Quote:
Originally Posted by AENeuman
Man, I'm going to miss this thread. This thread makes me feel like I'm watching someone set a cat on fire in order to get rid of its fleas.
Anyways, one of my students in my high school economics class brought up a question:
At what income tax % can a country be considered socialist? we were talking about obama's top 5% increase, which seems to me to be about a 4-5% increase. is there a threshold that this increase passes?
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The income tax rate isn't really a good barometer for determining socialist/not socialist. The level of government control over the production and distribution of the produced goods is a much better barometer. Of course, if the income tax rate was 100%, then it is a moot point.
But at the other end of the spectrum, you can have socialism at 0% income tax rate. Look at some of the oil oligarchies, where the state provides everything. Those are socialist places, and they have very low tax rates.