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David Allen Perrin
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 15 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 3510
Posted: 25 February 2020 at 10:47am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

A fraction of our military spending...

Taking back a fraction of the tax breaks given to billionaires...

The taxes the billionaires and corporations should be paying in the first place.....

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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4545
Posted: 25 February 2020 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

 Chris Blaise wrote:
One reason is student debt is non-dischargable.  Unlike credit card, mortgage, or others, you cannot declare bankruptcy, deal with the interim period for your credit to reset (7 years, I think), and move on.  It is with you until you pay it off or the rest of your life, whichever comes first.
This strikes me as an argument in favor of bankruptcy law reform rather than for complete discharge of student loan debt.  Predatory lending of all types is a huge problem in this country.  The economy is also hurt by credit card debt, and people who discharge their mortgage debt via bankruptcy still lose their homes and end up homeless.  Favoring this one type of debt strikes me as classist, and pretty deliberately aimed at pandering to a voting bloc that skews strongly toward Sanders.    
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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8007
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 8:00am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Then there's the question of just how much student debt should be 'forgiven'. Should students that opt to go to high-priced schools and dorm it be released from the same percentage of that debt as a student that opted for a city/state college?*

*Yes, I was one of them - I was accepted to Boston University, but didn't go because I couldn't afford it, and went to a state school instead.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 8:36am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Keep in mind, if we allow for taxation of “the rich” the government will begin downward adjustments of what qualifies. Remember, income tax started somewhere around 3%.

(How about we abolish income tax, and apply a national sales tax. Pay as you go, and the more you spend the more you pay. What could be more fair than that?)

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Joe Zhang
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 12857
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 8:49am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I think California's government and relatively generous social programs are funded by capital gains taxes on their tech millionaires and billionaires. Which is all well and good, except when the stock market dumps. And stock markets have this tendency of reaching great heights, crashing, and never really recovering, like Japan. The wealth of the top 1% is great but finite. Government spending knows no bounds. 

Edited by Joe Zhang on 26 February 2020 at 8:52am
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 9:11am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I’m in the bottom 1% of the 1%, and I do not like being viewed thru the same lens as some trust fund leech.

I worked hard to get where I am, and if Sanders wants to go after “the wealthy” I hope he remembers how some of us got here.

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Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 10:30am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Thus the inherent flaw in "the 1%." Not ALL of them cheated their way, embezzled their way, or inherited their way to the top. Some - I'll guess over 50% - EARNED their wealth.

How do you discern? Some people are good, generous, supportive, and don't deserve to get smashed. And of course, some do. How can we tell who should get what?
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Brian Floyd
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 07 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 8321
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 10:45am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

One problem with the government, especially President, is that you have to be wealthy or damn near it to successfully run for office. A lot of them were born into it rather than earning their wealth, so who do you think they're going to empathize with and relate to more? They have no sense of what its like to be lower or middle class. They're not out of touch, because they've never been in touch to begin with.

When Romney ran against Obama, I remember someone saying that Romney once thought he was poor because he had to live on $400,000 a year!

All the idiots who talk about how successful Trump is as a businessman keep forgetting that:

1. He was born wealthy, and his father bailed him out several times.

2. He's gone bankrupt multiple times.

3. There's a lot of people and businesses he owes money to because he doesn't pay his bills. He has even done this as President, with some of the political rallies he has held, where security and other things have not been paid for.

As for the 1%, lets not forget that some of them are not jerks. Bill Gates does charity work, but my criticism of that is that its mostly if not all done overseas.


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Wilson Mui
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 27 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4521
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 11:00am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Sanders wants a wealth tax on assets for the top 0.1%,
which is $32 million while Warren wants to tax those with
$50 million in assets.

To me, that is not unreasonable. If you have that kind
of money, you should give back to society.

(I don't think the plan would actually work though. The
rich spend a great deal of energy looking for ways to
avoid paying taxes. I am sure they will find a way to
hide most of it.)

Edited by Wilson Mui on 26 February 2020 at 11:02am
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Steve De Young
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 01 April 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 3487
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 11:07am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

If you look at how Bernie arranges his tax proposals, they're very carefully targeted.  For example, student debt relief, which would be a one-time event followed by reforms to the system to start over, would be funded by a tax on traded stocks.  In this case, 2 cents per stock sold.  That sounds like almost nothing, but it would pay for student debt relief in a few years, at which point that tax would go into the treasury to help balance the budget.

Placing this tiny tax on trades also means that it won't affect normal people with retirement investments, because those investments tend to be purchases that are held over a long term.  The people who will end up paying it are the speculators who play the market.  But even for them, at 2 cents a trade, with the amount of money they move around every day it won't affect much of anything in terms of discouraging trading.

The wealth tax is another good example.  It's proposed at 2% per year on the net worth of people who are worth more than 10 million dollars.    None of these affect normal, hard-working people and none of them are particularly onerous on those whom they affect.  Especially when you know some history and that, for example, for the first half of the 20th century the top tax bracket had a 90% tax rate.

Edited to add this math:  At the current rate of trade, the tax on stock trades will generate 47 billion dollars a year.  


Edited by Steve De Young on 26 February 2020 at 11:15am
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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4545
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

 JB wrote:
(How about we abolish income tax, and apply a national sales tax. Pay as you go, and the more you spend the more you pay. What could be more fair than that?)

Well, lower-income households have to spend a far greater share of their total income than higher-income households do.  So with sales tax the net result is that the lower your income, the larger percentage of it is taxed.  Very poor families wind up paying sales tax on 100% of their income, while very wealthy families pay sales tax on only a very small percentage of their income.  Sales tax is considered regressive for this reason.

It's not a coincidence that the two wealthiest men in the world choose to live in my state, where there is no state income tax and sales tax is the primary revenue source for the state.


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 26 February 2020 at 2:06pm
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3103
Posted: 26 February 2020 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Another aspect of sales tax as opposed to income tax is that the wealthy have a lot more opportunity and tools at their disposal to simply spend the money outside of the United States.

Not saying it couldn't work, just that it would require a serious amount of jiggering to make it so that the balance of fairness could be maintained - a dollar spent is a dollar taxed.
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