/siberia/ - Off-topic

>>531266
Makes sense that burgers cry about taxes when their tax system is designed to be as annoying as possible. That way they will vote for tax cuts for billionaires.

>>531266
I FUCKING LOVE TAXES

Taxation wouldn't even exist under socialism and obviously not under communism either, but lolberts are too economically illiterate to know why.

>>531322
>Taxation wouldn't even exist under socialism
Why not? It would under Marx's system of socialism as described in the Critique of the Gotha Program, and it would under the Cockshott-Cottrell model, and of course there was taxation in the Soviet Union and other AES countries. What kind of socialist system do you have in mind where the functions of taxation would be rendered obsolete? What kind of new institutions would overtake that role, and how?

>>531333
China doesn't even have an income tax for most of its citizens

>>531279
I often think about how annoying it is to do taxes in the USA. But really it's easy if you're working class and barely make money. In fact in that situation you get some of it back. So really the only people who complain about taxes in the burger reich are petit bourgeoisie making well over median income.

Even the haute bourgeoisie outsource the duty of thinking about taxes to some bureaucratic flunky.

>>531322
Value added tax would exist instead of income tax.

>>531336
Because they have value added tax instead.

Burgers are afraid of value added tax since it acknowledges that value is created by labor.

>>531266
This is shockingly similar to a meme I made a few years back.

>>531266
Why burgers are confused about this is because burgers are taught that you make whatever you earn. Taxes are concretely taken from your income after it manifests as a paycheck. While surplus value is stolen from your income abstractly before it manifests as a paycheck. Burgers are retarded when it comes to abstraction so they see the taxes, but not the surplus value. Also surplus value is an idea inherent to Marxism. It used to belong to political economy in general, dating back to Adam Smith in the capitalist era, but also existing as far back as the writings of Ibn Khaldun in pre-capitalist society. But the bourgeoisie abandoned the idea once Marxism became popular.

>>531336
China does have a highly progressive national individual income tax, as well as a corporate income tax. It's probably true (although I can't find evidence) that most people in China don't pay income tax, but most people in most countries don't pay income tax because only about half of all people have an income.
>>531338
>Value added tax would exist instead of income tax.
This is a good idea for a society where all income comes from labor and wages are highly compressed. I think it's broadly correct that a socialist society would derive its tax revenue from a value added tax for that reason.

Because a VAT is kind of a hidden tax, rather than very visible taxes like income taxes and sales tax, it might create the impression for the average Joe that he is indeed not paying any taxes under socialism, even though that's not really true. It's the same way that he doesn't realize that he is in effect paying a tax to his employer through the profit he makes that doesn't get passed down to him.

>>531333
>>531338
Okay I've done some research and yeah eastern bloc countries did indeed have VATs. The Soviet Union specifically also had an incentive bachelor tax that didn't really achieve its goal, unfortunately.
On some years these made up a majority of government revenue, though on most they didn't and only made up a small portion of it.

>you get some of it back
>So really the only people who complain about taxes in the burger reich are petit bourgeoisie
Nah this is very wrong. The tax code in the US (and really, most bourgeois states) includes many regressive taxes and lots of other stuff that, while not inherently regressive, still disproportionately benefits the rich (such as deductions). It also contains many loopholes when it comes to capital gains, which again benefits the rich more.

LMAO that's not how taxes work, it's these kinds of retarded graphs that make average proletarians laugh in the faces of those who post them. Income tax in many countries is based on Gross Income; i.e. the amount you make total for a year without accounting for expenditures on food, gas, rent etc. So while you may make 40K annually in gross, you're likely to only have 5-7K as remaining income in the absolute best case scenario if you literally buy the cheapest products and don't spend on anything except the bare necessities. Yet you're still taxed for the full 40K. Take into account student loans for universities - which even with scholarships will be at least ~18K - will mean you have debts to pay off, which have interest that makes them go up.

The thing about taxes is that essentially it penalizes you for making money, despite real wages not rising appropriately with the rise of prices and productivity, meaning that simply surviving is becoming more expensive as is, and you suddenly have to pay a government that doesn't take care you very much as is on top of that. Only the richest people can evade them through tax-cuts or "business taxing" or whatever.

Remember: Socialism isn't "when de gubmint duz stuff", so yes, taxes under capitalism is another form of stealing. Surplus value is also a form of theft, but that doesn't make taxes any less a form of theft under capitalism. Money that is supposed to pave roads, fund healthcare and provide other forms of welfare is instead directed to the US government to do shit like send billions of dollars to Ukraine or invest in absolute garbage like the F-35 or hell, cover the tax-cuts of the rich and shameless. Why the fuck should I pay for that? Well because if I don't porky sends the special police (IRS) to enforce the law and MAKE you pay for living. Even if you miraculously managed to work enough to buy a house, pay off a mortgage and have a self-sufficient supply of energy and water and whatever else would be necessary, you'd still be forced to pay taxes even if you're self-employed and sell something like custom hand-made wooden furniture or whatever, because the land that you paid for belongs to the federal government and you still need to pay taxes and they can foreclose on you if you don't. I'm being very basic about it, but that's the basic reality.

In the USSR if you bought a house and land, it was yours forever or until you sold it, and were considered personal property, same thing with an apartment given by the government and these property laws were so reinforced that even in the former Soviet Union, people that own land they were given during the USSR do not pay for the land, or housing. They pay for general utilities, but that's because they aren't making or generating the utilities themselves, and in the USSR it was a token amount comparable to a few dollars a month for water, heating and electricity. This is also why wages in the USSR appeared low, the state paid everyone through the jobs they worked and automatically subtracted the amount accounting for welfare needs like healthcare, which meant that the money you didn't recieve in hand went directly into investing in the public sphere that benefited everyone, including yourself. Thus the remaining wages could be used to buy specialized commodities and food outside of what was already free (salt, pepper and black bread was free at any cafeteria as well as compote).

TL;DR: Taxes under capitalism ARE theft, just an additional one to surplus value, and to understate their impact on the proletariat is to spit in their face and push them into the arms of ancaps and libertarians (fascists).

>>531479
>long rant
>taxes are theft too
>long rant
you're overthinking this entire thing, it's just making fun of lolbertarians and other petty bourgeois freaks for being more outraged at the indirect bourgeois theft (gubbermint taxes) but not the direct bourgeois theft (surplus value).

>>531266
where are the rents and debts in the chart retard?

>>531737
Make a better chart you absolute worm.

>>531741
no need, there are plenty, this just screams "i never read vol 3" and that's what i am communicating to OP

>where are rent and debt on this chart that says 'suplus value'
absolute midwit

>>531744
putting all of that shit into one homogenous group labelled surplus value and entrepreneurship is just uninformative, and concentric circles is a shitty graphing method.

This is still too individualised
The point about labour is that capital is based on the totality of the exploitation of "social labour" (which is what underpins the socialist mode of production as a sublation).
"You" dont produce all that, you and everyone else produces all that Value.

>>531749
I thought loberts considered real estate and the finance industry as 'entrepreneurship'

>>531742
it's a meme to make fun of burger lolberts, not a diploma showing you graduated from marx academy

>>531751
Lolberts worship small business owners, not hereditary firms

>>531751
some thieloids do think investors etcetera are the most important entrepreneurs, who create jobs. depends what kind of libertarian retard we're dealing with.
>>531752
not for showing off how much you know about marxism but for showing off how much better marxist analysis of how people get fucked is. a lot of leftist meme groups online lean towards discussion of how people get fucked by their employers, which is great, but people have a lot of other things in their lives ruining them.
i am tired of seeing leftoids on social media fucking up analysis of how the abnormally high wages of western workers get wasted on legal, medical, auto, housing debt/rent which goes to banks, suppliers jacking up prices on everything while simultaneously cutting costs at the expense of low income countries and migrant workers, this is the fabric of modern life and people learn from this analysis that it goes much further than being mad at your boss (which I am, and it rules how mad I am at my boss and you are etc)

see I forgot to list off motherfucking education, alright I'm gonna make my own meme when I get home you're right

>>531479
>So while you may make 40K annually in gross, you're likely to only have 5-7K as remaining income in the absolute best case scenario if you literally buy the cheapest products and don't spend on anything except the bare necessities. Yet you're still taxed for the full 40K.
No you're not. The income tax is progressive. It varies depending on the country, but the first say, 15,000 dollars you make is taxed less than the next say, 30,000 dollars you make after that. Poor people pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes precisely because poor people spend a larger percentage of their income on necessities like rent and food.
>The thing about taxes is that essentially it penalizes you for making money
No they don't. That's not how tax brackets work. It's impossible to lose money by increasing one's income, because taxes are levied within brackets. The tax you pay on your 15,000 dollars is not the tax you pay on your next 30,000 dollars, so there is never any point where you're punished for making money. The income tax merely serves to diminish returns on income, which is good for the poor and bad for the rich, hence why the income tax is one of the most progressive taxes in existence.
>and you suddenly have to pay a government that doesn't take care you very much as is on top of that
The reason the government doesn't take care of you very much is because it doesn't have very much tax revenue. If you want a larger welfare state (and you should), you should desire much higher taxes.
>taxes under capitalism is another form of stealing
Theft is okay if it's for the greater good. Property rights are defined and enforced by the state and it can alter society's property norms in whatever way produces the most beneficial outcome.
>Money that is supposed to pave roads, fund healthcare and provide other forms of welfare is instead directed to the US government to do shit like send billions of dollars to Ukraine or invest in absolute garbage like the F-35 or hell, cover the tax-cuts of the rich and shameless
Most US tax money goes to pay for social programs like social security and medicare. Look at this breakdown.
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
It's true that the US government spends a lot of money on defense, but in an ideal society, even if the defense budget were slashed to 0 (which would in fact happen in an ideal society) taxes would still be much higher. The money that the US gives in foreign aid, for example to Ukraine, is so minute compared to its total expenditures that it's basically nonexistent. The 75 billion dollars that the US government has sent to Ukraine over the last three years is less than half of one percent of what the US government has spent in general during that time period. Most of your taxes go to pay for your grandparents' social security checks or life-saving surgeries for poor disabled people. There's a reason that tax cuts are only pushed for by the political right. They prefer higher profits for the rich to meeting the needs of the poor.
>if I don't porky sends the special police (IRS) to enforce the law and MAKE you pay for living
Based. You WILL pay your taxes.
>This is also why wages in the USSR appeared low, the state paid everyone through the jobs they worked and automatically subtracted the amount accounting for welfare needs like healthcare, which meant that the money you didn't recieve (sic) in hand went directly into investing in the public sphere that benefited everyone, including yourself.
What you're describing is called taxes.