<p>From the Wall Street Journal: Rich Getting Richer
And in a related development:
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<p>Now, all of you folks who insist that tax cuts are good from the country, and that there’s nothing wrong with cutting income taxes for the wealthy while raising sales taxes and cutting services for the middle class and poor - what was that economic theory you were touting again?</p>
<p>Let’s see - 22% of $1M is $220K. That’s plenty for one person to pay. The ‘rich’ (defined as anyone who makes more than me) still generally pay more tax dollars than me and I’m grateful that they do.</p>
<p>I posted this earlier: </p>
<p>[Their</a> Fair Share - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks]Their”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks)</p>
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<p>Yet they still paid a greater share of taxes collected. Amazing. The miracle of the rich. Thanks rich people for taking care of us chumps.</p>
<p>What did they pay this year? 40%?</p>
<p>I actually think the rich should pay more. But I believe we should still be cutting spending!</p>
<p>The Top 5% paid 60% of taxes. The top 25% paid 86%. The lower half paid THREE PERCENT.</p>
<p>The way I see things, it’s not so much a matter of fairness but fiscal efficacy.
Most of the deficit comes from entitlement programs. Withdrawing from Iraq will not reduce the deficit, though both Obama and McCain are proposing to use “savings” to fund some of their proposals.
So: how to reduce the deficit? Most economists seem to agree that raising taxes will be inevitable. Obama has already spelled out his plan. During his interview with Stephanopoulos, McCain seemed to hint as much (“nothing is off the table”). So the question is not whether to raise taxes but whose taxes should be raised in order to produce the most tax revenue without hurting the economy. I thought that the Economist had a good analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both tax plans.</p>
<p>U-U-Dad, I can only imagine how grateful you’ll be when the trend continues to the point that the top 1% pay all of the income taxes, because they have all of the income, and the nation goes bankrupt because the interest on the national debt exceeds the revenues from all sources. </p>
<p>Or is there any point at which your gratitude becomes muted? :)</p>
<p>Barrons, the lower half of all taxpayers pay so little in taxes because their income has been declining over the past thirty years, unlike that of the wealthy.</p>
<p>Tega - how do your propagandists deal with this years half-trillion dollar deficit? Did Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy do that for us too?</p>
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<p>That is exageration to the point of ridiculousness.</p>
<p>No, they pay little/no taxes because of the increase in the std deductions and tax brackets.</p>
<p>ag54 - where do you draw the line? For decades, the concentration of wealth in the top 1% was in the low teens - ranging from 10% to 14%. The average income tax rates on that group were in the high 20 - low 30% range. And the National debt declined relative to the size of the economy every year from 1950 to 1982. Now the share of the nation’s income received by the top 1% has hit 22% - the highest since 1929, and the average tax rate paid by the same group has declined to 22% - the lowest in modern history, as our national debt has grown to be larger in comparison to the economy as a whole than at any time since Truman. [U.S</a>. National Debt Graph](<a href=“http://zfacts.com/p/318.html]U.S”>National Debt Graph 1940 -- 2020: Zooming Again) </p>
<p>Seriously - when has the correct balance been lost? When the wealthy have 50% of the nation’s income and pay income taxes of 10%? 30% and 15%? How far does the trend have to continue before you folks wake up? How much deeper into debt do we have to sink before we return tax rates to the levels they were at when we weren’t stealing money from our children to give it to Leona Helmsley’s dog? How far does the trend have to go before any of you folks think it’s gone too far? I’d honestly like to hear from any one of you - U-U-Dad, ag54, Tega, Barrons - how far is too far? </p>
<p>Personally, I’d just like to roll the clock back to the relative shares of wealth, taxes and debt we had in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, before “Voodoo economics” and the slickly packaged propaganda campaign I see echoed here so often was launched.</p>
<p>Barrons - as you know, working people pay a higher share of their income in taxes of all sorts than the wealthy. It’s only the income tax which closes a part of the gap between the relatively high tax rates paid by working people and the small share of income paid in taxes by the wealthy. A guy making minimum wage, with no income tax due at all, will actually keep a smaller share of his income after paying all the other taxes he’s subject to than Leona Helmsley’s millionaire dog will.</p>
<p>Ya know we all hashed this out already:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/519909-how-rich-hiding-income-not-paying-taxes.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/519909-how-rich-hiding-income-not-paying-taxes.html</a></p>
<p>Almost all the names I see on this thread are in this one… How many times can the liberals say the rich aren’t paying enough and the conservatives say they are paying enough or too much?</p>
<p>I think it is an exageration that there will be a time when the “rich” have ALL the income, and the nation will go bankrupt.</p>
<p>So, the rest of us will be living in caves scratching out an existance by poaching rabbits on the estates of the wealthy? </p>
<p>And, America will be a bankrupt nation populated by enormously wealthy landholders who have NO employees, because they have ALL the income (I guess they do their own laundry). There will be no restaurants or grocery stores because the wealthy wouldn’t want to work the counters or wait tables (remember - they have ALL the income, so there are no hourly paid employees).</p>
<p>See - RIDICULOUS!!</p>
<p>ag54 - the trend is clear - and it’s recent. I ask again - when has it gone too far? You say ridiculous, I ask - when does it become it ridiculous? When do we stop the trend? </p>
<p>Twenty-five years ago I would have thought that it was ridiculous that the share of the nation’s income garnered by the wealthy would double in just a couple of decades. Yet it happened. </p>
<p>Twenty-five years ago I would have thought that it was ridiculous that the national debt would more than double relative to the economy in times of relative prosperity because of economic policies driven by a trio of Republican presidents - yet it has happened.</p>
<p>When does it become ridiculous to you?</p>
<p>pmlrcomm - just a reminder that the “Starve the beast” strategy is working just fine.</p>
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<p>When people begin making histrionic statements based on gross exaggerations, somewhat like Chicken Little - he said the sky was falling too.</p>
<p>Kluge is right! Those bad richies! They should give ALL their money to taxes and then have their heads chopped off. Yeah!</p>
<p>The middle class is smaller now because they are moving to the upper class. Less taxes have helped people who work move up the ladder. Non working welfare recipients will continue to be in the lower class.</p>
<p>Actually, there has been less movement between the quintiles in the last decade than at any time in the past 40 years.</p>
<p>“They should give ALL their money to taxes and then have their heads chopped off.”</p>
<p>Nah - let 'em move to Gangzhou where they’d prefer the form of government.</p>
<p>Amom2, could you provide a source to this claim?</p>
<p>“The middle class is smaller now because they are moving to the upper class.”</p>
<p>“Nah - let 'em move to Gangzhou where they’d prefer the form of government.”</p>
<p>But not the smog a little north in Beijing probably.</p>