An honest analysis of using tax for the purpose of redistribution.

A post about taxation makes the observation:

First, it’s simply undeniable that the federal income tax is incredibly skewed. It’s not what it was before the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts, by any stretch, but it’s hard to argue that those who earn 21.2% of the nation’s income should pay 39.4% of all federal income taxes when taken in isolation.

Turns out that if you don’t include social security which one really shouldn’t federal income tax distribution looks like this:

Paul Caron cites a Tax Foundation study that finds “the top 1% of tax returns paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95% of tax returns.” Glenn Reynolds, reasonably enough, thinks “that degree of progressivity is actually bad.”

That inequitable distribution in tax is just obscene.

Looks like Hong Kong is going to be lowering its corporate and income tax to compete with Singapore. Hopefully this will put competitive force on the US to lower it’s absurdly high corporate tax. Competition. Is there anything it can’t do?

Don Surber makes an observation about returns on investments:

You bought Google at $100 and 3 years later is nearing $600 a share? Big deal. Microsoft has gone up 28-fold over the last 20 years? Yawn. You want to make the big bucks? Rent a congressman. Your return on your investment can be as high as $75 for every dollar invested.

Just ask the good folks at PMA Group, a lobbying firm. They sank $1,333,074 into the campaigns last year of 3 Democratic members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and walked away with $100.5 million in defense earmarks for PMA clients, Roll Call reported.

Remember it’s the democrats that most often argue for taxes increases to put more money into the hands of legislators. Clearly they don’t intend for this kind of outcome but there is a naivety to think that money secured for infrastructure will not eventually be used for political gains.

To reduce this kind of abuse the most simplest solution is to reduce the money legislator have access to by reducing taxation. Democrats advocate developing a complex set of law regulation and controlling lobbyist behavior rather than simply nipping the problem in the bud.

In The Know: Are America’s Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

Michael directs me to a piece analyzing how our byzantine tax system actually encourages people to spend.

I’m shocked to see our tax system reverses a smart incentive structure. Isn’t that the point of taxation anyway? Punish the hard working and dynamic just to reward those that are neither hard working nor dynamic. Whats the euphemism? Oh thats right: ‘infrastructure’.

Instapundit notes that several ivy league schools are seeing highest return on their endowments in years. He suggests taxing those gains as heavily as liberal want to tax corporate gains. Anything to infrastructure people out of poverty.