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Originally Posted by Karma Police  What do you think about imposing taxes on the ultra-wealthy in order to redistribute accumulated wealth? Should there be a limit to the amount of wealth that can be inherited? |
A touchy subject, taxes are. I'm personally very pro-capitalism (not republican though, believe it or not) and of the opinion that an attitude like "tax the rich, give to the poor" or "tax the rich more because they have more" or "let's redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor" is very bad. This is the kind of attitude that spawned Communist Russia. The reason the US is such a prosperous country is because we have a free market economy, and in theory everyone has a chance to get rich if they want to. Most of the time, people get rich because they create value and are then rewarded for it. I know that in practice things are more complicated, but I still believe that this is the best system. That said, it still
is a mixed economy meaning that we have some social services (social security, medicare, welfare) which I think are fine as long as they're not abused.
But going back to your question -- the reality in the US is that most of the tax revenue is being paid by the middle class. This is despite the fact that the tax is progressive and the rich are in fact taxed more than the poor or middle class. The reason that middle class pays the most though is because there are way more of them than there are rich people. A large percentage of income taken from a small amount of rich people isn't going to help much, no matter how you cut it.
Most of what I said above actually refers to income taxes. Got a little carried a way there.
As far as estate tax goes, that's a tricky issue. My opinion is that children shouldn't get too much money because it's just not healthy. People need to learn to make their own living. At the same time nobody wants to give money to the government so a compromise would be to make part of the estate get donated to charity. That's my take on it.
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Originally Posted by Adam Personally, I think that tax should be flat, no matter what. The only way to be fair is to charge everybody the same percentage from their income and drop the extra taxes. |
As much as I'd love to see that myself, it ultimately wouldn't be practical. Poor people need to be taxed less because they have less money to spend on essentials like food, shelter, and medicine. But I do think that there should be a lower ceiling to the progressive tax than it is right now. The tax brackets as they are now go
up to 35% in the US. A lower ceiling would be nice, but from looking at the alternatives I'm just happy that I don't live in the UK, New Zealand, or Australia.
Switzerland seems to have the most favorable income tax system. I imagine if the US didn't spend (that is, waste) so much money on the military we'd have much lower taxes.