• RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    At higher marginal rates we see larger amounts of avoidance, evasion, and fraud. In 1983 the US cut their top tax rate and took in more tax revenue than they had under the previous higher rates.

    This worked once. There is no reason to believe that further cuts would produce similar results. There are other things we should be doing to pursue greater income equality such as funding the IRS fully.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Instead of cutting it they could have just enforced it.

      Plus the odds are fairly high that a significant number of wealthy people complied after the cuts as a tradeoff of good will from the masses for future cuts. If it hadn’t worked out, they could have just gone back to cheating the system harder than they currently do.

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        Nah, it’s easier and less risky to not have to park ypur money in theoretically less stable nations with looser banking rules than to have it parked here. We might be too low but there’s no math supporting going back to 70+%.

    • nekbardrun@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      how much money would be worth if every person on earth ceased to exist?

      What would happen with the economy in this scenario?

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Do you think you are introducing a novel concept by pointing out that money is a replacement for bartered goods? We knew that when we invented currency thousands of years ago.

        • nekbardrun@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I’m not trying to introduce a novel concept.

          I’m trying to bring up to the forefront the old concept surplus value from Karl Marx.

          money isn’t just a replacement for battered goods, but also a way to precify the value of work.

          Work is the real value that runs through the world.

           

          Now, when we talk about taxing the rich, we are talking about the State getting back the value of our work (money) that the rich stole from us by underpaying our jobs.

          And for those who says “The rich will move their riches to a country that pays less taxes”, I must remind you again that these riches can only be generated through work.

          Tax the rich means taxing their companies and stores as well

          It means not letting them have half a trillion of a surplus value that they stole from all of us (because one way or another, we are “working” for them even if by something as stupid as writing a comment on a social media).

          And if, supposedly, the company desires to shutdown their factories here, the State must simply buy it and reopen the factories (maybe under another company that, but still with the state as the main “shareholder”).

          What makes the factories produce goods is not a rich man with billions of dollars.

          What make the goods exist is the working from man and woman in these factories.

          And doing so, the company that left will also leave the internal market share where they were profiting over us, but yet, the market share will still exist and be filled by those from within the state-company.

          • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Yeah the Labor theory of value is highly flawed. It doesn’t explain speculative gains in value that require zero labor to exist for example.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      3 days ago

      I feel like if we had spent the money lost to tax cuts on enforcing existing laws, like really throw the book at tax cheats, like put them in orange jumpsuits and make them rot in a cell, we’d have had better outcomes.

      The ultra rich should be afraid.