@pmonks@sfba.social
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

pmonks

@pmonks@sfba.social

Pronouns: he/him/his
Living on Yelamu Ramaytush Ohlone land (#SanFrancisco)
Searchable via https://tootfinder.ch/

All original content licensed CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.

This is an authoritarian (both left- and right- flavours), bigot, MAGA, TERF, tankie, anti-vaxxer, climate-change-denier etc. free zone. Conservatives and libertarians should be on their best behaviour too - I have a small amount of patience for your nonsense, and a large block button.

Posts auto-delete.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

QasimRashid, to random
@QasimRashid@mastodon.social avatar

A quick history lesson. From 1940-1980:
•Wealthiest paid 70-94% marginal tax
•0 of them went broke from taxation
•0 of them left USA
•All remained exceedingly wealthy
•Manufacturing boomed
•The middle class was 62% of US economy (It's now 40% post 'trickle down scamenomics)
•We had the strongest middle class growth in US History

Let's do that again. Stop protecting billionaires. Start taxing them.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@QasimRashid

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo that’s not how progressive tax systems (including the now-watered-down one in the US) works. No one paid 94% of their entire income in tax, pre-Reagan - that would have been a flat tax system (which the US has never had to my knowledge), and as you so rightly point out is grotesquely unfair (especially to lower income workers) @QasimRashid

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo again, that’s not how progressive tax systems work. Khan Academy has a good explainer that might help explain where you’re going wrong: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/taxes-topic/taxes/v/tax-brackets-and-progressive-taxation @QasimRashid

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo sure. Building on the example from Khan Academy, if I make $10,001 in income, I don’t pay 20% of the total ($2,000.20) in taxes. Rather, I pay 20% of the income that’s in the 20% bracket as tax i.e. 20% of $1, or $0.20. This is equivalent to 0.002% of my total income, not 20%.

The same pattern applies as my income goes up and the higher portions of it “land” in higher tax brackets. I’m only paying that higher tax rate on the marginal income that falls in that bracket. The net effect is that my overall effective income tax rate is always lower than the top tax rate I’m paying - that’s simply how the math works.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo and as we approach infinity, the remaining 6% also approaches infinity. Maths is fun that way.

But let’s also not forget that:

  1. The 94% top tax bracket you’re quoting only existed for 1 year (1944/45)
  2. To hit that bracket, one had to earn more than ~$3.5 million in today’s dollars

Even today anyone earning that much in any single year is clearly incredibly wealthy, and incurring a high absolute tax rate on the marginal income above $3.5 million doesn’t change that.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo the top marginal tax rate hovered around 90% from 1944 until 1963, and stayed above 70% until Reagan gutted the tax system in 1980.

Respectfully, you’re incorrect regarding the amount. The 1944/45 94% tax bracket was on incomes above $200,000, which in today’s dollars is close to (but slightly less than) $3.5 million.

Finally, I consider unrestricted wealth antithetical to healthy democracy (and also immoral, though that’s neither here nor there), and taxation is one of the few effective mechanisms we have to counter it. To one of the points one of the other commenters here made regarding the wealthy dodging income tax anyway, this is also why I’m in favour of wealth taxes (despite some of their flaws).

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo I agree that wealth isn’t a fixed-size pie, and that isn’t a point I’m making (or think is especially important). The tendency for wealth to concentrate in the hands of a few if left unchecked, is the point I’m making, along with the demonstrated fact that taxes are one of our best mechanisms to counter this.

I’m also not sure what tax evasion (by anyone) has to do with the original discussion. But let me be clear that I absolutely believe the IRS should be comprehensively funded so that they can go after all tax evaders, whoever they are.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo trickle down economics (which you appear to be describing) does not work. The impact of cutting (or indeed increasing) tax rates over the last century or so has not been shown to have much, if any, correlation with relevant economic indicators (GDP, job creation, income growth, wage growth, etc.).

I try to avoid memes when engaging in serious discussions, but this one nicely summarises what we’re discussing:

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo correction: I did. I mentioned wealth taxes several replies ago. @utterfiction

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo repeatedly calling something “abusive” doesn’t make it so, and I hope this conversation is encouraging you to reconsider that dogma with an open mind. @opendna @QasimRashid

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo that is incorrect. The Dutch also have a progressive income tax system and the first bracket (9.28% tax rate) is from €0 to €35,742. So your example person would pay €45.38 in taxes (in 2023). @opendna @QasimRashid

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo it seems you mixed up the numbers in your post - did you mean €469 (your first number) or €469,000 (your second number)? I used your first number, fwiw.

The second number is clearly for someone wealthy, so a high tax rate is not going to be material for them - they have plenty of income. @opendna

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo also correct, which is why I haven’t said that. Bringing emotive language into this discussion (either way) doesn’t help us each come to a deeper understanding of the topic. @opendna

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo you didn’t use that term, but what you’re describing is indeed trickle down economics.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@freemo you did, here: https://qoto.org/@freemo/110269174381291162

First paragraph reads:

“What your missing is these people where wealth concentrates are also the people resonsible for creating much of that same wealth.”

And not to go off on a tangent, but this isn’t even true. ~50% of the jobs in the US are in small businesses, and 2/3 of job growth over the last 25 years has been created by small businesses. They’re the engine of the economy, not the wealthy.

DavidGallagher, to random
@DavidGallagher@sfba.social avatar

Rainbow Falls, Golden Gate Park
Rainbow Falls was completed in May 1930 on the site of a former quarry mined for rock to pave park roads. Chris Pollock in his excellent book says the name comes from colored electric lights that framed it.

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@luis_in_brief it’s still there, just hard to see as it’s surrounded by trees @DavidGallagher

anildash, to random
@anildash@me.dm avatar

Been playing around with Bluesky a bit & it’s pretty interesting. They have an easier consumer experience (signup/discovery/UI works like Twitter) and it all feels very snappy. I like how they use domain names (or subdomains) instead of what look like funky email addresses. By far the biggest problem Jay & co face is that Jack Dorsey has effectively poisoned the well on everything from people assuming it’s a crypto platform (it’s not) to assuming (understandably) that be bad at trust & safety.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@thomasfuchs fwiw I strongly disagree with your first claim: “People don’t care about who runs it, they care about social interactions being easy.” and perhaps, like me, it was that sweeping generalisation that @anildash was responding to.

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@thomasfuchs genuinely curious here: do you have evidence to support that claim? All I have to support the opposite position are my own social circles, which is clearly just anecdotal evidence (albeit for an N of one or two hundred).

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@thomasfuchs sounds like all we have is anecdotal evidence then.

And to be clear: I’m not some uncritical Mastodon / Fediverse fanboy. I have my own concerns about the technology. I just happen to have a lot more faith generally in open source/standards/protocols than I do in any corporation or techbro “luminary” (whether that’s someone who seems relatively harmless, like Jack Dorsey, or someone who seems seriously unhinged, like Elon Musk).

pmonks,
@pmonks@sfba.social avatar

@thomasfuchs I didn’t say open source/standards/protocols are always the most popular options; I said I have more faith in them.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tester
  • InstantRegret
  • DreamBathrooms
  • ngwrru68w68
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • kavyap
  • JUstTest
  • cisconetworking
  • khanakhh
  • normalnudes
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • tacticalgear
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • modclub
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •