The reason people generally talk about federal income tax rates is to avoid getting into 51 separate discussions about 51 individual regions and how they are locally taxed. And then you get into the additional issue of which states are Democrat and which are Republican, and are the taxes regressive in those states because they’re too left or too right, and blah blah blah. This discussion is already too hard to follow just talking about federal tax rates!
Sure, but having a discussion on terms that are easy doesn’t mean that discussion is meaningful.
But do you dispute the specific data from the report as shown in the graph?
If you’re talking about federal tax policy, then of course that discussion is meaningful.
We’d have to establish ground rules, but sure: I bet that CEOs I’ve worked for have a higher net worth than CEOs you’ve worked for. It’s a pretty safe bet, actually.
Nesrie
1809
I’m familiar with this tactic, and I’m not playing. You disingenuously used a chart from a report that largely opposes what you’re trying to say to not answer someone else’s question. I am not changing the field to accommodate that approach.
You’re accusing others of moving the goal post, but the post was not yours to set in the first place. Someone else already did that, and it was not you.
Everything about that graph is misleading, and people who read that report and the analysis that followed… know that.
Yes, it’s very large, and properly firm and shiny. Now, put it away, please, there’s a good lad.
No, the report shows that the U.S. tax system is more progressive than other countries’, and the graph reflects that data. The rest of the report does not “largely oppose” that; your argument that the U.S. tax system doesn’t reduce inequality is not something I ever claimed or that anyone else ever requested.
This is your claim, and I don’t think you’ve actually supported it yet. That’s because it’s a very broad claim; it doesn’t impose limits of any kind on what taxes are to be considered.
No, because the chart reflects only a part of the U.S. tax system, and your claim is much broader than that. Of course you can always amend the claim, if you like.
Ok, you’re just an idiot.
Maybe. But it doesn’t mean that I should be worried because I work for CEOs who are paid well, because well-paid CEOs generally mean that the company is doing well, which is great for the company and great for me as an employee.
You’re missing the point. You are arguing that CEO pay somehow takes away from a fixed pool of money, and that a CEO being better off means that I am somehow worse off. But that’s incorrect: A good CEO will grow and improve the company, increasing revenues and making it easier to hire more people, and to pay the existing employees more. If paying a CEO 100x what I make means that the company does well, then I’m all for it!
…unless the CEO takes your share of the growth. As has happened for about 40 years. Are you ever going to address that? Do you acknowledge that it happens, or do you deny it?
Nesrie
1816
There is so much wrong with this statement, and that’s before the Golden Parachutists come out. You seriously believe that CEOs are only well-paid at companies doing well? You’re familiar with boards right?
edit: to be clear, paid means everything, stock options, houses, cars… not going to redefine wages to $1 dollar a year stuff.
rowe33
1817
I don’t really want to bet, just thought it was an interesting statement. I mean I’ve worked for at least two CEOs that have either topped the highest annual pay chart or are routinely on them but I don’t see how it personally benefits me.
If you don’t feel the out-of-control CEO pay affects a company’s employees then I assume you make way more than the average employee already.
It’s not solely about CEOs making more it’s about the increase in disparity over the past 40 years and how CEO compensation has grown while worker compensation has stayed flat.
Eh, finding people working for either Amazon or Microsoft (when Gates was there) on a forum like this wouldn’t be that uncommon. I haven’t worked for either and think the CEOs I’ve worked for hit around 80 billion combined with ~70 of that from one dude.
If you only look at individual income groups, then yes, worker compensation (I think it’s cited as the bottom 20%) has remained relatively flat. But people aren’t income groups. Extremely rare exceptions aside, no one is making the exact same pay he was making 40 years ago. People move income groups all the time, and the majority of people who are in the bottom 20% will be in the top 20% at some point in their lives.
If I go to Disneyland today, I’m sure the line for Peter Pan is longer than it was 40 years ago. But that doesn’t mean that the line hasn’t moved in 40 years.
Yes, I am sure there are people on here who have worked for Amazon or Microsoft. 100% sure, in fact.
Matt_W
1820
U.S. total tax burden is lower than most other countries. A lower tax burden makes progressivity mean less. Also, the U.S. is relatively unequal before taxation, thus a moderately progressive tax structure will produce more progressive taxation. This is similar to Romney’s comment that 47% of Americans pay no net income tax–it’s trivially true, but reflects income inequality more than the progressiveness of the tax structure.
The U.S.'s top statutory tax rate is about average for OECD countries:
Matt_W
1821
Totally untrue. The chance of someone below the 40th percentile at the beginning of their career moving above the 80th percentile by the end is about 5%, and has fallen in the past few decades.
Matt_W
1822
Krugman, BTW, comprehensively addressed all of these arguments several years ago:
Studies by the Urban Institute and the U.S. Treasury have both found that about half of the families who start in either the top or the bottom quintile of the income distribution are still there after a decade, and that only 3 to 6 percent rise from bottom to top or fall from top to bottom.
Even this overstates income mobility, since (i) those who slip out of the top quintile (say) are typically at the bottom of that category, and (ii) much of the movement up and down represents fluctuations around a fairly fixed long-term distribution.
Income mobility might in principle be an important offset to the growth in inequality, but in practice it turns out that it isn’t.
But, of course, originally we were talking about estate taxes.
Then Tortilla asked how the US’s “tax system” - in general, no mention of income vs. other or Federal vs. state and local - compared to those of other countries.
And you replied with a chart that only mentioned Federal income taxes. Intentionally or not, you shifted the goalposts to the most progressive part of the US system and away from the most regressive part.
