What a pathetic attempt at an argument. So you are trying to say that Amazon pays the same amount of taxes as you do? GTFOH. What my initial argument was if person A makes 250,000 a year and person B makes 40,000 per year they have equal stake in road maintenance. The more you drive on said roads the more gas you use hence taxed more. Now electric vehicles pose a particular challenge since they are not paying tax on fuel so how are these vehicles contributing to road maintenance? That is a huge loophole that needs to be closed.
Dude, you are either unable to comprehend the argument or are intentionally avoiding it.
First, no one is talking about someone who makes $250,000 a year. If you think that’s what I mean by ‘the ultra wealthy’, you are multiple 0’s away from the definition of ultra wealthy.
Second, looking at taxes paid as a total number is another just stupid conservative talking point. I’m talking about the amount someone, or a company pays, proportionally to income/profit. This is why understanding progressive and regressive taxes is important. Richie rich talking points will hammer on the progressive taxes and conveniently leave out that their overall tax burden is significantly less when you consider regressive taxes(e.g. they stop paying into social security after ~$170,000 earned in a year).
From your example, your guy how makes $250,000 paid about 4% of their income towards social security last year. Your guy who makes 40k paid in 6.2% of their income towards social security. That’s regressive.
Amazon pays in something like 6% of their profit in taxes federally. I pay 24% federally.
So no, I’m not saying that I’m paying the same amount of taxes as Amazon is. I’m saying that I pay MORE taxes as a % of my income than Amazon is, and so are you. (and thus more money towards infrastructure). That’s just talking about federal income tax. If we include local/state taxes and subsidies they’ve received, that disparity grows. Which is what I’m saying is BS.
You’re joking right? If anything we should be spending more on our military. I don’t want to derail this topic but you obviously haven’t served or have a family member in the military.
Many friends and family have served in the military, some of them proudly, some of them not so much. The amount of money we spend on the military is a complete joke. I mean unless you are the CEO of Lockheed Martin or something, then that defense spending is niiiiiice.
BigWerm, we are probably more in agreement than you realize on the government spending side of things, but I feel like you’re just moving the argument somewhere else. No one is saying that the government will solve our problems, this conversation was around how much do people pay in taxes and what’s ‘appropriate’ and ‘fair’.
For the record, the government sucks.
How the government spends it is absolutely another problem.
The point I’m trying to make, whether the government collects $1 Trillion or $2 Trillion in taxes a year, a greater amount of that money should be collected from the ultra wealthy and large corporations NOT from middle class / lower class. By any reputable study, the ultra wealthy and large corporations are NOT paying their fair share when you look at it as a proportion of income earned or accumulated. Answer this question straight up, Do you think that Warren Buffet should have a smaller tax burden than you?
However, you playing the ‘socialist’ card is just an immediate acknowledgement that you’re too far on the conservative side to even argue about it with. If you think making corporations and billionaires pay more taxes makes this a socialist proposal, I guess keep on sucking on Tucker Carlson’s teet and enjoy watching all that money trickle down into your pockets.
Billionaires increased their wealth by like 30% during the pandemic. We all did too right? That alllll just trickled down right into my pockets.
I’m sure when you all are billionaires and CEOs you’ll be really glad you fought for their right to pay less in taxes than you do now though, so you got that going for you.
