Comments by "Hari Sadu" (@harisadu8998) on "Watch a Democrat and Republican debate President Joe Biden's tax plan" video.

  1. Taxing the rich is a stupid idea aimed only at making a moral statement. When you raise taxes for the rich and then cut for the middle class and lower middle class, your tax cut on the bottom-side ends up being larger than that at the top. America is not actually serious about raising revenue. Sweden, whom everyone loves to quote has a marginal tax rate of 52% at an income level of $60000. For the same level of income, the US tax rate may be around 27%.
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  2.  @ryant5447  - The argument often made is one of revenue, which is to say that revenue is not enough because the rich don't pay enough. What Biden's proposal will do is raise taxes on the rich but cut it so much at the lower end that the total tax collection will be lower because the tax cut ends up being bigger than the tax increase, hence widening the deficit more. You're making my point for me regarding Sweden. Firstly, the federal rate is 22%, it's about 27% when you consider the additional taxes for someone making $60,000. The point I made is that America and Americans are not actually serious about collecting tax to provide the services they claim to want. Sweden collects far more tax as a % of GDP and then spends them on these programmes you mentioned. America cannot do it because it does not have the will to collect more tax. They need to tax the middle class higher as they do in Sweden. There's no wealth tax there. Secondly, Sweden has a 25% VAT, America has no such thing. So what the Democrats are really doing is trying to morally signal and score points instead of making any genuine effort to raise more tax. They won't raise enough from the rich and they'll give cuts to the middle class which will be larger than revenue raised from the rich, hence lower tax collected.
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  3. Taxing the rich is a stupid idea aimed only at making a moral statement. When you raise taxes for the rich and then cut for the middle class and lower middle class, your tax cut on the bottom-side ends up being larger than that at the top. America is not actually serious about raising revenue. Sweden, whom everyone loves to quote has a marginal tax rate of 52% at an income level of $60000. For the same level of income, the US tax rate may be around 27%.
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