A sin tax I can support.

[noamnety]

I admit it, I like the idea of sin taxes. I like the idea of people having to pay back the costs of their sins to society.

But I can't get behind regressive taxes like alcohol and cigarette taxes which take a bigger percent of income from the poor than the rich.

I propose a greed tax. Greed does more damage to society than cigarettes or smoking. For every dollar an employee or stock holder of a company earns that is between 0 and what the lowest paid employee earns, there would be no taxes. From the lowest paid employee salary to double that would be taxed at 2%. From there up to 3 times their salary would be taxed at 3%. And so on, up to if an employee/CEO/stock holder earns 100 times what the lowest paid employee of the company earns, anything at that point up is taxed at 100%.

Other than some tweaking to account for subcontractor loopholes, I think this could work.

[nashville_brook]

1. oh shit yeah. call it "enforced trickle down" b/c they often forget their noblisse oblige.

[DirkGently]

18. Love it. Nice paradigm shift! nt

[tridim]

2. That's a nifty idea.

[stray cat]

3. Alcohol and cigarettes and candy are not necessity items

[noamnety]

4. Nope, they are not.

Technically I suppose lentils, potatoes and cabbage would suffice for the peasants.

All the same, I'm okay with someone buying a piece of chocolate at the store tax free, if the guy who just bought all the chocolate in Europe had to pay 100% tax on all the profits he's going to make that are above 100 times what the cocoa bean farmers earn.

[pipoman]

7. Unless a person is addicted to those items...

[The Straight Story]

10. So only things you deem needed should be exempt? 50 cars is ok? Abortions? Don't need them

etc and so on people might need. I see. If it is something the rich can get in excess it is ok.

Abortions come about because people don't plan and have too much sex. Don't want a baby, don't have sex.

You don't need to shop at macy's so that should be taxed highly as well (to get people to shop at thrift stores).

[NoSheep]

16. Neither is your car. Stop driving and walk to work. n/t

[BlancheSplanchnik]

17. how many "un-necessaries" are on you, right now, I wonder?

Just ON your person, without even venturing into the question of your home and car....

Assuming you're a guy, (I have no idea)

Aftershave.
Deoderant.
Hair conditioner or other personal grooming shtuff--sun block, mouthwash, whatever.
Undershirt.
Shirt.
Underpants.
Pants.
Belt.
Socks.
Shoes.
Jewelry of some sort--earring, ring, necklace perhaps.


Oh, there's quite a bit you could do without, just in this short list.

[Synicus Maximus]

5. If you have a business like a law firm and the lowest paid

employee make $40000 and the lawyer makes $400000, the lawyer would end up paying 9%, if they made $800000 they would be paying 19% which is a lot less than they are paying now.

[noamnety]

6. Yes.

But the CEOs making millions in stock options would offset some of that.

And it's likely a lawyer making 400,000 a year would have a lot of money invested in stocks - and the taxes on those would likely offset some of it as well. So they would keep a higher percentage of the money they earn from actually working, but a smaller percent of the money they earn directly off the backs of others.

[Orrex]

8. But the Greed Tax would presumably be in addition to existing taxes

So the 19% plus whatever they're paying now would, I think, be more than they're paying now.


No?

[noamnety]

11. Oh - yes I like this answer better.

No reason it couldn't be in addition to existing taxes, though I'd probably lower everyone's taxes 1 or 2 percent then so the lower/middle class doesn't end up with higher taxes out of it.

[Cleita]

9. It's known as taxing wealth instead of income, an old

idea actually, but you can see from our present day condition, one that will never get on the books unless we have a revolution.

[noamnety]

12. It's that

but it's also taxing the disparity of income within specific companies, so CEOs have motivation to raise their employee's wages instead of being rewarded for lowering them.

[Cleita]

13. Back in Eisenhower's administration it was known as

progressive taxation, on which the burden of taxation was placed on those earning the most money. It actually kept CEO salaries much lower because most of it would have been taxed away (some at more than 90%) so there was no incentive for huge salaries. Instead high wage earners were encouraged to use their disposable income in investments to make money and become billionaires, not from their salaries.

[jmowreader]

14. I don't like it at all

This will simply encourage tax evasion.

Our favorite whipping boy is Walmart, so let's play with them. Walmart has a CEO they pay $13 million a year or whatever it is. They also have a million part-timers who are pulling down minimum wage. They ALSO have a whole shitload of private brands. What, pray tell, is going to stop Walmart from spinning off all those private brands into individual companies and putting their CEO on the board of each one? He could be on the board of the sour cream company for x dollars, the soup company for x dollars, the cadmium-laced jewelry company for x dollars...by the time they're done he makes the same money as before but, since none of it's coming from the same place, he's not subject to your greed tax. The IRS will have to hire a temp just to read all his W-2 forms, but that's not the Walmart CEO's problem now is it?

I have a better idea: Instead of using all these things to try to mask the problem, which is taxes are overall not high enough, why don't we get our Democrats to stand up, say "You will personally be better off if we raise taxes because you will make more money," WHICH HAPPENS EVERY TIME THEY TRY THIS, and raise taxes high enough to pay our nation's bills?

[pansypoo53219]

15. just go to pre ronald tax rates for the top 1%

they have to pay for their georgee and raygun tax cuts.