There’s an old saying; A picture is worth a thousand words. Pie charts will likely never be confused with great art in terms of story telling, but they have a way of making complicated issues clear. Income taxes are one of those things that are naturally difficult to grasp and the issue is made that much more opaque because liberals love to obscure the facts.
One of the shibboleths of the left is that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. One of the more amusing segments of the 2008 Presidential campaign involved Neal Boortz asking then Democrat hopeful Dennis Kucinich two simple questions:
- What percentage of total income is earned by the top 1% of income earners?
- What percentage of total federal income taxes are paid by the top 1% of income earners.
of all of the federal income taxes – according to Congressman Kucinich answered: He thought the top 1% of income earners earned 60% of the income and paid about 15% of the taxes. He was a little off. In fact, the top 1% of income earners earn approximately 17% of all the earnings in the country. That’s certainly higher than the 1% they represent of the population but a far cry from Congressman Kucinich’s 60%. More astounding however, is that they pay fully 39% a 2009 Congressional Budget Office report. The below chart demonstrates clearly the absurdity of the notion that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes.
The first chart shows that the rich do indeed pay far more than their oft cited “fair share” of income taxes. Not only that, it also shows that the bottom 40% of wage earners actually have a negative tax rate and get money back from the government in the form of income tax credits!
Another of the left’s arguments is that the lower income wage earners pay a disproportionate amount of the Social Security / Medicare tax. That too is false. The second chart states that the top 10% of wage earners pay 43.5% of all social insurance taxes while the bottom 40% pay just 15%.
Why does any of this matter in the first place? The third chart (taken from a 2010 report from the Tax Foundation) demonstrates why…Jobs. It compares wage & salary, capital gain, and dividend income for all income earners. As you can see, for the 80% of income earners below $200,000 per year, wages (i.e. a job) make up almost their entire incomes. Without jobs that someone else creates they would have no income… except government transfer payments.
At the $200,000 and above level, business and dividend income starts to take off and by the $1,000,000 and above level the three are almost equivalent. Those are the telltale signs of success. Those people earning those $200,000 and above incomes are the people creating the jobs that employ most of the remaining 80% of the population.
Put another way, jobs are not created by wage earners. Jobs are created by entrepreneurs risking their capital to start businesses… And those entrepreneurs are the usually found in that $200,000 and above group. The businesses they start generate 65% of all new jobs created in the United States.
While the first two charts debunk the myth that the rich do not pay their “fair share” the above chart demonstrates why it matters: The rich are the ones starting small businesses and creating jobs and prosperity.
Myths die hard, particularly when their proponents willingly ignore the facts. The myth that the rich don’t pay their fair share should soon be headed the way of the global warming hoax. Clearly it is the people at the upper end of the income spectrum that are being treated unfairly. They are not paying their fair share… They are paying more. Not only are they responsible for 2/3 of all new jobs created, but in return they are rewarded with being allowed to keep even less of their income as they become more successful. Perhaps as more Americans examine and understand what it takes to generate and sustain a dynamic and growing economy the “tax the rich” cries will begin to fall on deaf ears. That’s exactly what America could use right now, a reinvigorated entrepreneurial class striving to put more money in their pockets… and generating millions of jobs in the process.
Can’t emphasize that enough!
When we started our business we were both wage earners.
BUT…..we were wage earners who had scrimped and saved and accumulated almost one full year’s worth of income in the bank so, IF the business failed completely we could still eat and pay the rent while finding new jobs working for someone else.
We’ve had really good years and many lean ones, too.
The risks were all ours.
But the rewards were shared with employees who made them possible.
During those good years equipment was upgraded, new people were hired, people got raises as well as year-end bonuses.
But in recent years (Obamatime) no new hires, attrition is thinning the ranks, equipment is only replaced if it cannot be repaired anymore, customers owe us a lot of money and taxes as well as regulatory costs have gone up so no raises or bonuses.
I retired.
But hubby plugs away even though he is old enough to retire.
He feels a responsibility to those loyal employees he has had for so many years.
Now post income distribution. Your charts don’t even begin to tell half the story. Post sales tax as a % of income.
It all depends on how you want to define “fair share”. Some suggest–with perfectly straight faces–that taxing everyone at the same percentage without regard for total income would be fair. I’m inclined to think that one’s ability to pay is a factor.
As of 2002, the bottom 40 percent of U.S. households had only a 12.2 percent share of total U.S. income. The top 20 percent had a 49.7 percent share of total U.S. income, with that being further concentrated into the topmost 10 percent.
The 10 percent on the pie chart up above pay a greater share of total federal taxes because they receive a significantly greater share of the nation’s total income.
(See U.S. Census Bureau publication Income in the United States, page 25, chart A-3, year 2002, Share of aggregate income.)
Just as the nation’s wealth has been redistributed upward over recent decades, so has the nation’s income. You can see the steady gains of the highest quintile and the steady declines of everyone else by examining the percentage shares of total income on chart A-3 from 1967 through 2002.
It will be interesting once data has been compiled for 2003 through present as a result of the most recent census. That should provide a clear picture of the effect the Bush tax cuts have had on the distribution wealth and income in America.
Yeah Yeah Yeah…. we know…. “Tax the evil rich”… we get it Obama, I mean Greg!
Well, according to many, the fair share of the rich (but not anyone who is employed in Hollywood and Sports or other entertainment) is everything they earn.
The problem is, once you have determined “a fair wage” for someone, they will only work to attain that wage. What is the incentive to create more if the ROI is lower? And that’s idea here.
The problem in America is that we’ve turned from a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” country who created many of the greatest inventions of all time to a “you are a scourge on the planet because you are successful” country. The CEO of Intel recently said that building a new plant in the US costs $1 billion more because of the government regulations, NOT BECAUSE OF THE COST OF LABOR.
In some low skilled jobs, yes, cheaper labor can be obtained and if it is a significant cost to the business, they are remiss not to maximize profits. However, in skilled positions the US workforce still competes until you add the added regulations, at which point it is cheaper to educate and develop skills for another workforce.
As a company, are you going to spend $1,000,000,000 more to build a plant here or somewhere else? If it is your money, what would you do?
Maybe the top 20% spent a good deal of money to get an education and they actually have a job Greg. No one should have to pay for people who make poor decisions in life but the people who make poor decisions.
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The rich pay most of the taxes because they hold much of the wealth. Their taxes haven’t gone up, it’s just that their income has compared to everyone else. There is a simple explination for that and it’s based on how compound interest works. They have more discretionary income that the average person which is invested to create more discretionary income.
Part of the problem is wages and average costs have not kept the middle class going. In the 1960s housing was 5 times more than average wages. Even with the housing price drop, it’s still 7 times that of the average wage. Wages have not kept pace with inflation since the mid ’80s. When compared to the rest of the world the average citizen is still rich. Even though China is the second largest economy in the world, 800 million to 900 million people live in households that make $1 or less a day. If you live in a building with a working refrigerator, you are among the top 20% in terms of world wealth.
Another problem is people look outward for help. Fewer people are making things on their own including meals. They don’t build and repair their own stuff either. Getting others to do it costs money. The amount of new products that people are inventing on their own is very low. People talk about Walmart, Starbucks, American Eagle Outfitters, Hot Topic and Apple as if they were new companies even though they are decades old. There hasn’t been a major movie franchise based on something new since Jurrasic Park which is basic on probably the last book that “everyone” just had to read. There is no new major comic like Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes. There hasn’t been a “new” major non computer related toy since the Cabbage Patch Dolls. The Elmo doll, which was a huge hit later, was based on a decades old character (his birth year is 1979). The top part of the music business is a wasteland (although I consider some alternative acts as some of the best music ever done). The list goes on. People are living off of old companies and old ideas and then wonder why these founders (or their relatives) are getting all this money. Even when people had good ideas, like a burger joint I loved, they never expanded into a franchise or large company. The middle class needs to be more creative and stop complaining about the rich while handing their money over to people that dared to spend their money on making money.
@Greg
And why is that, Greg? We all would love to hear your actual reasoning for this.
And your point is? Apparently a how a person works, what they labor at, and the successes they acheive matter very little to you, if they make more than others. Apparently, a person who undertakes more risk and receives reward for it, matters very little to you. Someone could just as easily sit on their a** at home, and should receive income for it, taken from those who actually do work, just to make things “fair”. One thing you definitely do not take into account in that above paragraph is the amount of work done, type of work done, risk involved either with their own capital, or others, and their ingenuity to create their own slice of the American dream.
And now we come to the most important statement you’ve made. You call it “the nation’s income”, Greg, but you are wrong. The nation does not undertake the financial risks of those 10%. The nation does not work the long hours trying their damnedest to see those 10% succeed. The nation doesn’t use it’s collective mind to come up with new, or better products or services to help those 10% succeed. It is the individual that does that. Sure, they may have employees that help them, but that is a far, far cry from “the nation”. The nation doesn’t have any income. The nation is a collection of individuals that have income. The nation owns no part of an individual’s income, hence the nation does not have income.
Your “fair share” argument does not hold any water when one considers how much of the government’s tax revenue is generated by the high income earners. One could even argue that the share of taxes they pay is much higher than the graph indicates, because many of those high income earners actually provide the jobs that lower wage earners work at, and pay taxes on. And still, it can be argued that it’s even higher due to all the investment monies into other companies, that provide jobs for those lower wage earners. Do you wonder where the country would be if their weren’t any high income earners? It certainly wouldn’t be the Utopia your dreaming of.
You are showing your true colors with this sentence, Greg. I’ve explained previously about “the nation” not having any income. That phrase belies a socialistic tendency, if not outright statist mentality. In those, one believes that all wealth, and the generation of wealth, belongs to the state. That is exactly what you are saying by that particular sentence. No denying it, Greg. You are a socialist.
So, according to greg #3*, if I, or anyone else can account for every penny earned as needed to be spent on necessities, then I should not have to pay any taxes, right?
That boils it down rather nicely.
The OLD commie saw:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need…
Popularized by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program.
The biggest issue with that philosophy is it robs all people of incentive.
Without incentive who bothers to make a dime more than he needs?
You cannot confiscate what is not there.
The old USSR learned that the hard way.
North Korea is a living example.
Right now around $1.3 trillion is sitting on the sidelines while we await more certainty in our economy.
Obama goes in front of the US Chamber of Commerce and says,
“GAMBLE!
Ignore your fears and spend, spend, spend!”
Successful business people know better than to follow him over the cliff.
Maybe if he had made a payroll even once in his life…..
(We wouldn’t be where we are today, if he had, though.)
*one’s ability to pay is a factor
@gregory_dittman: You said:
The best way for this to be achieved is to get the government out of the way.
@johngalt: You said, emphasis mine:
Couldn’t have said it better myself, john!
@Greg: You said:
And I am inclined to agree with johngalt on this one, please explain your reasoning Greg. Maybe you can convince people better if you supply more than just liberal soundbites.
@johngalt, #8:
Because if the same tax rate that might cause a high-end earner to forego some discretionary luxury were applied to a person on the low end of the earnings spectrum, it could result in that low-income person having to forego something essential to a far more basic lifestyle. A lot of people worry from one paycheck to the next how to pay the bills.
Consider Figure 6 on this web page, which shows the percentage of income various income quintiles pay in various taxes. For bottom 20 percent earners, taxes absorb around 16 percent of their meager income. They couldn’t be expected to pay more and make ends meet. For the second 20 percent, the total tax burden is even worse.
Taxes obviously have to be paid by someone. Which quintile is it fairest to require the greater percentage from? Bear in mind, too, that everyone is subject to the same progressive tax schedule. Higher income people pay no more than anyone else on that portion of their total earnings that come before each percentage breakpoint. (Some pay lesser rates, if their income takes the form of something other than wages–15 percent on short-term capital gains, for example. I suppose we could argue that low income folks could benefit from that too, but the truth is that capital gains don’t figure large into their total income. They don’t have much to invest.
Horse hocky. That income is largely dependent on the working and middle classes, which are actually making the products and performing the services that someone else’s business is totally dependent upon. The extent to which this simple fact is often totally ignored astonishes me. It’s sometimes so bad you’d almost think that the working people who keep all the wheels of the national economy turning are nothing but ungrateful parasites, totally dependent on the largess of investors, financiers, and business owners. In fact workers and owners (two descriptive words that don’t appear only in marxist dictionaries) are dependent on each other, and each is entitled to a fair and reasonable return on the contribution they make.
As I’ve noted before, it’s also consumption by working and middle class people that creates much of the demand for the goods and services they produce. The highest income quintile profits from that consumption. If you don’t pay working and middle class people enough, or place too large of the tax burden on them in comparison with their income, their level of consumption declines and economic activity progressively slows. It also becomse increasingly difficult for them to provide for their own long-term economic security.
Red, I presume? Not so.
More is being read in to a couple of short phrases than their simple, straightforward meaning. If we were talking dollar values and referred to “the total income of the household” or “the total wealth of the household”, it would be pretty clear what was meant. Same thing here–no more, no less.
@Greg: I was wrong when I said:
While you did part from short soundbites, you borrowed heavily from Karl Marx and from his Communist Manifesto:
Hello, Greg. Thanks for adding that important contextual information.
I have been, and in some ways still am, a member of the working poor. My parents were working class. I have worked every day of my life. If you want to argue against Marx’s point about the exploitation of the working class, you are going to have to close your eyes to usurious creditors (look that up in the Bible, that goes back way before Marx), payday loan schemes, and old ladies paying for their prescription drugs with Visa, thereby paying 20+% interest on their medicines. Even at the above minimum wage rate of 10 bucks an hour, the average worker would have to work more than two weeks full time to pay for one emergency room visit. Taste the reality. It ain’t pretty.
If you want to take a look at the misery of the working poor, look no further than our enlisted military members. Go to any Military base and see the exploiters waiting just outside the gates to prey on their low-wage distress. But I guess they work for the government, eh? Just sucking the rich man’s teat dry. Yet who will protect the rich man’s ASSets against foreign invaders? Hmmm?
I would also point out that many of the rich came to their riches through inheritance. They aren’t this “golden class of producers” that you like to imagine. The founding fathers wanted to prevent a financial aristocracy, and that is why they wanted a heavy estate tax, and also a limit on the lifetime of a corporation (having been exploited by the East India Company). Look it up. And the rich would be nothing without the roads, infrastructure, both transportation and communication, built, subsidized, and maintained by the state. They reap more benefits from this infrastructure in conducting their business, and should be taxed accordingly for its upkeep.
According to your argument, Paris Hilton brings more value to our society than a small businessman, working his ass off, or a nurse, or a nuclear power plant operator. That’s shameful. And being rich shouldn’t be shameful, but when you are getting richer and richer while others work their asses off and can’t even afford necessities, there is a problem, and it is bigger than just poor people being hungry, although that should be bad enough.
I, Michael Moore, being of sound mind and (strike that)…will be donating 100% of my financial assets to the middle class downtrodden to be named soon. Hold your breath. Or, to be honest, as my pithy Mom used to say, “Don’t hold your hand on your a** waiting. It will grow there.”
@Greg:
“because they receive a significantly greater share of the nation’s total income. ” Please, correct ‘received’ to possibly something more honest like ‘earned’ or ‘worked to earn’.
Greg
I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. Personally, I like the Fair Tax, but I’m not opposed to a Flat Tax. But the reason I believe you are looking at this from the wrong perspective is because I think you believe the Federal Budget is a fixed entity. It is not. If you are not paying much in the way of taxes, why would you care if the government continues to take money to fund things they have no business funding? Let everyone feel the same pain on April 15th and see how long we continue to have the National Endowment for Humanities. Let’s see how long we allow the Executive Branch to continue paying “Czars” or how long we continue to allow Congress to redecorate their offices every two years. If everyone feels the pain, I doubt we’ll hear much about how that portion of the budget or this portion of the budget is just $20 Billion. If you see a substantial part of your hard earned income being chewed up by medicare, medicade, and welfare fraud, I doubt you would say it’s just a small portion of the budget.
I spent 10 years in the Air Force as an enlisted man. I worked my butt off to get where I am only to see there is no real incentive for making more money every stinking April. Where is the incentive to do well in school if the government is going to ensure the person that did nothing in school is going to have just a comfortable life as you do? Where is the incentive to succeed? Why should I or anyone else work 70 hour weeks so the money we earned goes to people that have no desire to get ahead?
It is quite simple, you choose either freedom or equality of outcomes; you cannot have both. In a free society, if you give everyone the same amount of money to start, a week from now, they will have unequal amounts.
Sure, Ukraine, just like Paris Hilton and George W. Bush. The EARNED it, right?
Where are all these people who have NO desire to succeed? I have never met them. Do you believe that only money can motivate people? History proves you wrong. There are millions of people who work 70 hours per week in this country and barely eek out a living. There are thousands who have millions who did nothing to earn it other than being born into the right family, at the right time. Is that a meritocracy?
Gary, not everyone has to be equal, but everyone has to eat.
JC – It’s Fair to use Bush and Paris Hilton, but are you aware of what % those people make up the Top 1%? Are you also saying that because someone in their family earned money (acquired wealth) that they shouldn’t have the benefit of their families wealth? So, we should all start fresh, without the benefit of our families sacrifice and start from the ground up?
Ukraine, I’m not saying that they should start with nothing necessarily, but if they had to work for a living, it would be for their own good, yes? If money is the incentive, doesn’t it kill theirs more certainly than food stamps and unemployment benefits kill the ambitions of the poor, at least in RW rhetoric?
They make up only a tiny part of the population, it’s true, but again, look at how much of the wealth they have, comparatively speaking. Paris Hilton will spend as much on a pair of shoes as a working stiff, making minimum wage, makes in a month. And as for money as an incentive, if it worked to make people better at their jobs, why do the bankers seem so crappy at theirs, and why do they get bonuses? Why does a teacher like me bust my butt when I haven’t had a raise in five years? Some of us are motivated by feeling that we are useful and productive. We like to work, and like to feel like we are contributing. Don’t we deserve to be able to eat?
And wouldn’t it be better for the economy (and capitalism) overall if millions of people could shop for reasonably-priced shoes, rather than a few heiresses paying stupid money for one pair?
Sure, but let us not be so dogmatic in thinking that because you have money that the desire to be productive and be successful is gone. Donald Trump, for this example, came from money and he appears to continue to work. Work Ethic is what we are really discussing, and that has to do with parenting, not as much to do with money. We have kids from all tax brackets that never grow up with the proper work ethic.
I also do not believe that because the ‘Rich’ have so much of the ‘Wealth’ that their isn’t enough to go around. Bill Gates having his Billions is not hindering my success, unless I want to compete against Microsoft and then I have major issues.
I’m a business owner and my costs for my materials have gone up 20%, but with the market and economy I’m in a position to where I have to reduce my prices (cut profit) in order to sell, or stick to my prices and HOPE people see value in my products and services, which is getting harder and harder with the economy. My wife is a physician who has not seen an increase in reimbursements from any insurance company, nor Medicaid, and she still works 70+ hours a week and her services are the same, if not more. She is a Neonatologist and can not, nor will not, turn children away. Her services are not based on choice, but driven by the patient, and she has to do what is needed. She can’t ‘Strike’ because she makes less now and allow a child to die. She can’t refuse to go in a 3am when it’s 10 degrees to take care of a 25 week baby. We always talk about Teachers giving and Civil Service workers, which is fine, but we also see teachers and Unions attack the ‘Rich’ as if we (Yes, we are in your ‘Rich’ category) woke up one day and my wife just happened to have: 1) 4 year degree, admission to med school, 2) a med school certificate for graduating, 3) a certificate for passing boards, 4) a 3 year certificate for finishing a Pediatric residency, 5) a certificate for passing Pediatric boards, 6) a certificate for finishing a 3 year Neonatal Fellowship, 7) a certificate for passing Neonatal boards and,
continued certificates for passing both pediatric and neonatal boards every few years.
Yep, my wife just made one of those flippant choices and was LUCKY to be where she is today. ANYONE could have chosen this path, she was just LUCKY. No risks she took in life. No sacrifices. You know she’s just like everyone else that waited until she was 32 to be able to hone her career and put money, having children and some of the things other are doing on hold until she was in a position to have a secure and solid future for herself and her family. (sarcasm)
JC, First, Why is it any of Your Business how other people spend Their own Money or how they acquired it?
Second, What amount of assets constitutes “Wealth”? Wealth is a renewable resource and not a finite quantity. As long as the wealth is acquired by legal means how is that any of Your Damn Business?
Just asking. Redistribution of My acquired assets or wealth is akin to cattle rustling or theft. I don’t take kindly to that. As long as I meet My Tax requirements, I am head and shoulders above the likes of Geithner or others that are a part of the Current Regime that is both Economically and Constitutionally Illiterate.
Both Social Security and Veterans Pensioners have done without COLA increases for the past Two Years while Congress has received automatic pay raises. Lets start looking at Congress getting pay and benefit cuts or no raises until they can get a budget in place as opposed to cowardly continuing on CR Budget numbers that as fiscally unsustainable. How about that?
@ UkraineTrain
Simply fricking awesome!! If there was a standing ovation smiley, I’d fill the board.
Old Trooper is right. If a someone makes a million times more than someone else, what does it matter if both are better off?
I heard someone comment about the difference between the difference between what employees and CEOs make today vs. earlier, say 1965. Apparently in ’65 CEOs made 12 times more than the average employee while today that number is 263 times. One cannot argue that the average American is not better off today than they were in 1965. A simple example. (From “Time Well Spent – The declining cost of living in America” by the Dallas Fed in 1997) In 1955 it cost the average American 1638 hours of work in order to afford to purchase the average new car costing $3,030; By 1997 the average worker would have to work only 1365 hours in order to purchase the average new car at $17,995. In 2011 it takes the average worker just 1222 hours (@$22.87 per hour) to purchase the average car at $27,950. Not only that, the cars are better cars. They get better gas mileage, they have more options, more safety features and come in a much wider variety of colors, sizes and styles. This same dynamic holds true for everything from telephone calls to TVs to air travel to food to medicines.
Why should anyone other than the person writing the paycheck care who earns what? Let someone earn what someone else is willing to pay them. That is how the market works and how Americans of all stripes have benefited. Liberals want to impose some arbitrary measure as to what someone should earn. Who decides? Barack Obama? George Soros? Charlie Sheen? If the goal is to have equality, or something close to it, let the government decide how much people can earn and we will quickly achieve that Nirvana. Unfortunately however the equality will be one of poverty. It has been tried before… in the Soviet Union and is currently in place in many places in Europe. If you want a real lesson in how to kill a golden goose, look at Western Europe over the last 25 years.
The bottom line is that the market is the best arbitrator of what workers should earn, both at the CEO level and the employee level. No system is perfect, but the American capitalist system has produced by far the greatest increase in the standard of living in human history. To borrow Winston Churchill’s observation about Democracy: Capitalism and free markets are the worst form of economics except for all the others that have been tried.
@JC: So, are you saying that the Hilton family didn’t earn the money they passed to their heirs? The just found it lying on the street somewhere? Now, I expect that they effort I am making working past an age where I could retire so I can make sure my sons inherit some money is not earning the money?
You also said you “Where are all these people who have NO desire to succeed?” Those are the people who drop out of high school and college. They are the people who are always late for work and get fired. They are the people who steal from their employer. They are the people who can not get off their couch in front of the TV to improve themselves and their job prospects. They are the people who pay no taxes and continue to vote for politicians who will continue to provide them with free hand outs at the expense of others who pay taxes. I am currently in dowtown Denver and can show you a considerable number of those. Maybe you should get out more if you have never seen any one who didn’t want to succeed.
@Old Trooper 2: Right to the point as usual!
You yahoos have no idea what poor is. I have no sympathy for someone with two color TV, cable, a microwave oven, two cars and gaming divices. In the US today, these people are considered poor. You say they need to eat. What they did is make poor choices with the money they did have while others used their money to improve their station in life. It is long past time for individuals to take responsibility for their own actions in life.
@ Randy
Exactly right. However, when you have Obama out there saying it is a “right” to have broadband internet access, and Jesse Jackson Jr. saying it’s a “right” to have an i-pad and laptop for all school children, the libs rally to the banner.
I honestly believe we are coming to a period in our history where we will have to split the nation. Allow those that believe they have the right to other peoples income go their way and let the rest of us go ours.
America is probably the YOUNGEST nation on earth. Yet , we rose to be the GREATEST faster than any other nation has. No one has been our equal in ability of ANYONE to “make it to the top! Now, Greg, you can say “Look at CHINA”! Well ok, LETS take a look!! China was an ARMPIT until MAO died, and his hard line Commie Dictatorship went with him! (by the way, MAO was ALSO a CommieFraud…forced Communism on the “masses”. while HE lived in palaces!) China now has risen to Fiscal power and Prominence…by going to CAPITALIST TRENDS and business policies! They now lend US money?? WHY?? What happened HERE??
Well, Since LBJ and his “Great (welfare) Society intiatives, we’ve been on a downwards spiral…Franklin is attributed this quote….
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money from the treasury, that will herald the end of the republic.”
It’s THAT point we are suffering thru now…. the LOWER classes you champion, are electing bums, like Charlie RANGEL,and Democrats in General…. who pay off in non-stop Social Programs… hence “voting themselves money”.. Add to that, the SAME deal we now see manifesting itself in Wisconsin, where the Democrats, PAID FOR by the Unions, put in their “Union Friendly” pals, who voted to give the UNIONS large payouts (more than can be gotten elsewhere in a “free market” ) from the “public Treasury”… and you have now COMPOUNDED the issue! Add in Unions OVERPRICING themselves… and you have the exact formula for economic COLLAPSE! I will go ahead an Lump in things like the Community Investment Act etc, as the lefts cover for giving away MORE PUBLIC MONEY as well!!
NOW you know WHY we’re in trouble fiscally as a nation.
Greg, you can spin it any way you want, but there will ALWAYS be “poor people”, always have been , always WILL BE! Some can’t help it, MANY Can! Education here is free! If you are TOO LAZY to get smart, so you can rise above, that’s just tough Schit! You HAVE the chance, you choose NOT to go for it, eat Alpo! I DON’T CARE! You made that choice. There are Charities to help the rest. So Greg, you like the “Communist model” so much, I suggest you move to a Socialist run country, WE are not going to allow it here, and we’re going to TAKE BACK America from the Demunists…… the Public Unions are going to get cut down to size, and a bit of REALITY is going to be put back into place! Like it or not. The door is always open, feel free to step thru it, on your way OUT. You know, North Korea might like a guy like you, who hates rich Capitalists. Can you Goosestep?? See ya!
We have a group of people who are literate, but ignorant or maybe just naive. Very few wealthy Americans store wealth; except for gold or diamonds, wealth is invested in the economy and has the possibility of creating more wealth. As wealth or capital builds in an economy, more wealth is created: as an example, a man has ten dollars and stuffs it in a rat hole; eventually he forgets about it and a rat uses the material to build a nest. That is ten dollars or a percentage of a nation’s wealth that is dead and lost forever. If that man buys a pair of shoes for two dollars, a meal for a dollar, and invests into a consortium to drill oil and gas wells with the remainder, he is providing jobs and wealth to many other people. Every time that money turns over in the economy, the economy grows and becomes more wealthy. Some of us control huge wealth: some of us deal with a paycheck ever week; none the less, the money goes back into the pool and increases the wealth and vitality of the country.
It works until you tax money from the economy, that deducts energy or wealth from an economy: tax too much and the economy dies. The economy also slows when people lose faith in the economy or their leaders. At that point they begin to stuff money in millions of proverbial ratholes. Americans, especially Americans with capital have lost faith with the amateurish antics and pretensions of expertise by the Obama administration; it is no wonder they are no longer to risk capital and spend money while facing the threat of a Marxist template for business, government control and regulation, and Redistribution of Wealth. The wealthy have far more dollars to contribute to the economy to maintain the steady turnover of dollars that breathes life into an economy. Then as you limit energy production, prices climb and another anchor is thrown to a drowning economy.
To a simpleton, the answer is easy: confiscate that money from the rich, they don’t deserve it, redistribute the money to all the working people and watch the economy slowly grind to a miserable death as investment dries up and jobs disappear. Even the government jobs like teachers disappear when the government runs out of people to tax, but we will have our Redistribution of Wealth and the end of coveting other people’s money. We will have the Primal version of a Socialist Dystopia. But they scream out, “Oh no, we can manage it so much better than that!” Yes, we have seen your management skills for thee last two years.
@JC: “Paris Hilton will spend as much on a pair of shoes as a working stiff, making minimum wage, makes in a month.” Are you f-ing kidding me? JEALOUSY? That is why I should want ‘the Rich” cut off at the knees? Here is the deal, Prog. I could give two shits what Paris spends for a pair of shoes, someone has a JOB making those shoes that would not otherwise. The amount she spends is plowed back into the economy. The old shibboleth of Scrooge McDuck swimming in his money vault full of bags of gold is complete and utter crap. If the best justification you have is that someone spends more on a single luxury item than someone else does for total expenses, you need to wake up and smell the envy. As for the canard that ‘someone needs to pay for Government’ I would suggest that what needs to be done is an overall lowering of the cost of government, so that less income from everyone is thrown down the governmental rathole.
@Greg:
What is considered essential, Greg? A place to call home? Food to eat? Heat in the winter? What else? There are things that people spend their earned income on that cannot be classified as essential, and just because one person has the ability to pay for them doesn’t make it a right for others to have as well. I know very well that I will never move into a house costing several hundred thousand dollars and be able to afford it, but I don’t hold it against those that can. What one earns, and spends their earnings on, has no bearing on what I earn, or spend my earnings on, nor do I think I deserve a slice of the pie someone else has carved out for themselves.
Your leaving quite a few things out of the equation, Greg. Who supplies the tools and machinery to make the products? Who supplies the networking, ads, and transportation for those performing those services? Who supplies the capital for the purchasing of raw materials that are made into products? Who supplies the access to continuing advancements in technology used to make new products? Who supplies the networking access to customers to sell the products and services? Whose idea, capital, and hard work built up the business that allows others access to the jobs they have? Etc., etc., etc.
Believe me. What you claim about those who labor at jobs isn’t ignored by myself. I work at one of those jobs. But I wouldn’t have that job if it weren’t for people before me using their ingenuity, capital, and customer access to create my job in the first place. What astonishes me, and other conservatives, is that you socialist liberals want to claim more responsibility for the success of the companies people work for than they really deserve.
Here’s a clue, Greg. Only the business owner and the worker can decide what is fair recompense for the labor the worker provides the business owner. If the owner thinks the worker wants to much, he won’t hire him/her. If the worker thinks the owner doesn’t pay him/her enough, there are other companies that will pay more. And the market, the free-market, determines the range wages that make sense concerning financial viability for the company. An owner isn’t going to offer such low wages that he/she doesn’t attract good employees, but they also aren’t going to offer such high wages that they price themselves out of the particular market they delve in. Neither you, nor others who aren’t connected to the company or the market they participate in, have any bearing on what the owner pays for wages, or what the workers accept as “fair” for their labor. It amazes me how much you talk about business but how little you actually know about it.
And this gets tied in directly with the taxation on the business owners and higher income earners who invest in business ventures. Without their direct action, or financial action, the jobs they might have created are not there, the jobs they do have they end up limited on how much in wages they can pay, and the offshoot businesses due to expansion that also create jobs are not realized. And the tax burden of working and middle-class? Please! When nearly half the workers do not pay any federal income taxes, your argument is a non-existent one.
Oh, your colors are quite rightly red, Greg. Any time you discuss “the nation’s” income, or “the nation’s wealth”, your meaning is clear as day. IOW, to you, everything made, everything sold, and the wealth generated by such, belongs to the state. That is a socialistic mentality, and the color socialists most generally associate with is red.
What you advocate is simply not freedom. It is of the served, and those who serve. Slave and master. And freedom does not play into the equation on little bit.
@JC:
And what has happened, in thinking that this is the government’s job to do this is, parents no longer take the responsibility to feed their own children, because of government breakfast and lunch programs.
At one time, people would have been embarrassed to take a government handout, unless they were starving. Now, even if the parents can afford to feed their children, they let the school do it.
If you want a strong, vibrant society, the wrong way to do that is to make everyone dependent upon the government for their needs.
@Randy:
You do not have a clue. The first house I lived in was occupied by a motorcycle gang before me, that had set up ramps up into the front door and down into the back yard from the back door. I am not sure what the walls of my shower were, but they were painted. Through most of my life, I worked 2, 3 and 4 jobs at a time. And for the first few years, it was a struggle to eat.
All that was good for me. I have no complaints of how hard I had to work. This is good. I also see people who’s lives are subsidized, and, in most cases, they are doing nothing to prepare their own children for the future. The government pays for their children’s food at school; the government pays for most of their rent, and they either don’t work, or they work a 20-30 hour/week job. That is bad for them and bad for their children and bad for society as a whole.
When 35% of our population get a check from the government, we are in serious decline.
@Gary Kukis, #36:
If 35% of the population weren’t receiving a check from the government, how would the private sector rearrange itself to make it possible for everyone to hold a living-wage job and to survive in old age?
@ Greg
He’s talking about welfare, not gummint employees.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508/Welfare_State_Handouts_Make_Up_One_Third_of_U_S_Wages
@Aqua, #38:
Social Security payments are considered to be welfare? That seems as odd to me as including Social Security payments under the heading of wages and salaries. The linked article does both.
@ Greg
I think you miss the point. If 35% of the nation is receiving government checks, that means 65% of us are taking care of them. Of that 65%, how many pay no income taxes? Nevermind…you just want my money so you can go give it to someone you deem more deserving.
And speaking of these “poor.” I have been inside of their homes. They have children but no books; NONE. No magazines, no children books, no newspapers, nothing. But, what do they have? A big screen tv, without exception, and cable.
Again, when you support this lifestyle, you raise a generation accustomed to sloth and government provision.
Greg cited the prime example of this. Social security. At one time, social security was supposed to be some additional income to help older people. However, for many, they have chosen to make no other provision for their old age, and now SS for many is their only income.
The government, in its benevolence encourages sloth and reduces our desire to take care of ourselves.
@Greg
Actually, the question should be asked on why some 35% HAVE to receive checks from the government. It must be those evil corporations and business owners thieving what rightfully belongs to the people, right?
How about, it’s the thieving, overspending government, raising taxes in order to attempt to cover the overspending, stagnating the economy that, without government’s continual interference, might just actually create enough jobs that many, or most of that 35% won’t need a check from the government.
But we can’t have that, can we. I mean, that could lead to companies making even greater profits, and some people making even more money, and oh, oh, the government would lose control over the lives of citizens. I mean, we might actually regain some of our freedom and liberties, and we just couldn’t have that, could we?
Your tired rhetoric of blaming all the economic woes of the country on the “rich”, “wealthy”, and “high income earners” just isn’t flying anywhere. If you want to continue the movement away from the founding father’s ideals and the freedoms and liberties they imparted to us, then just take it somewhere else. I hear Cuba is great this time of year. Not only that, but your pal Mr. Moore says their healthcare is better than ours. Just leave us the hell alone and take your big government, economically illiterate a** to somewhere that appreciates socialism, or is too scared or stupid to know any different!
I’ll let the comments I made farther up the thread speak for themselves. People who care to read them can decide for themselves how radical or mainstream they sound.
Here’s an example of the working poor paying more than their share:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/04/are_payroll_taxes_regressive
@JC: You said:
Nope, that is wrong.
@JC: You said:
What do you suppose those people work for? If they stopped receiving money for their labor, would they STILL work?
If 90% of their income was confiscated in taxes, would they STILL work?
Oh yes, we’ll all be millionaires someday.
Look, I’m not talking about people who have a million dollars. That could be one poor old lady who bought her house in San Francisco back in the 70′s. On paper, she could be a millionaire, while in reality, she could still be eating dog food.
I’m talking about the richest of the rich, and their hoarding of money. I’ve got no problem with some people being rich, and some poor, but the distribution is badly out of whack. And in America, working 40 hours per week, at any job, should earn you enough money to have a home, eat, and go to the doctor when necessary. That’s all I’m saying. Forget your welfare cheats (although that includes corporations that are subsidized). Let’s talk about the woman who takes care of our elderly in a nursing home and makes minimum wage.
A long time ago that was me, working for minimum wage, and you know what? 30 years ago, it was almost enough to survive. Nowadays, I know it is not. Yet I know how hard that person works, and what a valuable service they perform. Why should they live in constant stress, trembling at the thought of a dental emergency, or a car repair? Why do we not value their work enough to reward them with a living wage?
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/
And the glorification of the super rich over the wage-earner is anti-democratic. We should respect the wage-earner, because he makes the money that makes the rich rich.
JC,
Who would the wage earner work for if there wasn’t someone who didn’t take a chance and put his/her money on the line so that someone would have a job?
You are forgetting that there’s this equation called supply and demand. For jobs that require little skill, the labor pool is large, and therefore the wage is lower. For other jobs, the pool of candidates is much smaller, hence the wages are higher.
A rational business owner will always pay an amount that gets them the best job candidates, otherwise they are not maximizing profits.
Should the person who picks carrots at a farm make the same wage as the surgeon who saves lives? Yes, it is possible that someone is living off of carrots and would not survive without the carrot picker, but there’s a much larger pool of people who can pick carrots.
And for the record, two things about minimum wage:
1. You are not intended to live off minimum wage. Think about it. Minimum wage is some arbitrary number. If you make minimum wage higher, all products will cost more. If changing minimum wage could fix all our problems, why don’t we make a minimum wage of $50,000 year? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the person flipping burgers at McDonalds can finally have a couple nice things? Of course, the price of those burgers will need to go up substantially… And where are they going to get that money from? You.
2. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be a stepping stone. Hence the reason why you really can’t support a family on minimum wage. You prove yourself in the job market, then you take a higher paying position. Some people don’t have the ambition for that next step. But, imagine a world where you can’t fire anyone and all wages are for a specific standard of living… What would happen? Look at France. Kids were rioting because jobs are hard to come by and they raised the retirement age by two years. This means there will be more workers for roughly the same amount of jobs. What happens to the youth? They don’t get hired.
Your perspective is telling. The rich are evil. In reality, the rich employ others who, while they may make money off it, also provide wages and wealth to others.
Side note… If everyone made the same wage, within a generation there would be “rich” and “poor” people. The difference between rich and poor people has a lot to do with how they spend money. This is why some people can never be wealthy. Think about all those entertainment figures who have filed for bankruptcy. I ask you… Who is better for society, a sports figure who makes $45 million during his contract (and employs no people directly) or the owner who pays the salary of everyone from the highest paid player to the guy who chucks hotdogs to patrons?
Yet one is typically a villain and the other a hero..
Indeed, and who would make the rich man rich if not for the worker? And who buys his goods? You forget that the worker must create the demand, and the supply. The capitalist is pulling the levers, for sure, but the workers are the machine that makes it happen.
I would refer you to Henry Ford on this matter. We are a consumer based economy (i.e. supply and demand), and no matter how decadent, the rich man just can’t buy enough by himself. 400 people cannot create enough demand to keep 155 million people employed. You get that? The worker is obviously necessary to create the goods, but ALSO to PURCHASE the goods. If you bankrupt him, you are a stupid rich capitalist sitting on a pile of unsold widgets, watching your fellow citizens starve. Sounds like the American dream?
Great thread, thank you Skookum, johngalt, chipset, antics, Aqua, gregory dittman, Nan, Josh, Hankster, Randy, Vince, OT, Ukraine Train and, never thought I would have Michael Moore to thank for anything, but exceptions to every rule, thank you Michael Moore.
Outstanding commentary, you all combined to made the topic so very easy to understand, that is, if one actually read your comments. Thumbs up to you all!
Welcome Ukraine Train, salute!
You are missing the point, JC. Without capital, there’s no job to be had.
Look at the wealthiest people right now.
1. Carlos Slim – Telephone company.
2. Bill Gates – Created a company that minted a ton of millionaires
3. Warren Buffet – Bought a company based upon investment that employ hundreds of thousands of employees.
4. Larry Ellison – created a company that has minted millionaires.
5. Paul Allen – co-founded MS and owns a lot of other organizations
Should they not be compensated for creating wealth for others?
If Bill Gates didn’t save his money (he’s incredibly frugal and last I heard still flies coach) and spent all the money as he earned it, he’d be like the masses of “rich” people who are broke, living paycheck to paycheck.
So, I ask you.. What do you think a proper compensation is if you create 1,000 millionaires?
@ JC
Where in this thread did you see anyone disrespecting the “wage-earner?” If you want to know why it is so tough to eek out a living, turn your eyes away from the rich and look towards D.C. Every single time they try to make things better for the “working man” it has blown up in “our” faces.
Where did Slim and Bill get their money, Chip? Did God give it to them? Or was it millions of working people buying Microsoft products and telephone services? They get their money from consumers. Consumers are also workers. You are the one missing the point. Bill Gates knows that he has more money than he will ever, ever need. He had a great idea, and now he can have anything he needs, and anything he wants. That’s great. But he will tell you that he doesn’t need it all, and taking it out of circulation hurts his ability to sell the next crappy Windows product to new customers, who have to have the money to keep upgrading if he is going to continue to sell his product. If there are 400 rich families and 155 million poor ones, he’s not going to sell too many copies. If there are 400 rich families, and 155 million middle class families, he will sell many more copies, and the rich people will still be rich, and Bill will be richer. As more people fall into poverty, these guys lose customers. Get it?
Of course smart, productive people should make a lot of money. And lazy people don’t become millionaires. So what? That doesn’t take away the fact that consumers are required to make the system work, and if wages are stagnant, consumers can’t purchase. So then the vultures came in, and created payday loans so that the poor people could pay them exorbitant interest for borrowing small sums of money. Yeah. That used to be called a loan shark. Stop defending looters and pirates. Read the article I have linked below. Look at the increase in wealth at the top. You people used to argue that it would trickle down. Ha. You don’t even TRY to do that now, you just defend the wealthy as if they are so much better than the rest of us, we should all eat dirt while they wine and dine. Don’t they have a responsibility to the society that allowed them to become rich? That built the highways that transport their goods? The workers who created the goods? Or are they just shamans, who magically make money out of thin air, and owe nothing to anyone?
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-new-robber-barons-all-politicians-%22in-the-hands-of-the-super-wealthy%22-sachs-says-536034.html;_ylt=AowNFYBh6yOmwmVvX6PNL9Vl7ot4;_ylu=X3oDMTEzN3RibTMyBHBvcwMxMwRzZWMDYXJ0aWNsZQRzbGsDdGhlbmV3cm9iYmVy?tickers=MUB,^DJI,^GSPC,TBT,XLF,XLV,GLD
Disrespect = denying them a living wage. Telling someone who works 40 hours a week that they don’t deserve to be able to go to the doctor. That is the greatest disrespect of all.
JC,
Who prevents anyone from going to a doctor? A typical doctor visit to my doctor is about $85. So, who prevents them from going to the doctor?
But, many of those same people can afford a cell phone, something that wasn’t available to the last generation. Or two cars. Etc.
And if someone creates a product that no one can afford, they aren’t going to get wealthy, are they? It’s again called, “Supply and Demand”.
And so what if someone has something they’ll never be able to use? Is it a resource to be shared by all? What about your salary? I am willing to bet I gave more to charity than you did last year. And I certainly gave more than Biden.
You believe that you should have control to the means of production and wealth. Until you put your capital on the line, don’t blame those who did.
As for Gates and Slim making money.. They made money because people felt the product was worth their money. And if people didn’t think it was worth their money, they would pirate the software.
As for payday loans, the market was created because some people can’t make decisions on how stretch their paychecks. Anyone who does a loan like that should know better… but, and here’s the kicker, if there weren’t people willing to take the loans, they’d be out of business. They are giving money to people who have a high likelihood of non-repayment. Are you going to loan a stranger money with little likelihood of being repaid without appropriate compensation. Do you think the people who run those businesses are “Wealthy”? More than likely, they are getting a minor profit off the loans due to delinquencies and non-repayment.
Tell you what.. I want you to loan me $100,000,000 and I will give you $100 in return for your risk. Deal?
So a person who works for minimum wage has to work more than 10 hours to pay for that Dr. appointment. That seems fair, yes? Oh, but I hope they are not diagnosed with anything that requires tests, drugs, or god forbid, any other treatment.
Workers have to have discretionary income if they are going to purchase a product from Bill Gates. You love to accuse them of irresponsibility. That is a deflection from the discussion of inequality. The solution to poverty in our country, in your mind, is for the poor to have less. But that doesn’t help the rich or the poor, which is my point. Anything they might have you decry as evidence of their unworthiness, and anything they don’t have is also evidence of their unworthiness. While all the possessions of the rich are evidence of their superiority.
You’re pretty full of yourself. You just continue to ignore the “demand” part. I will just keep posting facts.
http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/counties/06037
Where do I disparage the worker?
The demand must be there, or the rich wouldn’t be selling their product. Hence the demand. If I supply a product and there’s no demand for it, then it doesn’t matter what the supply is.
The marketplace will determine the winners and losers.
It’s not that I am against workers or for rich people. You are projecting. I am telling you how it is. There’s a difference.
Okay, so let’s have some balance. I am not against rich people, but saying that it is okay to get rid of the middle class by suppressing wages and distributing money upwards is economic suicide for us all. When you increase the wages of working people, they spend the money, ergo almost all of it will go into the economy, and the capitalists see a return on their money. If you continue to distribute upwards, you kill demand, because demand is created when working people can survive, and moreover, can afford the occasional trip to Disneyland.
And I would also point out that you bring up capitalists who made their money from creating real products or providing tangible services. You cite the same two or three guys over and over. Small club. But the ones who are making the real money, on Wall Street, are not making money from either of those things, but from manipulating, and gambling on, and skimming profits from the transactions of people making real products and providing real services. For example, how many of those new millionaires made their money betting on an increase in Foreclosures?
Oh, and it is disrespectful to working people to say that they must work an hour in order to buy a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. That is devaluing them as human beings. It is unsustainable as a society. It drives people to desperation and deprivation. And that makes us all poorer.
JC,
One, I don’t care how people make their money. If I invest in a property, a stock or gamble on futures, that’s all legal. Manipulation is not.
I bring up Gates, Slim, Ellison, Buffet. Should we also bring up Soros who made his money in speculation?
You say the “ones making real money”, as if those mentioned aren’t making “real money”. Hmm. Interesting. Oil speculators get burned when things don’t turn out the way that want it to.
Here’s a little tip: Do you know what happens when the people at the top spend their money? they go bankrupt. How many people can they employ.
The simple fact of the matter is, people develop wealth by spending less than they make. Simple as that. And that means that money is working for them.
So, my question to you, JC, is how would you fix the problem that people are keeping their money?
Oh, and your example of going to Disneyland… It makes a profit that employs people and someone is going to save that money (which creates wealth).
So, HOW WOULD IT WORK IF IT WERE UP TO YOU? I am genuinely interested.
Study shows who bears Minnesota’s biggest tax burden:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/118136484.html
You didn’t answer my question…
Spending less than you make? So if I make $300 per week, and I save $10 bucks a week, I will get wealthy? Unless I get sick, that is, or lose my job. Such is the life of a wage earner.
Here’s how I think it should work. It’s basically addressing the ratio problem. Here are some stats: “S&P 500 chief executives last year received median pay packages of $7.5 million, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar. By comparison, official statistics show the average private sector employee was paid just over $40,000.”
http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/118136484.html
Now, you can live pretty luxuriously on 7.5 million per year, even if your taxes went up. Even if they went up to 40%, you still have 4.5 million to live on. Set your thermostat wherever you want it. Buy a tan. You’re not bankrupt.
But the truly responsible thing to do would be for the shareholders to demand that the CEO be paid 3 million, and that the wages of those at the bottom, 40k, be increased. So the CEO ends up making maybe only 150x as much as the average laborer. If corporations and shareholders gave a crap about the overall health of our economy or our society, they would do that. They have not traditionally been willing to do that without government intervention, in the form of taxes or minimum wages, or in response to collective actions by workers. And in the last several decades, they have run amok, hoarding money, creating giant ponzi schemes, and all the while taking taxpayer subsidies.
If you have another idea on how to make them more responsible, I’d like to hear it. As for the irresponsibility of the poor, let’s face it, what’s their motivation? To stop being poor. If working doesn’t get you out of poverty, then why bother? And why can’t you see that it goes both ways?
Sure, bring up Soros. What does that prove?
Is wealth really more concentrated among the wealthy in recent years than in previous?
Billionaires Own as Much as the Bottom Half of Americans?
JC…. who do you think you are?? You said this……”"”Bill Gates knows that he has more money than he will ever, ever need. He had a great idea, and now he can have anything he needs, and anything he wants. That’s great. But he will tell you that he doesn’t need it all, and taking it out of circulation hurts his ability to sell the next crappy Windows product to new customers, who have to have the money to keep upgrading if he is going to continue to sell his product.”"”"
SO?? It’s HIS money, to do with as he wants?? Who the hell are YOU to demand he turn loose of it?? LOL!! By the way, if you knew anything, you know Gates has given away TONS in charitable donations… and has SAID he’ll be shed of most of it by the time he dies, his kids will get a MINIMAL inheritance. So you don’t even know the goings on of the guy you use as an example… Jealous or something???
Then you said….”"”"A long time ago that was me, working for minimum wage, and you know what? 30 years ago, it was almost enough to survive. Nowadays, I know it is not. Yet I know how hard that person works, and what a valuable service they perform. Why should they live in constant stress, trembling at the thought of a dental emergency, or a car repair? Why do we not value their work enough to reward them with a living wage?
So your solution is “Big Brother” telling you how much money you can have?? How much you can keep???
You DO realize, there are LOTS of nations around the world, where the Gov puts a Microscope up your butt, and regulates you like a puppet! Why do guys like YOU, always insist WE have to turn into a country like that?? America must CHANGE, to please YOU! Why don’t YOU go to a place that runs, the way you want things run?? MUCH SIMPLER FIX for you… and leaves the REST of us alone! Now, as to the Comment above, Minimum wage was NEVER to “make a living on”…. it was the BASE PAY a KID entering the market place of labor HAD to get. STARTER wage… if you try living off it, well, you’re just not very smart…Having said that… WE are living right now, on about 12,000 a year. 1/5th of what the best I have made was..BUT, I saw this coming… My cars, Home, etc are all paid for. All I have to do is eat, keep the lights on, etc. And we’re doing well. Not as good as i’d LIKE, but well. New business venture is just about to lift off next month, so I expect to be back in the game SOON! LOL! Point is, you whine haw BAD it is, I say if you are smart and careful, it’s NOT so bad! I imagine many of the type people you cry about above… were living “above their means”….. then YES, you WILL be on the verge of losing it all, is the wind blows! What do you think caused the Housing market to CRASH????? Rich guys? Or STUPID PEOPLE??
Your focus is on the wrong thing. Another thing you should ask.. is WHY is everything so expensive?? I can remember, as a kid, my dad Bringing home like 160 a WEEK! we had a good home, a car, all we needed… today, people bring home (average guy) what, 4 times that week?? And he has.. THE SAME STUFF! No better off, yet he, and others have “went on strike” for more pay etc…. and all that’s been done, is to drive the cost of everything UP! But, what did they GAIN in the end?? NOTHING, still at the same “plain” in life…. house, car, food etc… people cannot want “more, and next year, more still… at some time, you reach a plateau where you cannot go any higher”… you “max out”…… only those with exceptional ideas etc go beyond… case in point… the KID who came up with the idea, of FACEBOOK! Now one of the wealthiest people in America! All he had, was an idea…. perhaps, if you’d moan about how much you were so “down trodden” LESS, and applied your mind MORE.. it COULD have been YOU!
Sorry, but tired of whiners at this level. Are there BAD people with money?? YEP! But then, who elected the people in DC who ALLOW it, and SET IT UP?? You’re barking at the wrong crowd….. See ya!
Oh, and Soros?? A RICH guy, who uses his money to FUND EVIL, and HAS used it numerous times, as a WEAPON!! Funny, how you seem “protective” of HIM!! Hmmmmm………
Yes, wealth is more concentrated. More facts:
http://www.datapointed.net/2011/03/relative-us-income-taxes-1913-2011/
Let’s also not forget the regressive payroll taxes. Worker who make under about 80k pay SS taxes on every dollar, while those who make more than 80k only pay on the first 80k.
@johngalt: @JC:
You can’t convert the greedy. In their mind .. it’s theirs ..they have a right to it..so screw everyone else. How many of the wealthiest Americans actually made their own wealth? How many inherited? How many just shuffled money around and profited from it, without producing anything tangible? The people here always seem to name 2 or 3 as self-made. They never mention the “inheritance billionaires” or the manipulators.
Now, what is so wrong with the rich being required to part with a little bit more of their immense disposable income, to take some of the pressure off the middle class? I’s part of living in a nation .. and contributing to its general wellness (& that of it’s citizens).
But, there will always be the ideologues, who believe that the rich have no responsibility for anyone else and that the poor, and middle class, should be turned into slaves, or left to wither and die.
Inherited Billionaires vs Self Made:
http://moneytipcentral.com/self-made-vs-inherited-billionaire-fortunes
You tell me.. which one is more? People who inherited or those who made it themselves?
And let’s talk millionaires:
http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip-offs/10-things-millionaires-wont-tell-you-23697/
Hmmm.. Seems a strong correlation to earning versus inheriting. I’m just saying.
Now, what is so wrong with the rich being required to part with a little bit more of their immense disposable income, to take some of the pressure off the middle class?
Lets alter that question a bit…. Why not ask the “poor” to do some work for the Government CHECK they get?? Ask that, and see the responses you receive….
Now I WILL agree, that if you are “rich enough… you should forgo the Social security check… SS was implemented to make sure people had “something” to fall back on it retirement, not to BE your total retirement! Hence, I don’t see a “foul” in cutting the well off,off, from the SS check, if they do not NEED the “help”….. THAT would be honest, fair and in keeping with the original design of the program….
Also of note, on the link chipset provided.. seems the good old USA ALLOWS more OPPORTUNITY for people to get and BE rich than anyone else!!! Now if the Gov would go back a bit, and get off of, and out of the way of, “business opportunity to GROW, I think we’d see things take off…. Problem NOW is, Obama has no plan, and is unpredictable! Hated Bush tax cuts, then was in favor, etc etc etc… no one wants to wager BIG money investments, when the Guy in charge, is both wishy washy, and unpredictable! Monday you invest.. Wednesday Obama changes his mind… you’re broke! STABILITY in leadership, and policy is KEY to investors laying the cash on the line…… With Obama at the helm forget it!
Hankster #72 AGREED. Happy St.Pat’s Day to all!
Dang!! that’s TWO!! LOL!! Are we “on a roll”????
@JC:
You have made so many comments here, and most of them are not based on fact or reality.
-Those “rich” people you so earnestly speak of include many small business owners that file their business taxes using personal income tax forms. On paper, they receive, or take in, enough to comfortably put them in the top tax bracket. However, after all the outgoing funds are distributed to things like any type of employee wages, stock replacement, and hundreds of small costs associated with running a business, they are left with middle class take-home pay or less. When their taxes are raised, it affects them more deeply than the CEO’s, or the truly high wage earners. Enough so that any employees they might have get less hours or laid off.
-The CEO’s you speak of receive their pay at a board’s discretion. Do some of them make well over what they should for their performance? Sure. But there are many others who, even while earning multi-million dollar salaries, bring the companies they run into higher profitability, which allows for more expansion and more lower wage jobs to be created. It is none of your business, unless you happen to be a shareholder of the company, what their salary and benefits are, nor should you or anyone else not associated with the company, and that includes the government, have any say in what anyone makes.
-Wages are entirely dependent on market forces. As the minimum wage is artificially raised, so is every other wage adjusted upward. This increases the cost of goods and services, and like I’ve told Greg numerous times, those making minimum wage end up in the same boat, or worse, when all is said and done.
-Those who gain large amounts of wealth from high incomes do not “sit” on their money. It isn’t taken out of circulation. They don’t bury old coffee cans full of money in their back yards, or keep stacks of cash under their mattresses. Their money is invested in things like real estate, stocks, bonds and the like. Their money goes back into circulation, to work for them and add to their wealth, and at the same time, it is put to work for others. Companies gain more capital for expansion, new products gain capital to increase their own market share, real estate is improved. All of that leads to more and more jobs for people, and not just minimum wage jobs but good paying ones. Bill Gates’ billions are working right now to not only make himself more, but by the companies he invests in. The same with Warren Buffett and any other super-wealthy person you can think of.
It’s not up to you, or anyone else to make anyone “responsible” in the arena of wages and benefits. The market corrects itself. If a CEO is very highly paid, but does a lousy job, then they are ousted and someone else brought in. If they do a good job, the employees working for the company benefit in higher wages and benefits, along with those who’ve invested in the company allowing them to invest more in that company, bringing more capital to the business, allowing for the prospect of further successes, and on, and on, and on. CEO’s are paid based on what the board thinks they can do for the company, and their performance in the job, and as incentive to do a good job for the company.
Your idea is to limit the ability of a company to provide incentive for it’s executive officers. That isn’t your business to do so. That rests solely on the company, and it’s board and shareholders.
The free-market, a truly free-market, is a wonderful thing. It self-corrects, punishes those who perform badly while rewarding those who perform well. It keeps wages from increasing astronomically, for a company paying wages well-above the market ranges prices itself out of competition in the market. It also keeps wages from being unusually low, for a company paying wages well-below the market ranges soon finds itself wanting for good employees(and that includes the executive officers).
Government intrusion into the market place artificially affects the market in areas, sometimes forcing companies to price themselves out of the market, either high or low. The free-market, when government intrudes, does not work well, either for business owners, executive officers, and those laborers who make the products and provide the services.
It is amazing to me that those with so little business background, or acumen, feel it necessary to want to force their will on businesses, and artificially affect the market, most oft-times to the detriment of the market.
@Hankster:
A lot of the poor are working, and paying taxes. Who is cashing government checks? Elderly people, rich and poor, who collect social security and medicare, people with disabilities, etc. It’s so convenient to imagine them all as caricatures, living so high on the hog with 100 bucks a month in food stamps, but that ain’t the reality.
And thanks Anit-Wacko, I realize the futility of arguing with those who won’t look at facts.
If a CEO is highly paid, and does a poor job, they get ousted (with a HUGE ASS compensation package) and then they run as a Republican (Meg Whitman, anyone?) Every asshole banker on Wall Street?
@JC: You said:
And your answer to this is to raise their wages? Okay fine. But when they work at a furniture store for minimum wage and you raise that wage, what do you suppose the owner of that store then has to do to the prices of his inventory?? Do you expect him to eat that increase in the cost of doing business?
It is clear that you have no concept of how the market place truly works.
Above all else, this taxing the “rich” talk and all the other talk needs to take a backseat to the overspending by the government.
Is their any reason why the federal budget this year should be as high as it is? $3.8 TRILLION. Think about that for a moment. Bush’s last full federal budget was $2.9Trillion, while the government revenues were $2.7Trillion.
Estimated government revenues for this budget year are $2.2Trillion or so. Out of that, just over $1Trillion will come from individual income taxes. Even if the highest tax rates were increased to pre-Bush years, it’d still only be about $1.1Trillion, or, a $100Billion increase. And our deficit? Still well over $1Trillion.
This tax talk is meaningless at this point in time. Government spending is the real culprit to both our current budget problems, and the unfunded liabilities to come due in the near future.
@anticsrocks:
Neither him, nor Greg, understand the workings of business and how the market system works. This is why they continue to espouse their views of evil “rich” people taking advantage of the “poor”. They lean towards social systems that do not work, have never worked, and will not ever work, and denounce free-market principles that do work, have always worked, and will continue to work.
The artificial effects they wish to impose on business, and the free-market, cause disruptions in the market itself, most oft-times to it’s detriment, which they then point to and claim the free-market does not work. In short, they cause the very issues they complain about.
Common sense left their minds a long time ago, leaving bitter, jealous people who’s only answer to everything financial is to take more and more from those who have it.
@johngalt, #76:
Aren’t costs such as employee wages, stock replacements, business equipment, etc, generally subtracted before the small business owner finally gets down to the “taxable income” line?
If what they’re left with after operating costs have been subtracted out is a middle class income, their attitudes about progressive taxation might have a lot more in common with the middle class working person’s than with earners whose income falls into the top 10 percent.
I think the great majority of small business owners actually are part of the beleaguered middle class. Those who speak loudest about small business often aren’t “small” in the average small business owner’s usual sense of the word.
This isn’t to say that there’s no legitimate reason for complaint about the overall complexity of tax law for average small business owners. That’s a separate issue from progressive taxation rates.
JC,
I guess working hard and trying to improve yourself doesn’t count. You see, by your definition, I should be poor with nothing to show for my effort.
Are you saying if the following happens to a person, there’s no way they should ever achieve anything?
1. Mother spent a fair portion of her adult life on welfare.
2. Father figure spent most of his life in prison.
3. Biological father not around, never provided child support.
4. When parents did work, the children had to assist to make ends meet.
5. Grew up in public housing/section 8 housing
6. When not in public housing, the apartments were appalling.
That was me. I didn’t blame anyone for my plight in life. My mother made her choices. I didn’t make mistakes like having children at 17/18 years old. I got a job and paid my way through college. By my mid 20s, I was making more than anyone else in my entire family. Work ethic, dedication and education got me where I am today.
I got an up close education on what government assistance does to people. It makes people yearn not to work, but to complain about their government checks. With those government checks come strings. There’s a fine line between working and collecting a government check for roughly the same amount. For those who don’t look at the big picture, they see the effort as not worth it.
You say that someone shouldn’t earn more than a given amount of money. Your 7.5 million dollar figure for example, is only the beginning. You see, they typically won’t spend the entire salary and they will invest it. After a couple years, they can make a substantial portion of money simply off the earning of their money. What are you going to do about that? And what about the jobs that money creates by investing in other businesses? Should that money be taken away.
You see, I have been on the very poor spectrum. Spending nights in shelters. Holidays in prison visiting rooms. Being forced to go to the store to buy a package of ramen on food stamps so the change could be used to buy cigarettes. Never being truly hungry, but never having new clothes, a nice place to live, or even a new car. My mother made those choices.
So, when I see what someone can do to bring themselves out of the poorest ranks, I know what doesn’t work. Giving someone something for nothing only buys you another beggar in a different form. And taking from those who produce to give to those who don’t is simply going to grow more open hands. At some point, someone will say the effort just isn’t worth the extra effort for diminishing returns.
This is the real world. Learn about it.
@Greg:
Not all of outgoing payments are tax deductible, nor is all that is deductible entirely deductible.
Have you ever owned and/or ran a small business? If you had, I seriously doubt you’d be claiming what you do about taxation. Progressive taxation is rooted in socialist philosophy, Greg, and has nothing whatsoever to do with “fairness”.
As for our tax system itself, it is overly burdensome to all who pay any type of income taxes. It is the epitome of something that is not “fair”. I state this, and I haven’t made over $100k a year in my life yet.
The amount of government revenue gained from personal income taxes, is getting smaller and smaller percentage-wise, as compared to the outgoing government payments from the treasury. Even at a 90% clip for the highest bracket, our deficit would still be well over $1Trillion on the year. Taxation is dumb to discuss in the face of a government spending not only the money we currently don’t have, but also the monies our children and grandchildren don’t have.
The fact that you and JC and airheads like Moore are even talking about raising taxes at this time shows your ignorance to the actual financial problems our country is facing right now.
@johngalt, #80:
How can it be meaningless? The result we get by by subtracting the total amount being spent by the government from the total amount of taxes being collected by the government is what tells us if the budget is balanced or not. Each figure is an equally important half of a problem that comes down to simple arithmetic.
Arguing this to be meaningless tends to distract us from the fact that we had tax cuts that are disproportionately weighted in favor of those having the highest incomes in place for 8 years, that we have just extended them in spite of our deficits, and that those who have most benefitted from them are strongly pushing to make such tax cuts permanent and even greater.
It seems to me that we’ve got to deal with both factors.
@JC: People get paid for the amount they can contribute. If a person has no skills, should he get paid as much as person who has developed skills? Was Joe Namath worth the $500K he was paid back then? Is Manning worth $20millionn per year. The answer is yes if they can produce add value to something. You want everyone to get paid a living wage for doing nothing to enhance their skills. The, you fail to determine what a living wage is. Should a living wage include payments on a flat screen TV with HD cable? How many car payments should a family be allowed and still be considered as living wage? You want people who make poor decisions in life to be equal to those who actually created something. People who had an idea and made it reality. I think it is time to move on from this thread. Greg and JC have no idea what they are talking about. What they need is to spend some time in a socialist country and really see how well distribution of wealth really works! Good luck guys.
@JC: IN 1972, I had $.50 in my pocket and a full tank of gas in my moter cycle. I bought two hamburgers and found a minimum wage job a few days later. I didn’t have health insurance. I lived in an old trailer paying $100 per month. I didn’t feel that I was disrespected, I felt I had made some poor decisions and vowed not to make them again. Right now, I am considered the “rich” by you lefties. I did that by saving my money, working hard, improving my education and forgoing things many of the poor in this country can not do with out. )TV, cell phone, New car, microwave, etc.) The difference is that you do not want to take responsibility for your poor decisions and to do anything about it except try to take money from others who earned it.
@JC: Wrong again JC. Don’t you get tired of being wrong. You are still spewing the Carter spin. If you are going to be respected here, you need to get your facts straight!
Wrong again JC. Don’t you get tired of being wrong? You are still spewing the Carter spin. If you are going to be respected here, you need to get your facts straight!
“”Snicker Snicker”…..
I read Chipsets last post above, maybe you two clowns should too!! He’s a guy who DID IT RIGHT! He started out at the bottom, and educated himself out of there….. Case Closed! those who WANT out, can do so! We need to get the Business sector going again, so they will have a place to move up TOO!! It would go faster, if Class/Rich envy guys like you would stop blocking the road with fiscally irresponsible “dreams”… and GET REAL!
If you’re not part of the SOLUTION, you are part of the PROBLEM!
@Greg:
You talk about a tax cut that even the dems claim as $600Billion over 10 years. That runs to $60 Billion a year, roughly, using their own math. Now, their figures are wrong because they don’t take into account any effects on job creation or deletion and the added tax revenue due to that, nor the expansion/or lack of expansion of businesses by continuing the tax cut or ending it.
But to get back to the dems own numbers, that $60Billion is only 3.75% of the projected deficit, or 1.5% of the total projected budget for this year. We’re not talking about something that would even come close to balancing the budget, and the negative effects of tax increases on the economy are not understood by the liberals, and nor do they care to understand the negative effects. My guess is that their $600billion number doesn’t take any realities into consideration.
As I said before, any talk of tax increases on the “rich” is meaningless at this point when our federal government is spending much, much more than the “rich” could ever hope to make up for, even at highest tax rates the country has ever seen.
So, not only is your talk about taxation on the “rich” continually and absolutely wrong, but you are missing the forest for the trees. The highest priority of our President and Congress right now should be the budget deficits and their negative impact on the economy. Instead, they continue to ignore the problem to the detriment of us all. The next president of our country will have an even larger problem on his/her hands than the current one. What are we to do? Keep kicking the can down the road? What your insisting on is akin to having a bill for $100 dollars with only $60 in your pocket, and yet you are more concerned about picking up the few pennies on the ground instead of why you have a bill for $100 in the first place.
1.Someone who is born into a rich family and has loving parents that are willing to spend top$$ for private schools is going to end up being more successful then someone who was born into a family of abusive crackheads.
2. Someone who is born in north korea or Iraq isn’t going to have the same opportunities as someone born in lets say london or the U.S.A.
3. Someone who kisses ass and plays golf with the boss is probably going to get the promotion before the guy that doesn’t.
4. My friend who’s entire family works for verizon got him a union job right out of high school and look what he gets because he was juiced in.
.80,000 a year
. Full free medical(top of the line ppo plan)
. 4 weeks paid vacation.
. 3 weeks paid sick days.
. 401k with a huge company match.
He didn’t even go to college and just got out of rehab for drugs and is a lazy bastard but has it better then the majority of americans. DID HE WORK HARD FOR WHAT HE HAS OR DID HE JUST GET LUCKY?????????????????? EXACTLY I REST MY CASE. The majority of rich people are lucky and should pay way more in taxes considering it was LUCK that got them there wealth anyway.
OK, we play your little game then. Take the money from the rich and plop it into your lap. Guess what, you’re now rich which means that money will now have to be gutted out from your ownership and then spread evenly again. Wealth will only gravitate towards people who operate in a market and away from those refusing to operate.
We all operate in the market. Money is supposed to circulate – that’s the idea. There will always be some disparity. That’s okay.
But in the U.S., wages for working people have been stagnant for three decades, while the rich have increased their holdings exponentially. Take a look at the heydey of the unions, when the blue collar workers were making a decent wage. The savings rate was much higher. Why? Because they could feed their families and still have a little left over. Industry boomed, because there were more consumers who were able to purchase goods in the market.
You only see two possible conditions: Rich and poor. But most of us are happiest somewhere in between. Working, feeling productive, and making enough money to take care of our needs and a few desires.
It’s about what we value. Do we value work? Then work should pay a living wage. Very simple. Does your heroic capitalist value the work of the employees who make his company operate? The smart ones do.
@Hankster:
Don’t worry, my self-esteem doesn’t come from arguing with you punks. I was born between a factory and a railroad track. I have hung out with the destitute and desperate, the rich and famous, and the learned and powerful. I worked my way, by myself, from welfare mom to PhD. Got that? It was hard, almost killed me. I got nothing for free. I worked shitty jobs of all sorts, including wiping butts in a nursing home for minimum wage, selling auto parts, etc. None of those jobs came with health care. I have a pre-existing condition (diagnosed during childhood) and for some reason, the wonderful free market doesn’t want me as a customer, and won’t sell me health insurance for any price. But I didn’t get bitter, I got busy. And you know what? I have compassion for those who, like me, are trying to work their way out of poverty. And I respect those people who work their asses off, even when work doesn’t really pay. I respect them more than those who come from privilege. And I pity those who inherit their money, and don’t have a chance to really test their own mettle.
And remember, when you judge the working poor who have credit card debt and don’t save, remember that like me, they may have had to charge a bottle of insulin, or a doctor visit, and they will pay usurious interest rates for that.
I just think this country works best when people like Chip and me have the opportunity to achieve whatever we are motivated to achieve. Hard work should get you out of poverty. That is the point I am making. Otherwise the American dream is dead.
Besides, Bush cut taxes on the rich a decade ago. Why didn’t that create jobs? Why didn’t that increase revenue? Your whole approach has already been debunked.
@Life is all luck.: You are a moron. According to you, the only way someone gets wealth is because they are lucky?
I call bullshit on that statement.
A small, small partial list of immigrants to the United States that did NOT inherit their wealth:
Levi Strauss, founder of Levi Strauss & Co. – first maker of blue jeans
Sergey Brin – co founder of Google
Lewis Prang – father of the modern Christmas Card
Arnold Schwarzenegger – body builder, actor and politician
Hyman Rickover, Admiral – father of the modern Nuclear Navy
Madeline Albright – former US Secretary of State
Joseph Pulitzer – journalist and publisher, Pulitzer prize named after him
The list goes on and on, this is just a few that I know of off the top of my head.
A study of New Yorkers that are children of immigrants are much more upwardly mobile and have better educations than their immigrant parents. – Source
Your jealousy of those “evil rich people” is pitiful.
@JC: You said:
Sorry JC. You are the one that is wrong on this. Maybe you should do some reading before you speak next time. Here, let me do the work for you…
Hmmm, let’s see. The effects of the Bush tax cuts on employment? Jobs went from a net loss of 267,000 to a net gain of 307,000 NEW jobs.
Sorry JC, but thanks for playing.
@ JC
Carlos Slim:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_10/b4024065.htm
Bill Gates: Just see for yourself – http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx
I read your story, very inspiring. I say that with zero sarcasm. The problem is, you see our stance as greedy and without compassion. I see your stance as wanting to take something from someone that you haven’t earned. You say you don’t know the people with a lack of desire I speak of, but I see them all the time. I have some that work for me. They do not want added responsibility, they don’t want to be put on an on-call rotation, they don’t want to go to COMPANY PAID TRAINING, or they just don’t want to move out of their comfort zone. Oh, they want more money. They want to be paid just as much as those that do take on the added responsibility. So don’t tell me people like that aren’t out there.
I think I read that you are a teacher. I don’t know if you are in a union or not, public school/university or private. Why would teachers not want competition? The public is held hostage by the education system because we pay the taxes for public education, whether you have kids or not. I say hostage because the only alternative is to pay extra for private school. If the money it costs to send a kid to public school was given to the parent at the beginning of the year in the form of a voucher, how many would continue to send their children to public schools? I believe the first year it would be around 25%. Once the private sector saw the possibilities that number would grow every year. Private schools would begin to recruit the best teachers and pay them accordingly. Would the very rich be at an advantage to send their kids to better schools? They already are. It would give the rest of us the same choices they have now. But liberals don’t want choice. They want to everyone to receive the same thing. They don’t want you to be able to fire a crappy teacher, because that teacher has the right to a “living wage.” So your kid suffers, thank you teacher’s union.
Not defending crappy teachers. I work with some and they should get out of the business. Just like there are crappy people in any profession. And I assure you, there are plenty of crappy teachers in private schools, which are motivated by profit, and have their own ways of shortchanging students and their educations.
But, why is it that everyone understands “you get what you pay for,” except when it comes to education? How can we demand excellence and not reward it? I am an excellent professor, I get nominated for awards, I get excellent reviews, and my students go on to be quite successful, but after five years on the job, I have not had one raise. Why? Because there are cuts to education every year. My employer says, yes you are good, and productive, you are valuable, and you make less than the market rate, but we can’t pay any more, because our Governor is trying to eliminate the corporate income tax. If you are the parent of a student, is that how you want your child’s teacher to be treated? And yes, I am in a union, and believe me, they are not as powerful as you think they are. In fact, they are kept so busy trying to stave off pay cuts and layoffs that negotiating increases is not on the agenda.
If I were motivated by money I would not have chosen education as a profession. But the price of survival has gone up substantially in the past few years. Food, gasoline, utilities, everything. Wages, however, have not risen, and income has only increased for those at the very top. Is this because they are working harder? I think not. It is because policies favor them, including things like payroll taxes, which are the bane of wage earners but barely noticeable for those at the high end of the scale.
Most of the rich people I know (many of them friends of mine) would be happy to pay a bit more in taxes to maintain the kind of society they want to live in. They know that their lifestyle would not be substantially affected by a 5, or even 10% increase. They know that a country full of desperately poor, poorly educated, sickly people is not a nice place to live. Most people, rich or poor, would agree that the American dream is built on 40 hours a week being enough to provide a basic standard of living.
Since you decided not to even address my comments that set you straight on the Bush tax cuts, here is a question for you, JC.
Let’s say that you write a book this year and it becomes a best seller, gets on the NY Times Best Seller List and you make $10 million dollars.
How much should you pay in taxes on that income? 30%? 40%? 50%? 60%? 70%?
How much of your hard earned income should your government confiscate??
@anticsrocks: You should have add “and piss away” to the last sentence!
@anticsrocks LOL your moron insult just shows how immature you are you pathetic piece of trash. Life is all luck and if you haven’t figured that out yet your living in a dream world kid.
@Life is all luck.: It is evident that you have no interest in honest debate. Should I have called you a moron? No. But I did and it stands, get over it.
Now that the petty insults are out of the way, I noticed you completely glossed over the points I made. Your inability to bring forth a reasoned argument about your assertion that all rich people inherit or fall into their money by luck is sad, really.
Come on now, what are you afraid of? I gave you a small, partial list of successful people who got that way by hard work, not luck. And you gave what back? Insults? Ignoring the issue?
You’ll have to do better than that here at FA, if you want to be taken seriously.
@Randy: Amen!
@anticsrocks:
Great comment about the mobility of Americans from poor to middle class to rich.
I’ve seen it over and over in hubby’s family as well as some of my family.
(I have a flaky bro and a late sister who never wanted more than to hunt and gather, so that’s what they did.)
I have also seen it among neighbors, especially their children.
They grow up, get married, are fairly poor but struggle to finish school and LO & BEHOLD get quite well off.
Poverty is not a straight jacket in the USA like it is in, say, Muslim countries where you cannot take out loans.
But one thing I really had hope for with Obama was that he’d get America’s black youth to stop thinking that getting ahead by studying and working hard was ”acting white.”
He’s had 2+ years and nary a dent in that.
It is really too bad.
@anticsrocks:
Even at 70% I am richer than most Americans. That’s my point. Three million would support my modest lifestyle for the rest of my life.
These taxes have traditionally been higher, and have never stopped people from wanting to get rich. The recent argument was over raising them to 38%.
Oh, and here are some facts for you: http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/18/news/economy/obama_budget_cbo/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
@JC: Okay, you are happy with $3 million. Fine.
Now let’s suppose that you take that 70% tax bracket and apply it to yourself and let’s say you own a small store. You work 7 days a week, most days you put in 16 hours and at the end of the year, your income is $300,000.00 dollars. (still in the top tier tax brackets) After what you consider to be a fair tax amount, you are left with $90,000.00.
Yes, $90,000 bucks.
You also have business expenses, salaries, etc… that come out of this $90,000 and after that you made $15,000.00 dollars if you are lucky. Still sound fair to you?
As for your link, well you read into it what you want. Bottom line is that under Obama, the economy will not prosper as he is so very anti-business. Oh he may call for a freeze in discretionary spending, but that is only AFTER he raised it 24%! If you include the stimulus, which as we are finding out isn’t a “one time thing” like he promised, then he raised it a whopping EIGHTY FOUR PERCENT!!
That is akin to being in a car heading towards a cliff edge, slamming down on the accelerator and then saying that you won’t go any faster!
From the source you cite:
But you go ahead and think it is because Obama is a tax cutter. That is laughable, at best.
@anticsrocks here is a question for you. Do you honestly believe that every person that has more wealth then you has it because they worked harder or they are smarter then you???? or do you believe that every person that has less then you is because they are lazy or dumb???? I can assure you that there are people in this world that are not as smart or as hard working as you and i and have millions more then you or i will ever have because lady luck was on there side. My father probably has a net worth of somewhere between 10-12 million which i’m sure we can both agree is a very nice nest egg for a 62 yr old man but at the same time there are people that make 12 million in one year. Are those people who make 12 million in one year that much smarter then my old man???? even though he has made more then 99.9% of the population with he 10 to 12 million net worth. Luck is a huge factor in life and you need to acknowledge it.
@ JC
Excellent post JC. I recently decided I wanted a Master’s Degree. I had a bunch of college credits and could have finished my BS in something like Telecom Management. But I wanted a Master’s in software engineering. So, I had to take a lot of new classes. I’m almost done and I spend $13,500 a year for college. In one year I have 10 professors, 5 per semester. My classes average 20 students. Let’s say the professor teaches 4 classes. Take half for administrative costs, which in the business sector is insane, (my company figures in 35% for overhead) and you have $54,000 to pay the professor. I figure that’s four hours of classroom work, and another four for building curriculums, grading, test prep, and meeting. And that’s if the professor does not teach summer semester. There is a lot of time off in there for holidays and break, which I begrudge no one. I think the administrative costs are pretty outrageous if it is actually half.
Now move to high schools. The cost per child where I live is $8500 a year. Average class size, 25. High School is different, they have the same teaching team all year, and every teacher teaches all day. So all the teachers have about 25 kids in class at all times. Maybe they have one period off, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they don’t. That’s $246,500 per teacher. Take half for the administrative costs and you are left with $123,250. I’m not getting what I pay for. I would pay more, if I were able to choose the school and the teachers.
As for the governor lowering the corporate taxes, in the long run you will win. I don’t know who your governor is, but it sounds like he or she is trying to lure business back in. When that happens, it will broaden the tax base and there will be more money for schools. Even though I’m not really a fan of the government subsidizing colleges, or agricultur, or anything else. If you can’t pay for it, you should get loans. A person will invest tons of money into their cars and houses, but not themselves? The military pays for college education and you get life experience that is almost impossible for an employer to overlook. My company seeks out veterans for their discipline, leaderships skills, and the technical knowledge they possess. There is Americorps, City Year (or whatever that program is), grants, scholarships, and all kinds of other programs. In Georgia, we have the Hope Scholarship. The lottery funds it but the government runs it, and for a while they were doing a pretty good job. They recently raised the requirements from having and maintaining a 3.0 GPA to a 3.4 GPA. People were outraged. Really? They pay all tuition and books to any college in Georgia. And maintaining a 3.4 GPA is too much to ask for a free college education?
@JC Don’t bother trying to convince these greedy pigs that that the rich don’t pay there far share because there greedy minds can’t comprehend that FACT.
@anticsrocks:
Your calculations are incorrect. Nobody at that income level is actually paying that much, and they are not taxed at 70% for 100% of their income. Not how it works.
Even if it did work that way, 90k is still not jeopardizing anybody’s survival.
@Life is all luck.:
Life, you are right. I’m done with this.
@Life is all luck.:
One more thing, what does the resentment of teachers and other public servants represent except some kind of pathetic class war, where these RWers try to incite the miserable to hate the slightly less miserable?
@Life is all luck.:
Only in most cases.
When we subsidize 35% of our people to sit on their butts and receive a paycheck, we are destroying America.
@anticsrocks:
Liberals are often unwilling to make such a judgment, because, once they get 50%, then they want 60% (and they will use all the same arguments).
As a conservative, I think the total we ought to be taxed is 30%, so once sales taxes and property taxes are figured in to that, the federal government, ought to be taxing us around 20-25%.
EVERYONE should pay taxes. There should not be any class of people who get a free ride (apart from maybe 1% of our population who really are unable to function normally).
I could live with a graduated tax code of 10-25%, as long as no one was excluded.
Those are my ideal markers.
I’m sure that many of us agree that our economy would take off like never before.
@JC:
Not exactly true. Because of property taxes, it is possible for a person to be taxed at over 100% of their income.
@JC:
You worked your way up by working hard, by being willing to do almost any job that needed to be done, and because you are apparently intelligent. This is all good; and it should make you proud to be an American. In most societies, where you started is where you would have ended up.
I hope you thanked God a million times as well.
@Life is all luck.: You said:
Sorry luckless, that isn’t the way it works. I posted a small, partial list of successful HARDWORKING people, who did not fall into their wealth and status. You posited that the only way folks get “rich” is by luck. I call bullsh*t on you and your comments.
Until you back up what you say, you don’t get to ask questions and be taken seriously at all.
Thanks for (not) playing. Have a nice day with your petty jealousy and class warfare.
@JC: You said:
Really?
First of all, YOU chose the 70% tax bracket in the example I gave, not I.
Secondly, the tax bracket for anyone making $300,000.00 is presently 33%, for the $10 million example, it is presently 35%. But give or take 2% they are in the same tax bracket, practically.
So that means that a small business owner very well could end up in the same tax bracket as the millionaire. YOU chose 70%, so that is what I used in the second example.
According to you, a small business owner gets to work his ass off all year, pay his bills, meet his payroll and after taxes he gets to pay himself around $15,000.00.
Wow. And the liberals think they know how to stimulate the economy… LOL
You and luckless can call names all you want, or at least as much as the moderators will allow but it does nothing to change the facts.
You completely ignored it when I destroyed your fallacies on the Bush tax cuts, instead you and your little buddy, luckless chose to call us greedy, when YOU advocate a 70% tax on the wealth creators in this country.
I wonder how it isn’t class warfare to try to incite the public against TEACHERS and their HUGE PAYCHECKS (not)
JC,
Real easy.. It’s not class warfare. It’s economics. With a projected 2+ billion dollar shortfall, people are going to have to make cuts. Are you saying the public sector should be immune from economic changes that the private sector has to deal with?
With the liberal, I am beginning to believe that there is never enough.
They never tax enough; they can always tax more.
For gay issues, they always want more. As I have asserted previously, gay marriage is not the end game but just a secure foothold.
They cannot seem to give out enough free lunches, put enough people on welfare, or give enough stuff away. It just never has a stopping point.
@JC:
This shows a complete misunderstanding of what is happening in WI. Budget shortfalls in the near term, and unfunded liabilities for the state in the long term are what is driving the GOP to limit collective bargaining for public employee unions. The state doesn’t have the money.
You said this:
But before that, just a couple posts up, you said this:
The average high school teacher salary in WI is just over $56k.
http://www.cbsalary.com/state-salary-chart.aspx?specialty=High+School+Teacher&cty=&sid=WI&kw=High+School+Teacher&jn=jn031&edu=&tid=22928
For 9 months of work, that averages to $6,222/month, and extrapolated out to 12 months, equals nearly $75k. And that doesn’t include the benefits packages which are well above what the average wage earner receives in WI. Now, for someone making $90k/year, it averages to $7500/month, or, roughly $1300/month less. But, if the benefits packages are figured in, the figures become much, much closer to one another, particularly as the teachers rarely have to pay anything out of pocket.
So, are the teachers miserable? Or, are they doing well enough for you that they don’t need any more, and in fact, can be limited as to what they make because, paraphrasing your words, they are not in jeopardy of survival?
@Life is all luck.:
There is quite a bit of difference in discussing wealth, and income. They are two, entirely separate, financial entities. Income can add to wealth, and investing wealth wisely can add to income, but they aren’t the same.
You make these statements:
You state that as an absolute, however, I can give you examples of quite the opposite. Because of the inherent wrongness of your statement, I will disregard it.
Last I checked, our income tax code, and the Constitution, applied to those who are citizens in our country. Even though you are correct about the opportunities, it isn’t applicable when discussing the U.S. and how taxes are applied to our citizens.
Personal experience? From either side? Yes, favoritism exists in the workplace, but I don’t believe it’s the norm. And, when discussing small business owners and entrepreneurs, favoritism isn’t applicable to them, as it is they, themselves who are making the decisions for their business, and in large part, determine how successful their ventures are. Also, that statement reeks of jealousy more than anything.
One example does not an argument make. While I agree their are many cases out there like that, there are also many more cases where someone starts out, works hard, invests wisely, and makes themselves very successful despite obstacles thrown their way, yet, I won’t sit here and argue that all who make it big do so by their own hand.
Are they? You don’t know for certain, just as I could not claim as an absolute that everyone who is rich got that way by their own hard work. Does the Constitution state that LUCK should be a determining factor in treatment of individual citizens?
In other words, no citizen shall be treated unequally in regards to the laws of the country, and taking property from someone, just because someone else believes they were “lucky” to get that property, is against the Constitution.
Later on, in another post, you state this:
So now we are greedy pigs? I’d bet if you were to take a poll here that most of us would state net worths many, many times lower than what your father has. It’s hard to be a “greedy pig” when I’m not even in the target group for your hate, and yet, I will defend those you deem a “greedy pig” because what you suggest isn’t what our founding father’s wrote down all those years ago, nor is it anywhere near in the spirit of the Constitution. You have no right to their wealth, nor do you have any right to claim it for the government, regardless of how they came upon it. Whether they received it through “luck”, or hard work, it is theirs, not yours. Our Declaration stated that “all men are created equal” and the right to “pursue happiness.” It never stated that all men were to end up equal. Our Constitution guarantees us equality under the law, and from the government. The Constitution has never allowed the government to take from one and give to another, to engender equality amongst us. That goes against everything our founding fathers fought for.
You may envy those who have more than you. You may even be jealous of them. Neither of those gives you a right to take it away from them.
You and JC need to look long and hard at yourself, and the principles and ideals our founding fathers set forth for us, and decide how and why you have turned away from them, and then decide if that truly is a good thing that you have done so.
@Randy:
JC in his/her last post above, has demonstrated a TEXTBOOK “switch, duck, and spin away” maneuver…something all “Died in the Wool” Liberals know by HEART! When you fight a losing cause, when your opponents have all but handed you your derriere on a platter….. in other words, YOU LOST the argument… bring up an unrelated “hot topic” to divert attention from your failed rants.. and move onto another (albeit also a loser) topic in an attempt to “save face”…… Not surprised here! LOL!!
And it Looks like John Galt has already polished up the NEXT “platter” ready for you! (will they (Libbies) ever learn??) tsk tsk tsk…
“Unknown” once said “If you can’t dazzle em with BRILLIANCE, baffle em with BULLSCHIT”!!
And so it goes…..
and JC.. “PUNKS”??? LOL!! Yeah right. You libs are a never ending source of amusement!
Who is greedy??
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/27134.html
Oh, and then there is this. Yeah, unions are all about the people.
http://www.businessinsider.com/seiu-union-plan-to-destroy-jpmorgan
Yes, who is greedy?
http://www.economist.com/node/319862
Oh, and just in case you all don’t know, JP Morgan Chase is not the U.S. Government. They plotted to steal from their customers, and now the customers plot their downfall. That’s called capitalism.
Hankster That’s “dyed in the wool” no killing involved.
Lib. subject change. Just picked up “The Best Of Chuck Berry” 11 hits from Maybelline ’55 to No Particular Place To Go ’64. Also S.R.V.’S “Couldn’t Stand The Weather”.5 bucks each at Walmarts. Best to you.
@ Rich Wheeler… Wise guy! LOL! Good scores there… SRV was killer! too bad he had to die so early… no telling where he would have gone/led music wise…
hey, contact me via “daisy-alexander-17@yahoo.com” leaving out the dashes,&leaving no spaces…. have something you might be interested in…. music wise
Here’s another way to look at the fact that America’s rich are already paying more than the rich of most civilized countries:
The top ten percent of American taxpayers pay more to the national government in taxes, both as a percentage of the total taxes collected and in proportion to their share of the national income, than upper-income taxpayers in any other developed country. This chart says it all:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/media/OECDIncomeTaxChart0077.jpg
@ JC
The government is its own worse enemy when it comes to taxes. Every idiot in a committee has to try to find a way to get their people the best deal. What they create is a big bucket of loopholes. Who has the lawyers at their disposal to find those loopholes? Corporations. Can you fault a corporation for taking advantage of a loophole? No. In an effort to “level the playing field,” the US Congress believes some corporations are more equal than others. To take advantage of tax breaks, all you have to do is meet the qualifications of what Congress wants more equal.
Even so, I take it you have no comment on the US having the most progressive tax system in the world? That the top 10% in this country pay more than the top 10% in any other country and this little tidbit:
~snip
JC said:
Seriously? You have a source for that? And now the plan is busted and the guy that plotted it will be getting a pardon from Obama if his corrupt Justice Department will even prosecute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
The US corporate tax rate is 0-35%
In fact, most of them pay closer to zero:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/12/us-usa-taxes-corporations-idUSN1249465620080812
Wikipedia – ROFLMAO!
What a great, credible source…
Yes, I’m sure Reuters is a left-wing source too. When the facts are against you, attack the source.
anticrocks, do you have another source that refutes the 0-36% number that is more credible?
Aqua, there is plenty of evidence that Wall Street, with the wink/nod/lookaway of regulators, set up ridiculous, unsustainable schemes that were destined to fail, but they played them as long as they could for short term gain, at our expense:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/harsh-words-for-regulators-in-crisis-commission-report/
Here is the horses’ mouth: http://www.fcic.gov/
And if you all are going to say, “who can blame corporations for exploiting every loophole,” just ask yourselves, who can blame the working man for fighting any way he can for his own survival?
@JC: I am not arguing tax rates. I set up a theoretical question and you took the bait, saying that the top tax rate of 70% is fair.
I took your tax rate and showed how it chokes the life out of small business owners.
Nowhere, at any time have I argued about what the current rates are.
Stop changing the issue, JC. Answer my questions in comment #117.
I never said 70% was fair. Go re-read what I wrote.
I said, if I made 10 million, and was taxed at 70% (even though that ‘s not how it works) I would still have 3 million dollars. I said I could live on that.
Fair is always a relative term, isn’t it? But it sounds so ugly when the very comfortable cry “unfair.”
@anticsrocks ok since you are to much of a turd to answer my question ill end my part of this debate with the following. NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU WORK OR HOW MUCH YOU SAVE I WILL INHERIT MILLIONS FROM MY OLD MAN AND WILL ALWAYS HAVE MORE THEN YOU SO FUCK YOU LOSER HAHAHAHA.
You know, i’ve gotten into several “fights” in here, as well as others to be sure but your Comment there, takes it to the LOWEST level I’ve seen here, that at least I can personally remember! You’re going to be rich?? Well Goody for you! Wonder if you’ll want to give it all away in taxes…..since you seem to want to see others do so! Be sure to LEAD BY EXAMPLE when you get all that dough!! I’m betting you won’t… because you are a fraud….. Now, don’t let the door hit ya in the butt on the WAY OUT!! Because sorry to tell you, it’s YOU, who are the loser, with that last comment. see ya! LOL!
@Hankster: I am with you on that one, Hankster. ‘Ol luckless is one french fry short of a Happy Meal, IMHO.
I did answer the question that was put forth even before luckless posted it. My initial reply to luckless proved him/her wrong. But since I didn’t answer the way he/she wanted, and since I blew him/her out of the water intellectually then insults and vulgarities was all the ammo to be had by ‘ol luckless.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/03/ten_giant_us_companies_avoidin.html
Who pays their share?
JC… the DEMOCRATS controlled Congress during those Time periods…. so.. why didn’t they “correct” the tax codes to fix this??? Why are you all over the CONSERVATIVES over this??? YOUR GUYS did nothing… so, WHO is the Party of the Rich??? I see GE is missing from that list!! GE paid virtually NOTHING.. and lets see.. WHO in Jeffery Immelt PALS with?? Hmmmm OBAMA! The big Zero even made Immelt a .. well read for your self!”
“Despite $14.2 billion in worldwide profits – including more than $5 billion from U.S. operations -
GE did not pay a dime in taxes in 2010.
Obama said: “Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. It makes no sense. It has to change.”
But in typical Obama fashion of saying one thing and doing the exact opposite, in January Obama named General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the President’s economic advisory board focused on job creation. “”
Read it all at…http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/from-the-right/some-evil-corporations-are-more-equal-than-others-in-liberal-land-118708649.html
Point is, Repubs take the RAP.. but the FACTS of who is “behind the “Evil Rich” not paying taxes” is NOT the Republicans…. so go blow!
Here is the story from 2007. “Democrats took control of the House and Senate after 12 years of nearly unbroken Republican rule.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010400802.html
Cutting taxes for the rich was Bush’s agenda and you know that. You defend it. 8 years of Bush. Democratic congress for three years, Democratic president for three of the last 11 years.
And don’t think I’m defending democrats. They have been enablers. But all these bad ideas
came from your side, my friend. Endless, expensive wars, (Iraq, a total war of choice, was going to pay for itself. How much has it cost?) tax cuts for the rich, etc. Republican ideas. They’ve all sold us down the river, but your guys were plotting the course.
@JC: You said:
Sorry JC, I blew you out of the water on this one way back in comment #96.
The tax cuts Bush imposed helped EVERYONE.
You cannot argue against facts.
@JC: You said:
Really? So Democrats NEVER cut taxes? Only the GOP want tax cuts, huh?
I seem to remember that in 1964, JFK cut taxes across the board. Gee, what Party affiliation did he have? Oh yeah! He was a Democrat.
You also said:
How much has the Iraq war cost?
Less that Obama’s Stimulus Bill, that is for sure. According to the Congressional Budget Office, anyway:
Funny, I don’t hear you complaining about the cost of the Stimulus…
Also you completely discount the number of lives saved by our invasion of Iraq. Saddam was killing over 4,000 people a month. He had used WMD’s on his own people and his sons were just as brutal as he was, so the killing would have continued after he left power, assuming they took his “throne.”
Look, JC it is plain that you have a very Marxist view of wealth distribution and tax policy. But try to stick to the facts when you make a comment.
Its less embarrassing for you that way.
Heaven only knows if JC is still around… altho 34 of the comments in this thread are by him, despite his claim he was “done with this” 34 comments ago. But I guess he couldn’t resist dashing in with revisionist history. What is it about the desperately partisan that insist life began and ended only with Bush the younger’s presidency?
Let’s start the clock with the most expensive of two the “bad ideas” given to us from liberal Democrat Congresses and Presidents… Social Security in 1935. Let’s see… history of control of Congress… control of the nation’s purse strings.
Since the 74th Congress in 1935 – a total of 39 Congressional sessions including today’s 112th – Democrats have held Senate majority 28 out of 39 sessions. One session was a 50/50 split (2001 to 2003). oops… no GOP majority there.
Democrats have held the House for 30 sessions out of 39.
Yet “all the bad ideas” are the fault of a total of 9 GOP majoritys in both Chambers out of all these years? This despite that the largest drain on the US economy is both entitlement programs… SS and Medicare… created by Dems for all the rest of their power hold for decades?
You got chutzpah, dude. Or a very limited view of history. Take your pick.
I doubt your math it better, but you might want to consider that since every Congress increases US debt… despite party rule… the Dems have done far more economic damage to this nation that the GOP simply because of their longevity of control. The trillions added in just two years alone is a record breaker.
So what was that about “bad ideas” again?
Oh yes… would have been very nice had we been able to compete for oil contracts in Iraq, but then all the nanny liberals would have been screaming it was a “war for oil”. oops, they did that anyway, even tho we didn’t have the first crack at that oil. Personally, I would have endured the criticism and built in American priorities for production and purchase of Iraqi oil as a “thank you” for helping Iraq become an Arab democracy of their own elected choice.
Now we’re “not” in another “war for oil” in Libya. Oh wait, it’s “humanitarian”, tho Darfur genocide can just stand by and be ignored. Yet how many use the argument that ensuring the continuance of Libyan crude is an American interest for world pricing for justification? Does that not then become a “war for oil”?
Dancing around “just words” and revisionist history. JC, you and your party peers need to supplement your deplorable public education and get a clue. Your talking points are fish in a barrel around here.
That’s funny. I’m still here, in the water.
Yes, Bush cut taxes for everyone. If you are in the middle 20%, that amounted to $791 in 2010. If you are in the top 1%, that tax cut amounted to 85 THOUSAND dollars.
http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0602.htm
I’m tired of you — and your kitchen sink. You try to deflect everything. When I point out that the GOP has held congress for the past 12 years, you go back to the 1940s to attack FDR. You seem a bit unhinged. Shall I tell you of the sins of Herbert Hoover?
Call me back when our participation in Libya reaches 1.2 trillion dollars. And several thousand dead Americans. Not that I ever mentioned Libya. Not that I said I supported it. I never said that. You are arguing with ghosts to avoid arguing with me.
I would also point out that many of your Tea Party members are collecting SS and Medicare, both programs that are responsible for keeping many of our elderly from eating dog food for the past five decades.
@Hankster, # 141:
The national debt was $4.7 trillion at the start of the 1994 “republican revolution”, when republicans gained control of both the House and Senate. Republicans retained control for 12 straight years, until the new democratic majority was elected in 2006 . The debt during those 12 years nearly doubled, growing to $8.5 trillion.
The most rapid expansion of the debt during those 12 years–approximately 3/4 of the increase–took place while there was both a controlling republican majority in Congress and a republican president in the White House.
Obama at least has the excuse of having taken office with the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression already underway; federal tax revenues were plummeting, the global economic system was in danger of collapse, and unemployment was rising out of control. Three years later, the U.S. economy is slowly but undeniably recovering. That wouldn’t be happening now without the stimulus spending that was done before.
What’s the republican excuse for their own unprecedented deficit run-up? What did their own deficits achieve? How do they account for the fact that the U.S economy was a total shambles after 12 continuous years of republican tax and economic policies? Basically, all that was accomplished was that the rich became even richer, while everyone else lost ground and lost financial security.
Your observation that democrats didn’t fundamentally alter the federal tax code during their recent 4-year majority is correct. The code as it presently exists isn’t the Obama administration’s doing.
——-
As of 2003, the federal tax code required corporations to pay 35% of their profits in taxes. In reality, the average tax rate the biggest corporations were actually paying 2001 through 2003 was less than 1/2 that.
Obviously the situation hasn’t changed. Witness GE and Exxon’s most recent payments of Zero. Zip. Nothing. Also witness the fact that U.S. corporations have pulled in historically record-breaking profits for each of the last seven consecutive quarters.
In spite of this, one of the most commonly heard refrains on the right is that corporate taxes are too high–the highest in the world–and must be reduced if the U.S. economy is to remain competitive. This, in spite of growing federal and state deficits.
Republican governors are collectively busy at present providing billions in new tax cuts to corporations and wealthy special interests. All the while imposing budget cuts in the name of fiscal responsibility that fall on the middle class, the working class, and the poor–pay and benefit cuts for public employees, deep cuts in public education, the elimination of Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of poor people–280,000 in Arizona alone. In some cases they’re actually imposing new taxes on those same people–Michigan, for example, will begin imposing state income tax on pension payments for retirees.
Apparently we’ve only got class warfare when the working class, middle class, or poor take notice of what’s going on and have the audacity to complain about it.
@MataHarley:
Oh, and you’re right, I can’t resist correcting your wildly inaccurate arguments.
And I’m female.
@JC: What “wildly inaccurate” arguments would those be?
@Greg: And speaking of Marxists, our resident troll, Greggie rears his head. Greggie’s arguments can be boiled down to four little words: “Its all Bush’s fault!” Then the crying ensues about how unfair it is when rich people get richer. Greggie is happier when the poor people get poorer, as long as the gap between them and the rich doesn’t get too “wide.”
Greggie whines about corporations using loopholes in the tax code (that Dem controlled Congresses put there) to pay little or nothing in taxes. But he sits idly by when Jeffrey Immelt from GE gets buddy buddy with Obama and stands to make literally billions from Obamacare.
Boring, but predictable Greggie.
Ya know, I’m through talking about this stuff here…
1> Because some of you guys simply get off on the argument, NOT the truth, or end result of it!
2> Those smart enough to know what’s what, do, those who refuse to see it, NEVER will. Stay dumb!
3> Beating “who was wrong first” to death is a waste of time, and effort! What MATTERS is from here on!
4 Lastly, if nothing else…TWo simple Ideals say it all, I don’t care HOW many stories you cut and paste…they are..
A> One can NOT spend more than he makes, and not have to pay up! You are BANKRUPT at that stage.
B> Two wrongs will NEVER make a right!! Who was first, who cares. But REPEATING an error is DUMB!
C> For you Military guys… KISS! Keep It Simple, STUPID! This means less Feds, PERIOD! You place your faith in the Gov for everything, you sold your ass into slavery! We’re on the Brink, and you want more?
Think about it… have a nice day. I’m gone, got Horses to tend to.
TYPO!! should read ..”"THREE simple Ideals”"…. edit isn’t working…
@Greg:
Please tell us again how the $1Trillion in spending over 2009, leading to a deficit of $1.4Trillion was entirely Bush’s fault when the democrats held Congress.
Please tell us again how the 2010 deficit of $1.3Trillion was Bush’s fault, even though Obama had the WH for the entire fiscal year, and the democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
Please tell us again how the estimated 2011 deficit of $1.65Trillion is Bush’s fault, even though Obama is the President, and a third of the fiscal year Congress was in the hands of the democrats.
Please tell us again how it is the GOP’s fault for the spending, when they cannot push meaningful spending cuts through because the democrats in the Senate will not allow anything to be cut.
It isn’t taxes, Greg. It never has been. It is about maintaining governmental control over more and more aspects of our individual lives, and placing the cost for that control on our shoulders. The estimated federal budget for 2011 is $3.82 Trillion, while the federal revenues are expect to be $2.17Trillion. That is a $1.65Trillion deficit. By contrast, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to lapse for those “rich” people you, JC and Luckless demonize, the deficit would still be $1.6Trillion or so. And on top of that, the economy itself would suffer due to less investment into markets that need the influx of investment dollars. That means lost business, lost jobs, and lost federal revenue, whether immediate or in the near future.
And yet, all you liberals want to do is demonize the “rich”, when the real problem is the size of government, on all levels, and the ever increasing spending that goes along with it. And to top all that off, you don’t want to cut the spending. You want the “rich” to somehow pay for it all, and more, because they make more than you. That is jealousy, and stupidity, and ignorance that fuels that thinking. It certainly isn’t fiscal responsibility.
The blame game can go back and forth, stretching back decades, for who is responsible. Guess what? We, the people are responsible for continuing to place inept, corrupt, power hungry politicians in office who aren’t looking out for our best interest, or the interest of the nation, but for their own selfish reasons. We have allowed the government to take more power than they are allowed by the Constitution. We have allowed the government to take more of our rights away from us. We have allowed the beast to feed, and your answer is to point at the guy next to you and tell the beast to feed on him instead of you.
Neither you, nor JC, nor Luckless have any idea what the true goals of the TEA party is. You simply put forth the same fear-mongering that your liberal masters shout out about them. They are racist. They don’t care about the middle class. They want corporations to have all the power and money. Really?! I guess being for the Constitution, and the founding father’s ideals, doesn’t appeal to you three. It makes me sad that ignorant stupidity can reign because of people like you.
The tea party was a rebellion against corporate subsidies. The corporation was called The East India Company. Your tea party defends corporations.
Why don’t you rich people go Galt? Oh yeah, because you need poor people to clean your toilets, and fix your toilets, and watch your kids, and build roads and cars and all that useful stuff.
I never demonized anyone. Seriously, get a grip on reality. Where did I demonize the rich? Where did I say they were evil? You are the second participant on this forum to try to put words in my keyboard. You defend the wealthy for taking advantage of loopholes and tax havens, but demonize the poor for taking advantage of any opportunity they can find, even when their very survival is at stake. You demonize the poor for simply fighting for their right to survive. You call them greedy — because when leaders call for sacrifice, they expect (how silly of them) everyone to sacrifice. But for some, the sacrifice is all one sided, and should come from those who have the least to give.
Good day, sir.
Hmm… this follows the comment of:
If it’s not a form of demonization and an assault on people in general I don’t know what is. OH wait I guess having the assumption that someone who works a postion of Janitor is always going to be a Janitor or someone who flips burgers will always be stuck flipping burgers. In a pure Socialist or Communist system, that would be true.
But don’t delude yourself JC in thinking the various splinter groups of the modern day TEA party defends corporate subsidaries, as the likes of GE and Goldman Sachs has been given multi billion dollar benifits at the expensive of Tax Payers by Democrats and RINOS alike. Much to your chagrin, the bulk of them do not support Corporate benefits from the Government as that relates to higher taxations on the citizens (Hence the monkier Taxed Enough Already Party).
And here’s a bit of history since you seem a bit confused, the East India Company was not what you claim it to be. It was the target of the Boston Tea Party riot due to it being the company in holdership of warehouses of British Import Tea in contrast to your claim of them being “subsidized”, the actual taxes imposed onto the Colonial Citizens were imposed on all goods that were not British made or imported up to and including Dutch merchandise that was cheaper and in more demand due to being better quality. This threatened the British Empire’s economic grasp over the Colonies and thus the taxations were inflicted to force Colonial purchases of British goods. It back fired and lead to the infamous Tea Party of Boston that destroyed British warehoused goods and ultimately lead up to the Quaratine of Boston and confiscation of firearms of Colonists which helped sparked ultimate revolution. Demonization of the modern day TEA party groups as corporate stooges makes you look like a fool when they are not a centeralized party base but a fractured and disjointed entity by namesake alone. Wichita TEA party groups have little in common in policy goals in comparison to St. Louis TEA party groups when examined closer, with the only connection of demanding lower spending and a fair tax rate that doesn’t encourage migration of residents to another county or State.
And then we get this little bit that Illionis TEA members have been pointing about about higher corporate taxations:
http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-caterpillar-leaving-mar27,0,2069753.story
The arrogance of the Govenor of Illionis shows how little he understands the situation and how more galvanized CAT will become to shut shop and relocate due to Government meddling in their Business at any level. If CAT does depart the State, a lot of honest people’s jobs are hung to dry due to Democrat tweaking around in places they don’t belong in. Much like the damages Congress Democrats did to Aerospace Industry that left about 10,000 of my counterparts unemployed up till today. Yes, keep barking up that tree that TEA Parties are for corporations, and see how quickly jobs can be kept when your heros act to kill that, “evil golden goose.” The damages of a business shutting down for Local and State Government will be high as citizens in the Local will face higher property tax rates next fiscal cycle of government action and local businesses could expect to carry extra burdens unless they shut down due to lack of clients that operated as CAT workers.
That’s not demonizing. That’s stating a fact. If you say I need someone to change the oil in my car because I don’t know how, or don’t want to do it myself, is that demonizing me?
No, if I said the rich are a bunch of greedy bastards who want to run this country into the ground and enslave us all, THAT would be demonizing. But I didn’t say that. Like I said, some of my best friends are rich. They know what I say is true.
Oh, and boo hoo on the corporate tax rate.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Tax/ge-exxon-paid-us-income-taxes-09/story?id=10300167
You demonize people who work low income jobs and claim it as a fact? You demonize Johngalt and then claim it instead a fact? Hypocrite, I call thee.
The point is, most of the “poor” in this nation are in the state of childhood working a part time job between school and life. Granted some adults live within the poverty line but is it the Corporate greedy bastard’s fault for it or is it the own person in poverty’s fault for not seeking various training programs that exist in each Local community by Federal mandates since the 1930′s? As it stands I can get training from anywhere from medical examination equipment specialist (x-ray tech) to being a plumber (which entry base pay can be at about 60k a year). Any person without a felony can seek training to get a better job, it isn’t the Greedy bastard’s faults for the apathy and lack of intivative in a person in seeking a better job. Case in point I’m within a series of training programs myself to be more robust in the job market (a must in this economy). Failure to train oneself is not the Coroprate’s fault, as there are many programs offered up even by the State Government to get training.
And yes, boo hoo about that on Exxon and GE… wait, what’s this? What major political party was given large donations by GE and Exxon in 2008 elections? Oh would it be the Democrats? And who is the major poltical party setting in control of our US Federal Tax Codes? Democrats.
Sure sounds like those damn dirty TEA partiers are sure to blame for our Tax problems, bub…
Yes, the jobs are just sitting there — it’s all there, if only those lazy demon poor would take advantage of it.
Of course.
You are mean and boring.
@JC: JC aren’t you a little concerned that you never get anything right? The original Tea Party was about “taxation without representation”. That is a far cry from subidizing corporate business. It was a fenent of freedom. Are you writing the history books our kids are now studying?
Well, I don’t write textbooks, but here it is, in language that even a child could understand. Looks like educational material for homeschoolers. It was about corporate monopolies, and corporate subsidies. The British Government basically arranged it so that any tea that was NOT from the East India Company was taxed. They gave the corporation a tax break.
http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/bostonteaparty.htm
I see Greg has a a buddy that also hates and envies the rich. As usual they have only stereotypes and strawmen to justify their irrational hate and rank bigotry. What pathetic, small people.
@JC: The issue was taxation without representation. It was about freedom, nothing else. Spin it all you want JC, but the issue was lack of representation.
JC says: 158
Yes, the jobs are just sitting there — it’s all there, if only those lazy demon poor would take advantage of it.
Of course.
Well lets look at that for a minute….. If there ARE no jobs for the “poor” to do….. What are the ILLEGALS then doing?? I hear they “do the work Americans “Won’t Do”…. or is it the Work, America PAYS them, Via social programs,(welfare, section 8 etc etc) NOT TO DO! 11 to 20 MILLION Illegals are here, “making it”… yet the “poor little Poor Americans CAN”T”???? or WON’T! I call BS on you here!! This is a VERY Complicated subject, but the FIX is available, if the Socialists will STFU and let us implement it! You cry foul too easily…. And “rich” is a state of mind…. I live a GOOD life here, but Currently, do it on less than 1200 a month! And I’ll bet I’ve way more “cool stuff” than you! Sometimes, SMARTS can overcome “CASH”!! Kwit cher Whinin’…….
Oh by the way, this “poor”.. unemployed for over a year guy, is on the verge of a comeback, starting our own from home business!! If one applies himself MORE than he whines about how evil the Big bad World is… ANYONE, can do ANYTHING! LOL!
Also, MY family came here in the LATE 50′s.. penniless….started from ZERO! We now live on our PAID FOR farm…. with the lake we had put in, two houses on it…all cars, trucks, tractor,atv etc paid for…telling you this, not to “brag”.. but to ask, if WE could do it, why can’t YOU, who’ve been here WAY longer than US do it?? I was the firstborn of our Family here in 1958… and I too, am debt clear…. so, what’s YOUR excuse, with the head start I KNOW you had, for NOT being so? No self Discipline? Not willing to self sacrifice for a time, to succeed in the end?? Not willing to WORK your ASS OFF?? WHAT?? We did it, and we never took Gov aid…why can’t YOU??
JC said….”Well, the East India Company wasn’t doing so well and the British government wanted to help the company get back on its feet.”
Well since all other Tea was MUCH higher than theirs, why didn’t they just raise their prices a bit, to get solvent then?? Instead of ASKING BIG GOVERNMENT for a TAX solution???? 200 plus years have gone by.. and some have not learned a DAMN THING!! LOL!!
Well duh… do they have a choice? Ever heard of a lawsuit called Hall v Sebelius? I did a post on this a few months ago.
Sorry to hear you’re female. It’s because of those like you I have to defend myself against conservative male friends who, somewhat tongue in cheek, love to remind me that giving the women the vote seemed to coincide with the move for the US to socialism (i.e. the entitlement ponzi schemes you love)
Thanks for nuttin’….
Ahhh… the ol desperate bait ‘n’ switch tactic. And this after my first response to several embarrassing diatribes. LOL First it tries to argue it was GOP majority (almost, since 2001-03 was an even split) for 9 Congresses that is responsible for the accumulated debt of the US, the bulk of which even the lib/progs, who possess more sanity than hormones, admit is the entitlement programs. Started, of course, in 1935. That is why I started my timeline there.
What part about the observation of the idiots who believe the world began and ended with the Bush presidency didn’t you get?
But I shoulda known not to go over the head of the disadvantaged in brain power.
ta ta, JC. Hope you’re still cute enough to get a sugar daddy. You sure ain’t got the smarts to be much more than an Obama welfare recipient.
@Randy, apparently JC is so young she has the PC version of US history as her source. Heaven help her children if she home schools, and this is her source.
I do think that “taxation without representation” may be a concept beyond her capabilities of grasping. You might want to try to lower the level of communication.
@MataHarley: Mata, I know socialists fail to understand that those who came to this country sought freedom. They had a certain amount of freedom here. They wanted to have a say in their government like those citizens in England. Instead, they were treated as vassels and taxed with out any representation in the government. That is what the current Tea Party is about. This administration has over stepped its authority given to it by the people. Now, the Tea Party wants to bring “big” government back into line with the founding principles. The Tea Party movement is that simple. That is why the simplicity scares socialists like JC who wants to live on other people’s money. Yes, they are rewriting the history books. Haven’t had a reply from JC yet. Must looking for another spin!
The sheer volume of whining from greg and jc is unbelievable. The world isn’t fair, waahhhhhhh! Envy, greed, selfishness, self rightousness, elitism, and authoritarianism is what those two stand for.
Gosh darn, Randy… you sure give JC a lot more credit for thought capability than has been demonstrated. I think that’s extraordinarily kind of you. I’m impressed.
@JC: You said:
Here you said:
And here you said:
And here luckless dazzled us with his brilliance when he said:
To which you readily agreed here:
So I guess you have in fact demonized entire swaths of the American public.
You also said:
According to the article you cite a full three quarters – 75% of the tax cuts went to families making less than $73,000.00 a year.
In fact, the Washington (Com)Post, clearly a far left rag in the middle of one of it’s many rants against Bush states that the Bush tax cuts did NOT cause the economic mess we are in:
When the debate on whether to extend the current tax rates put in place by Bush, CNN said:
You really hate anyone who has wealth, that much is clear. You state that you are a very good teacher, a professor who routinely receives awards. That is good, but I hope for your students’ sake, you do not pollute y our classroom with your far left, Marxist ideology.
@JC:
Well, the history part has already been taken care of. Sounds like someone needs to have an American History refresher course.
As for the TEA Parties of today, I don’t believe they defend corporations.
http://www.theteaparty.net/inner.asp?z=6
http://greeneteapatriots.org/Editorials/whoare.htm
http://teapartychicago.netboots.net/node/1
http://houstontps.org/?page_id=2
Is there anything within the quoted text, or at the sites themselves that discuss defending corporations? No, there isn’t. And I could continue to link and link and link to numerous other sites and you could peruse their mission statements or info pages and no where would you find the defense of corporations. That is a leftist, liberal lie propogated by the liberal rags like HuffPo or DailyKos or the MSM. Try doing your own research, from the horse’s mouth’s next time, instead of relying on liberal diatribe. It might just wake you up to the fact that the liberal machine is using you.
-One, I am not rich. Far from it. I hold a middle-class job.
-Two, if the rich ever did “go Galt”, much of society would collapse as jobs would go away, investment dollars would go away, and much government revenue would go away.
-Three, many of those “rich” people you demonize(said it again, didn’t I) are the ones who started their businesses from scratch, doing the manual work themselves. Many of them still know how to “fix toilets, watch children, build roads and cars and all that useful stuff.”
Really? Let’s look back, shall we?
Post #8
Post #22
Post # 47
Post # 48
Post # 50
Post #57
Post #59
Post # 64
Post #78
Post # 126
In all of those statements within your posts, you are demonizing the “rich”.
I have not done anything you accuse me of doing in that statement. I stand on a principle that what a man(or woman) earns, through his/her labor, is their own property. To take more and more from those who make the higher incomes is not “fair”, no matter how you look at it. I have explained many times that this taxation discussion is stupid when we are faced with such reckless spending.
The Bush tax cuts? We gained many jobs from those, as others have pointed out. And, the cuts themselves added to federal revenues from individual income taxes the year after the last part was enacted.
The extension of the “rich” part of the Bush tax cuts was claimed to cost over $600Billion over a decade. In a static economy with a static GDP, that translates to roughly $60Billion/yr. That is a drop in the bucket when we are discussing deficits of well over a Trillion dollars. And the figures I used aren’t even correct because we are not in a static economy, don’t have a static GDP, and taxes are not a “cost” to government in the first place. Those tax cuts allow many people to keep their jobs, many others to get some kind of wage increase, and still more people another choice in the marketplace. Quit talking about the Bush tax cuts as if they were bad. The way you liberals are, you still won’t be happy when 75% of the wage earners aren’t paying any income taxes and the burden is nearly entirely on the “rich”.
But let’s get to your last comment, shall we?
If you had followed anything I have said, or followed other similar topics and my comments there, or even just thought about my FA name, you’d realize that “sacrifice” plays no part whatsoever in my views when it comes to government and fiscal matters. It does for liberals though. They want the “rich” to “sacrifice” more and more of their property, for the good of all.
To sacrifice means to give up something for the sake of someone else, as far as how liberals apply it. So who is collecting those sacrifices? The people who lecture others, or force others to “sacrifice”? He who is collecting that sacrificial offering is forcing servitude upon those doing the sacrifice. Slaves and masters. I am no one’s master, and certainly not anyone’s slave. I sell my labors to the company I work for, for what I deem a reasonable pay. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t sell my labors there, but rather, find another employer who provides me a better trade on my labors. The money I send to the government, and the money you send, whether we like it or not, is forcibly taken from us, for if we don’t send it, we are penalized either with fees and monetary penalties, prison, or both. When I feel it is a fair amount, I don’t complain. When I feel they are taking too much of my property, compared to the compensation I receive in the form of roads and other services provided by the government, I will stand up and fight against it. I do not care what my neighbor pays to the government, or doesn’t pay. That is no concern of mine, nor should it be a concern of yours.
The US Constitution, Amendment 14, states that all citizens shall have equal protection under the law. So I ask you, is our tax code equal? Should the resultant be equal, or the application of it? If the resultant, then we are no longer following the founding father’s ideals set forth in the Declaration nor the Constitution, where all shall have equal opportunity. No, the application is what should be equal, however, the application of it certainly isn’t equal either when one considers the different deductions and credits that apply to some but not to all. In short, the entire tax code, from individuals to businesses is not equally applied. But your discussions on taxation aren’t grounded in the Constitution, nor the words set forth in the Declaration. Your discussions seek to destroy those freedoms and liberties that many hold near and dear, and fight for daily.
It isn’t the “rich” or wealthy you should be fighting against. It’s a government that sets unfair conditions, seeking control over individual lives, and snuffing out freedoms and liberties every time you turn around. Don’t demand other citizens be forced to pay more and more. Demand, instead, that government be forced to spend less and less. You have no more right to someone else’s income or wages than they do of yours, so quit demanding it from them. Demand, instead, that government be forced to apply true equal protections under the laws, from the smallest wage earning individual to the biggest corporation. That is the only way to ensure that true fairness and equality will reign.
Ah, the silence from JC is deafening…
I got bored with you slave morality. Here is something you should read:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/its-wealth-gap-stupid
I would also point out that by focusing on Income Taxes you are ignoring about 90% of the tax system.
@JC: I’ll see your leftist website and raise you one youtube video.
Check it out, JC, that is if you are truly interested in the truth.
With these articles thrown in to boot:
Data overlook upward mobility
–and–
Policy Analysis: Has U.S. Income Inequality Really Increased?
Watch the video and read the articles, and we can have a discussion on them.
.
.
@JC: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain (Samuel Clemmens for those of you on the left!)