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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Children are future taxpayers the majority with parents who were not a tax burden --net positive tax contribution. People without Children benefit from the taxes paid by the children of people who rear children -i.e. people without children aren't "cashing out" their tax contributed retirement --that contribution went to other retirees.

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And citizens benefit from the taxes paid by non-citizen immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. Not just income and payroll taxes that might be dodged by under-the-table arrangements, but sales taxes, property taxes (perhaps paid indirectly via rent to a taxpaying landlord), the consumer share (nearly 100%) of tariffs, etc. And much of that tax base is spent on benefits and services that are not accessible to taxpaying non-citizens.

So from that standpoint, immigrants are a /better/ economic deal for the public than children are. At the end of the day, though, it shouldn't matter where people were born if they're contributing to society, and the grandparent post is 100% correct that the whole debate is stupid.

Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along.

It is absolutely impossible for an undocumented alien to meaningfully contribute towards their tax burden in any meaningful way.

Oh, in that case no w-2 employee pays income taxes, their employer does. I guess we’re all just mooches on society and only the company owners do anything.

Ah, you arrived at the point. Undocumented people don't pay taxes in a W2.

No, they just pay sales tax and other taxes on use. I was being sarcastic because you are fundamentally incorrect and as the other comment said, engaging in sophistry.

Disrespectfully, get fucked.

Oh man, struck a nerve here huh. We escalated from sarcasm to rude quickly.

I enjoy both fucking and getting fucked, I shall take you up on that.

Have a nice day!

> Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along.

This is sophistry. Ultimately the tax is paid by the person that brings their money to the table.

The vast majority of adults and their children will never pay their tax burden proportionately.

How do you figure that?

Grade school math. Look at income tax receipts: the top 5% pay >61% of all income taxes.

You can try and split hairs with "sales taxes" and "payroll taxes" and try to shimmy things into some anti-capitalist stance ("but the companies benefit from their labor!!!," "renters pay property taxes indirectly!"), but the overwhelming majority of all tax payments come from a small percentage of individuals.

Which is a very stupid way to look at things since it only means they are able to get the majority of the richest made by the country

> Grade school math. Look at income tax receipts: the top 5% pay >61% of all income taxes.

This is a nonsense comparison unless you include the proportion of income that said taxpayers earn.

Why does this matter? The government spends X dollars each fiscal year, divided by the number (N) of people. Most people aren't paying X/N.

The government would not be able to fund every social program or services if it weren't for these receipts, which, most people cannot afford to pay. Even 100% of the majority of salaries can't cover this amount.

Pretty cut and dry.

> Why does this matter? The government spends X dollars each fiscal year, divided by the number (N) of people. Most people aren't paying X/N.

It matters because we don't know if these people are being taxed more proportionately or less. Like, Elon Musk pays more tax than you or I, but he probably pays at a much lower rate.

What you don't want (from an equity and fairness perspective) is for people with more money to pay a lower rate of tax. That will cause problems.

From a total population perspective, given some amount of money S it doesn't really matter who pays it (except for downstream impacts around fairness and elections).

However, your original point was:

> The vast majority of adults and their children will never pay their tax burden proportionately.

I would argue that this is incorrect, everyone pays some proportion of their income in income/sales/property/estate taxes. And really, your point about who pays the majority of US federal taxes doesn't actually support your point.

Finally, I would note that I mostly replied because I really hate those top x% comparisons as they're deceptive without looking at the proportion of income earned.

"Fairness" - it's not about fairness, it's about basic accounting.

Government could not afford to provide the services they provide if these taxes weren't paid, full stop.

Progressive taxation or 'fairness' doesn't change this reality.

> Government could not afford to provide the services they provide if these taxes weren't paid, full stop.

Of course they could. Taxation is not necessary in the short term for a government to provide services (especially if we're talking about the US which both issues its own currency and benefits from massive foreign demand for its debt).

Over the long term, taxation needs to at least pay back the debt but that long-term appears to be much longer than I would have expected (when was the last time the US government ran a surplus?).

Immigrants pay social security taxes, unemployment taxes, ... that they also will never be able to benefit from. Those are purely for the benefit of US citizens

There is a good case for vetted legal immigration (there is need and they fill that unmet need), no question; however, that should not be at the expense of the local population, regardless of country. In other words, the locals should not suffer a depressed job market because of immigration. The whole reason for a state to exist is to first and foremost look after the wellbeing of its citizens that elect the bodies of government.

I'm not sure where you're getting that from in my comment. I never said US citizens should want H1Bs for everyone with zero vetting, only that they are a net tax positive.

It's not a dichotomy of maintaining the status quo or getting rid of H1b completely. At least in big tech companies, they do follow labor market tests and prevailing wage tests and so on that are designed to vet that there is an unmet need and that visa holders aren't underpaid. I won't deny there are visa mills and consultancies that game the system and pretty much explicitly just hire cheap foreign labor, but this is a thread about H1B in the context of Amazon layoffs, not InfoSys layoffs.

It depends if the immigrant is hired because the native worker is deemed too expensive. In this case, it contributes to reducing contributions through wage suppression.

If you have access to data that shows big tech is preferentially hiring visa holders over US citizens you should get on that class action lawsuit right away. That's probably hundreds of thousands or even millions per person in lost wages, and even after lawyers take their 30% cut, that's still a sizable chunk.

It's anecdata, but a college friend who now works at as a manager in an IT/Data consultancy in my birth country in the EU told me bluntly that they prioritized hiring foreigners as they were 20% cheaper.

Given that the company sponsors them and come from lower incomes countries, they are ready to accept lower wages. If they do it I don't see why everyone wouldn't be doing the same.

It's of course hard to prove formally as those companies will comply with regs to make it look like they aren't discriminating (fake job ads, etc...). By the way in the US Indian consultancies got busted for this.

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