And of course, my selfish side, is all, well…hell yeah, I’d love to not get taxed on overtime. But it isnt fair IMO. I don’t think hourly workers should get special treatment over salaried workers.
The typical American worker works 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, totaling 2000 hours.
The idea is that people who are required (or volunteer) to work more than that should get rewarded for their EXTRA efforts. The idea is just tax the regular hours to encourage more work.
The system we have now discourages work and rewards people for not working with too many government handouts. It’s very difficult to cut back on the freebies.
We have a shortage of people willing to work, especially if they have to get their hands dirty. It’s difficult to hire anyone to do anything. We need more workers.
A tougher Border and illegal immigration policy is already making it harder to find workers.
Taxes need to be restructured to encourage work and savings.
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In comparison; typical workers in the EU; in 2023 (people aged 20-64 years in full employment) worked 36.1 hours on average per week:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Actual_and_usual_hours_of_work
Holidays per year in Europe:
Which result in the average hours worked per year being:
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Uh huh, sure.
Yeah, I don’t know too many uber rich people making tips.
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No such thing as OT in the industry. Don’t believe it HAS to be paid to mariners. Some stupid loophole.
It depends on your contract
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Europeans can work less hours and have free government healthcare and many other handouts, only because American workers paying taxes on our wages paid to rebuild Europe after WWII and have paid for most of Europe’s defense for the last 80 years.
European VAT tax exempts also subsidize exports, and US duties on European goods are ridiculously small.
It’s long past time to get Europe off of American taxpayer funded welfare.
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A number of things, especially welfare programs should be funded by voluntary check boxes on tax returns.
Such as “If you want to support the Section 8 subsidized rent program check this box and voluntarily pay 1% more in taxes.”
The misguided liberal do-gooders should have to put their own money where their mouth is.
This would also be a great way to actually measure how much popular support there is for some of these programs.
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Just look at the Capital Gains tax. Capital Gains are not “work”. They are instead wealth or ownership begetting more wealth. They don’t represent any true labor or “good” (and I mean this in both ways) being produced or delivered to a customer or society at large. They are simply a reward for possessing something that increases in value while you possessed said thing.
However Capital Gains is taxed at a LOWER federal rate than labor, or as is properly termed “earned income”. Earned Income is indeed earned through labor, work, time, effort. While Capital Gains is simply possessing.
I find it odd, but perhaps not surprising, that the labors of individuals (literally our effort during our finite time on this earth) is taxed at a HIGHER rate than the inactive state of simply owning something.
In this regard the system is rewarding (or penalizing less) those people who make money through non-labor versus the majority of us who make our money through actual work.
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I agree. I favor taxing capital gains at the same rate as wages. We need to end the tax games that disguise productive labor as capital gains for a lower tax rate. A simpler tax system is a fairer tax system.
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So when you sell your house you’re in favour of giving a fair chunk of it to the Tax man and can’t buy a house of the same standard you sold.
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First of all Capital Gains on primary residences are already taxed at an even lower rate than regular Capital Gains, and honestly I’m fine with that. Protect the RESIDENT homeowner, NOT the hedge funds and the domestic and foreign housing speculators.
If you’re wealthy enough to own multiple homes I can’t help feeling Uncle Sam perhaps deserves a little bigger slice of your “profit” than he does from the check I bring home every couple weeks from the actual work that I do.
Second, I would imagine if we increased the capital gains tax and perhaps eliminated, or at least reduced the tax break for mortgage interest, property values would likely regulate in response. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’m sure my kids would appreciate it!
At present both of these measures (lower capital gains and deducting mortgage payments) are pretty much Uncle Sam subsidizing the real estate industry and it has helped contribute significantly to the out of control housing costs.
If we taxed capital gains higher there would likely be less real estate speculation and buying up of real estate by investors and hopefully a better supply of affordable homes for people who NEED a place to live, rather than those who just see dollar signs. Let real estate, especially residential real estate, primarily be for actual residents, not for the speculators and land grabbers!
As for the fair chunk given to the tax man, that is only taken from the GAINS, not from the total sale price. Also homeowners have the use of that home as a residence for all those years and at present have gotten to write off all the mortgage interest as tax free. They’ve ALREADY gotten a nice break from the tax man as part of living there and ideally building equity at the same time. Goodness knows a renter gets no such luxury or tax break.
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It’s even more than that, it’s subsidizing the creation of more US dollars which isn’t a bad thing. I would say most people have no clue how a dollar is created & think it’s the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury employees in a basement somewhere with a printing press while actually its mostly based on loans given & promissory notes signed.
While I’m in favor of a more streamlined tax code with less loopholes & barriers I wouldn’t mind a slightly higher tax rate on capital gains, I see the logic in it. Except for on the elderly & reasonable aged retirees that is. Many current & future retirees live on a fixed income except for money from dividens, interest & capital gains. If they’re retired, disabled or over 59 1/2 I’d say not to raise their taxes.
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While I agree that creating more US dollars isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I do feel that tying this creation to property ownership is problematic in that it generates more wealth for those that own and a greater disparity from those who don’t. Property owners are generally more wealthy to begin with, or at least have more resources at their disposal in terms of financing options etc.
As a homeowner for the last 25 years I’ve enjoyed incredible growth in property value over that time. However when I bought that house it was not as an investment, it was as a home; to live in as much as I could and eventually house my family and provide the comfort and stability of a known and consistent place. Even if my property value hadn’t gone up, or had just kept up with basic inflation and property tax increases, I would be perfectly content in the rewards that I received and continue to receive, for me and my family. I didn’t think that property values were particularly low when I first bought my home but I did know that interest rates were very good and of course getting the financing and associated arrangements was pretty dang easy in the late 1990s.
The bottom line is people need homes. It’s a basic necessity for a stable and productive society, and it’s really not all that far behind clean water and healthy food, and might be more important for the individual or the family than even a good education.
The fact that so much wealth and wealth generation is tied to a universal NEED like housing is a seriously unfortunate feature of the system we’ve created. It’s exacerbated wealth disparities, and over time the separation between haves and have nots, especially generationally, can be tied directly to home/property ownership.
Over the last few decades, even if you provided comfortable, safe, and consistent housing for yourself and family, if you did it via renting rather than owning, you lost out on one of the single greatest wealth generating elements of our society. Simply through the act of renting rather than owning, you set yourself and your descendants up at a disadvantage relative to others, like myself, who have owned homes over that same period. This knowledge is what drove so many people to pursue problematic loans during the housing crisis. Just about everyone dreams of owning their own home, and knows that in our society home or property ownership is directly tied to wealth and wealth accumulation. You can hardly blame people for chasing that opportunity when both the evidence and the infrastructure that home ownership = wealth generation & housing stability is there for all to see.
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Owning a home remains a dream with the average annual household income, most households with one or two people working is $80,000/yr and the average home cost is $420,000. If they have a child and have to pay for day care buying a home is out of reason. House prices are in bubble territory. Stocks also are over valued. Looks to me to be a repeat of the bubble. It’s scary times. The too big to fail banks haven’t changed since that time and hedge funds which are unregulated along with the banks that back them now own more derivatives [bets] than the entire amount of money on the planet. Throw in the cryto bubble which is backed up by nothing it’s a bubble waiting to burst. There’s a reason investors like Buffet are reducing stock holdings and hoarding cash. Been there done that.
Party like it’s 1929
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Those of us who have invested in property and ridden out good times and bad. Very much deserve whatever paper “wealth” that we have created.
Up until the 1970s real estate created most “wealth” in America.
Very few people were in the stock market or making much money from it. Stocks were an exclusive club primarily for institutional investors and people who were already wealthy.
Now the situation has changed. A great many people are in stocks, mostly through IRAs and 401ks.
Europeans work less hours because they value their free time more than money.
They have universal healthcare, which is not free but paid for by their taxes.
PS> Looking at the calculation in the OP I’m not sure if their tax is much higher than US taxes, all considered (“free” healthcare, education, sick leave etc.)
As to the US taxpayers having paid to rebuild Europe after WWII through the Marshall Plan:
Source: Marshall Plan (1948) | National Archives
Paying for European defence for 80 years?
Well, NATO is a mutual defence alliance, with mutual benefits for ALL members.
Each members paying their dues according to their GDP and only one country has ever failed to pay on time.
The 2% of GDP for defence spending is something agreed upon, with most member states already meeting the target per now. (It is NOT something other countries pay to the US for their “nuclear umbrella protection”)
In any case, this last will soon not be an issue any more:
VAT is a domestic “Sales Tax” and do not apply to exports.(That is why you have Tax Free shops at airports and refund for business travellers/tourists)
The low duties will also disappear when “Tariffman” get into office.
Unfortunately it will probably cause a trade war, with higher prices for ALL.
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I think that is the problem: running a government and social services has a cost, that needs to be paid by taxes. If average Josephine doesn’t care that the CEO don’t pay taxes, she also doesn’t realize that:
- her social services will be cut (so her-tax free tips will have to cover much more),
or - other taxes she pays will have to go up.
Math doesn’t lie.
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