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If you add the word 'earned' as in 'with enough EARNED income to be consumers' I will agree.
Of course, jobs are much preferred to welfare.
If you add the word 'earned' as in 'with enough EARNED income to be consumers' I will agree.
That's outrageous. What the **** do you think minority rights are in general?
The majority is HARMED by me being forced to pay 35%-40% in taxes, far more in $$ than some pay in a life-time? I don't know how some of you guys manage to get food to your mouths when you then make claims like that.
They certainly do not include owning 80% of the country.
I agree we should reverse the trend over the last 30 years where taxes were reduced for the top 1% and raised for the middle class.
They certainly do not include owning 80% of the country.
I agree we should reverse the trend over the last 30 years where taxes were reduced for the top 1% and raised for the middle class.
Eliminating the temporary tax breaks for the rich is not oppression, it is justice and smart economics. Tell me how the rich minority was oppressed in the 90's before the tax breaks were given to them?
How were the rich oppressed (even when their effective tax rates on all income was twice what it is now) in the half century between the 30's and the 80's when we had low debt and steady growth of the economy and the strongest middle class in the history of the US?
Nor do rights exclude such a thing. Our rights don't guarantee equal ownership, nor should they. Our rights are process-focused, not outcome-focused. This is where we diverge.
I can agree that vast wealth and income disparities pose problems. Really, I can. Political instability mainly. Marx was right about this, but I'd like to not have to prove him right about the rest of history too. Specifically, I believe the market needs to disempower the rich, not the government (via taxes). The government is so deeply penetrated by corporations that the former cannot be trusted to govern the latter. The market has to fix it. In other words, shoppers. And not just with protests, but with their wallets too. We do it to single companies every once in a blue moon. Look at Netflix, jacking its prices way up and then paying for it oh so dearly. It would have to be grassroots revolutionary, because the alternative guarantees the status quo, where Goldman Sachs guards the Treasury, where Biotech staffs the FDA and USDA, where Wall St. staffs the SEC and advises the President, and where Big Business controls Congress, and so on and so forth. By asking government to tax the rich you're asking the very same ***holes to stop being ***holes.
The top 1% is 3 million citizens. The richest of every 100 of us in the country. That's really quite a massive amount of people. There aren't 3 million uber-rich CEOs and gazillionaire hedge fund managers. The people we're really foamy at the mouth about are actually not very many people at all, running not very many banks and corporations at all. One percent seems like a room full of gazillionaires, but it's not. It's 3 MILLION people. And "just making them pay more" for the same basic services based upon the size of their bank accounts is hard to justify, particularly when its budgetary benefits are so questionable. And with most of the taxpayer burden lately being retrospective (quantitative easing) and prospective (deep deficit spending), WTF do income taxes really matter anyway?
If we want to give the middle and lower classes a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but boycott all large corporate campaign donors across the country when Congress passes a budget that is 20%, 30%, 40% or more IN THE RED. If we want to give the prudent small-time savers a break, we should not only riot in the streets, but also boycott ALL large corporate campaign donors when the Fed announces another round of quantitative easing or whatever other clever new name they've given to the practice of inflation. Taxes are effectively raised on the meek every time one of these two things happen. Say we get FedGov to hit the top 1% with an extra howevermany percent income tax.... well the old prudent savers and the unborn are already having their taxes jacked up by an order of magnitude greater each time they deficit spend and quantitatively ease. We're focusing on small potatoes and being quite whiny about the rich's refusal to punish themselves to try to accomplish a task We the People must take on ourselves.
Of course, boycotting all major corporations is very inconvenient for us in our personal lives. Can we handle personal inconvenience for the sake of our country? Or are we gonna keep bleating for someone ELSE to do our dirty work?
/rant off.
one wonders how the top 1 percent pay a higher share of the federal income tax burden now than at any time in the last 70 years
It doesn't make good economics if the idea is to make excuses for ever increased spending.
Its not exactly a mystery. As more wealth is concentrated at the top, even with tax rates that have been lowered over the last 3 decades for the rich, there is less money at the bottom to pay taxes on. It is the end result of trickle down economics. Bon appetit!
What kills tax revenue more than anything else, is when the government destroys the job market.
We tried this approach for the last 30 years, it hasn't worked.
Income taxes are how we pay our bills.
Boycotts have their place but cannot take the place of sound policies that served us so well during the most stable growth in history combined with the strongest middle class.
Progressive taxation and separating commercial banking from investment banking need to be our top priorities.
I contrasted two different approaches in the run up to this comment. Which are you suggested we "tried" that didn't work?
Not when our bills exceed our revenue by $1.6 TRILLION in a single year. Income taxes are how we pay a few of our bills. Devaluation is how we pay some others. Debt that we don't ever intend to repay is how we pay for others still. You'd have seen this if you read my post.
You make the common mistake of assuming causality where there's barely even correlation. There were many factors that had to do with our growth over the last century and particularly in the 50s - 70s that do not boil down to "what were the tax rates?"
Boycotts can do more than take the place of "sound policies." We just don't want to voluntarily bring about consequences to our lifestyles to effect the change we want to see. We'd like someone else to do that for us. You can't expect to American People to reward the same handful of huge corporations with all their purchases but expect some different result than them ending up with all the money and hence all the power.
The latter is agreeable. The former is based on misguided assumptions.
It took 30 years of spending too much and taxing the rich too little to create our debt problem, it will take 30 years of the reverse to fix it.
In your opinion.
Not in an era of oil decline concurrent with the rampant industrialization of the world's most populous countries. If there is a fix to it, it extends light years beyond tax rates. Tax rates won't give us back the global hegemony we had 30-60 years ago, and we don't have (and won't have) the per capita energy availability, or the need for human labor hours, to enjoy an era of progress like that... ever ever again.
Really? I say, let them go.The sad truth is that it often difficult to tell other people how much tax they should pay because they can just leave. And why not? Other countries with lower taxes have great climates, high speed internet, the latest movies, night clubs, are scenic, relatively safe, etc.
Keep drinking the KoolAid.So it doesn't really matter what Americans were paying 20, 50 or 100 years ago, it's what people must pay now, and whether or not they are getting their money's worth. There are just more opportunities now in more countries and fewer reasons to invest in the United States. This is good because now countries must be more competitive to attract money and people, which allows greater freedoms then we have known in the not so distant past. Bur we must also adjust to this changing reality or Detroit will soon arrive in your neighborhood.
and you seem to have no problem with most of america paying much lower rates than the rich so your indignation is a joke
I choose returning to progressive taxes.
It took 30 years of spending too much and taxing the rich too little to create our debt problem, it will take 30 years of the reverse to fix it.
Yes, there was also deregulation of the banking industry. Tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation - Reaganomics they called it.
In your opinion.
The fact that half of America doesn't pay taxes doesn't even register with you that it is because they don't make enough money to even pay taxes. All that caught your eye was that they didn't pay taxes - just shows how brainwashed most conservatives are. They turn a blind eye to the rich soaking up all the money in the country off the backs of the middle class and all they can see is that the poor who don't make enough money aren't paying any taxes.
The fact that half of America doesn't pay taxes doesn't even register with you that it is because they don't make enough money to even pay taxes. All that caught your eye was that they didn't pay taxes - just shows how brainwashed most conservatives are. They turn a blind eye to the rich soaking up all the money in the country off the backs of the middle class and all they can see is that the poor who don't make enough money aren't paying any taxes.
Not in an era of oil decline concurrent with the rampant industrialization of the world's most populous countries. If there is a fix to it, it extends light years beyond tax rates. Tax rates won't give us back the global hegemony we had 30-60 years ago, and we don't have (and won't have) the per capita energy availability, or the need for human labor hours, to enjoy an era of progress like that... ever ever again.
Yes, in my opinion, of course. We are discussing this issue based on our respective opinions.
This is the delusion they must create in order to get by. Otherwise, their conscience would take over.
It's also why they ignore facts like CEO wages increasing 27% between 2009 and 2010, while employee pay rose 2.1% and the unemployment rate stayed marginally stagnant.
The American system has been completely gamed - and instead of the CEO's and the boards rewarding them so foolishly - we blame the President. He's the reason unemployment isn't any better. He's the reason CEO's are raking in an average of $9.4 million each while the rest of the country struggles. It's not the CEOs at all - nor is the board of directors who appoint and approve such massive salaries and bonuses. All Obama's fault that this continues to happen even as most American's suffer. He specifically makes that happen and is responsible for that behavior occurring - as it has - for the past 35 years or so as the wealthiest Americans accumulated and consolidated nearly all of the economic growth the country has seen. All his fault.
I know the stardard rhetorical argument from Conservatives/Republicans "why do you hate the rich?, why do you want to take money from wealthy people? all poor people want are hand-outs" and all the other "redistribution of wealth" arguments, but I've got news for you people. It's no longers just Warren Buffet saying "tax me! I'm good for it" to create jobs in America.
These promonent BILLIONAIRES are also saying "TAX ME! We want to create jobs IN AMERICA because the People want...NEED to work!" Watch these video interviews given by Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20" of BILLIONAIRES who are saying "TAX ME! CREATE JOBS IN AMERICA!" Even they agree with the Occupiers need to put America back to work!!
Again, the Occupy Movement IS NOT anti-capitalism. It IS anti-corruption. The People just want a job and for AMERICA to get back to work!!!
Really? I say, let them go.
The G.O.P. says global competitiveness requires the United States to reduce its corporate tax rate. But the United States actually has the lowest corporate tax burden of any of the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Bruce Bartlett: Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low? - NYTimes.com
Keep drinking the KoolAid.
Fortunately, the 99% are belatedly catching on and speaking out! I have not seen this kind of awareness since the Vietnam war protests which brought about an end to the war.