Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[benji]

This is it: my ResetEra Trolley Problem.

In order to defend my boy Soapbox, I have to...*gulp*...agree with Nepenthe.

It's not that he doesn't want to pay for improving/maintaining society. It's that it's harder for the bottom 80% of society to afford tax increases because it's getting harder for them to afford life in general, a life that- despite tax increases on said bottom 80%- is nonetheless eroding away and falling behind other comparably-developed countries and even some underdeveloped ones (lol at Cuba having higher literacy than us.) You can't shrug your shoulders at the lack of wage growth and the wealthy dodging their responsibilities.

The solution starts with taxing the wealthy egregiously. But here we run into the contradiction where both parties are capitalist and thus are not going to actually implement the solution because it's against their values and interests. And instead of dealing with that contradiction, we instead engage in intraclass conflict and call OP, a Black man who- as a Black man, is statistically likely to be struggling more just due to systemic racism- a selfish Republican.

Like going by this thread you'd think the Sheriff of Nottingham was the real hero of the story lol.

You don't because she doesn't know what she's talking about. The top 1% already pay 40-45% of income taxes (depending on the year because their income fluctuates so much) despite accruing less of their income that way, easily even more of property and capital gains since lower classes don't own these. The top 50% of people pay 97% of national income taxes, it's greater at the state and local level.

Taxes have to go up on the "bottom 80%" because spending only ever increases and the alternative is runaway inflation. The United States already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world, if it's going to copy those "other comparably-developed countries" then the answer is massive tax increases on those bottom 80% like those countries have.

People look at only the top tax rate and say "oh this country taxes the rich more because their top rate is 55% and in the US it's only 39%" but they completely ignore that the bottom 20% has a rate of 20+% and in the US that's 0% or less. They don't tax the rich more, they tax everyone more.

Also the literacy rate has no correlation with taxes. Because spending has no correlation with education performance. Plus Hispanics who are Spanish-first skew the US literacy rate, they typically aren't tested in Spanish and thus fail to be literate. (That said, whites who aren't literate are the major failing group. Era regularly demonstrates this.)

Anyway, the point is that she's wrong and Soapbox should be guillotined.