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Lowest-taxed group in each state of the United States
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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You pay more money total, but you have a lot more left over too. You don't pay more in Washington State unless you own an expensive property, since they don't have income tax. Well I guess you pay more if you buy more stuff, but that's a given.
Even in Washington state you have federal income tax. Why should someone who makes $500k pay 10x more than someone who makes $50k? Just because you think they have more? Someone who makes $500k has worked far harder, likely has lots of student loans, and much higher expenses. This is a capitalist country, not socialist. They say eat the rich... I say eat the lazy.
A family who earned $500k is likely putting lots of money into some sort of savings or investments while a family making $50k is likely living paycheck to paycheck. The $500k earner can part with a little extra to help benefit the greater good.
Also, your ridiculous "they worked harder and low income people are lazy" schtick is idiotic. Do you think someone who grew up in a poor family, went to an underfunded school district, had to work to help support the family, couldn't afford college, and works multiple jobs just to live paycheck to paycheck is lazy? Or are the high income middle managers that grew up in high income families, went to good school districts, had college paid for by their parents, spend weekends at their lake house, have full time child care, and earn money off the backs of the lower income people the lazy ones?
That's unironically how they think and they can't fathom how us poors had to grow up. I work with a privileged (I'm not even being derogatory by saying that) lady who had it all growing up and has a nepobaby job and she was gobsmacked when I told her I had to drop out of college to work more to help my younger brothers survive. Took her a second to get that not all of us have both of our parents and that our parents aren't all rich people who could just give infinite cash. She does straight up live in a rich bubble here in Cali.
She's also a landlady that got gifted houses to rent by her parents so she's part of the reason us poors have to pay so much rent.
When I was living in my car during college I met a girl who had a full ride from her parents and she un-ironically said "why don't you just get your parents to give you an apartment?". She couldn't fathom that one, I have a single parent, not parents, and two, that parent didn't have any money either. Her parents paid for a bad-ass apartment for her, paid her college tuition, gave her a BMW, and a credit card with an unlimited budget. By contrast, I was living in my car, working all night for my money, and going to school during the day, trying my damnedest to improve my situation in life.
Edit: on one hand I kind of agree with what that other guy said. There are plenty of people who never bothered fighting through the type of situation I outlined above, never built any job skills, and never pursued a career. They go to their minimum wage job, clock in, clock out, and don't concern themselves with anything beyond that. But on the other hand I recognize that there are tons of people whose opportunities have been limited due to their position in life, and despite fighting through adversity to build a better life, life kicked them around enough that they never succeeded in fighting their way out. That second group is what those who are more fortunate don't want to acknowledge, since it means they need to acknowledge that they aren't in their awesome situation purely through their own awesomeness.
Replying to your edit, even those people who don't want more deserve to live a happy life with their basic needs met and the other dude just doesn't seem to think so. Not all of us can be doctors and lawyers earning the big bucks. Some need to do the 'lesser' jobs that the rest of us enjoy. We need baristas, grocers, teachers assistants, daycare workers, garbage men (I know they can make decent money in some parts), fast food employees etc. We can't leave some of those jobs to teens, and even for the ones we can our human growth won't be enough to keep this house of cards going.
I agree with you.
You've made the claim a couple times that lower earners are just not working as hard, you know that's not how it goes, right? Me and my wife working as teachers put in the time to go to school, put in the mandatory internships of student teaching, and then work our asses off on 80 hr weeks each to do the job and still walk away with less than $100k income. Are we just lazy?
You mean you walk away with less than $100k EACH. Your household income is likely close to $150k to $200k, with full benefits and retirement. You almost never have to worry about layoffs. Many teachers are part of unions and can practically commit murder and keep their jobs. Your household is in the top 10%, and you are exactly who they want to tax more. You have "extra income" because someone making $40k a year earns far less than you. So you have more that you can pay.
You are going to compare yourself to a Walmart employee who couldn't bother to do their high-school homework? Who just clocks in and clocks out every day without a care in the world about their job? They absolutely work less hard than you and are far more lazy. You make more than double what they do. Do you think you should pay far more taxes? While you pay those student loans?
No, I mean total, and that's without full benefits since one of the schools is a small business.
My wife has been fired basically for being autistic more than once and while the union wanted to make a case it was eventually determined to be too unlikely to stick.
It's cool that you think you know my whole situation and also the situation of everyone else earning less than me, but it's just not the case that everyone or even most people making 40k are lazy. Many of them have been working hard their entire lives but didn't have the resources to succeed despite their best efforts, and writing each of them off as
is just pretty shitty. It's not the case that every high earner was handed life on a silver platter, and it's not the case that every low earner is an unskilled layabout content to wallow.
The graphic is about State taxes, not federal. It's lacking in information though and hard to draw conclusions from. It's probably intentionally created to cause anger.
In response to your statements though, the idea is that you can comfortably part with a higher percentage of your money. I'm also in a high tax bracket and I'm not really opposed to a graduated tax rate. Someone's gotta pay for our military, our roads, social services, police, etc. All of that stuff isn't going to get funded by people with low income. Social programs can help people lift themselves out of poverty and give them a chance to make something of themselves. They also help protect our nation's children.
That said, I think the big corporations should shoulder a lot larger portion of that burden than they do. I'm also not keen on the competence and lack of efficiency/effectiveness of our government in a lot of areas.
They say eat the rich, you say eat the lazy, I say don't eat anyone. I'd love to see our country more unified.
By this logic why not just tax high income earners to the point that they make the same as low income earners? After all, they have more money they can part with as you state. Just offering to blindly pay more tax because uncle Sam needs more missiles is a really stupid argument. It leads to gross over spending and negligence. I worked for a government agency for many years and every year they would buy millions of dollars of stuff that never made if off the pallet just because they needed to spend their budget so they got it next year. Not with my money, no thanks.
There's two facets to consider. -Is government spending well managed, and if not, what to do to improve it? You may have some fair points there
-To the extent government spending is reasonably required, how to handle paying for it? On this, you overextend their point about who can afford. Someone making $30k/year and trying to get by can't really spare any money. Someone making $500k/year would still have crap tons of money even paying $200k/year in taxes. No one is proposing that making more should make it so you take home less than the low income person, or even close to the low income person, just that the proportion that can go to government comfortably increases.
I don't disagree with you there. I made that very same point. And that's the answer to your question, as well as part of your previous statement. We're still mostly a capitalist society, so you get to reap the rewards of your income. But we have socialist programs too, so those who can bear more of the weight do so.
Point of order, do you mean 10x more proportionally to their total or 10x more in general?