Pete Buttigieg Admits That When He Says ‘Fair Taxes’ He Means ‘Higher Taxes’

Or, and stick with me here because this is a difficult thing to understand for many conservatives — it’s because the rich have all the money. Literally, all the money. The top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 50% combined

 

When I mean how hard a tax "hits", I mean percentage of income. Excise and property taxes take a much larger share of working class paychecks than they do from the wealthy who tend to be hit harder by the income, investment, and business taxes.

I agree that collecting the most with the least negative effect is important. But you are ignoring the things the taxes are paying for. For example, if the tax is paying for affordable retirement and higher education for workers, this is going to benefit the general population much more than the negative impact of the tax.

You want tax rates that don't punish success, but all taxes punish success one way or another. Also, even if they did punish success, as long as they didn't make it harder to succeed and only punished those already successful, at worst they will only inspire the wealthy to work harder for new gains because they are being taxed higher for the benefit of the general population.

I agree we shouldn't demonize the wealthy. Even though they tend to take most of the economic growth, they do this because they are only human and human nature is selfish, working class people share this selfishness as well. We have taxes and government policies because we don't live in a perfect world and need to deal with the fact that people are selfish and so need to impose involuntary taxes to get things done.

We should impose a tax and regulatory system such that even if people acted completely selfishly and uncharitably, within the bounds of the law, we will still get growing prosperity for the general population because the government regulates and taxes to even out some of our worst tendancies.

 

Yeh but its never the "rich" who pay all these taxes. They have tax lawyers to get them all the tax deductions and writeoff's that allow them to pay much less than middle class people. So the poor pay nothing and the rich pay next to nothing. Who do you think gets stuck with really having to pay taxes?

 

That’s why loopholes and the vast majority of deductions need to be eliminated.
Our tax forms need to be:

Your income from all sources = ti
Your tax rate (automatically calculated) = mtr
Your standard deduction = r

((ti x mtr) - r) = amount you owe

 

Sounds good to me. Do any of the Democrat candidates propose that? I haven't heard any of them say so, including Buttigieg. Seems like all he's interested in doing now is talking crap about Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves like a hell of a lot of other Americans did too. Its too bad that these Democrats have to get so spun up over stuff that happened 200 years ago.

 

I don't know what these top dems are thinking.

 

Ah, the Trumpers are afraid of Buttigieg. Smart, very smart.

 

I guess the TDS crowd must be massively afraid of Trump.

 

Trump was a fluke, Paul7, and you know it.

 

How things will be for Democrats...

 

LOL, how so? If Trump disappeared his movement wouldn't, just look at similar political movements in Europe, Brexit, etc.

If he gets re-elected will that be a fluke too?

 

It would be a target-rich environment for the Trump campaign.

 

Also that this "tax the 1%" bullshit hits working professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc - when it is marketed as being against the top end of town.

They know they can't tax the whole budget off the rich, but can't say this.

Round these parts the top marginal of 46.5% kicks in at $200,000. I guess it's just not all that marketable to tax the living **** out of people who spent 7 years studying to serve the community.

Yeah, it's those guys at the top end earning 20 million as CEO we're aiming for *snicker*. Just don't question the billions in subsidies, regulatory barriers to market entry, literal cartels (taxi industry), whole business models based on state decreed monopolies (pharma) we give them in exchange.

 

The bottom 50% have never paid much in taxes. As the wealthiest get more and more tax cuts, it is those in the middle that end up paying more. High earned income is taxed at a higher rate than unearned income.

 

Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson both wrote about taxing the wealthiest. Part as a way of keeping them under control, and part, because the wealthiest benefit most from the state. One of their primary arguments was that the state in large part, exists to protect the wealthy from the poor that would otherwise steal from them. Without the state, the wealthy have no power, with the state, they do. The argument can be taken further, that the wealthy benefit from the infrastructure more than poor people, benefit from regulation, benefit from police protection, benefit from the courts, on and on. The wealthy benefit far more than average people that they should pay more. And a whole lot more.

 

Nothing wrong with that; you want services, it comes attached with a price tag; trump is too busy lamely attempting to defend himself these days to worry about busing immigrants to cities.

 

The answer to solve that is not simply just 'higher taxes'.

Only a simpleton would think that.

These large businesses don't pay low taxes simply because taxes are 'too low'.
There are much more specific reasons in the tax code. Some of them justified, some not. Maybe we should discuss that.

But that's a bit too complicated to think about for the simple mind, isn't it?

 

And what do you imagine Trumps import duty on Chinese goods is if not a tax on American consumers?

 

More than 14 million voted against him than for him last time, and it will be more than twenty million next year.

 

The more the right fears Mayor Pete the more they misinterpret him.

 

Such a cheap shot. But you are right, "too complicated" for you.

 

Give it a rest.. a guy making $500k is a pimple on the ass of the elite wealthy, and you **** him six ways from Sunday with the tax code, and now want more

 

Oooh boy, maybe he'll lose California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut

 

Indeed Kazinetsu. we’re all far too stupid to understand anything you may say. It must be lonely being a genius.

 

If we had not the income tax, but a one size sales tax, Amazon never could reach a pay no taxes condition.