Jul 15th 2011, 14:00:56
[quote poster=qzjul]
"Proven?? I wouldn't say so; the capital gains tax is so low now as to be laughable; as with all taxes (or other economic policies in general) there will be a maxima for tax revenue, perhaps not a parabola, but a generally smooth curve with a maxima; republicans act like this maxima MUST BE AT ZERO. Which makes no sense; 100% also makes no sense; Somewhere in the middle obviously makes sense. But I'd wager that it's above 50% and below 75% if I had to make an educated guess. And if I was an especially long-lived politician, I'd run an experiment. [ Ideally, we'd mandate that each of the 50 states run a different range of capital gains tax for say... a decade.. and then report back on which was best ]
But the current what... 15%? is just absurdly low." [/quote]
You're basing your argument about ideal tax rates on the false assumption that Americans are interested in maximizing the power of the State. Most Americans reject the idea that we need a nanny to take care of us. Therefore, the ideal capital gains tax is not the rate which brings in the highest revenue to the government, its the rate which generates the most investment and thus economic well-being for the country as a whole.
Edit: Not sure what happened here but I'm trying to quote qzjul
Originally posted by CKHustler:
and Qz, we already had this discussion about capital gains tax in another thread a few weeks ago. History has proven that raising that capital gains tax will not increase revenue and will decrease investments, thus costing us jobs. The numbers are there, lets not ignore the conversation we had before and act like I have to bring up all that was talked about.
"Proven?? I wouldn't say so; the capital gains tax is so low now as to be laughable; as with all taxes (or other economic policies in general) there will be a maxima for tax revenue, perhaps not a parabola, but a generally smooth curve with a maxima; republicans act like this maxima MUST BE AT ZERO. Which makes no sense; 100% also makes no sense; Somewhere in the middle obviously makes sense. But I'd wager that it's above 50% and below 75% if I had to make an educated guess. And if I was an especially long-lived politician, I'd run an experiment. [ Ideally, we'd mandate that each of the 50 states run a different range of capital gains tax for say... a decade.. and then report back on which was best ]
But the current what... 15%? is just absurdly low." [/quote]
You're basing your argument about ideal tax rates on the false assumption that Americans are interested in maximizing the power of the State. Most Americans reject the idea that we need a nanny to take care of us. Therefore, the ideal capital gains tax is not the rate which brings in the highest revenue to the government, its the rate which generates the most investment and thus economic well-being for the country as a whole.
Edit: Not sure what happened here but I'm trying to quote qzjul