Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

The epstein one was a different image. There's a bunch of them out there. The one Trump posted was the one with what looks like GWAR coming out of the clouds, and the person being touched inappropriately looked like this:

Ah, okay. That version was the first one I became aware of and the first one I saw commented on.

[PFVA]

When I first looked at the image and I wasn't paying much attention I thought he had dressed himself as Roman Emperor.
As just before he was talking about an Arch of Triumph bigger than the one commissioned by Napoleon in Paris I thought he had moved from comparing himself to Napoleon and was on Cesar phase. Then I noticed he was comparing him to Jesus Christ.

I think Nancy Pelosi is right, he needs a psychiatric evaluation and fast.

[Little stoned kiwi]

I think Nancy Pelosi is right, he needs a psychiatric evaluation and fast.

I doubt that there's any point. Trump doesn't want to leave and the people benefiting from him don't want him to leave. He's dictator in every way but formal recognition.

[KlaxonCow]

These are American figures, but this is broadly how neo-liberalism has worked across all Western economies.



Source: New York Times

It's real simple logic. If the ultra-rich are paying less and less - now less than the poorest pay - in taxes, then the taxman has to recoup the loss from somewhere else to make up the difference. Or society sacrifices public services and infrastructure to bail the ultra-rich out of their tax burden.

And there are vastly more poor and middle income people. So, yeah, the graph has been very clearly levelling out over time, becoming increasingly un-progressive. To the point now where the ultra-rich are paying less taxes than anyone else. But as we lose their contribution, where else can society make up the difference?

There's only two options. You tax the poor and middle income more - and, in that equation, the majority of that burden has to fall on the middle income population, as the poor simply don't have the money in the first place - you can't really push the poorest any further, as they're already choosing between food and warmth in Winter and surviving on Food Bank contributions. Or you simply shut down society to reduce the tax burden, cutting and ending public services, and not investing in infrastructure (and that just impoverishes everyone, though least of all the ultra-rich, as they can pay privately to have their own needs met).

So, yeah, as the line for the ultra-rich drops like a rock, the rest of the line has to rise to make up the difference. Notice that the poorest has just risen consistently, as the ultra-rich has dropped like rock consistently. And then, making up the difference in the middle are your "aspirational middle earners" rising up the ranks of their careers. It's a bit more "up and down" in the middle, but it's generally the middle that's taking all the hits.

And, after the banking crisis, you'll just notice that the line is lower overall - from 2001 to 2010 and 2018 - for everyone but the poorest, who are not spared despite having the least means, and this simply means that public services and infrastructure has been de-funded. So enjoy longer waiting times at the hospital, more pot holes in the road, less bin collection, etc..

As a society, we're all "going Dutch" on the costs of our shared infrastructure. But, increasingly, the ultra-rich are excusing themselves to go to the toilet when the bill arrives and then jumping out the bathroom window. Leaving the rest of us to somehow pick up the tab, giving the ultra-rich free meals and trying to support the poorest, who otherwise couldn't afford to eat at this restaurant at all. Who gets lumped with paying the majority of the bill? Those aspirational middle earners who're not rich enough for tax evasion / avoidance (to jump out the bathroom window themselves), but rich enough to be made to pay the majority of the bill, as the poor simply can't scrape together enough to cover themselves, much less subsidise anyone else (though their line consistently rises, so they're pretty much supporting everyone else to the maximum degree they can).

And I guess, in one sense, you could see "corporate welfare" - where the rich are given "free money" by the rest of society making up the difference, from those least affected by taxes not paying any - as a form of "Communism", I suppose. Though, generally, as Mussolini had it, the merger of government and corporations - corporatism, handing out "corporate welfare" - is really the basis of fascism, not communism.

[Little stoned kiwi]

It will trickle down any day now.

[Mayhem]

Rich are still paying more. They are just paying less than they used to. The top 10% still make up 85% of the overall tax revenue.

[zip accident]

These are American figures, but this is broadly how neo-liberalism has worked across all Western economies.



Source: New York Times

What the heck is that graph?

MY eyesight is poor, but it dosen't make any sense to me whatever.

Time is a "y" axis?

[Little stoned kiwi]

X axis is income level. Y is the percentage of tax paid. Each colour is a different year, with the year marked on the right side.
It shows that higher income earners were paying a significantly larger percentage of tax in 1950, with that reducing for each year listed until the tax distribution line flattens out in 2010 before doing something weird in 2018.

[tufty]

The top 10% still make up 85% of the overall tax revenue.

According to https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Income- ... ution_.pdf, it's only 60% of the overall revenue.

This, however, explains what is the actual reality (and having been in or close to the top 1% at one point, I can confirm) - "far from rising with income, taxes become semi-optional for at least some of those at the very top"

My accountant called it being "tax efficient". I was promised NI contributions and an overall tax rate of under 5% on the rest, without getting too convoluted. Plus accountant's fees, obviously, but when you're talking about 100k of salary, paying 5k in tax and another 1k in fees is a no brainer compared to the ~30k I should have been paying. More convoluted thinking would have taken the 5% down to under 2%. Clearly, things have been tightened up since then, but still.

FWIW, I paid the ~30k I should have been paying, and the accountant looked at me like I was mad.

[Little stoned kiwi]

FWIW, I paid the ~30k I should have been paying, and the accountant looked at me like I was mad.

Good on you.

People not paying tax is inflationary. Inflation hurts those who earn the least the worst while also being the people who can't be 'tax efficient' and unlikely to get a pay rise that matches inflation, while also not owning assets that avoid inflation.
Generally speaking, neo-liberal governments control inflation though austerity to make the poor suffer and society less functional.

[KlaxonCow]

Rich are still paying more. They are just paying less than they used to.

Sure, the Y axis is the tax rate as a percentage. So 20% of £2 million is much more money, in absolute terms, than 20% of £20K. That's quite true.

But the graph and post were about the distribution.

And, more specifically, how the only options, to account for ANY disparity in the distribution, are to either "rob Peter to pay Paul" to make up the shortfall, or you simply de-fund societal infrastructure - less police, less doctors, less ambulances, with more ageing infrastructure collapse such as school buildings full of asbestos ceilings falling on the kids' heads, more pot holes not being filled, sewage discharges into rivers by water companies because privatisation always chooses the "moral hazard" profit over investment. Et cetera.

And, yes, the nature of this graph means it doesn't show the relative sizes of each group - other than "top 400" is literally the richest 400 people in America. So what you can't see directly in this graph - but I did pick up on in my discussion of it - is that there's a lot more people in the groups to the left than there are to the right. Indeed, that's part of how the middle earners can be "making up the difference" of such a precipitous drop in the highest earners. There's only 400 people in "top 400" but there's many, many millions in the poorest and middle income groups.

But that's actually part of the story here. In that if you're a politician who's looking to raise tax income, the temptation is to nudge up taxes by 1% or 2% for the poorest / middle income bracket, than attempt to go for a 10% or 20% tax rise on the "top 400" richest. Because there's simply many, many more people in these groups that a modest nudge upwards there can actually equate to far more money raised than the possibly futile attempt to get 10% out of the very richest, who have all manner of tax evasion / avoidance schemes to end up paying none of it anyway.

And this is what I was getting at with the graphs. Not how much, in absolute terms, everyone is paying. But the distribution of the tax burden between the groups, and the simple logic that, to afford the same overall tax burden, any tax cuts for the rich have to be made up for elsewhere. Or tax revenue falls and then there's not enough cash to pay for everything.

That's what I was getting at. The inherent "rob Peter to pay Paul" - if the rich are paying proportionally less then, to make up the difference, the poor / middle income find their taxes creeping up 1 or 2%.

Indeed, these are American figures. It'd be interesting to see the UK equivalent because we have tax thresholds - the first £12.5K that anyone earns is untaxed - and that would be an example of it working in the other direction. Because to make up the difference of excusing the first £12.5K of tax, to help the poorest on minimum wage, actually keep most of their barely survivable pittance, then that calculation needs to creep up the taxes on the middle income and rich to subsidise that and / or we're de-funding something else.

This was not about who pays the most and who pays the least. It was about how - as my analogy of all of society "going Dutch" to pay for our societal infrastructure and business grants and benefits was about - if one group is paying less then either another group (too often, the middle income earners - as there's only so far you can reasonably squeeze the poor before you literally start killing them off from mass starvation and the rich just tax evade / avoid like buggery that you can't reliably get anything out of them) and we rob Peter to pay Paul, and / or we just start shutting down the societal infrastructure that we can no longer afford: Less hospitals, less doctors, less schools, less teachers, more pot holes, more sewage discharges into rivers from any infrastructure that needs maintenance that's never happened, more flooding because we can't afford to rebuild the flood defences, etc.

Hence my analogy. Society is going out for a meal at a restaurant and we're "going Dutch" on the bill. But the rich have excused themselves to go to the toilet when the bill arrives - and are jumping up the bathroom window not to pay. The bill has to be paid for - so who's left at the table to actually pay the bill?

By the way, whilst I'm emphasising that this almost always hits the middle income earners - as they're the only ones left at the table who could afford the bill but who can't afford the "creative accounting" that allows the rich to tax evade / avoid to jump out of the bathroom window and avoid the bill entirely - then the biggest victim of the ultra-rich jumping out the bathroom window to avoid paying the bill would be what we could call "the honest rich".

If you're ultra-rich but you're not fully exploiting every loophole and dodge you can to get out of paying for the bill, then you're going to be absolutely rinsed by the taxman to make up the shortfall. Any rich bastards who aren't jumping out of the bathroom window, like their compatriots, and are still sitting at the table when the bill arrives are going to be gutted like kippers by the taxman to make up the difference on all that sweet tax revenue that jumped out the bathroom window.

(Tufty paying the full £30K and not trying to avoid / evade tax is the true "biggest victim" here. Because the only reason they're paying that much in the first place is because, to make up the shortfall, the "honest rich" have to make up for all the "dishonest rich" - who jumped out of the bathroom window to avoid paying the bill at all - in the highest tax bracket of them all.)

Indeed, this is the thing about the distribution of tax - and it was the distribution, not the absolute numbers, I was pointing to - is that if we did close up the loopholes that allowed the ultra-rich to end up paying less actual tax than their secretaries, nannies and cleaners (which Warren Buffet pointed out was the case for himself and is the "weird bit" of the 2018 graph that it's gone beyond "levelling out" and now the ultra-rich are paying proportionally less than everyone else), then we could have a tax cut for everybody.

Make Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. actually pay the same tax rates as the "mom and pop" small local businesses, who can't afford the "creative accounting" to dodge their taxes, and then you could afford to give everyone (including the rich) a tax cut.

In fact, this is part of how it all works. They get the poor and the middle income earners to war amongst themselves - that the poor have too many benefits - so that no-one notices the rich and ultra-rich have been getting away with murder in the interim.

[KlaxonCow]

Generally speaking, neo-liberal governments control inflation though austerity to make the poor suffer and society less functional.

And that's why - across the world - those in neo-liberal societies have gotten tired of this shit.

How trust in governments and institutions has hit rock bottom. How popularism is rising - because though, as Trump and Brexit have shown, it's all full of shit and actually makes things far worse, vast swathes of people are taking in to vote for "change", as they desperately need this shit to end. And they're honestly and genuinely voting for chaos - they're just protest voting against "the Establishment" because they've followed the rules and things have just gotten progressively worse for them over time.

When not robbing Peter to pay Paul - and upping the taxes on the poorest and middle income earners to bail the ultra-rich out of paying any taxes at all - then, yes, the only other option is that you've got to reduce the tax bill itself.

So you shut down hospitals, police stations, fire stations. They usually disguise this by opening up a big centralised "super hospital" - but then close 10 local hospitals in the surrounding area and, of course, the new central "super hospital" does not have the collective capacity of those 10 hospitals we lost. Same with police and fire stations, and even schools - the smaller local stations and schools disappear and close to be replaced by a centralised "super station" / "super school" but this does not have the collective capacity that all the stations / schools it replaces once had.

I know in my local town, there used to be "police houses" when I was a kid. There was a central police station in the centre of town, and then, in the various villages that make up the town, there were "police houses". These were basically converted houses. But they were satellite police offices in every local community. I've not only seen those disappear - the town's central police station is gone now. We're served by the big "super police station" from the city nearby. There's literally no local police stations of any kind whatsoever in the town at all now. None. If the police are called, there's a 15 to 20 minute delay, as they travel down the motorway to reach the "suburb" local towns of the nearest city, which is now the only place where there's police facilities.

The same thing happened with the schools, with all the small schools closed and knocked down, shifting all the kids into a couple of "super schools". And, yes, these new facilities are bigger and more modern, but it is a collective loss overall because the new "super school" isn't equivalent to the dozen smaller local schools they shut to feed it. It's a bigger school - but it is not equivalent to adding all the rooms of all those other schools together. Yes, the new school has an impressive big "computer room", for example - but that computer room is not equivalent to the 10 computer rooms that the individual schools had collectively.

To pay for the rich side of that graph collapsing, you've found that your own tax bill - including all the stealth taxes - has been gradually rising and, at the same time, the societal infrastructure around you - schools, police stations, hospitals - have been closing and the ageing infrastructure is not being maintained and is falling apart, and society is increasingly not functioning properly because its capacity to cope has been whittled away through cuts and "austerity".

This is the cost of all that tax evasion and avoidance. It's far from a victimless crime. It's actually causing the societal infrastructure to collapse, while you're bizarrely paying the highest tax levels ever (and there's an increased population paying it as well) - and everyone's voting for the popularists because they're desperate for "change" - any change of any kind that ends this current mad house we live under.

Feeding the ultra-rich has consequences. That's why we all have that feeling that the current system is falling apart and our "trust in institutions" level has reached rock bottom.

It's not new - this has been going on for decades and is just getting progressively worse and worse, the more the ultra-rich are let off the hook - to invest in property and land, which is driving house and rent prices through the roof. The intro here was written decades ago, and all that's happened is that it's gotten more and more relevant and true:



"There are new forces in the world...a conflict between the generations (Gen Z will never own their own homes, while boomers are lording it); a powerful feeling that the 'American system' (neo-liberalism) is failing to deal with the real threats to life: the Bomb (wars in Ukraine and Iran), the pollution of air and water (climate change, water companies dumping sewage into rivers), the population explosion (mass immigration), the mounting slums (Food banks) and crime..."

[KlaxonCow]

Source: New York Times

What the heck is that graph?

I gave the source from the New York Times.

If you click through, then you can see that the original is actually an animation. This might be easier to understand and follow.

But to pack a three dimensional graph into a single picture, it's a stacked graph with colour-coding. I overlaid each of the individual graphs on top of each other, and the years follow the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, "indigo" and violet).

[tufty]

Tufty paying the full £30K and not trying to avoid / evade tax is the true "biggest victim" here.

No, I wasn't. Not a victim at all. I paid that tax happily. Taxes are not high enough for the top earners. They weren't then, and they certainly aren't now. Yes, I paid 30K in tax. But I took home over 70K. About 4 times the average salary before tax at the time. Fuck people like me at the time.

[KlaxonCow]

Tufty paying the full £30K and not trying to avoid / evade tax is the true "biggest victim" here.

No, I wasn't. Not a victim at all. I paid that tax happily. Taxes are not high enough for the top earners. They weren't then, and they certainly aren't now. Yes, I paid 30K in tax. But I took home over 70K. About 4 times the average salary before tax at the time. Fuck people like me at the time.

I did "scare quote" it.

What I was getting at - as is the point of the distribution graphs - is that, essentially, the tax burden is being amortised across all of society.

So if there's loads of rich people not paying taxes, then we need to account for that and get the money from someone else instead. Like, we put everyone's tax bills up 1% or 2% to make up the difference that Amazon and Google and Apple aren't paying the billions in taxes that they really ought to be paying.

And this presents a mad, but entirely real, concept. If you could make all those ultra-rich actually pay the 40% rate that they're supposed to be paying, in full, then we could give everyone - rich and poor - a tax cut.

Or, put another way, if the rich really were always paying that 40% in full, then we could probably knock that tax rate down to 30% and still be netting the same amount of money overall.

Because the rich are not paying their share, that's necessarily accounted for in the tax rates. They raise taxes on the poorest and middle income earners to make up the difference.

So, yes, you were not "a victim" because you were happy to pay it. But what I meant was that "the honest rich" - who willing pay their taxes and don't try to dodge it - end up being taxed at a higher rate, exactly because there's all those "dishonest rich" dodging taxes that "the honest rich" are effectively subsidising.

This is the "distribution" argument that I've been getting at. We're all "going Dutch" on the tax bill. If all the ultra-rich are jumping out the bathroom window to avoid paying their share of the bill, then it just means that those who were honest enough to stay sitting at the table are going to have to pay more to subsidise the "free meals" that the ultra-rich got when they jumped out the bog window.

If we were able to lock the bathroom window, so no-one could jump out of it and avoid paying their share of the bill then, actually, we can all pay less. Including the rich people as well. The tax rates can be lower for everyone. Because there's more people actually paying the bill, we can spread it out - amortise it - more thinly for all parties.

If Google is dodging the £10 billion they ought to be paying at their tax rate, then we've got to find £10 billion out of everyone else to make up the difference. The tax rates have to take account of all this non-payment, as we've still got to collect enough taxes to pay for everything.

But if the treasury were getting £10 billion off Google, £12 billion off Amazon, etc. then we could afford to lower everyone's tax bills (including the rich).

Or, put another way, if the rich who are paying their taxes are annoyed that their tax bill is so high, the first people they should be blaming for this are their fellow rich compatriots who're dodging their taxes. Their non-payment leaves a "black hole" in the finances that needs to be filled somehow. So everyone gets charged a little more to make up the difference, and - as it's a progressive system - then those are the top are paying more than anyone, in absolute terms.

The "biggest victim" of the ultra-rich dodging taxes are actually the rich folks who're not evading / avoiding their tax. It has to be higher to make up the shortfall, and progressively they pay the highest rates.