Reply #188: funny [View All]

[William Z. Foster]

Yes, and the poor pay no taxes on mansions and yachts.

I don't favor gas guzzler or luxury taxes, by the way. The carrot and stick approach to controlling public behavior in the hope of thereby effecting desirable social outcomes is inherently authoritarian and anti-Democratic.

Taxes on things that only the wealthy can afford - how is that regressive? Regressive taxation requires a tax that applies to both wealthy and poor, and that impacts the poor harder. It describes a relative relationship between the two. If there are not two, there is no relationship between them. We could say that the relationship in your examples is this: no tax on the poor, and some tax on the wealthy. That is a legitimate way to look at it, but when we do look at it that way it becomes quite clear that it is not "regressive taxation," as I explain in the next paragraph.

I suppose we could say that taxes on luxury items if regressive against the rich, but that then strips of the concept of any meaning. When the rich are taxed in ways or at rates that the poor are not, that is what we call "progressive taxation." When the poor are taxed in ways and at the rate that the wealthy people are, or more, that is what we call "regressive taxation."

I have no hope or intention of convincing you, and agree that I am not at all close to accomplishing that. "as for convincing "people" - I have absolute confidence in that, as 90% of the people I explain this to offline understand it and agree. We have the relative handful of people who refuse to understand this represented online in disproportionate numbers, which would explain the effect you are anticipating and predicting.