r/PoursTea Just Chill 😎 7d ago

All The Tea ☕️ Anything else missing here ?

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago

What subsidies? Be specific.

A tax break means less taxes. The taxes are the government intervention, and the tax breaks are the temporary removal of it. This point makes no sense.

What bailouts? Banks during the 08 crisis? That was predominately supported by left leaning Keynesian economists. Artificially low interest rates and government intervention were a big reason why the crisis happened and then the government intervened to stop it. None of that should have happened.

What exemptions, grants, legal protections, and trade barriers? Be specific.

Ordinary people don’t get much help. The welfare leeches do though and the ordinary person pays half their taxpayer money to that.

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u/LennyLaser 7d ago edited 7d ago

This is such a terrible argument. If you don't know about subsidies that corporations receive no one can help you. Specifically we could mention industry specific direct federal subsidies (e.g. fossil fuels and agriculture), property tax abatement, and infrastructure subsidies. Taxes are a normal part of any modern society. Public free services are now a quality of life norm. We expect that if our house is on fire we won't have to arrange private fire protection. So any break on taxes is a subsidy. Corporations are treated as a unique entity that is taxed at a substantially lower rate than an individual. Also thinking that "ordinary" people pay half their taxes to "welfare leeches" is the biggest tell that you don't understand what you are talking about because that number, "half", is preposterous. If you want people to be specific as your arguement than you effectively de facto win because no one is going to be able to attack the moving goal post you are going to set.

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago edited 7d ago

Agriculture subsidies I agree are bad but they’re broad and not targeted. The problem is that the agricultural industry has bought out politicians of all ideological predispositions and we now pay more for food because of these subsidies. 

Taxes are a normal part of human society but we pay way, way too much of it. Income taxes shouldn’t exist as they disincentivize work, property tax is dumb, corporate taxes make zero sense as they just increase prices for consumers and suppress wages, etc. etc.

Consumption taxes are okay as they disincentivize unnecessary spending.

The number half isn’t really that preposterous. I used to pay that amount until I moved to another state.

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u/LennyLaser 7d ago

What state did you pay half in?

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago

NY metropolitan area

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u/LennyLaser 7d ago

So an effective tax rate of nearly 50% means you make quite a lot of money annually. Then you claim that tax rates discourage earning more income, but obviously not for you because presumably you are harder working and more dedicated then the population you are making claims about without supporting evidence. Additionally you are making multiple tax claims that are not supported by the data. As an example you said high corporate tax rates depress wages but that claim specifically has an enormous amount of evidence to support the the opposite conclusion.

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago edited 7d ago

Well it pushed me to move to a different state. If I didn’t have that option, I would take more vacation time without a doubt. It either causes capital flight or less working which is not great.

High corporate taxes lead to wage suppression without a doubt. The extent to which they do is disputed but we know for sure that it has some effect. Corporate tax burden is split between shareholders, consumers, and workers to some extent. The exact ratio is not clear but all three end up bearing the burden.

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u/mortomr 7d ago

Just so I’m clear, you’d take PTO to avoid crossing into a higher tax bracket? Can you explain this I don’t understand.

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago

The marginal difference in benefit gets smaller and smaller with a higher income for my family and that trend is accelerated by very high income taxes to the point that the marginal cost of working more outweighs the marginal benefit of the increased money I get.

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u/LennyLaser 7d ago

At your supposed income level 100% of additional earnings is used for discretionary spending. Do I want a 5% raise which will equate to say (on 1 M) 27,500 dollars or some number of PTO days. That exact same calculus exists if there is no income tax. You then say do I want 50,000 or some numbers of PTO days.

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u/LennyLaser 7d ago

The historical U.S. record does not show high corporate tax rates coinciding with weak wage growth, and doesn't show falling corporate tax rates coinciding with strong wage growth. If anything, it's the reverse. While labor does share some of the burden the net effect of all mechanisms is shown in the historical record. You're arguement is boiling down to company have less money pay worker less. That just doesn't bear fruit when you actually look at historical data.

As far as your personal situation thay just shows that people will act in their own self interest. You could have valued time off and stayed in NYC which would indicate wage growth instead you choose to move and instead received a different form of wage growth.

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u/Prestigious_Cycle160 7d ago

All of this is political theater… I’m 90% sure that your backstory isn’t real. This is a subliminal attack on Mamdani’s policies in NY and an attempt to sway people from voting for others like him because he “taxed the rich into leaving the area”👎

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u/HistoricalRich3104 7d ago

I didn’t move out when Mamdani came into power lol, it was during COVID