<p>
I can vouch for that…I was there. Getting richer was secondary for most of us, though; the real goal was to make the poor as poor as possible, and to roll back the clock on women and minorities.</p>
<p>oog, you forgot to mention the nice tax rebates we got for buying a Porsche Cayenne, or any other luxury SUV on a truck chassis…</p>
<p>Simple numbers - calculated from the IRS spreadsheets at <a href=“http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/03in05tr.xls[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/03in05tr.xls</a>
Between 1985 and 2003 the share of all reported taxable income received by the bottom 50% declined from 17.26% of the total to 13.99%. The share received by the top 10% increased from 33.77% to 42.36%. The share received by the top 1% increased from 10.01% to 16.77%. Average inome per taxpayer in the bottom 50% in 1985 was $8,041. In 2003 it was 13,680 (no inflation adjuctment.) Average income in the top 1% was $233,692 in 1985, and $820,036 in 2003. </p>
<p>Adjusted for inflation the income at the 50th percentile was unchanged from 1985 to 2003. At the 90th percentile it rose by 20%; at the 99th percentile it rose by 60%.</p>
<p>No joking matter.</p>
<p>“oog, you forgot to mention the nice tax rebates we got for buying a Porsche Cayenne, or any other luxury SUV on a truck chassis…”</p>
<p>Or to attend a “dream school”! ;)</p>
<p>“I can vouch for that…I was there. Getting richer was secondary for most of us, though; the real goal was to make the poor as poor as possible, and to roll back the clock on women and minorities.”</p>
<p>By their deeds you shall know them.</p>
<p>Paul Krugman has written extensively about the tax cuts, and how the middle class was bought off for $800 “refund”, while the rich laughed all the way to the bank (and back again).</p>
<p>I can search his archives for some really good op-eds.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>All of that is correct, and so is the fact the the bottom 50% of all taxpayers only contributed 3.46% of the total income taxes. The top 1% contributed almost 35% and the top 5% a bit over 54%. </p>
<p>No wonder if a tax REFUND benefitted the people who paid taxes in the first place. </p>
<p>Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1% 34.27%
Top 5% 54.36%
Top 10% 65.84%
Top 25% 83.88%
Top 50% 96.54%</p>
<p>Bottom 50% 3.46%</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/Research%20Report_109-20.pdf[/url]”>http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/Research%20Report_109-20.pdf</a></p>
<p>Congratulations, Xiggi, you’ve oficially discovered the “no blood from a turnip” principle as applied to taxes. (By the way, while the income of the top 1% grew by 67% during that 18 year period, their share of tax payments only rose by 54%. “Do the math”)</p>
<p>And which means…jack****. The top percent is paying soo much…So what if they are growing richer? Thats the idea in a free society! You are only bounded by how much work or creativity you possess.</p>
<p>Do the math? I was expecting a “read my lips” :)</p>
<p>Swiped from newmassdad in another forum:
</p>
<p>W1cked, calm down. Average federal income taxes on the top 1% declined from 31% to 24% from 1985 to 2003)</p>
<p>mini, tell me about the dream school remark…? Am I in for a tax bonus I didn’t know about?</p>
<p>Xig; I do not deny the fact that GWB made a necessary step in reducing the taxation on the wealthy, inorder to get the US and the World economy moving again after the Tech Crash and 9/11. I would also imagine that on a percentage basis the working class did quite well, if they understood how to use the system. </p>
<p>The real question-Is how in GWB’s World or rather his Handlers, are we going to repay all this debt? Maybe we should ask all the graduating student economists at Chicago, NYU, JHU, Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Yale? Are you ready for another round of stagflation?</p>
<h1>68. I think Maria Antoinette (or biographer) and King Louis said the same thing. But they did something very foolish, They financed the American Revolution.</h1>
<p>
Xiggi, I’m surprised you would use selective data like this … for the rich the income tax is the main hit they face … and GWBhas done his best to reduce this hit. What is the main federal tax on poor and near poor? … it is social security and medicare taxes. Provide the same info using the total federal tax burden as a base instead of just the income tax and I’d be surprised if you still believe your argument has as strong legs. Using the overall tax burden also makes the effect of the GWB tax breaks even more severly favor the rich than considering just income taxes.</p>
<p>3togo, don’t forget sales tax as a percentage of income. Disproportionate hit to those who spend every cent of income on gas, food, etc.</p>
<p>
agreed … our overall tax burden is regressive as a % of income … a fact that gets exasperated every time income tax breaks that proportionally help higher income families are enacted.</p>
<p>here’s the big problem I have with the recent republican tax cuts … if they wanted a much easier time getting bipartisan support they could have proposed tax cut with the same overall cut in federal taxes … but have the benefit mostly pass along to lower income families … and I would bet more of the money returned to tax payers would be spent in day-to-day US businesses than returning those bucks to higher income families. Given such a proposal lots of liberals would probably jump on board … but why no such proposals?</p>
<p>Why no such proposals? Who would pay the lobbiests to get it done?</p>
<p>In figuring out who pays what, how do you calculate the numbers if you are only looking at tax payments as a percentage of adjusted gross income? Doesn’t it skew the calculation since it excludes the income derived from tax exempt instruments?</p>
<p>Does anyone know what the numbers might be if we looked at taxes paid, versus total gross income?</p>
<p>“Xiggi, I’m surprised you would use selective data like this”</p>
<p>3togo, I was answering directly to a post of Kluge (quoted it) and tsayed on the topic of INCOME tax breaks. For the record, I have often posted about the impact of social security taxes on lower and middle class taxpayers. </p>
<p>If we want to stretch the discussion to a broader picture, we might start questioning why a family with an income of $50 or $60,000 feels POOR in the United States. At the heart of the issue is our propensity to spend well beyond the means of our income and succumb to the tentations of a highly consumerist society. The overwhelming majority of the world earns a LOT less than the US citizens and pays a LOT more in taxes. However, houses costing several hundred thousands dollars, multiple recent cars in a single family, collections of TVs, computers, or other fancy electronics are merely pipedreams. Just as our government, americans do not hesitate to spend, spend, and spend again. </p>
<p>There are, alas, way too many poor families in our country. All of us have seen abject pictures of poverty in the Appalachians, the inner cities, or colonias in the South. However, the story of a family of four complaining about the difficulty of maintaining a two or three cars and $500,000 home in a San Francisco suburb on a $50 to 60,000 salary/disability payment does not have the same ring. This new type of poor will be able to ABUSE our “progressive” system and government programs to the fullest. For this family, public and free schooling is available, property taxes will remain low, income taxes will be extremely low, future social security payments will be multiple of any contributions, college tuition will be covered by financial aid, and, through appreciation, a multi-million dollar home looms in the future, which sale could fund a very happy retirement. Fabrication? Nope, that is an exact story of the glorified prison guard that was discussed right here on College Confidential </p>
<p>Betcha he is still complaining! .</p>
<p>There have been attempts to correlate AGI with actual, total income, but I’m not aware of a definitive answer to that. The thing about data is that the rawer it is, the more valid, yet frequently the less informative. AGI is a number that you can calculate to the dollar, but it excludes a lot of income that wealthier people enjoy. To get more informative numbers, you have to restore depreciation, amortization, tax exempt income, etc. etc. etc. And those numbers are harder to come by. The one thing you can say with a fair degree of confidence is that the numebrs we’ve been discussing actually do understate the income of the wealthy, while pretty accurately capturing all of the income of the working class.</p>