Is it fair for the ultra-rich to pay dark money to the people making the laws (legislators,) and the people with the ultimate authority to interpret those laws, (SCOTUS judges,) to make and enforce laws that give huge tax breaks available only to themselves, (the ultra-rich?)
Fair share is the amount it takes to provide and maintain promises laid out in our Constitution. ie: " form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," divided by the citizenry and adjusted to meet all those advantages laid out in the Preamble to our Constitution.
It takes money to follow through with the promise our Constitution offers to each citizen. The folks who occupy the highest levels of income in our country benefit from the labor of the people who occupy the lowest levels of the economic ladder. Is it fair for a person in that upper echelon of earners of wealth to keep thousands of times the money required for the essentials of life and require someone in the bottom to “get along” with half what they need to put food in the mouths of their kids?
I think that a fair share of the expense to support our economic system should be based on the value extracted from that system. And given that some people will, through a combination of skill and chance, outperform the others it is a fact that they will have benefited more from the system and a fair solution would be for them to shoulder a higher percentage of the associated costs of maintaining that system. Given the fact that everyone needs to have enough capital for essential living needs, that amount should not be subject to the tax supporting the economic system. To do otherwise would result in such a disparity it would detract from the good of the country, (domestic Tranquility,) as a whole.
I challenge that assumption. And the ultra-rich are the folks pushing politicians and paying them money to make the tax code even more complex.
I have experienced the situation from both ends of the economic spectrum. I can tell you from first-hand experience that the top 1% couldn’t be happier with the acceptance and encouragement that the folks in the bottom 99% give them. They are laughing all the way to the bank, which by the way, many own.
I also actively pursue local politicians who also bristle with indignation when confronted with questions concerning their performance in pursuing their sworn duties.
No problem! That’s easy!.. all you need to do is supply the data and I’ll give you the resulting numbers.
Here’s what I need from you:
2023 Federal budget
For the 2023 tax year the # of taxpayers in each 5th percentile of income up to the 95th. Then by each one percentile until the 99th, and then each taxpayer broken down into 1/10th percentile within the 99th.
The average number of tax returns from 2015 thru 2022 in each category in #2 above.
I’ll get on it as soon as you can get me the valid data…
Sorry Woody, not wasting any time on an abstract pie in the sky policy just to fulfill your wealth envy issues. Good luck with it though !!! Someone that doesn’t understand a simple flat tax is ineligible to judge the qualifications of others.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I don’t see anywhere in the preamble and I have never heard of “fair share” used in the constitution.
Fair share will always be in the eye of the beholder.
LBJ started it. Hasn’t it worked wonders solving poverty?
It confounds me as to why the same people promising to fix the same problems with the same theory have been voted into office repeatedly for the last 60 years.
No, it’s paying your way. The system that allows us to prosper comes with a price tag. And when a person takes advantage of that system they should help shoulder the costs of maintaining that system. And that share should be commensurate with the benefits gained from that system.
What many people don’t accept is the fact that everyone has basic needs, like food and shelter. And if those basic needs are not met the people can’t participate in the economic engine that keeps our country going.
So, we have choices. We can either let them die of starvation, exposure, disease, etc. That has worked in the past in many cultures, given a chance, it could work today.
Or we could lock them up in debtor’s prison and probably save a little money over letting them live on welfare and the charity of their neighbors and charitable organizations.
Or we could continue the frustrating, marginally effective programs of welfare, charity, tax exemptions, free work training, free medical services, etc.
Or maybe we could all pray that the next generation of Americans will be perfect…
Instead of motivating people to have confidence in themselves and teach them to improve their incomes via self reliance we promote a class warfare system of “pay your fair share” that breeds dependency of the able body and mind.
Fair share in the constitution is a personal construct that doesn’t exist. No where in the constitution is a fair share of individual productivity guaranteed. It is a socialist construct.
I guess you feel the reason that all of the folks who find themselves in the lower 50th percentile are just lazy good-for-nothings and the folks in the top .01% are brilliant, gifted and talented people who deserve to keep every cent they can squeeze out of our economic engine, and that luck and circumstance has nothing to do with it.
That kind of reasoning has allowed them (the top one-tenth percentile,) to increase their wealth by $10M while in the same period the average wealth of those in the 50% to 90% wealth group have seen a decrease in their net worth of almost 10% and the 90-to-99 percentile has remained the same.
So you say having the poor saps who are paying most of the taxes already while seeing their total wealth decrease should pony up the money to cover our national deficit is fair?
BTW… this last question deals directly with the topic of this thread.
Because I had explained the facts behind the reasons I believe the Constitution provides the framework for "fair share’ in regards to taxing citizens for revenue to support our democratic republic, and you still didn’t get it,. So I simply posited the realities of your argument. It appears that you don’t want to talk about those glaring frailties, I can understand why that is so.
So I’ll accommodate your request and try once more to help you understand why I think our Constitution provides for the “fair share” assessment of income taxes.
Anyone who has given the Constitution any serious thought should readily understand that the preamble to the Constitution states the objectives and desired results in the words that follow it. The words “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,” and “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” would be impossible to implement if they meant that the resulting actions were not fair to all the citizens they touched.
The Constitution gives the authority to tax it’s citizens in order to help pay for the costs of operating our government to the legislature. And that authority has resulted in an income tax. And that taxation allocation is where your beef lies, is it not?
And one of the reasons that you don’t like the current method of income taxation is because you think that the poorer citizenry should pay more than they currently pay, is that not the case?
And… the argument you hang your hat on is that the Constitution does not allow for a “fair share” doctrine in formulating and collecting taxes, when that is what we currently have!
Yours is a very weak argument. The proof of that fact is that the laws as currently enacted and now enforced are examples of the “fair share” principle. And it was all done under the guidelines and laws laid out by our Constitution.
The problem we currently have is in the implementation of it. The top end is not paying their fair share. The mechanism to do so is present but the legislature has adjusted it to favor the rich. And the pressure to do so was brought by who?.. the rich of course! and what did they use to do it? … a fraction of the money they saved in taxes of course!
