All this brain power could be used to help with this sort of injustice, in what seems to be essentially a battle of brains (IRS lawyers vs rich people's top lawyers).
But then the gov needs to find a way to competitively pay for this stuff.
This is, quite literally, a won battle at this point. The only way to fix it is for the ancient republican party to either collapse or iterate into something that serves America's interests instead of ultra-wealthy interests.
I'll counter and say the only way to fix it is to either go to pre-1917 no income tax, and have a smaller government (do we really need $700BN/yr on defense around the world?), or move to a flat % wealth or income tax (if you are pro-progressive, set an offset that neutralizes to $0 at say $50k/year, but I am against).
We can do this without all the loopholes and misaligned incentives that causes finger pointing in all directions. And we won't need the CompSci majors from CalTech!
On either side of those "elitist liberals" are where I see the biggest concentration of conservative political views. There's the stoic >$50k crowd who preach personal responsibility between drags off a Pall Mall while Rosanne reruns play softly in the background but carry balances on all their debts and haven't had a raise or a job interview in 10 years. They think the world should be like them, content to stay near the bottom because they think they're still in the middle. Probably lower-mid level education with a proclivity to disdain any social spending at all with an emphasis on "WWJD?" These people are conservative because their own brand of low-effort thought aligns with typical knee-jerk conservative policies like "shut down the entire border" or "trickle down economics creates jobs (that aren't worth having)." They only know about the social conservative policies that (they believe) affect them. Like women's rights (or lack of), LBTQ rights, anti-discrimination, gun laws. Economically they have no idea what's going on and they just trust whoever tells them they get to keep their guns.
On the other side of the "elitist liberals" are the ultra-wealthy conservatives. They are the engines of the party and use their resources and influence to concoct the low-effort policies that rope in the lower-class conservatives. Then they focus their hoarde on how "amoral" the left is while these ultra-wealthy conservatives empty all of the social services the non-stoic poor people rely on to save themselves money and taxes. They use their lower-education counterparts as pawns and fodder to keep the liberals busy talking about non-issues while they dismantle safety nets and redirect government resources into the private sector. They don't believe half of the things their own party tells poor people, but they all rub each other off and that's what keeps the party going.
the simple idea of rich republicans vs. average to poor democrats has some truth, but there's also the pesky fact of a large number of liberal Democratic billionaires which complicates the picture.
i think it's because these ultra-wealthy folks can extract their needs from (aka corrupt) any politician. D vs R doesn't really matter much.
Actions speak louder than words. Endorsing a democratic candidate while paying your warehouse employees barely enough to survive without food stamps doesn't exactly quality you for "liberal of the year."
> i think it's because these ultra-wealthy folks can extract their needs from (aka corrupt) any politician. D vs R doesn't really matter much.
This is 100% true, and also why I did not/do not support Hilary Clinton for any elected office.
of course, even that idealism may evaporate if it means an intelligent, meritorious poor or disadvantaged student might take the place of a favored son at an elite university.
are the wealthy really "D" or "R" at all? it seems to me they're "W" first and foremost. also narcissistic. really narcissistic. presidentially narcissistic.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-neighb...
The problem is a democratic party one -- they need to figure out a way to grow beyond their urban core to appeal to some subset of rural and other voters. You need a better message to control the Senate.
Trump said he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and not lose a single voter. And he's right.
If we can change our voting system, then maybe I can give you better advice. Until then, game theory suggests voting Democrat.
> proud white Americans
Better be careful here. Proud to be an American is okay. Proud to be white... why should anyone be proud of the color of their skin? Even if it should be okay (but honestly white people have an awful history, as do most skin colors if you look back far enough), it's so arbitrary. There's nothing to be proud of, you just have specific pigmentation.
I cannot argue with any of this, and highlights some of my flawed thinking. I guess I thought of "white americans" as an abstraction of Americans of European decent. So I guess, I don't know the proper way to convey "Someone who is proud of their European heritage, and proud of being an American."
You apparently do care about groups over individuals, using that classification.
The GOP is the party of grievance. The democrats are a big tent, but smaller groups get lost in the crowd.
Those views of mine were developed over years of observation and represent my true opinion of the Republican party. If you feel I'm misrepresenting anything feel free to get specific about your beliefs.
Also, the IRS is big, the commissioner does not decide cases, however it issues policy memos, which have a large influence on enforcement. And these are usually public and or can be FOIA-ed.
So all in all, their pick is very much a political ally, and that he/she happens to be a tax specialist is just a convenient factor. (So that the man is fit to deal with IRS stuff.)
Trump only got 46% of the popular vote.
The Republican Senate majority represents 18% of the population.
Can you name a Democrat who proudly proclaimed that not paying taxes made them "smart?" Or a Democratic equivalent to Grover Norquist saying he wanted to reduce the size of government enough to be able to "drown it in a bathtub?"
What ever else the Republican party might stand for, they obviously also stand for plutocracy, albeit with a veneer of libertarian and populist rhetoric that leads the rank and file to believe they're doing it for the sake of the common people.
So I agree Whataboutism isn't attractive.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist#Taxpayer_Prote...
Legitimate question, would it be viewed as "not extremist" if it came from another group such Libertarians, or SJWs?
The way I see it, if you default to working for or starting yet another ad-tech/surveillance company, it's a sign that you aren't creative and probably don't have anything original or useful to contribute to society. If they weren't on the ad-tech bandwagon, they'd just be going for the next path of least resistance.
Whoever is angrily downvoting this is welcome to explain why they think allocating brainpower to the IRS is the best way to maximize welfare.
However, you are right that it is probably regressive, since the rich normally place more of their wealth percentage-wise in non-cash assets than poor people do.
Second, can you show your basis for thinking that? I would think it's the opposite: the wealthy aren't using the public schools, free health care, etc.
The upper class has their own private version of pretty much everything.
It is the difference between not being able to afford childcare and not being able to afford a second vacation home.
It's fine to think that, but normally when people are talking about tax progressiveness, they are thinking about the fractional tax on dollars, not "utils". Otherwise, you'd also call our existing, progressive taxation scheme "regressive," since it still probably taxes poor people's utils at a higher rate than rich people. And there would probably not anywhere in the world be a tax scheme that can properly be called progressive.
One good rule of thumb, IMO, is that when you want to change the meaning of a classifier such that all extant instances of the classified type fall into a single bucket, that's probably not a useful change. YMMV.
The cash-poor with few or no financial holdings or savings, are largely unaffected, as are those holding non-cash assets (real property, capital, commodities, stocks).
It seems like rapid inflation would really only hurt the poor and middle class.
Also I feel that it is immoral to steal from the future generations (my children) via inflation. Cash investments should be allowed to gain value via productivity gains, instead of constantly cashing in our productivity gains for Govt largess. We'd probably have that "4-hour work week" by now if it weren't for inflationary policies stealing gains.
I know benefits are popular, and the gov't recklessness (defense budgets for example) today makes uninformed people feel like it's a gravy train out there...but really it's a house of cards, arguably steered by IYIs (IMHO).
(inb4: "Do you want Hitler and Nazis? Because that's literally how we got Hitler and Nazis!" /s)
Inflation as a tax is inherently regressive, as the rich are usually the first to hold the newer money, and the poor the last to hold it, long after all the information about the new size of the money supply has already leaked out to the market.
And it is a tax on holding the circulating currency. The rich often trade their currency for ownership in ventures that produce passive income, or, at worst, low-risk government bonds. In order for those investments to sell, they will have to offer a rate of return exceeding the expected rate of inflation. If inflation is used in place of all taxes, then just reading the government's budget is sufficient to predict the rate of inflation.
The poor see annual wage increases near the expected rate of inflation, if they have sufficient labor-market power, or below it if they don't.
Monetary inflation is a tax on holding dollars. The rich don't hold much of their wealth in dollars, percentage-wise. They hold ownership of productive assets and inherently valuable properties. A tax on money doesn't touch those who get all the money they need from ownership of their wealth.