Political Discussions
Rich people demand to be taxed more
Posted by clioandme • 10/23/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Germany, taxes
Here's something you don't see every day. A group of wealthy people in Germany are demanding to be taxed more. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8321967.stm This is coming as the CDU, CSU, and FDP form a new coalition, and the FDP demands tax cuts in a period of increasing deficits. (The FDP's critics call them "market radicals". They are a cross between market extremism on the Republican side of the US political spectrum and the emphasis on the individual rights and and educational opportunities that matter to Democrats in the US.)
Another thing you don't hear every day: Listening to the "Tagesthemen" (Daily Topics) podcast this morning, I heard a lot of voices by citizens criticizing forthcoming tax breaks. Their complaint? It can only be done by borrowing money.
Maybe we in the US could learn a thing or two from the example of these citizens who know you can't get something for nothing?
User Comments
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Wow, this is something I would never expect to see. However, yes there are many things that America could learn from other countries. I think the largest problem is that there is some Americans who are too arrogant to admit that America could learn from European countries. Like Bill Maher said, America is not the greatest country in the world, it may be great but not the greatest." Maybe America needs a touch of humility and then we could understand how to apply the lessons that were learned in Europe and apply them to America, perhaps even improve them further. -
"The petition has 44 signatories so far, and will be presented to newly re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel."
44 people, interesting position coming from someone that thinks the GOP is marginal and unimportant.
What does this teach us? That there are kooks in every walk of life perhaps.-
One man's kook is another man's human being with a social conscience.
And what about the second part of my OP, the one about ordinary Germans and attitudes to tax cuts at the cost of higher deficits? I don't have data on that, but it is a fact that the only party pushing for tax cuts is a minority party, the FDP. -
So what do we say about all the Obama voters who wanted his low and middle income tax cuts?
Lacking in social conscience? -
Just for once, take off your ideological battle fatigues and think for a minute. Did I cast the OP in a right versus left format? No. I spoke of the US in general. That includes Democrats and Republicans. Yes, both sides find fiscally sound policy suicidal when it comes to talking about revenues. That's not a Republican or Democratic problem. That's an American problem. The only thing most Americans have the stomach for is talk of expenditures, never revenues, which is just plain dishonest. We are being dishonest with ourselves, and our politicians are only giving us what we demand of them.
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No, you just said that those that would advocate higer taxes have social conscience, which then means that those who would advocate against it would lack the same quality.
As far as talking about revenue, it's not "responsible" to pretend that you can raise revenue time and time again and never cut spending.
Not many, with all certainty not a majority, would advocate raising their taxes. The reason they don't talk about that is because like you said it would be suicide.
In other words, those that would increase spending, and lie about the need for increased revenue are the ones that need to be removed from office immediately.
Those that advocate cutting cost, in order to get to a sustainable level are the ones that are being honest about it.
What they most likely won't say out loud is who and what is getting cut. Because again, this is suicide.
This is not an American problem, the same issue occurs in every country I know of. -
You have succeeded in missing my point entirely. Or I have failed to communicate it effectively. Either way, I'm not feeling like playing the role of Sisyphus.
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Your point, as always is to make sweeping statements about who is good / bad, smart / dumb etc.
And as always, when turned around and used against you, you "choose not to engage"..
Predictability is by far your best quality. -
Actually, my point was about differing cultural attitudes towards taxes and national debt between the US and Germany. Having lived in a couple cultures, maybe that is something you could get, if you could take out the ideological lenses that are clouding your vision.
Disengaging? Sometimes that's the only rational response to people determined to do ideological battle over a relatively harmless observation that could have provided food for an interesting discussion. -
44 poeple only make a "cultural" statement if you have clouded vision to begin with.
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See again the second paragraph in my OP. The first paragraph is merely a subset of the broader phenomena I point to in the second paragraph. Got it?
If you see no cultural differences in attitudes towards taxes, only ideological differences, how do you explain the high taxes in Sweden? Part of it is a different attitude towards government and its role, not doubt. And that is cultural, not just ideological. Putting that bit aside, though, how tolerant is that country of deficit spending? German public discourse worries about amounts that would look like chump change here, even if you account for this country being 3.75 times as large in terms of population and maybe 3.9 times as big in terms of GDP. Well, not chump change, but relatively smaller amounts nonetheless. That is a cultural difference. How about Sweden?
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This sounds more like well intentioned philanthropy than a business plan or model that would work...
In my opinion taxing rich people unfairly chases them and their money elsewhere...When big business is taxed unfairly the tax gets passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for goods and services... -
Makes perfect sense to me. When marginal tax rates are higher, you create income buffers that dampen the amount of new investment going in to industry (as most companies record their incomes as individuals), the result being less competition, higher prices, and greater job security for America's billionaires.-
This isn't about marginal tax rates. These guys were suggesting a specific, limited-time tax for specific investments. Of course, it is not going to happen, but it is interesting to see wealthy citizens make the suggestion.
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If they want to make investments in special project, why don't they make investments in special projects?
Why is it that lefties always like the idea of forcing others to pay for things they want to accomplish? -
What I find funny, is how offended you are at a suggestion being made by a petition from fewer than four dozen people in a country where you don't even have to pay taxes. Your first question is a good one, though. If you assume they're not "kooks", to use your word, but rather intelligent people, then you have to get into the cultural differences that you claim are irrelevant.
Your second question, on the other hand, kind of misses the point of why human beings live in societies in the first place. Perhaps you would rather live in a "state of nature" where the law of the strongest is all we need? No policemen, no roads, no military, no national currency, no laws protecting your property, no nothing but what you yourself can keep your hands on. -
@csi: Because rich people, like everyone else, don't want to pay for their dirty work themselves.
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You seem to be speaking tongue-in-cheek, Jeremy, but I gotta give you credit for originality. You take a sensibility of class conflict, say the government is doing the bidding of the wealthy, and that is why the government is your enemy. Kinda like Marx, if I read Marx loosely, only you land on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. But I guess ordinary people are what populism is all about, regardless of the ideological answers one arrives at.
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YAda yada, the same stupid argument you always get from the lefties.
Why is it that the left can't distinguish between Roads, firedepartments, Miltary and other things that should be in the hands of a government and things that should be outside of gov't control.
There are SOME things that should be paid by taxes, there's plenty more things that shouldn't. And "special projects" are all but never covered by the first area.
But since you are asking about extremes. Then Yes, I would prefer no government to a government that controls everything.
how about you?-
Well, since I have no property to speak of, there wouldn't be a loss there, but I do kinda like law and order, electricity, and heat, and I'm not really set up for hunting and gathering at the moment. In the end, though, decisions about what a government does have to be reached in a manner that makes sense for the greatest possible number of people. That means not taxing a particular class out of existence or to the point of flight or a coup, but it also means not setting up laws in a one-sided manner that favors only a particular class of property owners leaving others wondering if the political system is even worth it. That middle ground will shift from time to time within the constitutional framework that a body politic agrees to operate within. It's that middle ground that all the current political debates are occurring, not in a bizarre world of either Big Brother or the Lord of the Flies.
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