this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
1463 points (99.2% liked)

Political Memes

5413 readers
2965 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 32 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Should you not be upset even more that no matter how much tax is collected, govt has insatiable desire to keep spending more and more? i agree "Rich need to pay their fair share", but what is "fair share" govt should be collecting?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

govt spending more and more is fine, so long as it goes back to society. maintain roads and bridges, create new parks and accessible paths, etc etc.

the problem is when it all goes to providing weapons to foreign countries so more children can be murdered and providing weapons to pigs so more minorities can be murdered.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If increasingly more spending is ok, do you support 34T debt or unlimited debt?

Should taxes have an upper limit? 50%? 70%? 90%?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

yes, money is made up and i don't give a shit about govt debt.

and of course taxes have an upper limit. i think it's fair to say taxes shouldn't go above 100%.

i support multi-tier taxing, starting with 0% until a living wage, a reasonable percentage from that point until a well-off range, then higher and higher. every dollar above 100 million at 90%, and every dollar from 1 billion and beyond at 100%. billionaires shouldn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What upsets me is, we post these memes but nothing ever changes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

As long as unpaid corporate shills and idolization of tax evaders exist, there is use in these memes - if only to combat misinformation and PR schemes. Not everything has to be a drastic change.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Turn back the tax brackets to Eisenhower era.

Capital Gains back to pre Reagan

Trebuchet anyone who suggests changing them into the grand canyon.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

The Grand Canyon is nice. Launch them into someplace toxic like a superfund site or the Republican national convention.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I've posted this before and next time it comes up I'll probably post it again,

Way it should be in my eyes,

Set the brackets at calculated thresholds for the 20th percentile, 40th percentile, 60th percentile, 80th percentile, 95th percentile, and 99th percentiles of incomes.

  • For the 20% bracket, you pay no income tax,
  • For the 40%, and 60% brackets, you pay a percent equal to the share of the national wealth controlled by households in those brackets
  • For the 80% and 95% brackets you pay twice your bracket's share
  • For the 99% bracket you pay three times your bracket's share

And just to turn the dial up even more, find the median income in the 20% bracket, and apply just the teensiest percent multiplier to the nominal rate for every time someone's income tips over another twenty times that median

Doesn't just keep tax rates dynamic to reflect the economy, it also ramps up the pressure extremely quickly against wealth accumulation, and suddenly inclines the rich to start eating each other, because now they're all in direct competition to have the most while cutting each other all down to avoid their tax rates spiking, and since it's a flat multiplier instead of a more complex formula, those 99 percenters can get titanically screwed by actually losing money for getting too much, since anything above a third of the nation's wealth means they're paying a dollar and change for every dollar they make. They'll become each other's worst enemies since anyone who starts hording raises the tax pressure on everyone else.

Oh and just to make sure it stays that way, anyone who peaks the 99% club, you are officially acknowledged as "doing well and good enough", and are barred from public office for the next ten years following the last time you pay in that bracket. Just picture it, a government with no one percenters in it, and instead of trying to lobby their way back in they're all too busy trying to tear each other down for a decimal point off their nominal rate.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The taxes should be an exponential function of the income, no tax brackets

I never understood why it isn't like that

At least a quadratic or cubic function

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Got dang this sounds hot hot hot

Quick i need a republican to tell me how this hurts the children or stifles muh innovations or something

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Nine

Eleven

thunderous applause from the sticks as the rubes vote to hamstring themselves

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

If those hijackers were Christians those redcap jackasses would have been cheering, and not enough time is spent making them publicly accountable for that

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I just want to say implementing a mathematical function is far more convenient then using brackets. That way you can make sure anybody who gets a raise also gets to keep more, but pays more taxes at the same time. Because you will never jump a bracket which reduces your income because of higher taxes. The other benefit is, that you can easily implement a negative income tax. This would make sure that anybody who is working, has more income than people who don't work. This would be an incentive for anybody to work what they can, even if it is very little.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Because you will never jump a bracket which reduces your income because of higher taxes.

Dude, what are you even talking about?? The entire purpose for brackets to even exist is to make it literally impossible for this to happen. Maybe take the time to learn how the tax system works before attempting to improve it?!?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thats not how the tax brackets work. Only the amount that is in that bracket is taxed at that rate. What can happen is a loss of income based social services and tax breaks for lower income families.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

You are obviously right. I always mix this up (see Bracket creep why I mix this up). But otherwise my point still stands. In this stackexchange is a graph with an example how tax brackets turn out at each income. My actual point ist, that the graph is not smooth and I don't like that. Also there is a highest bracket, which will allows the super rich to keem growing their wealth. The fact, that super rich people are hiding their actual wealth for example via credits, is a separate issue, which obviously can't be tackled by income tax alone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Fair yeah, the system needs reform

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Technically the bracket system fits the definition of a mathematical function but taking your intent, I think a single function is actually less flexible, by introducing brackets you can specifically raise or lower the tax burden on demographics that have been shown, at least in America, to form meaningful statistical cohorts.

Plus the wealth percent based rate creates a direct negative impact to wealth accumulation, meaning that rich folks will likely be trying to offload wealth to keep their rates down, meaning that wealth can go back into the moving economy, meaning into the hands of the people it has been horded from through wage theft and price gouging.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The main problem is it can't be trivially based on income. You have to figure out how to tax things like stock and "I got a low interest loan from the bank". Things that aren't a check your employer sends you every two weeks.

Probably taxing unrealized gains would do it? If you own stock that's worth a shit load of money, you pay something.

I think people also use stock as a collateral to get loans. That should probably not be a thing you can do to avoid taxes.

Also there probably shouldn't be a marriage tax break. I'm pretty sure that came from some rich asshole who didn't want to pay taxes, so he said half his income was his stay at home wife's to lower his burden. There's a book "the whiteness of wealth" that talks about this, and how it tends to help white people more than anyone else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

See I've got an idea for that too, tax loans collateralized on capital assets (save primary home mortgages, primary vehicle car loans, and other loans of that like) either as income always or if they're given an interest rate below the federal interest rate.

As for marriage tax breaks, I actually disagree, with a caveat, I think what should be done there is to reform the legal concept of a marriage to become the formation of a legal household that provides the legal benefits of a marriage currently but that also fits family models that don't work with traditional nuclear families. Of course laws banning discrimination should remain so that churches won't try to use this as an excuse to say they get to decide who's allowed to be married or not again, but a legal concept that can accommodate something like a three parental figure household would go a long way towards uncomplicating family rights, and also allow cases like cult survivors to band together as next of kin to prevent situations where the legal family tries to kidnap an escapee out of a hospital (saw it in a reddit story)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So. When you running for president? you've got my vote lmao

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Well I'm 27 and have never even held appointed office, so....know a campaign agent who's willing to work on contingency for 8 years at a minimum?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

I think you can change stuff around the legal definition of marriage and family separately from the tax break part. I'm not an expert, but if you're interested in this sort of thing I recommend "The Whiteness of Wealth": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/591671/the-whiteness-of-wealth-by-dorothy-a-brown/

From another article about it: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/05/17/us-taxes-dorothy-brown

Marriage puts the issue front and center, she says. Most married Americans receive a tax cut, “but there is a significant minority of Americans, when they get married, they pay higher taxes,” she says. “Well, as it turns out, if you look at Census Bureau data, which actually does provide this information by race, you see white married couples are more likely to contribute income … that leads to them getting a tax cut.”

However, Black married couples are more likely to contribute income to the household in a way that leads to higher taxes, Brown says.

For example, “let's say someone makes $50,000. As a single person, their taxes are going to be a certain rate,” she says. “But as a married person with a single wage earner, that $50,000 household is going to wind up paying less taxes than that single wage earner had they remained single.”

Census Bureau data shows single wage-earning families are more likely to be white than Black, she says. For example, many of these types of single wage-earning families consist of a working white man — a person who statistically holds a higher paying job than any other identity, she says — and a woman who stays home with the children.

“On the other hand, the couple where both spouses are working full time and contributing roughly equal amounts to household income, they don't get a tax cut,” she says. “That couple is more likely to be Black than white.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

Basically none of us should be paying taxes until people with net worths above 50 million dollars pay theirs.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago

"we can't afford universal Healthcare"

"we're shutting down libraries to give cops more money"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago

It's astonishing how our politicians do everything else, but to finally reform the tax system.

That's because there's nothing to reform, it's working just as intended.

They just have to keep the population busy, distracted by lots of flashes and bangs, so we all just continue to manage our own lives, without standing up against this shit.

This is so normalized around the world, you can't even guess what country I'm from, from what i wrote.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I live in California and am taxed out the ASS. And I am super all for it, because California's economy, job training, assistance programs, and strong worker and consumer protection laws brought me from homeless to making good money.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Yeah I make good money in Cali and am happy to get taxed accordingly. It rocks here.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 months ago

Same, but Europe here. Free healthcare and mostly free education, now a decent paying job. I don't mind paying a ton of taxes, what pisses me off is that the mega wealthy don't.

The reason I'm paying so much in taxes isn't that homeless guy with mental illness that needs a meal, or that immigrant that needs healthcare because his fucking asshole boss is exploiting him and not providing proper job safety.

It pains me that so many good, decent people are falling so hard for this fascist propaganda, and don't realize they're being swindled by the mega rich that are making more money than they ever did...

[–] [email protected] 91 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If less of my taxes went to missile and more toward social programs I'd be a lot happier too

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.

By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.

The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is.

Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

All this wouldn't be possible without your tax dollars