20 years ago, the right wing propaganda machine was focused on (before they went full out fascist) low taxes for the “job creators” such as corporations and rich people, on the basis of that leading to more lucrative job opportunities for everyone else. The thinking was that the people and corporations in this low-tax environment would have incentives for creating jobs “here” instead of moving them overseas.

Not everyone on that side of the isle have realized that this results in jobs still ending up overseas, along with money that could’ve funded schools, roads, libraries, et al. And many of those who have realized it continue along the same path because it’s too profitable for them to do so.

Remember this next time you hear slogans such as “trickle down economy”, or Glitch McConnells favorite: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.

Rich people have special access to the legislative machinery that you and I don’t. Through bribes “contributions” they can craft laws that let them avoid paying their fair share of the tax burden. They can also “modify” pending legislation to remove the penalties for breaking those laws. It must be nice to live in a consequence-free environment.

Don’t be fooled, taxes are just a way to extract the fruit of the poor folks’ labor and give it to the rich and powerful. Always have been, since their inception. Not just in America, here in the (highly idealized by lemmy) EU I cost my company 3200€ a month, 1850€ go to my bank account and 1350€ to the government, plus up to a 21% vat from the things I purchase. Amazon pays literally 0€ in taxes.

I’m pretty sure their argument is “because fuck everyone but us who can decide that.”

Incompetence at being selfish.

They think they’re being selfish, but they fucking suck at it. They think selfish means “I don’t want to pay taxes but fuck you you still have to pay I win you lose”.

If they were even slightly competent at being selfish, they’d realize in about three seconds that doing things that way makes your town (and more) stressed out and shitty, and you still have to live there, and you can only build walls so high.

And even if we got rid of physics so you could build impossibly tall walls, now you’ve definitely lost because you had to build them in the first place, instead of being even remotely sensible and building a world where your neighbor would be happy to see you, or thrive peacefully and leave you be.

The “economics” of it are mostly about couching this damning and embarrassing realization in big words so that everybody stops paying attention because they yawned and lost interest.

The argument is that the rich and powerful are rich enough and powerful enough to corrupt the system and not have to pay taxes.

Because fucking over the poor is how the rich stay rich.

This is political science 101

It’s the same as in every business: those making decisions think that the decision making is the hardest and most important part of the equation. Not only that, they believe that it is their right and that they worked very hard to get where they are.

There are two reasons they have to believe that:

1. if they didn’t, they’d feel that they didn’t deserve it
2. it also explains (to them at least) why there is inequality

The common argument that is brought up against change now is capital flight: “if businesses and rich people were taxed too much, they’d leave the country”. There is a great fear that they will leave and take all the good jobs with them. The counter argument to that is: they aren’t the only ones with brains to get a business going. Rich people aren’t smarter than non-rich people, businesses that leave did employ people from whence they left and they also probably sold to the people in that area or country.

Now, of course the speed of departure, the political reaction, and the location are important.

Speed: instant departure can have a serious impact as the jobless might not be able to find other employment quickly. A graduated departure allows that however and also makes it possible for people to focus on other jobs/specialisations in the first place.

Political reaction: depending on where you are, providing recertification and training courses, having good welfare programs, and most importantly having an exit tax can help soften the blow of departure

Location: A big employer leaving a small town can be devastating. A small employer leaving a city, less so. A big employer leaving a city can burden the city, but the other factors are important.

Its basic selfishness that people seem to not grow out of. Even the poorer class act selfishly so there is no difference when they are rich.

So the richer you get the less you want to contribute to gov programs and what not. Its always the “why would i want to give money to a gov that doesnt know how to use it? Or why is it my problem to help people who are lazy?” They are seemingly reasonable arguments but actually are immature

IMO the most valid argument is that there are way more people making a middling income than people making a high income, so any reduction in taxes for those people would need a proportionally much larger increase in the upper brackets to maintain the same level of tax revenue, if it’s possible to make the numbers work at all depending on how much of a tax break you want to give. The minimum amount to be taxed is set based on where the tail end of the bell curve is, the number of people who are poor enough not to be taxed is small.

Of course there’s also the fact that the richest people don’t get their money from having a job at all, it’s all in investments, so messing with income tax rates doesn’t even affect them.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

-Lyndon B. Johnson

There are a lot more poor people than there are rich people. It’s a game of numbers, and a slight increase on the middle class would often bring in more money than a substantial increase on the top percent.

Rich people also have a lot more loopholes they can abuse to pay less in taxes. Closing these loopholes could also potentially/occasionally disproportionately hurt lower or middle class people. They are possible to close, but (A) there’s always more to find, and (B) lobbying means there could be political incentives to not close them.

There’s also the arguments about raising taxes leading to innovation stagnating, or rich people moving to countries with lower tax rates. I’m not sure how much I buy those arguments.

That said, I’m not condoning these. In my country, I think we need to introduce more tax brackets. A doctor making less than $300,000/yr shouldn’t be in the same tax bracket as a CEO making an over $800,000/yr salary before bonuses. But they are in the same tax bracket. That doesn’t feel right to me.

Lord Sauron is a simple working class person just like you and me. He received the diamond mines from his father only after he had proven himself. He knows what is best for all of us.

I often wonder this myself. Why do rich people, who have so much wealth that it is unimaginable to us, not want to pay any taxes? It hampers the economy, makes it less adaptable to contractions, and makes the lives of the vast majority of the population much more difficult. At a macro level, I really don’t see any benefits to it. So, here’s my best guess.

• Power & control. A poor and uneducated population is much easier to control than a financially stable and educated population. If people are fighting each other for survival and minimal luxuries, then they can’t organize to improve their lives as a whole. Add to that being uneducated, they get their “education” via the media and are easily manipulated via propaganda.
• Strength. Similarly, they want to feel strong by manipulating the system to get what they want. By getting the government to do what they want and finding loopholes to reduce their burden, they feel stronger than others. This gives them a sense of strength that they seek, which ultimately means safety for them.
• Greed. They just want the numbers on their bank statements to be higher. Some people are proud of numbers, so the larger the number, the more proud they are. It doesn’t matter if the number is relative, so the value doesn’t really have any practical impact on their lives. They just want a larger number. I swear, sometimes we should just print fake bank statements wich ridiculous numbers, give them to the wealthy, and congratulate them. That’s what they want: to be envied.
• Lack of care. They literally do not care about others. It’s not even an issue that fits in their heads. Find someone that is politically right-leaning and ask them what they think about the economic situation in a poor and war torn country. Their response would be indictive of how the wealthy think about us.
• Narrow & short sighted. They can’t see the whole picture. They’re focused solely on their own relative position on the hierarchy and can’t consider how their desires will impact the whole system in the long-term. They can’t see that if the lower classes are complacent and uneducated, their products and creativity suffer. Look at Russia where people contribute just enough to get paid and all creativity is to please the elites. This stifles academic and scientific progress while also damaging integrity. People don’t contribute to the economy because they have a personal drive. They contribute to please their superiors. This results in a terrible economy full of corruption and lack of ingenuity. The wealthy can’t see that because they don’t care about it. They just want to feel strong and in control.

The poor should pay the taxes because “only the little people pay taxes”.