<p>That was an awful lot of work on your part to try to deny the numbers. Nothing short of the top 10% paying 100% of taxes will satisfy you, I guess. And you dance around the spending side of the causes of the budget deficit. Oh wait, I am sure the shift in power in Congress will reign in spending. Now who is falling for the spiel for ginsu knives?</p>
<p>I wish I could say that exchanges with you were somehow enlightening but they aren’t. On almost every thread where you start posting, you eventually find some way to bring the discussion around to your same tired, rote, whining economic complaints. Have you always been this sour on the world? </p>
<p>So, I will give you the honor of being only the second person on CC who has given me sufficient reason to use the “Ignore” feature. I would wish you a happy life, but I think you prefer the sense of moral superiority that your unhappiness with the world seems to provide you.</p>
<p>“Deny the numbers?” I’m not denying anything. It’s absolutely true: The people with 87% of the taxable income pay 96% of the income tax. I’m just pointing out that your triumphant crowing about “50% pay 96%” actually just means that income taxes really aren’t very progressive at all. Facts are facts - and I don’t feel a need to run away from them. </p>
<p>But if you’re afraid of anything which contradicts the happy-face propaganda you’ve learned to swallow uncritically, by all means, don’t expose yourself to anything else.</p>
<p>Louisiana is one of the few states that actually taxes people INTO poverty. (Most states’ tax structure sets the bar high enough that people below the poverty line or just over it don’t pay state income tax). It hasn’t worked out very well for us.</p>
<p>“So when the top 50% of earners pay 96% of the income taxes they are subsidizing the hell out of low income earners. That is not enough?”</p>
<p>Since the top 50% are making at least 90% of the money in the country (taking capital gains, etc., into account), I’d say that paying 96% of the federal income taxes is pretty close to being perfectly fair.</p>
<p>Of course, income tax is the only progressive tax we’ve got, and people in the bottom 50% pay the vast majority of their taxes in flat taxes like sales, gasoline, etc. Those taxes make up a greater proportion of their income than they do for people in my (upper) bracket. There are a lot of ways we could improve that system. For one thing, I’d like to see gas taxes keyed to the mileage of the vehicle.</p>
So stop pretending that you think our economy isn’t “zero-sum”. You clearly believe that their is a finite pool of income, and that the greedy rich are over-fishing, to the detriment of the less-skilled fisherpersons.
<p>Gotta love the right’s indefatigable propagandists, and their faithful echos. </p>
<p>Blogger headline:
Actual quote:
At this point is there anyone who disagrees with what Rangel actually said, as opposed to the carefully edited “interpretation” by the right-prop blog?</p>
A distinction without a difference, Kluge. You don’t choose your fights when you join the military…you go where you are sent, and you complete your mission. Is it a decent career? Ask the careerists.</p>
<p>“So stop pretending that you think our economy isn’t “zero-sum”. You clearly believe that their is a finite pool of income, and that the greedy rich are over-fishing, to the detriment of the less-skilled fisherpersons.”</p>
<p>How is one related to the other? Income taxes are calculated retrospectively. Last year, a finite sum of money was earned by the workers of the nation, yes? People paid taxes on it in pretty close proportion to the amount of it they earned. That doesn’t mean that I believe the amount that will be earned next year is already set in stone.</p>
<p>It’s possible to believe both that (1) the sum total of money collectively earned next year has the potential to be larger or smaller than this year’s, and (2) the distribution of income taxes across the pool of workers this year is not a major factor in determining the size of that sum total.</p>
<p>YOU are making a big assumption: that if people who made a lot of money in 2005 bear a smaller share of the tax burden paid in 2006, the economic pie for everyone will be larger in 2007. That is, at best, a controversial assumption on which many economists disagree.</p>
<p>“A distinction without a difference, Kluge. You don’t choose your fights when you join the military…you go where you are sent”</p>
<p>Sometimes this is true, but if you join the Marines right out of high school, you know darn well where you’re probably going. It isn’t the same place you’re likely to go if you’re a lawyer joining the Air Force.</p>
<p>I don’t know, Hanna. All I can say is that if I gave the amount of money I pay to the IRS each year to an individual family, that family would be considered to be in the top 5% of income earners. I could offer my income tax payment as salary to most lawyers and they would jump at the chance to be my personal attorney. It is mind-boggling, and I realize that my mind is boggled from a different point of view than many CC posters, but there it is. I don’t accept the idea that I’m undertaxed.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve made the argument that you are undertaxed when it comes to earned income. But if we’re going to distinguish between different kinds of income, it’s appalling to me that money that is handed to a taxpayer – e.g., the capital gains earned on an inheritance – is taxed at a much lower rate than money I earned pounding this computer till 11 p.m. night after night. And no, I would not just put my savings under the mattress if the capital gains were taxed at the same rate as earned income, and many of my investments are NOT creating jobs in the U.S. economy (the usual explanation for the tax differential); our foreign debt is scaring me to death about the future of the dollar, and I am heavily into the EU and Asia. So why the discount on that (large) part of my income?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’m sitting pretty far down towards your end of the spectrum, and getting closer to you every year. Income is a mediocre predictor of where people will stand on these issues. The main thing that has changed about my fiscal perspective since I was a graduate student is that rather than simply being opposed to the government waste I see, I am actively angry about the government waste I see. This hasn’t changed my voting patterns, especially since I don’t see any difference between the parties on this point (though an argument could be made for supporting gridlock).</p>
<p>“NO money is “handed” to taxpayers. It is only taken, or not taken.”</p>
<p>The capital gains I “earn” on what’s left of my inheritance are indeed handed to me. I guess you could argue that I have earned them by choosing not to cash out and put the money in Enron, but IMHO for all the effort I put in, that money might as well have fallen from the sky.</p>
<p>Driver, I believe that the military is an honorable profession, and I respect those who choose to serve their country by enlisting - a position I’ve never wavered from. But I have no doubt that the reckless behavior of the current administration will weigh heavily on the minds of those who may be mulling that choice in the near future. Risking your life in defense of your country is one thing; being IED fodder for an incompetent commander in chief’s foreign adventures is another. Given the performance of the political hacks who are currently running the country, I wouldn’t blame anyone for declining to pick military service as a career today. Those politicians have demonstrated a willingness to spend the lives of our soldiers for no positive end other than to cover for their own errors in judgment. That’s what I took Rangel’s comment to refer to. Do you disagree with that?</p>
What are you talking about? This isn’t fantasy land. We don’t have a European-syle army with fat morons who couldn’t invade a third-world country if their lives depended on it. The military is dangerous. So is police work, fire department, etc. Who will save you whiners when the stuff hits the fan?
JHC</p>
<p>They are – the worse your mileage, the more you pay in taxes. </p>
<p>If you are suggesting a graduated gasoline sales tax rate (which would only cost about eleventy-zillion dollars to implement by the time every single gas pump in the country is upgraded – all passed on to consumers as a higher base price), you are going to do the exact opposite of what you want. A lot of time the vehicle of choice for lower-income people is a used car which does not incorporate the latest technical advances and gets worse gas mileage. You would just be adding another regressive tax on the poor. Of course if you would just pony up to buy every poor person a Civic Hybrid, I would withdraw my objection.</p>
<p>You assume that “what I want” is solely to give the poor a tax break, when in this case, there is a parallel goal of encouraging everyone to use only as much gas as they need to get around. If we’re talking tax code reform, there are a lot of desirable outcomes to work towards.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Occasionally. But for the most part, the vehicles that get the best mileage aren’t those with the “latest technological advances”; they’re the lighter cars with smaller engines and less power. A beat-up 4-cylinder 1990 Toyota coupe (lots of them are still running) may get better mileage than the spanking new hybrid SUVs. (This is one reason why giving access to carpool lanes to all hybrids is missing the point.)</p>
<p>Further, while it would be technologically simple to create a graduated tax based on the make and model, with exemptions for vehicles needed for work or off-road homes (every car comes with a swipe card for the pumps), it would be impossible, in practical terms, to measure whether an individual vehicle is getting typical mileage. So if someone can’t afford to fix up their 1990 Honda, and it really isn’t getting 40 mpg any more, they’re going to slide under the radar. </p>
<p>This isn’t the kind of tax shelter that keeps me up at night. But if you’re really concerned about it, you could always grandfather in the graduated tax so it kicks in for vehicles built in 2007 or later, just as we exempt older vehicles from seat belt and air bag standards.</p>
I was going to stay out of this thread, but I feel the need to point something out. Money earned is taxed at a higher rate because it is the FIRST time it is taxed. Earnings from investments have typically already been taxed, at the corporate level and also at the individual level when you used your net income to purchase such an investment. </p>
<p>I don’t want to live in a really low-tax state or country – the quality of life typically is very poor. But I don’t think we should tax any dollar more than once, and I don’t think we should tax all incentive to achieve out of our high-earners. There should be rewards for investment in education, time and talent.</p>