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Old 11-24-2007, 02:17 PM
Scary_Tiger Scary_Tiger is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 8,590
Default Re: Australian Elections Results

[ QUOTE ]
and lack of social mobility, mostly

[/ QUOTE ]

How do higher income tax rates facilitate social mobility? Namely, say you have two individuals, one with nothing and one with one hundred thousand dollars. Taxed at 90%, the one with nothing finds a skilled position paying 80,000 dollars. The other does data entry paying 40,000 dollars.

In 90% Taxland:

After Year 1 8,000 104,000
After Year 2 16,000 108,000
After Year 3 24,000 112,000
After Year 4 32,000 116,000
After Year 5 40,000 120,000
After Year 10 80,000 140,000
After Year 20 160,000 180,000
After Year 25 200,000 200,000

Despite earning twice as much, and one million more dollars, the guy who started with nothing now has the same amount of wealth as the guy that started off well to do, but worked a do nothing job his whole life.

In 35% America:

After Year 1 52,000 126,000
After Year 2 104,000 152,000
After Year 3 156,000 178,000
After Year 4 208,000 204,000

After just four years working twice as hard or whatever, the guy who started with nothing has more.

In 0% Incomeland:

After Year 1 80,000 140,000
After Year 2 160,000 180,000
After Year 3 240,000 220,000

Do you not see how terrible an income tax is for social mobility? When you tax productivity you aren't taxing the rich more, you're taxing those who actually do something useful more.
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