Taxing the Poor

[tippy]

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/415/index.html

An illustration of how regressive taxes keep people in poverty and too uneducated to participate effectively in a democracy. In Alabama people living below the poverty line pay 10% of their income to the benefit of the wealthy and foreign corporations.

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

I'm curious as to how wealthy people benefit from the measely amount the poor pay in taxes.

This amount of money wouldn't even come close to footing the bill for Al Gore's earth-scorching private jet flights around the globe.

[tippy]

Whatever Gore has to do with it, I don’t know but since the money the poor are paying in taxes is not going to benefits for them, where is it going? They also pay sales tax on food in Alabama. Where is that going? Nickel and diming might seem measly and meaningless to someone like you, but for people who don’t have enough to keep their bellies from grumbling those nickels and dimes mean something.

[Gary Sisco]

True enough, Tip, but in the case of Alabama, in particular, they don't have income taxes, either, and the sales tax applies to all, tourists included.

I'd rather go with the sales tax and eliminate the others, frankly, at least the way they operate now. A sales tax I can personally control by controlling my spending. That's not the same with income tax, property tax (by far and away our hardest hitting -- it's more than all of the others combined and we get nothing at all in services for it), etc., which rates get controlled by others for me. And all increase.

Here in VT, there's a state sales tax on everything but unprepared food and clothing, and several municipalities, including Burlington, have sales taxes of their own on top, and a rooms and meal tax, also, on restaurant food.

Frankly, I know I'm supposed to rave about how they're regressive and so forth, but, again, I can control spending and hence can control how much I pay in those forms of consumption taxes. Add it all up together and it doesn't come anywhere near the others.

[tippy]

It’s food for thought. But if this has been Alabama’s tax structure for 100 years isn’t that a negative comment on a tax structure like Alabama’s that doesn’t provide enough to support a healthy infrastructure. On the other hand I suppose we have even more examples of what happens with ample money from taxes. People who can scoop it right up. Everybody should go eat worms. Essentially and what was touched upon in the program, we are a nation of dunces too stupid to vote in a way where democracy can work effectively. If this weren’t true, we sure as hell wouldn’t have had a George W. Bush term two.

[tippy]

Not taxing food is significant. Alabama has one of the highest if you figure in 4% for the state and up to 7% local sales tax puts it at a whopping 11%. Here’s a couple of links that show state by state.(I couldn’t find a combo rate like the first table for 2008 yet.)

http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/sl_sales.html

http://www.money-zine.com/Financial-...les-Tax-Rates/

[Pete C]

I'm all for income tax at the levels I grew up with. 70% on the richest.

[walto]

I'd rather go with the sales tax and eliminate the others, frankly, at least the way they operate now. A sales tax I can personally control by controlling my spending

Maybe eliminating all taxes but the most regressive one would be good for you personally. But there actually are other considerations.

[Gary Sisco]

True, Tip. But I'd wager AL's not having income taxes etc makes up the difference, esp with Gulf Coast tourists paying the sales taxes, too. Ain't anyone there making noise about wanting an income tax instead.

[Gary Sisco]

Walto -- Yeah, there are other considerations, no matter who thinks what about anything at all, so, there it is.

Would I rather pay 11% as I go? Yes, I would. It would save us much and, again, anyone can control their consumptive spending. Almost no one can control government's ability to tax them -- at any level.

Half of my family lives in AL. They're not being taxed out of their homes, like many Vermonters are today.

[Noj]

I'm curious as to how wealthy people benefit from the measely amount the poor pay in taxes.

This amount of money wouldn't even come close to footing the bill for Al Gore's earth-scorching private jet flights around the globe.

If it's such a "pathetic" amount of money, why not let the poor keep it and have the rich pay a "measly" little more? What's "pathetic" to the rich would help poor folks immensely, and wouldn't even be a bump in the road for the 600 class Benz.

[Gary Sisco]

That's what I would do, income taxwise, Noj.

Bronwyn did the research back about 12 years ago. The state of Vermont, at that time, was spending 27k a year to pay a caregiver $5.00/gross/hour, with hours allowed to be worked per week severely restricted so as not to have to pay any kind of benefits in addition to the genuinely pathetic wage. It's not any better today. Out of that five bucks gross of course came federal and state income tax withholdings and also Soc Sec/Medicare, which is by far the largest chunk of taxes paid by working class or working poor people, no comparison.

Bronwyn got a law passed in Vermont that would allow handicapped people to be given that 27k directly to hire who they saw fit to do whatever it was they wanted done, themselves. The state bureaucracy vetoed the law, needless to say, by refusing, still today, to write regulations for its implementation, and also to apply for a necessary waiver from the feds.

They use the waiver -- which they never applied for -- as their excuse for having refused to implement what is in fact state law.

The same people, when Dean instituted welfare reform here, before any repubs in DC did anything but run their mouths about it, had no problem applying for *those* federal waivers, which were also required. But those waivers wouldn't have cost them anything, personally. See, it's much better for people who do just about nothing to soak up the bulk of that 27k/year.

Concern for the poor is not in that picture, anywhere. No one that's not working poor *is* a caregiver. It's almost entirely working poor single mothers who do that kind of work.

Another factor that most won't admit is this: every political position, no matter who holds it, is correct *within their ideological system,* but that system is inherently subjective. It can be nothing else. No one's ideas that conflict with mine are any more or less right, to me, and everyone else is in the same boat. Everyone has an ideological system because humans don't understand the world in any other way. Not having an ideology is itself an ideology.

That's why there is political contestation of power, after all, in any society.

There are also clearly conflicting inherent economic interests. There is one between capital and wage labor. There is one between public employees and those who pay them with their taxes. There is one, clearly, between statists and antistatists, Georgeists and not-Georgeists, socialists and capitalists, and so forth and so on. This is unavoidably the case.

Hence, political struggle.

"What matters is who rules. That's all."

Nothing is objectively right or wrong, politically speaking, or morally speaking. Ideological systems are subjective, necessarily, and can't be anything else.

[walto]

A lot of people--in Alabama and elsewhere--don't have big fancy homes on gigantic lots. But everybody has to buy stuff to, you know, eat.

[Captain Hate]

Any state which conducts a lottery is taxing the poor.

[walto]

That's true, Cap. As Quine once said, it's a subsidy of the dumb/gullible to the more savvy, and, unfortunately, poorer people tend to be less well educated than the suburban rich that don't play.

I suppose it's ok if people want to do blow their money in that way, but advertisements are really evil IMO.

[Captain Hate]

I suppose it's ok if people want to do blow their money in that way, but advertisements are really evil IMO.

MO too. Lotterys, like most governmental entities, grow like toadstools and are continually advertising and having tv shows to rake in the rubes. Always with the oxymoronic caveat of "please gamble responsibly" added on as a stay-out-of-hell afterthought.

[Pete C]

In all the back and forth about income tax rates, does anybody talk about realistically adjusting the income level before federal income taxes kick in, with annual adjustments tied to a relevant index? How about a geographically based reasonable cost of living for family size, free from income taxes?

And 70% for the rich.

[Hudson Boy]

In all the back and forth about income tax rates, does anybody talk about realistically adjusting the income level before federal income taxes kick in, with annual adjustments tied to a relevant index? How about a geographically based reasonable cost of living for family size, free from income taxes?

And 70% for the rich.

Families already get a federal tax deduction of 3400 dollars for each dependent.

[Pete C]

Families already get a federal tax deduction of 3400 dollars for each dependent.

Yes, but cost of living varies drastically in our big country. I was talking about realistic credits.

[Uli]

Yes, but cost of living varies drastically in our big country. I was talking about realistic credits.

It sure does. But isn't where you want to live your choice, i.e. in terms of tax fairness how you want to spend your money?

[Hudson Boy]

Yes, but cost of living varies drastically in our big country. I was talking about realistic credits.

Theoretically, everybody is entitled to the same Federal benefits, so it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine how to implement that idea.

[Pete C]

It sure does. But isn't where you want to live your choice, i.e. in terms of tax fairness how you want to spend your money?

Do you think I think before I post?

[Uli]

Do you think I think before I post?

I think I will have to ponder this for a while.

[Enforcer]

if your poor its probably cuz you want to be poor so its not my fault you have to pay taxes. my advise to you is make more money!!!! then you can stop worrying about all teh taxes you dont wanna have too pay since you'll have so much money it wont matter!!!

[Gary Sisco]

The most regressive tax in the US is the Soc Sec/Medicare, because of the cap. Note there is no low-income break on it. However small the income, it takes the same bite. For working class and working poor, it's by far the biggest bite out one's gross. There is no comparable tax, for them. And since the government insists on spending it as if general revenue, the only honest thing to call it is an income tax. Because of that, the working poor and working class wage earners' income taxes are hugely regressive.

No one has to buy a lottery ticket. It's a voluntary act.

No one has to buy personal consumption items subject to sales tax. More particularly, no one has to buy them *on credit,* or on time payments (hugely expensive, always) which is one of the biggest problems in the US, which has a negative savings rate, meaning people spend more than they make or save (government also, obviously). Way I look at it, if people buy on credit, that's more dangerous to their personal finances than any sales tax will ever be. If you don't have the bread, don't buy whatever it is.

I've been dead-assed broke many times in my life. I've been working poor, I've been blue collar. No one ever forced me to buy any consumer items. No one ever forced me to buy a lottery ticket.

I was forced to cough up income tax including Soc Sec/Medicare, which had me paying out more in income taxes, percentagewise, than many well to do people pay out, and without deductions for anything at all but myself. You can't itemize unless you're making above a certain amount. You just pay. You don't get to choose, because it's taken out of your paycheck before you have a chance to decide anything at all.

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

It sure does. But isn't where you want to live your choice, i.e. in terms of tax fairness how you want to spend your money?

Getting up off of your ass and doing something about your lot in life would require initiative.

It's much easier to sit around and cry foul.

[walto]

Getting up off of your ass and doing something about your lot in life would require initiative.

You mean like whining about how liberals have ruined this country on a jazz bulletin board?

I have some friends who live in a rich, Republican town in northern Mass. They do OK, but they're very poor for that town. They thought the schools would be good there, but the residents don't care about the schools: they mostly send their kids to private schools, and vote against all the tax increases. So the mother in the family, a big liberal, confessed to me recently that she now hates public schools and that in her next life, she's going to send her kids to private schools all the way. But, in my view, the moral is rather that you need to stay away from towns where the populace doesn't give a shit about anything except themselves. There are poorer towns with much better schools, because some people aren't so goddamed selfish. They're....decent.

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

You mean like whining about how liberals have ruined this country on a jazz bulletin board?

[B][FONT=Courier New]

I fight the libs here so that they don't spill over into the streets.

It's a thankless task, but it saves the country from the pseudo-intellectual babble that dominates here.

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

I have some friends who live in a rich, Republican town in northern Mass. They do OK, but they're very poor for that town. They thought the schools would be good there, but the residents don't care about the schools: they mostly send their kids to private schools, and vote against all the tax increases. So the mother in the family, a big liberal, confessed to me recently that she now hates public schools and that in her next life, she's going to send her kids to private schools all the way. But, in my view, the moral is rather that you need to stay away from towns where the populace doesn't give a shit about anything except themselves. There are poorer towns with much better schools, because some people aren't so goddamed selfish. They're....decent.[/B]

So, instead of leaving the very expensive neighborhood and moving somewhere more affordable and with better schooling to boot they are staying there?????

The logic of a liberal is completely illogical.

[walto]

Moving isn't so simple if you're settled someplace. Not only is there a down real estate market, but your kids have friends, etc. (I take it those aren't considerations that matter to you logical conservatives.) She's (futilely IMO) trying to get some tax override passed there and joining in some lobbying of the statehouse (again uselessly) for a different local aid distribution methodology.