“Almost nobody says we should have the richest pay the least. And yet when we look around the country, the vast majority of states have tax systems that do just that.”
Nearly every state and local tax system in the U.S. is fueling the nation’s inequality crisis by forcing lower- and middle-class families to contribute a larger share of their incomes than their rich counterparts, according to a new study published Tuesday.
Titled Who Pays?, the analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) examines in detail the tax systems of all 50 U.S. states, including the rates paid by different income segments.
In 41 states, ITEP found, the richest 1% are taxed at a lower rate than any other income group. Forty-six states tax the top 1% at a lower rate than middle-income families.
thanks, conservatives!
and guess what their major party platform will be this year! you got it, tax reform! across the country conservatives are proposing tax cuts even though half their states cant pay for themselves. awesome!
you guys are just doin top notch work. top notch.
The top tax bracket was 70% before Reagan. Now it’s 37%. No wonder wealth is consolidating.
It was over 90% during WW2!
thanks, conservatives!
I’d argue that this is a bipartisan position at this point. When Democrats have power and elect to ignore this glaring problem (and the shifting of the tax burden has been a problem since the 80’s), and in fact are themselves getting getting even wealthier from it, it’s hard to argue that it’s a purely conservative position.
Democrats are walking a fine line. Money wins elections. Patriotic red haters love to grovel for subsistence wages and carp about other workers making a decent income.
If money wins elections it makes more sense not to allow the impoverishment of your voting base, yet the Dems do just that every single time we give them power.
Yup and some of it is just absolutely insidious too. Take for example my state’s 529 plan, it actively punishes the poor and working class. They charge a 4% fee/tax that decreases as you put more in at one time so a working stiff putting in part of their paycheck every month will get 4% stolen from them while the rich guy that can afford to put in 10K at once pays not a damn thing. To me that’s completely and utterly screwed up and punishing those who need help the most.
It’s absolutely sick how this “Christian Nation” actively goes and hurts the poor.
It’s because the hyper-Christians in Government think the poor are poor because of their own failings. They are sinful and not favored by God. People who are rich got that way by being in God’s favor, so why shouldn’t we reward that?
It’s called the Prosperity Gospel. It’s uniquely American. And it’s frightening.
Throughout the twentieth century, proponents of this particularly American blend of theology envisaged God as a kind of banker, dispensing money to the deserving, with Jesus as a model business executive. Both of these characterizations were, at times, literal: In 1936, New Thought mystic and founder of the Unity Church Charles Fillmore rewrote Psalm 23 to read, “The Lord is my banker/my credit is good”; in 1925, advertising executive Bruce Bowler wrote The Man Nobody Knows to argue that Jesus was the first great capitalist. The literal money quote reads, “Some day … someone will write a book about Jesus. Every businessman will read it and send it to his partners and his salesmen. For it will tell the story of the founder of modern business.”
I’m not even Christian, but I’m pretty sure that’s the exact opposite of what Christ was supposed to be teaching.
The only time that anyone wrote about the guy getting even a little irritated, he found moneychangers at the temple, and was so pissed he took a few hours to braid his own whip, then went back and started flipping tables and whipping moneychangers…
Sounds like you may be on to something.
I wish things were this small scale still. You bet your ass there would be lines miles long to whip the fucking blackrock assholes and anyone in the 3 letter positions of Bank of America would already be dead.
You’re right, of course. It’s sad how many times I have to dig this gem out. It only gets more relevant over time.
https://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx
Not Republican Jesus!
Prosperity gospel is like the most grotesque, final boss form, of The Just World Fallacy. The fact that it doesn’t even have a quiet part, and just comes out swinging with full-throated equivocation of money and power to god’s love, is disgusting and truly terrifying. It’s like peering through a time vortex straight into the worst parts of dark age Europe. Thanks, I hate it.
For those who are too busy to read the article, it is talking about the overall tax burden, counting all taxes imposed by governments at any level, including income, property, and sales taxes. Sales taxes are, by their nature, regressive. They are only assessed on transactions and the poorest people have to spend a higher percentage of their income just to survive.
Flat tax advocates are willfully ignoring how regressive other taxes are, on purpose. By taking the one tax that is easiest to make progressive and flattening it, you guarantee that the tax burden gets shifted downward.
In Washington, home of the Microsoft Millionaire every-fucking-where, oddly enough has no state income tax.
But oddly enough it has a huge problem with unhoused people.
Out of curiosity, when did “the homeless” become “unhoused people”? I’m just beginning to notice this shift in language. Has the word homeless become derogatory?
The word home has a lot of subtext attached to it, a lot of it relating to feelings of belonging, so I think the idea is to make a phrase that doesn’t have a little bit of subtext implying they don’t belong anywhere. Houseless would accomplish a similar thing but unhoused seems to be the result of that line of thought.
Thanks, that makes sense. I’m often suspicious of new euphemisms that make people feel like a problem is less of a problem than it really is. I’m all for more accurate language.
Anytime, I feel like it’s probably one of those things that’s going to be most noticed by the people who are called unhoused instead, though I’m certain not everyone will like it the same amount or even at all.
So does California and many other states with state income tax? Is there evidence of a correlation between state income tax and unhoused people?
No there isn’t, it’s just idiots who think more taxes will magically fix everything…they think new taxes won’t have the rich not paying it. When in reality, new taxes will just have the same people who pay now, paying more. The rich aren’t going to start paying the new taxes anyways.
I’m pretty sure that there is no correlation between zero income tax and massive unhouse population and social issues. /s
I’m honestly curious on that, I’m in Florida and tripping over homeless people.
Since companies and corporations are “people” tax them too? I don’t have a large parking lot at my house, that should be taxed. ETC.
For the parking lot tax, we need to repeal the mandatory minimum parking laws, and then I’m all for it! Get rid of single use zoning while we are at it!
Agreed.
I mean, they do get taxed. But they don’t generally have to pay income tax on anything but profit.
It’d be like you not paying income tax on anything except what you put into savings.
For the first time in US history the richest 400 families have the least tax burden on any other class.
Time to tax these fuckers into oblivion.
edit:defined historical period
I wouldn’t say the first time in history. OG feudalism was great for the wealthy land owners and lords too. This is more of a remix, if anything.
When I was a kid my parents rented a VHS movie called Kid President or something like that.
It was about a kid who wrote to a sitting president who wasn’t doing well in his re-election campaign, and the president started to replace his own policies with what the kid suggested in his letters, these changes were obviously wildly popular with the public.
Anyways, in the movie the kid’s tax policy was to reduce your taxes the richer you got, as a reward for doing well, and to motivate the poor people to work harder so they’d have to pay less money in taxes.
Who would have guessed every republican would’ve also seen this film and taken it to heart?
Grover Norquist came up with his tax pledge in like second grade. All of their ideas are elementary school level analysis.
We should shift the tax burden onto land, something everyone needs but rich people own most of.
Tax? That’s not how you spell EAT
Well… they’d probably enjoy a friendly nibble. they certainly won’t enjoy being taxed.
Shhhh… don’t say it too loud or the working class could turn off the TV and start organizing to tax the rich… 🤫🤫
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
How about we all stop paying taxes until the fucks start using the income for things other than making foreign peoples dead?
There’s enough money in the pot, it’s just squandered on things that don’t benefit the people. We could accomplish so fucking much with just the amount of cash that the Pentagon misplaces every year.
I’ll never understand the obsession with demanding more from the rich while we can’t even account for what we already have. Is everything a goddamn distraction campaign?
/rant
the amount of cash that the Pentagon misplaces every year
They don’t misplace a penny - every dollar they “waste” is money that goes into somebody’s pocket.
Inequality is its own cancer on society, separate and independent from the enormous sums sent to the military. Both must happen for different reasons.
And the divided focus is why progress on either matter is never achieved. Minor triage obviously reveals the military industrial complex to be the issue most deserving of our attention.
Until we stop hate-voting and actually vote for politicians that will get rid of lobbying, nothing will change.
