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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • The top 1 percent of earners alone pay over one-third of income taxes.

    Accounting for all forms of taxation, they pay roughly 25%.

    Corporations “pay nearly no taxes” is just categorically false. Language matters - some companies avoid paying federal income tax. In these cases, chances are it had a combination of both zero or negative book income and either net operating losses, significant foreign profits, sizable capital investments, or all of the above.

    Of course, it’s also important to remember that federal income taxes aren’t the only taxes corporations pay. Businesses are also liable for state income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, and excise taxes, of which are almost entirely unavoidable.

    Empirical studies show that workers (i.e., labor) bear more than 50 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax. How is it possible that workers bear the brunt of a tax they don’t even pay? The key lies in the difference between “legal” tax incidence—who is legally obligated to pay a tax—and what economists call “economic” tax incidence—who indirectly pays for a tax, often in the form of lower wages.

    The higher business taxes are, the higher the cost of investing is and the less likely businsess owners are to invest in things like equipment, buildings, and trainings that will make their staff more productive. And the less productive workers are, the less their employers can afford to pay them in the long run.

    Instead, maybe we look at limiting a companies ability to offshore profits, limit incentives for stock buyback, and adjust how deductions for stock options work.

    Crazy idea, how about we make it easier to pay taxes so companies don’t feel the need to cheat. What if we make it so it’s cheaper to pay federal taxes than it is to avoid them.


  • Back when there were numerous loopholes, deductions, and methods of evasion and nearly none paid that rate? And when they later lowered effective rates, closed loopholes, and ended up collecting more?

    Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s incentive finding ways to avoid paying taxes.

    This is exactly how you give incentives to higher CEO pay. Record profits? Give all of it to the CEO and you’ll pay none of it to the government. You didn’t mention a higher personal tax rate, so end of the day the CEO wins.

    Own an S-Corp? Pass through all profits to yourself and pay 0%.






  • Lowpast@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.worldDerby, CT road widening
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    1 month ago

    I don’t know what sort of copium you’re smoking. I lived in rural Michigan for most of my life. Train is absolutely not a viable mode of transportation for rural America. There’s a reason trains and subways still exist on the east coast of America and in most or Europe, Asia, and south America - they are useful.

    They died out everywhere else because guess what, they are not ideal at all, and the convenience factor of cars is basically unbeatable. Even if we had a high-speed rail connecting our major cities, okay, how do I get to my destination? Another train? What about when I live 35 miles from the city center… another train…? Sounds absolutely atrocious


  • Lowpast@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.worldDerby, CT road widening
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    1 month ago

    .Assumimg youre refering to the US, fixed rail is not a feasible mode of transportation for 90+% (ignoring something like a subway or monorail) of travel in modern America. Intra-city or between a major metropolis, sure. But that still exists… you can still take them… because the utility of them keeps them alive…


  • Lowpast@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.worldDerby, CT road widening
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    1 month ago

    People with drastically more information, data, and money decided this is the right call. These decisions are not made in a box and the town (mayor/chamber of commerce) is always involved.

    What if the reason more people don’t stop in the town is because the narrowwness made it a difficult to visit the town?

    People drastically more involved than any of us decided this is the correct course of action to revitalize the downtown.



  • Lowpast@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.worldDerby, CT road widening
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    1 month ago

    When small towns start disappearing, it’s often because they are no longer economically or socially relevant. Decline of local industries, reduced agricultural activity, lack of job opportunities, population migration…

    The town is clearly on a downward trend. 60 years with no growth is not a positive thing.

    Business owners just don’t randomly sell because the DOT wants to widen a road.

    The town is already gone.




  • However, who replaces the aging workforce? Who pays for social security? Back in the 60s, it was a ratio of 6 workers per 1 retired. Now, it’s 3:1. Soon, it’ll be 2:1. That’s bad. Very bad.

    A smaller working population and a large inactive population create huge labour shortages which must be filled by migrant labour which creates additional problems.

    One solution is enabling people to work for longer but this is challenging. Do we push the retirement age to 75? What about the declining health and abilities of ther population.

    People are having children much later than normal. Births under the age of 20 have dropped 90% in the last 10 years. We are aging faster than we are replacing.