Where will inflation stop?

In reply to ProDarwin :

I thought that sounded high especially for the average person. But it checks out. Lots of info backing it up. This article is interesting because it breaks it down by state...

Average total taxes paid by state

Everyone thinks of income tax- but add in sales tax, vehicle related taxes, property tax, etc- it adds up. Still, I didn't expect it to be that high. Since a good chunk of people don't pay income or property taxes, those paying must be quite a bit over the 33%. And those are just the direct taxes. Not the taxes to businesses that we pay as higher prices and lower wages. 

j_tso said:

Opti said:

You know what both of those guys had in common? Opposition to paper money

And it still got printed. Are those 2 the only founding fathers?

Your talking about a whiskey tax which was 3-15% on whiskey at a dollar a gallon, vs 33% of your lifetime earnings.

Doesn't that depend on how much whiskey is distilled? And doesn't that say more about people back then than now?

Again, why should we care what the founding fathers thought when dealing with today's issues?

It got printed about 200 years later in 1971. Paper money doesnt refer to actual paper it refers to fiat currency, which isnt backed by anything tangible.

And no it was more than them two, most of them opposed it. I only mentioned those two in response to someone else bringing them up. It why "emit bills of credit" was removed from an early draft of the constitution by an almost unanimous vote.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Yah we are getting fleeced and most people dont realize it. What we get for it is a massive deficit, bad infrastructure, endless wars, and failing systems.

I think a lot of people wouldnt be so upset if the government was actually good stewards of our money and thought our money actually went to good use, but a third of all your productive labor is still pretty obscene.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Delaware, #26 with a bullet!  Just below the fold.

Opti said:

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Yah we are getting fleeced and most people dont realize it. What we get for it is a massive deficit, bad infrastructure, endless wars, and failing systems.

I think a lot of people wouldnt be so upset if the government was actually good stewards of our money and thought our money actually went to good use, but a third of all your productive labor is still pretty obscene.

I happen to agree with that statement.  
   The problem is we don't buy our politicians.  So all we get from them is lip service.  And little enough of that.   
     You are aware that politicians get free franking (mail) privileges.   
    Yet when is the last time you got a letter from one of them that didn't include a plea for a donation?  
   

Opti said:

j_tso said:

Opti said:

My underatnding of taxes in the early US were largely excise taxes and tariffs. Show me something showing a similar tax burden in the early US as today.

I had the whiskey tax in particular in mind. Not an income tax, but some people thought it was enough of a burden to take up arms.

About the money, the founding fathers were a diverse group, but many were rather vocal about their opposition to paper money including Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and Madison.

Pre-ratification the continental congress and the newly formed states all had their own currency backed by well wishes. Whoever was against it didn't get their way.

And that's just it, the founding fathers were a diverse group. So whose intentions are we trying to invoke when interpreting the Constitution? Hamilton and Jefferson had different ideas about government and banking. Their writings have been studied and reinterpreted over the years but to cling to them like scripture is ridiculous.

You know what both of those guys had in common? Opposition to paper money

Your talking about a whiskey tax which was 3-15% on whiskey at a dollar a gallon, vs 33% of your lifetime earnings.

Taxes really are one of those things that if they were applied equally  people wouldn't have a problem with them.   
      When you and I pay 33% of our income in taxes while others with more don't pay as much or even any.  
   That's  when people have a problem.
 
 Take a look at the total gross domestic product of the whole country. 
  Now look at what the total taxes collected is.   
           So how much America needs is a simple  math problem ( with a whole bunch of comma's).  
 Now come up with a way to collect the needed income.  

In reply to frenchyd :

If the government taxed everyone equally, then the organizations writing the tax code couldn't use it to manipulate public behavior. Too many entrenched interests are not going to give that power up.

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

So the trade off is the middle class pays for what the upper class avoids?   
     Frankly it's a lousy trade off.
   I'm speaking from the view of someone who really got a lot of tax deduction from mortgage interest deduction.   If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

frenchyd said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

... If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

I'd take a simple tax code. Simple. I'd prefer consumption over income, but one that takes X, based on Y, without think tanks and special interests adding in 2(E+R/H)/T-n.

This is also a similar tax burden to what Europeans have, even in "high tax" nations like the scandanavian countries. Iowa and Nebraska are pretty high on that list too, Nebraska in particular mashes all your taxation onto property taxes as if they're trying to punish people for owning homes. Thanks for posting that boost, I'll have to poke around for others to see what their methodology is.

Funny enough, the Strong Towns movement and other new City Planning/Anti-suburbanization groups really get deep into the weeds on long-term taxation like that; they paint a great picture about how bad an "American way of life" really is when it comes to paying for E36 M3 nobody ever needed. Basically Opti's TOTALLY right about us getting our money stolen, but tons of it is also on bills and debts our grandparent's made that we (legally or incorrectly believe) cannot back out of until a city decides to cut off a failing portion of itself. It's really screwed up on how many laws there are that exist only to reinforce old methods.

Opti said:

Yes and the whole point about the founding fathers was because Girthquake said they taxed everything else into oblivion and wanted paper money with no backing.

No that was someone else. Not sure who tho.

Paper money doesnt refer to actual paper it refers to fiat currency, which isnt backed by anything tangible.

No, it's "backing" is access to American markets which are protected by American guns. It's backed by heavy metal, but not the commonly thought of type 

If the government taxed everyone equally, then the organizations writing the tax code couldn't use it to manipulate public behavior. Too many entrenched interests are not going to give that power up.

I don't think it's too extreme to say, that if you had a movement to make America's tax code stable and understandable to the common person you'd could only do it through violence. Even recent history shows that corporations only care about writ of law when they benefit them.

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

... If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

I'd take a simple tax code. Simple. I'd prefer consumption over income, but one that takes X, based on Y, without think tanks and special interests adding in 2(E+R/H)/T-n.

The beauty of a consumption tax over an income tax is you can decide  if you want to pay tax or not.   
   Don't want to pay?  Don't buy anything.  
     
One final point.  Getting people to do or not do something through the tax code is really stupid.  
   Do you think that if they stopped the liquor tax.  They companies would suddenly sell their liquor cheaper?  
    Do you think  if beer was 50 cents a bottle cheaper people would drink more beer?   That smokers would smoke more cigarette's if they were cheaper without taxes?   

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I stand by what I said. Hint: access to American markets isn't tangible.

It's is backed by the American market, but the importance is decreasing. It's also backed by the American military, we sure have removed a bunch of leaders that wanted to get away from the American dollar as the reserve currency. I wonder if that means anything? And its backed by petroleum traditionally only being traded in dollars. BRICS is trying to stop this and is actively doing it.

About all that's left is to enforce our will on everyone with our military

In reply to Opti :

Our military does more than enforce our will. The Navy keeps the seas open.  
  Other than a few minor skirmishes they've been successful.  
 Aircraft carriers are stupidly expensive and insanely vulnerable.  But they do a great job of intimidating  those that can't afford them.  

frenchyd said:

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

... If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

I'd take a simple tax code. Simple. I'd prefer consumption over income, but one that takes X, based on Y, without think tanks and special interests adding in 2(E+R/H)/T-n.

The beauty of a consumption tax over an income tax is you can decide  if you want to pay tax or not.   
   Don't want to pay?  Don't buy anything.   
 

The beauty of a consumption tax is that poor people are taxed on 100% of what they make. 

Don't want to pay? Move out of your apartment and into a cardboard box. Then stop eating.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

... If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

I'd take a simple tax code. Simple. I'd prefer consumption over income, but one that takes X, based on Y, without think tanks and special interests adding in 2(E+R/H)/T-n.

The beauty of a consumption tax over an income tax is you can decide  if you want to pay tax or not.   
   Don't want to pay?  Don't buy anything.   
 

The beauty of a consumption tax is that poor people are taxed on 100% of what they make. 

Don't want to pay? Move out of your apartment and into a cardboard box. Then stop eating.

The www.fairtax.org handles that. 

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

I thought that sounded high especially for the average person. But it checks out. Lots of info backing it up. This article is interesting because it breaks it down by state...

Average total taxes paid by state

Everyone thinks of income tax- but add in sales tax, vehicle related taxes, property tax, etc- it adds up. Still, I didn't expect it to be that high. Since a good chunk of people don't pay income or property taxes, those paying must be quite a bit over the 33%. And those are just the direct taxes. Not the taxes to businesses that we pay as higher prices and lower wages. 

Even renter's pay property tax. Land lords just bake it into the price of rent. 

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

We are pretty much already taxed on 100% of what we make. Try and do ANYTHING without a tax.

Everyone should pay taxes and they should be obvious, maybe we'd hear less "othering" about them paying their fair share, and everyone could come together on fiscal responsibility. Pipedream I know, but so is a simplified tax code

Like the last time they put a luxury tax on yachts. People with money stopped buying yachts until the lobbyists from the boat building industry got rid of the tax.

Yeah. That will work.

Then stop eating

 No tax on food

In reply to z31maniac :

That was introduced in the house in Jan I think. Last I heard it hadn't been voted on. Unlikely to go anywhere though

Peabody said:

Then stop eating

 No tax on food

With which plan?

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Current system and potentially under Fair Tax with the prebate. Essentially any spending under the poverty level is not taxed

Opti said:

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I stand by what I said. Hint: access to American markets isn't tangible.

If China attempts to blockade Taiwan to force them into using the Yuan only, a missile from an F-35 reopening access to American markets blowing up a boat suddenly becomes a VERY tangible thing. That's why they're partially tangible, and the part of the purpose of the modern Navy; preventing wars as economic policy by other means, allowing everyone to play in the sandbox by keeping them in it

It's is backed by the American market, but the importance is decreasing.

The EU is pretty cool But they're realistically, the only nation that can replace the American largesse, if only in access to liquid cash.

It's also backed by the American military, we sure have removed a bunch of leaders that wanted to get away from the American dollar as the reserve currency. I wonder if that means anything? And its backed by petroleum traditionally only being traded in dollars. BRICS is trying to stop this and is actively doing it.

About all that's left is to enforce our will on everyone with our military

BRICS? Man, BRICS isn't a thing. It'll NEVER be a thing- it's a term OUR economists came up with to describe up and coming economies in ~2012 that was coopted by anti-american voices, since whom:

Brazil just had an attempted coup from a right wing populist, who's government is likely gonna do what the earlier presidencies were doing since the 90s and trying to make their own path out of America's shadow- but unfortunately has to drag much of the rest of South America out as well somehow, and is still dealing with serious systemic poverty.

Russia. Is Russia.

India is actively in a state of cold war with China, who's rapid advancement is also held back by growing wealth disparity, a rapidly democratizing society, and terrible public health bad enough in some areas to seriously damage lifespans. Except they're also an American ally who are rapidly acting to contain...

China, whom is widely known to be lying about quite a lot economically but nobody truly knows to what degree, now prevented from serious chip manufacturing thanks to modern EU deals.

South Africa is tearing itself apart. Genuinely a question if they'll be a nation in 10 years.

Opti said:

In reply to z31maniac :

That was introduced in the house in Jan I think. Last I heard it hadn't been voted on. Unlikely to go anywhere though

It was originally proposed nearly 15 years ago. 

Of course it will never go anywhere because it eliminates the 70,000+ page tax code that politicians can use to promote or discourage certain behaviors. 

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

frenchyd said:

In reply to AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) :

... If you give me a choice of deductibility or lower taxes. I'd take lower taxes, wouldn't you?  
        

I'd take a simple tax code. Simple. I'd prefer consumption over income, but one that takes X, based on Y, without think tanks and special interests adding in 2(E+R/H)/T-n.

The beauty of a consumption tax over an income tax is you can decide  if you want to pay tax or not.   
   Don't want to pay?  Don't buy anything.   
 

The beauty of a consumption tax is that poor people are taxed on 100% of what they make. 

Don't want to pay? Move out of your apartment and into a cardboard box. Then stop eating.

Or grow your own food.  It was done for a long time before we started buying things to eat.  
   As far as living in an apartment?  How do you win doing that?    There are places in this country that will pay you to move there and places where you can move into abandoned home.  
   Yes I know. It's hard work!! No luxury's. But also no taxes.