Tax System Explained in Beer

the OP horribly misrepresents the tax system.

then he said in a later post "everyone is taxed the same until theyre considered too poor." then i made my posts, and like a day later he replied by ignoring everything and resorting to "calm down bro"
 
also, as discussed in my.. 3rd to last post (?) the last paragraph of the OP goes on to claim that the rich are "attacked" for making money and that if we do this too much there will be a mass exodus of the rich

not trying to get on your case, just saying that's why i'm saying this stuff
 
how does the OP horribly misrepresent the tax system? his comment about everyone paying the same rate was wrong but high taxes on the "rich" can lead to the "rich" leaving or re-allocating money and/or hiding/sheltering money in order to pay less taxes. The higher the taxes = the more incentive to work harder to hide your money or just work less.
 
an analogy is a comparison of two things that are similar in important respects from which you can therefore derive a conclusion from one to apply to the other. the OP's analogy leaves out MANY things that make the beer situation dissimilar to our tax system. i'm not going to bother listing them but to start, the analogy would need to include that if the first guy received 1 beer, the top guy would have received something like.. i dont know. a shit load of beer.

the second part of what you said (mass exodus of the rich) has been discussed. to summarize, the rich are coddled like a newborn in this country. there arent even tax brackets over 373,000 anymore and as a whole our taxes are like 10-20% lower than most other industrialized nations. i have many more reasons to back up this statement so if you want to argue it further i'll list them, but right now im pretty sauced
 
the beers received in the story weren't income, they were government benefits and services so really the rich guy would have gotten less beers than the poor guys or wouldn't have even gotten a beer haha
 
well... it needs to take into account what the people get out of the system they are participating in. the fact is rich people have shittons of money, but they still use public roads, go to school, etc etc. so you need to mention how much money or "beer" or WHATEVER these dudes are getting out of this whole thing somehow. so really if you say you can't, it's just further highlighting the inadequacy of the analogy..
 
okay the rich guy got one beer but the poor guy got 6, plus many "rich" people send their children to private schools so they aren't even using the public schools that they are funding, they fly jets so they don't even use the roads they are paying to build.

and what benefit do "rich" people get from paying taxes? show me one "rich" person who would be upset if you told them tomorrow that they were now going to pay 5 or 10% income tax and that the government was only going to pay for the bare essentials (military, some roads, courts, police, etc...)

all kidding aside, the storyalogy successfully makes the point that the rich guy gets the same amount of beer (arguably less in the real world) while they pay the majority of the bar tab, while 4 guys drink for free.

 
no, see, what you and the OP are implying is that taxes only go to safety net programs, which is completely untrue. ~20% of federal income tax goes to these programs, while the other 80% goes to military, social security, infrastructure blah blah blah blah blah.

to make this analogy work (probably impossible, definitely not worthwhile) you have to take into account the entire system and what you give and take from it, that is, what you give and take in this country as a whole. so you need to take into account the amount of money you have earned thanks to this system which relies on taxes and the government (including police and law which make it possible to even make transactions on a large scale). if you'd like to fit this into the OP's analogy, by all means try, and then run it by me. in the meantime i'm gonna say this analogy is horseshit.
 
jesus.

im sorry i didnt type out a larger post.

Straight from the horses mouth.

you dont think this happens on a state to state basis as well? well it does. CAPITAL SEEKS ITS HIGHEST POST TAX RATE OF RETURN
 
ughhh what a prick. look there will always be crooks looking to make more money than they need to, but what more can we do? taxes on a large scale have been slashed in the past 30 or so years (seriously look up the numbers), we're generally 10-20% lower than most other countries, and the rich are pandered to obscenely already in this country. what should we do, ignore all of this, and special interests, and along with ALL of that, lower their taxes EVEN MORE?

that's fucking absurd. those little crying bitches need a slap back to reality. there isnt even a bracket over 373,000 anymore. what pricks. their life is SO fucking hard. dictating our already generous tax brackets because of these douches' whims is not a reasonable course of action (beyond a certain point of course. i wont deny low taxes havent helped the production in this country)

and, once again, just cause trump vaguely said "some of his friends" might leave isnt so convincing. even if it is, what should we do? lower the taxes when they bitch until wehave the lowest taxes in the developed world? im not trying to be a sarcastic dick, this is a serious question: what's the breaking point?
 
there's a great program on NPR right now and they just said exactly what I said in an earlier post in this thread: MAKE MORE FUCKING TAX BRACKETS

"lebron james pays the same marginal tax rate as his dentist"

they also mentioned that while the gap between people making $250k and the poor has widened, the gap between people making $250k and people making $3million has widened even more.
 
like i said i'm no expert but i would think people might accuse that of being further "attacking" people for making more money. not sure though really. it's worth noting that we used to have many more brackets. pretty sure at one point there was a 91% bracket. OUCH

haha

ALSO, i think i should mention that the OP PMed me and basically said no hard feelings, sorry for causing such a shitstorm, so i guess i should reiterate what i said to him: i'm very sorry if i've come off as a total douche in this thread, and as the OP said in the PM, the story is meant to be at least a little bit of a joke. it's just some part of me can't stand the idea of people reading this and, not knowing any more about the subject, basing their opinions and political decisions on it. i know the story isnt completely serious but in my opinion these kinds of things can lead to decisions being made that are detrimental to people that already lead very difficult, sad lives.. i acknowledge i'm just a big ole bleeding heart.

so once again, sorry if i've been a bit aggressive in this thread. hopefully mugatu showed that i'm not actually pissed at anyone here, and i have a sense of humor when it comes to most anything besides taxes haha. props to OP for extending a friendly hand though
 
stop acting like all rich people are pricks with such an easy life. for the most part, these people that make 373,000 a year work their fucking asses off. ive got a friend who's dad makes over 400,000 and he deserves everything he has and more. spent 14 years in schools, works 12 hour days sometimes more, 5 days a week at the least, often times 7 days a week. been doing this for 20+ years, as well as co-owning a second business on the side. and this is the case for a very large majority of rich people. they either are working their asses off, or have been for a long time and now are living the life because they earned the fuck out of it. Ive got a lot of poor friends, and know alot of rich people because of this guy, and i have never met anyone who would fall in the bottom 30% that works half as hard as the top 1%
if you ask me, they should have to pay a lot less than they do. they arent getting a break at all.
 
-i didnt say that at all, skiminnesota and i were talking about the super elite rich whose exit from the country would mean something, not your friend's dad making 400k

-also didnt say a lot of rich people dont work hard

-your handful of firsthand experiences dont bring anything to the table

-if youre going to try to get me to pity the rich in this country youre gonna have a hard time. please refer to my posts in this thread
 
then on the other end of the spectrum don't act like all poor people are lazy drug addicts who are just trying to milk the system for everything that it's worth. (not to say that you specifically were implying that, but that's the general attitude that a lot of people take.)
and if you think that the "rich" don't get a break at all, then you're kidding yourself. it's a big fucking game. a lot of the "rich" pay a lot less in taxes than you think due to certain tax practices.
 
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dude... youve been pretty reasonable in this threads so dont pull this shit now. you asked this before, i explained it, and you didnt respond. now youre just asking the same question again as if it never happened
 
haha no we talked about it and I responded to most of your points. everyone needs to understand that the story is not an all encompassing detailed explanation of the tax system but it does successfully demonstrate the concept that:

the richest guy is paying half the bill and drinking the same amount of beer as the 4 guys who are drinking for free.

END OF ANALOGY

don't take it any further than that and it has done it's intended job. it is a fact that the top 5% of income earners pay 59% of the tax burden. I don't care if they make more money, that isn't the point of this story. They pay much more and receive the same amount of beer as those who pay none.

 
do they get the same amount of beer?

because if anything the more money you make, the less you use government. EG no social services.

i mean, sure we all use true public goods, but the rich dont use, plenty they pay for in taxes.
 
NO because as i said, what youre implying is that taxes only go to safety net programs which is totally untrue (once again, it's like 20%). the richest guy in the story got TONS of beer. he pays taxes and in return he gets a lot of shit, not the least of which is roads, infrastructure, the entire system from which he made all his money, and the cops and laws and courts that protect his transactions and business. you can't say "tax system explained" but then leave out 80% of what taxes go to
 
NO because I said the rich guy gets the same amount of beer as the guys who don't pay at all.

The rich guy does not get any more beer than the poor guys.
 
How about the people who make more generally work much harder, have college loans to pay off, went through a ton more schooling, and they should be fucking rewarded for it.
 
beer represents benefits received by virtue of paying taxes and participating in our system. the rich guy got shit tons of beer. you can't just say "they all got the same amount of beer," it further weakens the worst analogy in history
 
how do you figure theyre not getting rewarded for it? paying generous marginal tax rates does not equate to not being rewarded for your work. they still make shit tons of money. you cant be "punished" for working more in a marginal tax rate system

it's hilarious that you guys want to only focus on safety net programs (1/5 of what taxes go to) and claim that the rich havent benefitted hugely from the system they pay taxes to. they wouldnt have made any of it if not for the laws police infrastructure courts etc etc etc that we pay to keep in place with taxes. the rich get a lot of "beer," period.
 
what in the hell are you talking about now, the rich guy did not get any more beer than the rest of the guys.

the beer represents benefits and services provided by the government, if you pay more taxes then you are not therefore receiving more benefits/services from the government

everyone benefits from the courts, laws, police, etc... not just the rich guy.

your benefit from government programs does not increase as you pay more taxes

they all get the same amount of beer and as was pointed out above, in the real world the "rich" get less beer.

and all of this hate on the "rich" totally leaves out any discussion of charitable donations. without getting into the tax deduction (which isn't 100% anyways) the "rich" literally fund thousands of non-profits that are out there doing work and providing services better than the government bureaucracy machine is able to.
 
yeah because the analogy leaves it out!! which is exactly my point, the analogy sucks.

the rich guy benefits a lot from the system he pays taxes to, namely the hundreds of thousands of dollars he's made. once again, if you think he made all that money without the help of the system you're crazy. the rich guy got WAY MORE BEER from the system as a whole than the poor dudes did. STOP pretending taxes only go to safety net programs
 
in my idealistic world it would be :)

debating the way things are is boring, debating the way things ought to be, thats much more interesting. besides, semantics bore me. haha
 
i don't understand why you are disagreeing with me as I totally agree with you.

Rubbersoul is saying that people who pay more taxes receive more benefit than those who pay less taxes.

I am saying that people who pay more taxes receive less benefit from government services.

If I pay $300,000 in taxes and you pay $0 in taxes

yet the government provides the same public services to both of us

the person who paid $300,000 is getting the shaft because he/she paid $300,000 more for the same public services.

the person paying $300,000 is not receiving any more services than the person paying $0. they both get the benefit of the roads, courts, police, military, etc... and the person paying $0 is most likely ALSO receiving social program benefits.

 
you obviously are not understanding what he is trying to say. I think what he is trying to say is that all tax payers pay into the same "system", and the fact that the rich are rich goes onto to show how they get much more "beer", as they presumably were able to get rich as a result of said system. Of course, to say that they both receive the same services as you so elegantly state, is one of the dumbest things ive heard in a while. There are a lot of examples of this, such as a rich suburban neighborhood with beautiful parks and new roads vs. an inner city neighborhood in shambles, a drug addict getting sentenced to 10 years due in part to his shitty appointed lawyer versus a corporate crook getting a minimal sentence ect.
 
AND this is all not to mention that fact that these arguments being posed (sometimes purposely, sometimes out of simply not knowing) cherry pick their evidence and numbers.

for instance, this "analogy" chooses to not mention anything besides federal income tax, when in reality the less wealthy pay all kinds of taxes that they dont receive as much back for, for instance sales taxes, which, when you go through the numbers, can manifest itself as a REGRESSIVE tax

i hate to further complicate the issue (god knows we all want this to be simple) but the evidence showing this analogy is inherently flawed is overwhelming.
 
no I understand but everyone has the use of the system, the rich do not get to use the system just because they are rich.

parks in a rich suburban neighborhood are most likely not funded by the federal government so I don't see how that is relevant, most suburban neighborhood greenspace isn't even county funded it is put in by the developer to increase property values

the drug addict is lucky to get any lawyer at all and the corporate crook is not having his lawyer paid for by the government so how do you call that a benefit

 
yes it is not a comprehensive analogy but it still demonstrates the income tax burden distribution which was the intent of the story.

plus the fact that poor people get money for nothing and chicks for free
 
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