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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29425 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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I guess if it was a really low percentage, like how the Swiss do property taxes, there may be some sense you could make of this, and it would actually be some incentive to make companies public, which would reinforce the power of the PMC and create a whole bunch of sinecures in the IRS.

But at the rates proposed here it's just straight up confiscation.

Even the famed 79% tax bracket that only applied to Rockefeller was on revenue income, not just straight up stealing from him because he has too much.

Yes, governments engaged in the most destructive war that has ever been do tend to straight up take everything from people. I agree, FDR was basically Mussolini.

He straight up proved you wrong and this is your response? How about a little grace and humility?

I don't respect people who go to WW2 to make arguments about peace time tax policy. Because it's transparently dishonest.

Especially when they accuse me of using the non central fallacy a few seconds before.

Sounds like a cautionary tale with relevance to the instant case, no? Camel, nose, tent, yada yada...

And no one actually paid these famously high tax rates either. There were a million and one loopholes that were closed under Reagan.

When Reagan reduced the headline tax rate (70% under Carter!), he closed the loopholes at the same time. As a result, tax revenues as a percent of GDP stayed level. The wealthy were no longer able to use their preferred tax shelters. Tax avoiders paid more. People who didn't try to game the system paid less. The result was a much fairer system for everyone.

Anyone who tries to use past headline tax rates as an argument simply doesn't understand the reality of the pre-Reagan code, which was inferior in every way. Only suckers or fools ever paid 70%.

It didn’t apply to revenue but income. Revenue would not be an income tax and therefore would be required to be apportioned amongst the states.

Yeah that's what I meant, it's the same word in French which always trips me up.

What's the word for revenue in French, then?

Both income and revenue are revenu, the latter being a loan word from Old French in the first place that means return, comeback.

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