I feel that “outgroup dumb” is shitposting but it’s from a real poll.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part
If you ever wanted proof that a population that doesn’t understand math allows the billionaires to take advantage of them here it is. This is why education systems are under attack, because if you understood how taxes work you’d more likely support higher tax rates for the rich.
I think this is at least partially the result of intentional propaganda. It benefits the elite greatly if a lot of Americans are screaming against higher top tax rates due to this faulty logic. There are also a lot of anecdotes of people not accepting higher paying job offers or promotions within their company, which also benefits the business owners.
https://youtube.com/shorts/-621rVJvUdY
Mr. “Population collapse is the biggest threat to the world.”
Maybe it’s just the biggest threat to capitalism and your ROI. Why do you think he’s supporting the make everyone dumber party?
Probably the lead poisoning have something to do with it.
Some houses still have lead, to this day.
I know because my city recently passed a law requiring landlords to inspect rentals for lead paint, because a lot of kids are still getting lead poisoning.
(Its Philly btw)
If you ever wanted proof […] here it is.
Yes! Well yes but also no but only because…
@General_Effort@lemmy.world I always do the web search when OP didn’t happen to think about linking a source but this is egregiousDANGIT IT’S A SHITPOST I AM SO SORRY
To be clear for those unaware, you pay the lower bracket rates for the amounts earned in that bracket and the higher bracket rates for the amounts earned above that bracket.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
This is the problem. My partner doesn’t want to work OT because he thinks it will cost him more in taxes. I explain why that’s not exactly true, but I can tell he’s not interested. Financial Literacy in the US is abysmal.
Your partner is a moron who doesn’t understand relatively simple math.
Nah. He’s not an idiot. But he is impatient. He doesn’t handle paperwork or anything involving patience well. (ADHD)
I also think taxes in the US are intentionally over complicated and confusing. I don’t struggle with things like that but I can empathize with people who do.
Strictly speaking the taxes in the US are not that complicated, but the credits, deductions and what not are. Still Tomato Tomato.
I too have ADHD and am impatient (combined type, severe). Impatience is not an excuse for financial illiteracy. And a graduated income tax is not complicated. Deductions, credits, exceptions, etc are where it gets complicated. But if he thinks he’s losing money by making more money, then he’s stupid.
Reading your other responses, you’re right. Not knowing something doesn’t make someone stupid. Refusing to learn something when you find out you don’t know it, that’s what makes someone stupid. Willful ignorance is stupid.
At the very least, he should just admit he knows nothing about it and just take your word for it. Deferring to others expertise in areas you are weak is smart.
have you considered asking him why he even thinks that in the first place? You’ve literally put him into a spot where he’s too stupid to even care about whether or not that response is logical or makes sense.
If he just doesn’t want to work overtime that’s fine, a lot of people don’t, why would he justify it with stupid tax logic that he evidently must know is stupid? Seems like cope to me.
You cannot simultaneously “be smart” and then “be stupid” you are either stupid about something, or not. It’s one of the two. I’m sure he’s a pretty generally smart guy, most people are, but either it’s an excuse he uses because he doesnt want to work overtime, or he’s literally uneducated (and therefore stupid) about taxes, and chooses not to be educated about it, even though it would be financially beneficial to him, because that’s literally how money works. (which would also make him pretty objectively stupid in that case) again, he may not care at all, but then why wouldn’t he just be upfront about not caring?
I would disagree with your premise but it’s not your fault. It’s my fault for not explaining it clearly
I don’t think not knowing something makes you stupid. Humans can’t know everything. We all have strengths and weaknesses. I know about taxes, but I don’t know shit about cooking. He cooks dinner, I deal with the bureaucracy situations.
Also, I’m don’t know if you’ve ever spent time with someone who struggles with ADHD and Neurodivergence but their brains don’t work like others. They can’t force themselves to do things that other people can tough out. They can study all night but if their brain can’t stay on track, they won’t be able to retain it.
When I come along and start telling him how tax brackets work, especially if he didn’t ask me, hes going to be frustrated and he’s not going to get through it easily.
I don’t know if he just doesn’t want to work OT and has settled on this excuse or if there is some other issue but it doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t want to work OT, that’s okay!
I would disagree with your premise but it’s not your fault. It’s my fault for not explaining it clearly
TBF, i was being a little unreasonably harsh, but i was trying to make a point off of minimal descriptive language so i don’t really have much flexibility there.
I don’t think not knowing something makes you stupid. Humans can’t know everything. We all have strengths and weaknesses. I know about taxes, but I don’t know shit about cooking. He cooks dinner, I deal with the bureaucracy situations.
Personally i think being stupid isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a lack of education, but i think what really matters is whether or not you weaponize it, if you don’t know anything about that topic, you would be relatively stupid in that space, however if you acknowledge that you know nothing and have no practical knowledge basis, that’s fine. It’s when you know nothing, know that you know nothing, and still engage with it even though you know you have a limited basis to act upon, that it’s a problem.
Also, I’m don’t know if you’ve ever spent time with someone who struggles with ADHD and Neurodivergence but their brains don’t work like others. They can’t force themselves to do things that other people can tough out. They can study all night but if their brain can’t stay on track, they won’t be able to retain it.
believe me, i understand it, i’m very ADHD coded, but that usually means i just never get around to doing the things that i need to do (which is relevant here) i don’t normally make up weird tangentially relevant reasoning to cope about why i don’t do those things though. Personally i find very directed note taking helps a lot with retaining, and it acts as a cheatsheet for when you do inevitably forget about it later on. Though it still requires researching it in the first place.
When I come along and start telling him how tax brackets work, especially if he didn’t ask me, hes going to be frustrated and he’s not going to get through it easily.
there could be a few reasons for this, ignoring external influences, like being pre-occupied, you’re either going to have a problem with explaining it, and you need to alter the explanation so it’s easier to comprehend, or you’re going to have a problem comprehending it, but tax brackets are pretty conceptually simple from my understanding. It should take like 2 minutes to explain the concept of tax brackets to someone, obviously filling them in on all of the details takes longer, but it’s the relevant part here.
If you aren’t capable of digesting that level of explanation, i’d be concerned about either your level of intelligence, or your ability to care about things. If you aren’t capable of caring about something as important as finance, and relatively simple as tax brackets, i’m not really sure what you’d be capable of even conceptualizing in the first place. In my mind, that’s either weaponized incompetence, or you have a significant learning disability/developmental disability, as an adult. Which is something that should probably be addressed, obviously i’m not at liberty to talk about any specific person here, but i would personally be pretty concerned by that. Even as someone who struggles with this kind of stuff.
I don’t know if he just doesn’t want to work OT and has settled on this excuse or if there is some other issue but it doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t want to work OT, that’s okay!
Yeah, again not wanting to work OT is perfectly fine, but if that’s the reason i’d be confused as to why he’s using an irrelevant topic to excuse that, instead of just being upfront about it, seems weird to me on face value. The other option is that he seriously believes what he’s saying, even with you correcting him, which means he doesn’t trust you, even though you would be the one filing the taxes, which is also incredibly weird. Even if you try explaining it to him, it doesn’t seem to matter, so i’m not really sure what the deal is here, but it’s weird. Like you see what i mean here right? This doesn’t really check out logically in any significant capacity. Granted, it’s possible you’ve left out relevant details that would impact that, but i’m just basing this off of what i’m reading so there’s that for take it with a grain of salt.
Regardless of this specific event, it’s probably going to influence future recurring behaviors, so it’s something to think about. Generally it’s rare that people latch onto a specific mechanism of behavior for one, and only that one thing, it usually applies to other things as well.
There’s not enough information provided to reach this conclusion.
This is not a US specific issue, tbh. I’ve heard this weird belief repeated by all sorts of people.
You’re absolutely right. I cant speak for anyone else, as I don’t live there but I highly doubt the US is an exception.
Rather than being mad at each other, I want to make sure we hold the right people accountable! Governments, corporations, billionaires etc.
It’s a form of oppression.
it is a misinformation many people in power wants to keep because it lets republicans sell their policies to not tax the rich and bosses to not raise their employee’s salaries.
Oddly enough it kinda does. OT can make you pay out more taxes on that one check since withholdings are calculated by check. Basically the government/payroll system thinks you’re going to be making that every week so more taxes will be taken out.
In reality this only effects the size of your tax bill or return at the end of the year.
That’s what people see and exactly why they think they got kicked up a whole tax bracket.
The whole notion of “kicked up a tax bracket” is also a misleading thing. Only a piece of your income goes into the “new bracket”, all pay under the new bracket is taxed as they would have been used to.
Exactly, and it also depends on what withholding you have requested.
“you can’t make less money by making more money”
Unless you’re poor enough to be on welfare. The Welfare Cliff is awful.
Run, if it’s not too late.
We all have our weaknesses and faults. No need to dismiss every relationship due to imperfections.
Nah. He’s not a bad person or a dummy. He just gets frustrated by bureaucracy and doesn’t have the patience I have.
It’s not the fear of bureaucracy that is concerning, it’s the lack of interest to listen to your sound advice on a relatively simple topic.
That’s fair. I appreciate your concern for me!
He’s not always like that. I didn’t mean to make him sound like a jerk. I just meant to relate to the topic of tax confusion with personal experience.
He had pretty severe ADHD and struggles with some topics. It’s okay! I deal with the money stuff and he cooks dinner. :)
Fair enough. Good luck on your journey!
You too!
Nah. There’s good people here and even the people who voted for this deserve to have their needs met, many of then are only personally responsible for a tiny fraction of the immense harm caused by the systems of power. And they may not have caused any harm in the first place if they lived in a place where people are always taken care of as well as is reasonably possible. there is immense pressure to shed empathy and embrace individualism and forego the many benefits of community such as efficient and effective collaboration, for example to prevent a disease from spreading or at least reducing the harm it causes. As many of us can see, especially obviously in the US, the goal and function of the system isn’t actually to stop causing harm in the first place, or even reduce the harm that must be caused for your society to function, the cruelty is often very much the point. Non-absolutely essential needs are less and less profitable to meet the less common it is to have the need, and the amount of wealth that can be extracted from the people with whatever need is the only thing that really determines what gets things done, and subjugation and not giving folks a chance to think critically and question their circumstances by completely overwhelming them with horrible information (including dis- or misinformation) about the world and making them think they’re threatened by whoever is opposing efforts to make line go up. Most folks don’t stand a chance without direct intervention and time spent with someone directly affected by the system in an obvious way, including possibly the person themselves.
At the very least I owe it to my family to stay and be as helpful as possible to the people who have supported me and hopefully others who don’t deserve what’s coming if a major effort of community organization doesn’t happen
Tbh, literacy in the US, financial or otherwise is abysmal right now.
it’s just not the US. I live in the Netherland and many people here think OT and bonuses are taxed differently, because they see a higher tax rate applied to it on their slip. They forget that their base salary covers multiple brackets and a tax credit. Thus has a lower average tax rate than their OT and bonuses which falls in their top bracket or even a bracket above.
By design
No, they teach you this in high school. These people are just dumbasses
Yes, everyone’s education is the same as yours.
Yeah, I definitely didn’t leave this in school. I know about it from reading articles on tax brackets. _(‘’)/
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I think you’re on the wrong side of the chart here.
That’s not how is works though.
I’d you made say 1500 normally and 2000 with ot your take home could be 1200 and 1400. Paying more taxes overall on the ot but still taking home more.
There is no way you’d take home less money because taxes are paid on the first $1500 @ $300 and say the next $500 @ $300 too at a higher bracket. Overall your pay is still higher though even though your taxes “doubled”.
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That’s not how it works though. Unless you didn’t work regular hours during that same time period so worked less overall OT is taxed higher upfront so you don’t end up owing (more), but would never decrease your pay
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It boggles my mind how many people who have had to pay taxes for decades even, don’t understand how tax brackets work.
The only time you’ll get screwed on making more is if you were getting some sort of socialized assistance and you make a dollar over the cut off for aid.
It is kind of by design to keep people from trying to get ahead at all
And to keep the private tax filing agencies afloat
Yeah, the Welfare Cliff is the only place where this happens and it’s unconscionable.
try telling this to people who think government agencies pay taxes
That dude would have been hilarious if he wasn’t really so delusional. Not Sam, he was great. The dude that was convinced that government agencies get tax breaks.
What? Is this the onion?
I used to be a supervisor at a psych hospital and had to regularly explain this to staff who were refusing overtime. They wanted to do it, sometimes desperately so because they needed the money, but they were utterly convinced that once they crossed 40 or 45k or whatever they would be taxed higher and make it all pointless. I felt like some just didn’t want to do ot, which was fine, but some legit keep meticulous records of their earnings to ensure they wouldn’t go over the line. I swore to them it didn’t work this way but they never believed me
Seen the same bullshit when I worked retail. Nothing will convince them.
It’s easier to trick someone than it is to convince them they’re wrong.
The only way that’s a problem is if you’re on certain government benefits, if you make just a little bit too much there’s a hard cutoff for many benefits so you may end up losing more than you made in OT. But if your staff is facing this dilemma, they need to be paid more.
Pay them more? So they can lose their benefits? Are you crazy?
I’m kidding, of course. I know that what you mean is, “pay them so that they can afford to live without requiring benefits.”
You get into some of the poorer places in the country though, that truly would be nearly impossible for most businesses. There are some places in West Virginia that would immediately have no access to gasoline, groceries, etc.
It is crazy to think that Bobby McBusinessman gets to ride around in a giant RV all summer because the government pays his employees. They don’t see it that way though, as they collect their HUD payments and accept food stamps while all of their employees receive food stamps and medical benefits.
All while the rest of the community lives on nothing and experiences very little joy in this life.
What do I know though? I’m just a pissed off hillbilly who helped make someone who isn’t me very rich.
We covered how taxes are calculated at school, it isn’t very complicated. Yet SO MANY people insist they end up getting paid more it made me question myself for a while.
Although sometimes the removal of certain benefits does mean people can be worse off for £1 extra. Which if anything is just a sign that the benefits were poorly thought out and should taper off instead of being a hard limit.
Short of doing a demo with rolls of change or MnMs or something, asking people to conceptualize math that is not just simple addition is often asking too much. Especially when people’s financial literacy is learned at home from people who retired in 1996.
Well look where we are, trump loves the uneducated, they got his thieving rapist ass elected.
every day, my theory that people are just willfully retarded gets proven more and more correct. Even with the tools at the disposal of the modern internet savvy person, nobody tries ANYTHING to verify ANYTHING.
It’s actually so fucking depressing and i think humanity is joever at this point. I’m not sure how you recover from this point effectively.
I mean in defense of these staff: many of them were not amazingly well educated and were pulling 80-96 hour weeks pretty regularly to earn a livable wage. When were they supposed to do this research?
whenever they have to time to do normal people shit? Even slow learning is better than no learning, you can learn a lot over a long period of time if you keep at it regularly.
Perhaps maybe they should spend less time watching their favorite political sock puppets talk about politics, and spend more time actually learning about shit that’s important and matters. Or maybe instead of yelling at people online about their political views, they could spend that time educating themselves instead. Just a proposal.
I don’t know what demographic you think these people were. They were by and large African immigrants. It’s weird that you’ve created this boogeyman version of them in your head though
They would make stuff like jollof rice and share it with everyone. Super nice people. The only politics they ever brought up was one guy I got to know well would talk a lot about how the elections in the Congo at the time (2010ish) were rigged and the leader at the time was concentrating his power; that war was inevitable if someone did not intervene. He apparently was right because the m23 has been going off there, though admittedly I don’t know the full scale of the situation
are we talking about a specific demographic of people? It’s possible i missed that, but i figured this was a generalized thing.
Oh see I was continually referring solely those coworkers I had at the psych hospital in my original post you replied to
I mean I’m sure there are people who believe this though who are like trump people or whatever
Where i live we have a system where if you take sick days, they are paid 80%. 20% reduction applies only to the days you were sick. Once I got sick at the end of a month and took the last 3 days of the month and first 2 days of the next one off and my mother in law freaked out I’m about to loose 20% of 2 month’s salaries. She was and is still convinced that 20% deduction applies to a whole month worth of salary even if you take one day off that month. She almost never takes sick days and she works in a hospital… She self medicates and works with patients even when she has a transmittable diseases. Best of luck to those who have serious health problems and then get a fucking flu on top of everything from hospital staff. She is 60+ and reading the law to her doesn’t change her mind. A couple years ago she had more serious health problems and took a week off for the first time in decades, even after getting a paycheck reduced only by 5% and not 20% her perception of this issue didn’t change. She misunderstood that system once 40 years ago and she is going to take that misunderstanding to ger grave. Real world has no influence on her beliefs.
And they’ll also refuse to believe you when you try to explain it to them
How dumb do you have to be? By the time you make that much money you should, in theory, know the answer definitively or have a guy.
And this why democracy won’t work. How can people votw in their best interests when they don’t know how basic taxes work
For someone outside the American tax system, can anyone put the difference in approximate numbers?
This all boils down to a common misconception about ‘tax brackets’.
To simplify, pretend there’s a 28% tax bracket up to 100,000 dollars, and a 33% tax bracket when you hit 100k. The first 100k is always taxed at 28%, no matter what you make, and it’s only the incremental amount that gets taxed heavier. So here in this example, that would mean tax burden would be 28,000.33 instead of 28,000.28. These are not the exact brackets or percentages, but it’s at least showing the right magnitude of increase versus total amount.
However, many people are “afraid” of bumping a higher tax bracket. They think the tax bill would go from 28,000.28 to 33,000.33. That the tax bracket bumps up all your liability. I remember growing up people saying “I have to watch out and not hit the bigger tax bracket, if I’m close then I need a big raise to make it worth it, or else the raise is going to cost me more than it would make me”. This a big driver of antipathy toward democrat tax policies, a belief that mild success will punish them, despite it only increasing on the incremental amount.
A lot of US benefits have “benefit cliffs” where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs
It’s not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.
True, though if we are talking about tax bracket going over 30 percent, that would be at nearly 200k, so well above those thresholds too. Of course the numbers aren’t 28 and 33, but that is the closest threshold to the example.
To be more specific the first 100,000 isn’t taxed at 28%. The 44 to 100k range would be, but below that will be taxed at lower percentages. The first ~10k you make is taxed at 10%, and then it increases throughout.
If getting specific, there’s no 28 percent or 33 percent bracket, so these are all examples rather than real figures. I did make a comment using real numbers, same general magnitude but just more specific about the brackets.
German income tax works the same and most Germans get it wrong too. It’s really infuriating.
OK, so it is similar to our system. And would probably in the range of cents or a few dollars then.
In exact numbers, 5 cents.
Your local tax system probably works the same.
These people are allowed to vote, and that is why we are all fucked.
No source?
Don’t need one. The amount of times I’ve had to explain how fucking tax brackets work, I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers were even more skewed towards the wrong answer.
This is how missinformation spreads though. If something lines up with your existing worldview then you just assume it’s true.
this was pushed in the 80’s/90’s on conservative talk radio (iirc). strangely, it gets an ideological push from the phenomenon of income reduction resulting from lost welfare benefits as income increases. the brain correlates things irrationally.
Hungary used to have a system, which worked like what the republicans imagined, which made “taxing the rich more” a widely unpopular move…
FWIW globally, there is the issue of “welfare traps”. Benefits for low income people are usually tied to income (or savings). Once income reaches a threshold, these benefits must be replaced with income. So a higher income may result in a net loss.
