The upper income tax bracket in the US was 90% and higher for many, many years, and the country grew fine, and wealth still accumulated. In the last few decades it's hovered in the mid thirty percent or so, and "that party" still screams and fights like crazy about a point or two either way, like it's killing anyone with an upper income. It really insults ones intelligence.
If you do the math, you discover that no flat tax within any semblance of reason (like the usually quoted 10%) comes anywhere close to providing the revenues even Republicans want to spend.
And anybody who is actually paying all of his bracket taxes is an idiot.
What really insults ones intelligence is when idiot politicians define wealthy as making $150K, $200K, or $250k per year.
I agree that wealthier people should pay more, but right now they carry almost the entire burden. I also think everyone should pay taxes, and currently 1/3 of us households don't pay anything. The top 10% carry almost the entire burden, and the top 1% pay 40% of the income taxes collected.
Depends on which quick "averages" you want to bandy about for whatever political purpose you're pushing.
The arithmetic mean that is most often citied may be misinterpreted as the median to imply that most people's incomes are higher than is in fact the case. When presented with an "average" one may be led to believe that most people's incomes are near this number. This "average" (arithmetic mean) income is higher than most people's incomes, because high income outliers skew the result higher (in contrast, the median income "resists" such skew).
However, this "average" says nothing about the number of people near the median income (nor does it say anything about the modal income that most people are near). Nevertheless, because one might carelessly relate "average" and "most people" one might incorrectly assume that most people's incomes would be higher (nearer this inflated "average") than they are.
For instance, reporting the "average" net worth in Medina, Washington, or Omaha, Nebraska, as the arithmetic mean of all annual net worths would yield a surprisingly high number because of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, respectively. Consider the scores (1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 9). The arithmetic mean is 3.17, but five out of six scores are below this.
The modal individual income in the US is about $30,000. That is, $30,000 is the peak of the income histogram--more individuals make $30,000 than any other income figure.
Moreover, the curve is heavily skewed left. If you look at your own words, the reason a "progressive tax" causes more of the tax burden to be carried by ever smaller numbers of individuals is because the modal individual income curve is skewed heavily to the left.
pipspeak wrote:
Who's profits AREN'T tanking? Even Sony and Toyota are hurting right now.
My beloved Leica/ E Leitz has gone through a bunch of product and corporate changes over the last few years.....they still make a great product for the most part. It's hard to know what "might have been" if these companies were never put through some hungry times.....
Your losing me? I didn't mention averages, I just mentioned some tax stats. I am ok with progressive taxation (to a point). While attractive to me, I don't think a flat tax is fair for the lower earners, it does shift too much of a burden on people who can't afford it.
I do agree 100% with your point on the way statistics can be very misleading and can be easily manipulated to forward an agenda.
canvasback13 wrote:
What really insults ones intelligence is when idiot politicians define wealthy as making $150K, $200K, or $250k per year.
I agree that wealthier people should pay more, but right now they carry almost the entire burden. I also think everyone should pay taxes, and currently 1/3 of us households don't pay anything. The top 10% carry almost the entire burden, and the top 1% pay 40% of the income taxes collected.
I always laugh when i hear some idiot politician complaining that most tax cuts go to the "rich". Of course they do, they pay almost all the taxes!
The rich have almost all the wealth. Sure, you can twist words aroudn to make a "true" assertion that the rich are shouldering a hefty amount of the burden. The truth is that US workers do almost all of the work, and the rich make almost all of the profit. Accumulation of wealth by the rich and corporations has far outstripped anything possibly foreseen by the founders of this country.
canvasback13 wrote:
don't get me started on estate taxes!
It's nuts how people are allowed to pass so much of their accumulated wealth on to their heirs. It ensures class separation and maintenance of the status quo.
jvarszegi wrote:
The rich have almost all the wealth. Sure, you can twist words aroudn to make a "true" assertion that the rich are shouldering a hefty amount of the burden. The truth is that US workers do almost all of the work, and the rich make almost all of the profit. Accumulation of wealth by the rich and corporations has far outstripped anything possibly foreseen by the founders of this country.
It's nuts how people are allowed to pass so much of their accumulated wealth on to their heirs. It ensures class separation and maintenance of the status quo.
Welcome to the Gilded Age Part Deux. Since the middle class has been pretty much wiped out, it is pretty much a class system now. The divide between the wealthy and everyone else is obscene.
Our founding fathers wanted only rich land owning men voting and were certainly not in favor of their workers having equal rights! Forunatly our country has evolved into a place with much more equal oppurtunities.
Estate taxes just confiscate wealth. Wealth that was taxed when earned, taxed when invested, and usually taxed when spent. If you are going to have one, make every one subject, not just 2% getting hit with 45 or 55%. The staus quo is not kept the same, especially when the family has more than 1 child. The next generagtion ends up with only a fraction of the wealth.
Just my personal opinions, we can all agree to disagree.
canvasback13 wrote:
I agree that wealthier people should pay more, but right now they carry almost the entire burden. I also think everyone should pay taxes, and currently 1/3 of us households don't pay anything. The top 10% carry almost the entire burden, and the top 1% pay 40% of the income taxes collected.
don't get me started on estate taxes!
These numbers are always quoted but conveniently not complete. Yes there may be 1/3 of the US households not paying INCOME tax, but they absolutely pay SSI, sales taxes and property taxes at exactly the same rates as those poor old 1%'ers. So who gets screwed there? I also love the quote about the 1%'ers paying 40%... the fact that they control 70% of the wealth in the country is always conveniently left off.
Please do get started about estate taxes... about how we go to work everyday and have to pay about 30% of our income out to various taxes, while some snivelling survivor of an ultra wealthy family gets to shuffle around millions in windfall cash income and expect to pay nothing.
jvarszegi wrote:
It's nuts how people are allowed to pass so much of their accumulated wealth on to their heirs. It ensures class separation and maintenance of the status quo.
It was already taxed once. Bitter about your own income failures ?
rockitman wrote:
It was already taxed once. Bitter about your own income failures ?
No, I'm not bitter. I've had a six-figure income for nearly all of my adult life that I wasn't in university or the army, and would have been content with a lot less. I'm just talking about the unfairness of maintaining dynasties of the rich. There's no good reason for it.
Is there ANY Bank on this planet that's not being bailed out for horrendously obscene amounts of OUR MONEY - and these same institutions are still treating the small businesses like dirt -- if your account is 1 CENT below your agreed limit because of THEIR processing delays -- they still issue nasty letters and charge you 30 USD for the privilege - even though WE OWN the wretched businesses now.
I wouldn't worry about Canon - it's sound enough and it makes a lot of things other than Cameras.
If the Politicians were serious about fixing the economy they would do much better to give EVERYBODY around 50,000 USD tax free each and let the banks go bust.
This would re-start the ecoomy really fast -- new DECENT lending institutions would arise, some people would pay off Credit Cards etc whist loads would go out SPENDING again (and not on borrowed money).
Giving everybody around 50,000 USD would start the economy overnight, create new jobs and actually be a LOT cheaper than the Bank bail out which looks like our children will be paying for well into 2030 -- and these Wall street directors and CEO's ARE STILL COLLECTING their Fat Cat salries.
Don't worry. Companies like Canon have 5 year and 30 year plans, unlike American companies which have 90 day plans (as far as the next quarterly earnings report).
jvarszegi wrote:
The rich have almost all the wealth. Sure, you can twist words aroudn to make a "true" assertion that the rich are shouldering a hefty amount of the burden. The truth is that US workers do almost all of the work, and the rich make almost all of the profit. Accumulation of wealth by the rich and corporations has far outstripped anything possibly foreseen by the founders of this country.
[.
x2
The top 10% income bracket holds 90% of the wealth, while the lower 90% holds 10 % of the wealth
.
And what is riddiculus is that billions of dollars are being given to corporate executives as bonuses (retention payments)that are being payed for by a stimulus package coming out of future tax dollars that will be compounded by large amounts of interest and be paid for by the general public. This all while the same corporations are laying off their lower paid workers en masse. It is absurd, and far removed from any kind of democratic principles.
Is there ANY Bank on this planet that's not being bailed out for horrendously obscene amounts of OUR MONEY - and these same institutions are still treating the small businesses like dirt -- if your account is 1 CENT below your agreed limit because of THEIR processing delays -- they still issue nasty letters and charge you 30 USD for the privilege - even though WE OWN the wretched businesses now.
Yes, there are such banks. At one extreme, I was recently reading about a small, locally owned bank that almost exclusively serves an Amish farming community. Yes, the Amish farmers do borrow money, but they only borrow what they need, what they know will increase their own income, what they can pay back well within their means, and they are scrupulous about paying it back. Because these Amish farmers don't have official credit references (the bank loan officers know them, know their families, know their parents, know their aunts, et cetera), the bank can't "securitize" and sell the loans--the bank owns and services the loans directly. That bank is still doing quite well, and will do well as long as the Amish farmers can continue to sell their crops profitably.
There are actually a lot of banks that never tried to get into the schemes that were essentially gambling with other people's money. Those banks were considered dumb schmucks a few years ago.
If the Politicians were serious about fixing the economy they would do much better to give EVERYBODY around 50,000 USD tax free each and let the banks go bust.
The claim by banks is that it's the approximately two million "toxic home mortgages" in the system that are causing the problem. If that is the case, two million multiplied by an average of $175,000 per home comes out to $350 billion...as much as has already been delivered by the Treasury to Wall Street.
If we recall, McCain did float the idea of the government simply buying up these toxic mortgages, but that idea was immediately shot down by everyone who was supposedly smarter in such things--mostly on the Republican side, if it makes any difference, because the people who are supposedly smarter in such things (most of those on Wall Street) are mostly Republicans.
Ah, those smart guys tell us, we don't want to just buy up the mortgages because they may not actually be worth that $350 billion (much of it was overvalued)...we wouldn't want to waste the taxpayers' money by paying $350 billion for real estate that may not be worth that much.
But we've already paid $350 billion for nothing, and we're about to pay another $350 billion for nothing. I'd darned sure rather have paid $350 billion for maybe $100 billion worth of real estate and solved the problem than to pay $700 billion for nothing and still have the problem.
