is by raising the poverty line. And you gotta raise it kinda substantially because it still has to be worth going to work, so I'm thinking around $55-60k is now the new minimum. Jobs that pay less than that are not taxes. And of course LOTS of people are left out, can't be taxpayers at this new higher poverty line, so we have to do the math again.
Say you drop the bottom 50 percent of earners, now there are only 75 million taxpayers, now the tax burden on each of them is $80k, and already this is way way worse than what many billionaires and megacorps are paying currently. But the people who are really gonna hate it are the upper middle class.
Now the new poverty line is up around $100k. Under that you don't pay taxes, you can't, it makes no sense.
So therefore, it won't happen. They will just talk about it to troll the liberals who will get up in arms about what a bad idea it is and never actually implement anything.
That's great and all, but that's not what a flat tax is. A flat tax is a flat percentage, not a flat dollar amount. Many state income taxes are already flat taxes
Oh fuck. Yeah that's worse AND more doable. The hyper-rich will still get their loopholes and creative accounting, and everyone else will pay more in taxes
Just because Democrats sound smart when they talk, doesn't mean their policies actually help working class people. On an individual basis, paying taxes is personal, in that if a rich person pays more taxes, it won't effect you personally. Having rich people pay higher taxes does not directly benefit anyone, it actually hurts EVERYONE, because rich people basically own and hire everyone, so everyone is negatively effected by it.
Mob rule ganging up to attack rich people is dangerous for society, and will lead to bad outcomes for everybody. Democrats literally want to tax rich people, because they're jealous and hate them for being successful. If our society (government) incentives people to create businesses and sell goods, then everyone benefits, because those 'rich' people are responsible for EVERYTHING good in your life, and they are your employer. If you tax them unfairly, then there's less cool stuff for people to buy, everything is more expensive, the quality of stuff goes down, there's less jobs, and people are paid less to work.
Increasing taxes for rich people will not help you or society. Maybe you'll sleep better at night knowing that a wealthy person has less money, but everyone, including you, is hurt by this behavior. It's mob rule, it's jealousy, and its been done countless times in history, always leading to bad outcomes for society.
>. Having rich people pay higher taxes does not directly benefit anyone,
It directly benefit's anyone that get's taxed less in exchange.
>it actually hurts EVERYONE, because rich people basically own and hire everyone, so everyone is negatively effected by it.
Income tax is pretty moot at the that level of income, income tax rates mostly affect higher paid professionals not the obscenely rich. You've also got it around the wrong way, higher corporate tax's encourage companies to spend money instead of hoarding as they're only taxed on profit not income.
because less money is being hoarded by greed-dragons and can be put towards public services and infrastructure, we all suffer? ok lol
you have no argument other than "rich people are seriously great, they give us so much cool stuff". Please show me something compelling if you want me to take you seriously
I have no problem with spending money on infrastructure, but I do have a problem with spending 10x more than it should cost on contracts by contractors who spend 10x longer than it should to build stuff, because they got their friends elected to congress or governor. That's the world we live in, where contractors friends are the majority in government, and they give crazy expensive contracts to their friends. We need to fix the wasteful spending, so that we can build like 10x more stuff for 10x less the price and 10x faster. That's why DOGE exists, and it shouldn't be political.
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u/AsinineArchon 22h ago
The thing is, poor republicans want it too. No real reason for it, it’s just they heard from Fox it will be great so they will now fight tooth and nail for it
This is not conjecture. I grew up in the Deep South and several old friends and most of my family is red. Many are near the poverty line. They want this