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Do The Rich Pay Too Much Federal Income Taxes

Do The Rich Pay Too Much Income Taxes

  • Total voters
    90
TurtleDude said:
I guess even you admit that the bottom 95% use more of the services paid for by the FIT than the top 5%
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No, not really, if it were not for those services, the rich probably wouldn't be rich.
 
pbrauer said:
Answers:

Yes

No

I don't Know

The 2013 tax tables are below:

Married Taxpayers Filing Jointly

Head of Household

Individual Taxpayers
​


Married Taxpayers Filing Separate​
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NO. Upper incomes are taxed too little.
 
The so-called poor in America would actually be considered well off if you compare them with other countries so to even label them as "poor" is just socialist propaganda and caters to those who want to maintain the welfare state.

What is Poverty in the United States: Air Conditioning, Cable TV and an Xbox

In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.

The home of the typical poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European. The typical poor American family was also able to obtain medical care when needed. By its own report, the typical family was not hungry and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.
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PoS said:
The so-called poor in America would actually be considered well off if you compare them with other countries so to even label them as "poor" is just socialist propaganda and caters to those who want to maintain the welfare state.

What is Poverty in the United States: Air Conditioning, Cable TV and an Xbox
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Poverty is relative, as well. Especially in a republic where means tested corporate welfare even has paid multi-million dollar bonuses to Persons who were nowhere near the poverty thresholds and could afford to hire entire departments to help them conform to rational choice theory or fill out corporate welfare forms in triplicate, if necessary.
 
Jack Hays said:
The top 25% of earners pay 87% of federal income taxes so the problem you claim doesn't actually exist.:peace
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What I've said for a long time now, Jack, is that if entry-level workers are paid a living wage, then they can pay their fair share of taxes...which you must admit would take some of the tax burden away from the rich. One could argue that instead of paying taxes, the rich would lose just as much or more because they'd be paying their workers more...but the flip side to that argument is that the lower middle-class and below generally don't have much in the way of savings - they spend pretty much all their income...which goes right back into the pockets of the rich.
 
danielpalos said:
Poverty is relative, as well. Especially in a republic where means tested corporate welfare even has paid multi-million dollar bonuses to Persons who were nowhere near the poverty thresholds and could afford to hire entire departments to help them conform to rational choice theory or fill out corporate welfare forms in triplicate, if necessary.
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So you believe two wrongs make a right?
 
PoS said:
So you believe two wrongs make a right?
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They don't, It just seems the right doesn't really have a problem with income transfers and direct payment to even artificial persons of wealth, but Only seem to have a problem if the least wealthy may benefit.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Can you show me where a MW increase of 50% (or more) has not?
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I am not aware that there has been any MW increase of 50% in the past...and that means that your question is logically fallacious. I asked you if you can show if there have been many jobs lost in the past due to MW increases - and there HAVE been many MW increases. But your question asks me to prove a negative...which is a logical fallacy.

FYI, it was 1938 when America first introduced the minimum wage - and one could argue that the initial introduction of a minimum wage is by definition a 100% MW hike. So...when the MW was first introduced in 1938, did that drive us further into the Depression? Apparently not.

And Australia - where the minimum wage is over twice what our own is - has not had a recession in over twenty years. Been to Perth three times and Hobart, Tasmania twice...and you'd be amazed to see the similarities in how things work there compared to here...and I never once saw a homeless person there.

I know, I know, your next reply will be "So why don't you move to Australia?" And my reply to that is (1) I've thought about it many times, but I like the weather here better, and (2) what the heck is wrong with looking at what other nations are doing, and if their ideas are working better, putting them into action here? There's nothing wrong with that - we're all every bit as human as each other...and people really are the same all over the world.
 
danielpalos said:
They don't, It just seems the right doesn't really have a problem with income transfers and direct payment to even artificial persons of wealth, but Only seem to have a problem if the least wealthy may benefit.
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I wont disagree with you there. Thats why Im against any sort of welfare or entitlement, be it individual or corporation.
 
PoS said:
I wont disagree with you there. Thats why Im against any sort of welfare or entitlement, be it individual or corporation.
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Yet, those of your point of view seem to be consistently more, for less social spending on the least wealthy while corporate welfare even pays multi-million dollar bonuses.
 
tres borrachos said:
It had no correlation to the discussion. You're bringing in medical examples.

You're on here claiming people need a living wage, but when you're pressed to define it, you become mute. All you're doing is repeating what you've heard and you don't even understand it. We aren't talking about diabetes, which by the way I can talk intelligently about as my husband has had it since he was 9.
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What I pointed out to you - and what you refuse to grasp - is that one doesn't have to know all the intricate details of a complicated issue to be able to say that one side of the issue is better than the other. Are you an expert on every issue you discuss on this forum? Of course you aren't - no one is. When you ask me to define the details of a living wage, you're hoping for a simple explanation - but the answer is not and can not be simply answered. It would involve studies of the costs of living within counties or regions within a state - food, housing, clothing - and then there's education costs. And should the costs of computers and internet access be included, since such are becoming essential to the point of being appliances and utilities rather than luxuries? These are all questions that must be studied and answered by those who have a heck of a lot more education than I in these fields.

So for you to expect me to provide a detailed answer when it's obvious that I can't know everything you want to know, to the level of detail that you demand...is simply unreasonable.

But I will remind you of this particular discussion the next time I see you taking a strong stand on another issue when it's obvious that you aren't an expert on that issue...like, say, climate change or military spending.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
And Australia - where the minimum wage is over twice what our own is - has not had a recession in over twenty years. Been to Perth three times and Hobart, Tasmania twice...and you'd be amazed to see the similarities in how things work there compared to here...and I never once saw a homeless person there.
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Ive been to Australia and was there for a few days in 2008 and their minimum wage had nothing to do with them weathering the financial crisis. The simple reasons is that Australian banks didnt over leverage themselves unlike the ones in the US and EU, their government had a budget surplus and their central bank didnt keep interest rates at zero which is what the US Fed did. Apples and oranges.
 
Sean.McDonnell said:
No, if you make enough money to be in the highest tax bracket, you have a larger responsibility to the state. You owe your financial success in part to the nation we live in which allows you to prosper. That and tax dollars building schools, libraries, and roads gives other citizens the ability to prosper, bolstering the economy of the nation as a whole.
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If the state is capable of making the rich rich....why are there poor?
 
danielpalos said:
Yet, those of your point of view seem to be consistently more, for less social spending on the least wealthy while corporate welfare even pays multi-million dollar bonuses.
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If the board of directors and shareholders decide to give huge bonuses to their corporate CEOs thats their business since its their companies that are private.
 
pbrauer said:
Answers:

Yes

No

I don't Know

The 2013 tax tables are below:

Married Taxpayers Filing Jointly

Head of Household

Individual Taxpayers
​


Married Taxpayers Filing Separate​
Click to expand...

Not to torpedo your thread, but are those figures posted in the charts adjusted gross income? Because if they're not, things like EIC lowers the total income into a bracket where no tax is paid. Yes?
 
PoS said:
Ive been to Australia and was there for a few days in 2008 and their minimum wage had nothing to do with them weathering the financial crisis. The simple reasons is that Australian banks didnt over leverage themselves unlike the ones in the US and EU, their government had a budget surplus and their central bank didnt keep interest rates at zero which is what the US Fed did. Apples and oranges.
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Not apples and oranges - their system is not radically different from our own. Besides, if a high minimum wage were indeed that destructive to an economy, exactly how is it that their economy is doing just fine? If bank leverage is what made the difference, then the over-twice-as-high-as-our-own MW is obviously not as destructive to an economy as you seem to think.
 
ocean515 said:
Why would I care? The two countries are not even remotely the same.

Move to Australia if you must. After all, automobile manufacturers appear to be quite bullish on it's future.
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The two nations are not that different. Yes, they have a MW over twice that of our own, and they've got mandatory voting (which I wish we had), but despite some differences here and there, their economic model is truly not that different from our own.

O5, perhaps the biggest mistake I see in conservatives is the almost unshakable belief that if another nation does something better than America does, it's either wrong or doesn't apply. It's as if conservatives seem to hold as a matter of faith that "those people over there" are somehow different, that what works for them cannot ever work here. But that's flat wrong - while not everything that works for other nations can be applied here, there are many things that can be done here to follow the example of other nations, when those things are achieving better results than we get here.

For instance, look at credit cards - do you see the kind of exposure of credit card numbers in Europe as we see here? Of course not - their system is different. One can't just take a credit card number from someone in France and plug that number in on the internet to buy whatever. Why can't we learn from that example? (1) American credit companies don't want to go through what would admittedly be a very, very expensive evolution in order to follow Europe's example, and (2) the idea among many that "if Europe does it, it must be wrong or bad or socialist or Nazi or whatever".

It's a very bad thing indeed when a society begins to refuse to learn positive lessons from other societies.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
The two nations are not that different. Yes, they have a MW over twice that of our own, and they've got mandatory voting (which I wish we had), but despite some differences here and there, their economic model is truly not that different from our own.

O5, perhaps the biggest mistake I see in conservatives is the almost unshakable belief that if another nation does something better than America does, it's either wrong or doesn't apply. It's as if conservatives seem to hold as a matter of faith that "those people over there" are somehow different, that what works for them cannot ever work here. But that's flat wrong - while not everything that works for other nations can be applied here, there are many things that can be done here to follow the example of other nations, when those things are achieving better results than we get here.

For instance, look at credit cards - do you see the kind of exposure of credit card numbers in Europe as we see here? Of course not - their system is different. One can't just take a credit card number from someone in France and plug that number in on the internet to buy whatever. Why can't we learn from that example? (1) American credit companies don't want to go through what would admittedly be a very, very expensive evolution in order to follow Europe's example, and (2) the idea among many that "if Europe does it, it must be wrong or bad or socialist or Nazi or whatever".

It's a very bad thing indeed when a society begins to refuse to learn positive lessons from other societies.
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An even worse thing is when a liberal finds another country that is not even remotely the same, and tries to use it as an example because there is something they are doing that matches their agenda.

You're in the even worse mode.

I'm not aware of any "conservative" who matches the thinking your suggesting about learning from other countries. If something works in another country, it is indeed worth looking at.

However, a living wage deal is a terrible idea, and should never, ever, be adopted in the United States.

If you want a no consequences life, move to where such mediocrity is rewarded. I know I will do whatever I can to insure such a place will never be found here in the US.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Not apples and oranges - their system is not radically different from our own. Besides, if a high minimum wage were indeed that destructive to an economy, exactly how is it that their economy is doing just fine? If bank leverage is what made the difference, then the over-twice-as-high-as-our-own MW is obviously not as destructive to an economy as you seem to think.
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Ive already explained to you why they weathered it. Read my post again.
 
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