Total receipt of taxes in the USA is $3 trillion

whitenight639

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Quote from: remotemass on March 25, 2013, 02:42:29 PM

Total receipt of taxes in the USA is about $3 trillion a year.
The number of citizens in the USA is about 300 million.
That means if you simply, gave all the money from taxes to each, equally:
Each citizen would get $10k from taxes, apart from their private earnings.

This would free people from having silly jobs, coming up with a highly productive and liberated society.

I hope you understand why this wouldn't work, for a start the government doing the taxing would need to cover its costs,

If you taxed and redistrubuted or even if you just printed $10,000 for the 300,000 citizens in america you would have hyper inflation, with everybody having so much money nobody would want to work, and those that did would charge higher prices because they know everybody else has the money, so $100 gallon of gas overnight.

What you propose is called Progressive Taxation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

Peter Lambert

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Quote from: remotemass on March 25, 2013, 02:42:29 PM

Total receipt of taxes in the USA is about $3 trillion a year.
The number of citizens in the USA is about 300 million.
That means if you simply, gave all the money from taxes to each, equally:
Each citizen would get $10k from taxes, apart from their private earnings.

This would free people from having silly jobs, coming up with a highly productive and liberated society.

The problem with your wonderful fantasy land is that the US government already spends twice as much money as it takes in. If you just redistribute all the revenue, then you will run the national debt up through the roof even more than it already is going.

Cut the government spending by a couple orders of magnitude, then you can do gimicky things like this. Maybe a more fair proposal would be to just lower the percentage of income taxed, that way people would just get to keep what they earn?

Quote from: qxzn on March 25, 2013, 04:48:40 PM

Isn't this the wrong board for this topic?

This thread should be moved to "politics" or just plain "off-topic". There is absolutely no redeming reason for the idiot of an OP to put it in the general discusion forum. Come, learn how to post things where they belong.

wtfvanity

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WTF???

Quote from: remotemass on March 25, 2013, 02:42:29 PM

Total receipt of taxes in the USA is about $3 trillion a year.
The number of citizens in the USA is about 300 million.
That means if you simply, gave all the money from taxes to each, equally:
Each citizen would get $10k from taxes, apart from their private earnings.

This would free people from having silly jobs, coming up with a highly productive and liberated society.

I'll take the silly plan of yours one step further. In fact, give you two choices.

We can all pay the same amount of tax equally... so we each also pay $10,000 a year. Or we can have the rich pay for it. They have enough, right?

But with that $10,000 you are going to have to pay to access private roads and utilities, schools, etc. Sure that's going to be enough for you?

dree12

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Quote from: qxzn on March 25, 2013, 04:48:40 PM

My politics are closest to voluntarism. So I don't like any mandatory taxes.

Yet I would prefer the proposed regime better than the redistributionism that we already have, for a few reasons:

- if it was done in conjunction with a flat tax (flat percentage taken in taxes, flat dollar amount returned), it would be much simpler and therefore require much less administration
- it would be more honest and transparent (about the fact that we're stealing from some and giving to others) than what we currently do, in the sense that it "admits" to being income redistribution
- everyone is a welfare recipient, thereby eliminating a government-reinforced class distinction
- people are free to spend their welfare as they please (versus e.g. food stamps)
- under the proposed regime, at least your income increases monotonically with respect to the amount of value you add (versus the current one, where for an increasing percentage of the population, it pays to quit working)

Isn't this the wrong board for this topic?

The problem is that the "low class" (welfare recipients) don't even get 10K/year in redistribution. Where's the rest going? To the Fed (owned by rich people), oil companies (owned by rich people), and to corruption (benefiting rich people). The system described would be almost fair. But so long as the rich and powerful remain in power, we'll never have it—they want taxes to continue lining their pockets.

qxzn

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My politics are closest to voluntarism. So I don't like any mandatory taxes.

Yet I would prefer the proposed regime better than the redistributionism that we already have, for a few reasons:

- if it was done in conjunction with a flat tax (flat percentage taken in taxes, flat dollar amount returned), it would be much simpler and therefore require much less administration
- it would be more honest and transparent (about the fact that we're stealing from some and giving to others) than what we currently do, in the sense that it "admits" to being income redistribution
- everyone is a welfare recipient, thereby eliminating a government-reinforced class distinction
- people are free to spend their welfare as they please (versus e.g. food stamps)
- under the proposed regime, at least your income increases monotonically with respect to the amount of value you add (versus the current one, where for an increasing percentage of the population, it pays to quit working)

Isn't this the wrong board for this topic?

Elwar

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Quote from: remotemass on March 25, 2013, 03:50:07 PM

Quote from: Vernon715 on March 25, 2013, 03:17:09 PM

I hope that you aren't this stupid.
If you are, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I suppose you cannot conceive of an highly productive anarcho-capitalist society, then.

An anarcho capitalist society would not tax in the first place.

And if it were to redistribute the taxes that someone forced upon them, they would redistrubute based upon what people paid in.

remotemass

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Quote from: Vernon715 on March 25, 2013, 03:17:09 PM

I hope that you aren't this stupid.
If you are, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

I suppose you cannot conceive of an highly productive anarcho-capitalist society, then.

Vernon715

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Quote from: remotemass on March 25, 2013, 02:42:29 PM

Total receipt of taxes in the USA is about $3 trillion a year.
The number of citizens in the USA is about 300 million.
That means if you simply, gave all the money from taxes to each, equally:
Each citizen would get $10k from taxes, apart from their private earnings.

This would free people from having silly jobs, coming up with a highly productive and liberated society.

I hope that you aren't this stupid.

If you are, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Elwar

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Viva Ut Vivas

And what do we do about the $246 billion we owe in interest to the federal reserve?
Or the $940 billion in medicare/medicaid welfare program?
Or the $882 billion in social security welfare?

Elwar

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Awesome...pass this redistribution plan so that we can all quit our jobs.

remotemass

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Total receipt of taxes in the USA is about $3 trillion a year.
The number of citizens in the USA is about 300 million.
That means if you simply, gave all the money from taxes to each, equally:
Each citizen would get $10k from taxes, apart from their private earnings.

This would free people from having silly jobs, coming up with a highly productive and liberated society.

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