Yes! Eliminate the ceiling on FICA taxes. And apply FICA taxes to all income, not just wage income. It is unfair for poor and middle-class wage earners to pay over 14% of their compensation (including the employer contribution to their FICA taxes), while people with annual incomes in the millions pay close to 0% in FICA taxes. Scrap the …
Yes! Eliminate the ceiling on FICA taxes. And apply FICA taxes to all income, not just wage income. It is unfair for poor and middle-class wage earners to pay over 14% of their compensation (including the employer contribution to their FICA taxes), while people with annual incomes in the millions pay close to 0% in FICA taxes. Scrap the cap to put Social Security on a sound basis and to make it closer to fair. Not fair, mind you. That would require progressive FICA taxes, but let’s just start with flat FICA taxes. What we have now is regressive FICA taxation.
Okay let's try to be a little bit fair here. There are plenty of billionaires. But that doesn't mean all or even most of them have billions in income. Most have billions in assets, but income is significantly lower than their net worth. And right now we don't have a net worth tax although many of us have advocated for that in the future (Liz Warren has been pushing a net worth tax for quite a while).
Yes they are still megarich and most pay far less in taxes as a percentage of their net worth than the rest of us but let's be correct when we criticize this. Thx for listening.
Yes I had the thought that few would make more than a billion or even that much in a year. And yet I think what I said is technically true, or true enough for informal discussion. A news item claimed that over several years Trump paid from 0 to $750 dollars in income tax, and other billionaires have been said to pay nothing. Some years ago. Warren Buffet, who claimed to use no loophole legerdemain, said the the woman who empties his waste basket pays a greater share of her income in tax than he (and he was not OK about it). I overgeneralize o a forum such this as it is informal and long posts more rarely read, but yes, i want to be fundamentally accurate and informed where I might be slipping.
Parenthetically. HRC has written more than once about how old school Republicans introduced a graduated federal income tax to pay for the Civil War. They reasoned that it was only fair that those more easily pay a proportionally larger share should do so.
Warren Buffet is not the only one proposing taxes on wealth (that is, net worth). Piketty’s data shows that without wealth taxes (together with steeply progressive income taxes) capitalist economies are intrinsically unstable. So, wealth taxes (on the extremely wealthy, not on the bottom 99%) are a requirement for stability, not a luxury. And yes, wealth taxes would require the holders of wealth to cash in sone of their wealth annually to pay their wealth taxes. That is not a bug. It is part the purpose of wealth taxes.
We are talking about annual income, not wealth. Wealth tax is another matter. According to Piketty, who has the data, we should have wealth taxes too, if we want a stable capitalist system. But FICA is a a tax on annual income, not wealth.
I think he knows he's a fake, but proud, as in hubris, that he fools people. His combined with his huge inheritance (which Robert Reich claims would have made him richer in a passive index fund) his shame-free sociopathy is his superpower. But it's also his huge potential liability. He must brutally attack any kid who comments on his nudity.
My guess, like yours, is that he knows he’s not in the classy class. Not that being in the classy class is necessarily admirable, but it’s important to him. He desperately wants to be one of them, and he wears his desperation on his sleeve. He knows that the only people he’s fooling are rubes and boobies, people he despises but knows are the source if his power. That realization constantly humiliates him from the inside out. Humiliation produces the worst sort of anger, and his reaction to that anger is what he exhibits in public.
He was never accepted, even while he was president, by the people he desperately wants to respect him. For example, other world leaders laughed at him in public and weren’t even surreptitious about it. He knows that, and it eats away af his insides.
Absolutely true, but it was like crowd size, seen through a skewed lens. He had the cult and sycophants at his beck and call every day. And, of course, he thought that Putin loved him. And he did and does. Puppets are valuable, as other oligarchs have discovered. Sad to say.
They do pay lower taxes on capital gains, which for many high income people is substantial. Many view this as double taxation-money you earn then invest is taxed when you sell the stock or other asset-home, art, jewelry, etc., but taxes are only on the amount above what you paid.
That's only part of the many options to reduce taxation that are only available to the well off (including me, since my retirement income comes from investments). I think the wealthier you are the more that is true, which is to say nothing of shadowy offshore shenanigans, much of which is "perfectly legal" even though an obvious con. Big corporations do it openly, let alone legally anonymous shell corporations that take a Sherlock Homes to even identify who owns them. It is innately easier for those with money to make disproportionately more, something that the rules should regulate, not accelerate.
Yes! Eliminate the ceiling on FICA taxes. And apply FICA taxes to all income, not just wage income. It is unfair for poor and middle-class wage earners to pay over 14% of their compensation (including the employer contribution to their FICA taxes), while people with annual incomes in the millions pay close to 0% in FICA taxes. Scrap the cap to put Social Security on a sound basis and to make it closer to fair. Not fair, mind you. That would require progressive FICA taxes, but let’s just start with flat FICA taxes. What we have now is regressive FICA taxation.
And those in the billions in income pay 0% in income taxes, or relatively very little.
Okay let's try to be a little bit fair here. There are plenty of billionaires. But that doesn't mean all or even most of them have billions in income. Most have billions in assets, but income is significantly lower than their net worth. And right now we don't have a net worth tax although many of us have advocated for that in the future (Liz Warren has been pushing a net worth tax for quite a while).
Yes they are still megarich and most pay far less in taxes as a percentage of their net worth than the rest of us but let's be correct when we criticize this. Thx for listening.
Yes I had the thought that few would make more than a billion or even that much in a year. And yet I think what I said is technically true, or true enough for informal discussion. A news item claimed that over several years Trump paid from 0 to $750 dollars in income tax, and other billionaires have been said to pay nothing. Some years ago. Warren Buffet, who claimed to use no loophole legerdemain, said the the woman who empties his waste basket pays a greater share of her income in tax than he (and he was not OK about it). I overgeneralize o a forum such this as it is informal and long posts more rarely read, but yes, i want to be fundamentally accurate and informed where I might be slipping.
Parenthetically. HRC has written more than once about how old school Republicans introduced a graduated federal income tax to pay for the Civil War. They reasoned that it was only fair that those more easily pay a proportionally larger share should do so.
Warren Buffet is not the only one proposing taxes on wealth (that is, net worth). Piketty’s data shows that without wealth taxes (together with steeply progressive income taxes) capitalist economies are intrinsically unstable. So, wealth taxes (on the extremely wealthy, not on the bottom 99%) are a requirement for stability, not a luxury. And yes, wealth taxes would require the holders of wealth to cash in sone of their wealth annually to pay their wealth taxes. That is not a bug. It is part the purpose of wealth taxes.
We are talking about annual income, not wealth. Wealth tax is another matter. According to Piketty, who has the data, we should have wealth taxes too, if we want a stable capitalist system. But FICA is a a tax on annual income, not wealth.
Loopholes are the Repub bread, butter and caviar
Or McNuggets if you're Trump.
He’s a poor excuse for classy elite…if only he knew
I think he knows he's a fake, but proud, as in hubris, that he fools people. His combined with his huge inheritance (which Robert Reich claims would have made him richer in a passive index fund) his shame-free sociopathy is his superpower. But it's also his huge potential liability. He must brutally attack any kid who comments on his nudity.
My guess, like yours, is that he knows he’s not in the classy class. Not that being in the classy class is necessarily admirable, but it’s important to him. He desperately wants to be one of them, and he wears his desperation on his sleeve. He knows that the only people he’s fooling are rubes and boobies, people he despises but knows are the source if his power. That realization constantly humiliates him from the inside out. Humiliation produces the worst sort of anger, and his reaction to that anger is what he exhibits in public.
Nose pressed to the glass. The Presidency gave him a clue of what acceptance felt like. Temporarily
He was never accepted, even while he was president, by the people he desperately wants to respect him. For example, other world leaders laughed at him in public and weren’t even surreptitious about it. He knows that, and it eats away af his insides.
Absolutely true, but it was like crowd size, seen through a skewed lens. He had the cult and sycophants at his beck and call every day. And, of course, he thought that Putin loved him. And he did and does. Puppets are valuable, as other oligarchs have discovered. Sad to say.
They do pay lower taxes on capital gains, which for many high income people is substantial. Many view this as double taxation-money you earn then invest is taxed when you sell the stock or other asset-home, art, jewelry, etc., but taxes are only on the amount above what you paid.
That's only part of the many options to reduce taxation that are only available to the well off (including me, since my retirement income comes from investments). I think the wealthier you are the more that is true, which is to say nothing of shadowy offshore shenanigans, much of which is "perfectly legal" even though an obvious con. Big corporations do it openly, let alone legally anonymous shell corporations that take a Sherlock Homes to even identify who owns them. It is innately easier for those with money to make disproportionately more, something that the rules should regulate, not accelerate.
Say it loud and say it proud, Rex!!!
But not in Italy! Very rude word.
Very!
I must hsve lost track somewhere in this thread. What word are you talking about?
Decency and modesty forbid me to reply. Miss that one, catch the next...
Is that a hint? Still can’t figure it out.
OK, climbing back up the thread I find a 7-line post beginning:
Rex Page (Left Coast)
20 hrs ago
Yes! Eliminate the ceiling on ( four-letter acronym) taxes.
Don't worry - 'twas a passing joke, and only one person has indicated that they either knew or looked up the meaning.