But imagine the sense of pride that those making over $402k must feel every time they see roads being built or wars being waged. I think I could handle having that sense of pride.
(I’m kidding, in part. I do think this chart does a good job of illustrating a valid point. For those who don’t believe the top 1% pays enough, it’d be interesting to know what they believe is a fair burden.)
Posted by Recess Supervisor on August 21, 2008 at 0143 hrs
Damn Owen, I can’t seem to generate the bitter tears you weep for the rich in this country.
1) Taxes of 40% on someone making $400 M leaves them roughly $260,000 to play with. That’s over 8 times the income of the lowest rank—providing the lowest rank’s income is untouched by taxes, which it isn’t. You don’t feed your kids, pay for housing or buy gas on percentages.
2) This is only fed income taxes. What kicks in are taxes that are far more regressive at the local and state levels. Our income tax in Wis is almost a flat tax.
3) What is the correct level? That amount we need to run the country, fairly contributed by everyone.
4) Again, if you dislike taxes why are we dumping so much of it in Iraq and on a military we really did need to any great extent until numbnutz in the White House started poking Putin?
No, I am not jealous. I make a fairly nice income myself. I, on the other hand, am not a leaker and believe that a combination of my talents, the opportunities this country affords me thanks to mostly well-managed government and the help I got from others tells me I should be paying in my fair share. That fair share does not include stupidity though such as bone-headed military adventures, unregulated faith based initiatives and bailouts of irresponsible companies.
It should include infrastructure, protections against food pathologies and readiness in case of natural disasters among other things.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 0754 hrs
Not surprisingly Keith you don’t understand.
Owen is not crying tears for the rich.
Owen is showing the idiocy of the entire “rich not paying their fair share” class warfare idiocy of you and your leftie pals.
The rich are clearly paying their fair share. Check out the chart, the top 5% are pulling down 58.8% of the over-all tax burden.
Tell me Keith, if 5% paying 58.8% is not fair then what would be in your mind?
Posted by Fred on August 21, 2008 at 0845 hrs
I wouldn’t call letting others off the hook from paying what they owe to keep society operating. That’s more servility.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 0851 hrs
Tell me Keith how much is too much?
Where is your ethical line?
On a percentage basis how much of someone’s earnings should we take away?
Let me put it another way, at what point would you become ethically uncomfortable in regards to someone’s total tax burden?
Give us a number.
Posted by Fred on August 21, 2008 at 0859 hrs
Tell you what Fred, you raise the money for me to work on that question and I’ll be happy to work on it for you.
In the meantime, all I do know is those on the bottom are paying too much and those on the top too little. We have so many problems that are going unfixed.
The number is something we work towards. The exact number exists in the juvenile mind.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 0956 hrs
It should include infrastructure, protections against food pathologies and readiness in case of natural disasters among other things.
Keith Keith Keith…
You know I think its funny that when you and guys like you try to make the case for socialism you always pluck out these “who-could-argue-with-that” roles of government, all of which put together don’t even hit the radar screen compared to where all that money really goes.
Have you looked at the federal budget? Do you know where the lions share of that money goes? Let me tell you brother, it isn’t to the things you listed. Its to social spending.
And half of my beef with the tax structure and philosophy in this country has to do with the freedom side of it.
As a matter of principle I don’t believe government gets to redistribute wealth and anyone who has studied government and history knows that socialist societies end up with a smaller wealthy ruling class than a free-market society.
The other side of my beef with social spending is all that social spending DOESN’T WORK. It doesn’t provide a better return for people than they could have keeping their own. It only encourages dependence and lack of self-sustainability. All the entitlements and social spending are drug-like in their ability to cause people to become addicted to having someone else support them and failing to grasp control of their own future and support themselves.
The more money we pour into social spending the more demand there will be.
And all that money at the hand of government is a pretty dangerous thing. You might have noticed, there aren’t angels running government.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1007 hrs
58.8% is not enough from the top 5% Keith?
Like to see a juvenille mind? Look in the mirror.
Posted by Fred on August 21, 2008 at 1015 hrs
Social spending? You mean the non-existent welfare program that Bill Clinton abolished in the 1990’s? I am sure anything to you that isn’t military spending is social spending.
And by the way, let’s knock off the solipsistic socialism labels. You guys cry like babies when anyone hints that your views are fascist. So if you can’t take it I’d advise you’d better not dish it out.
Oh I forgot where I am right now. When someone is so far jammed to the right even Jack Welch looks like a commie.
I am a little hard pressed to get the freedom thing from someone who is a corporate servant and a fan of FISA.
Go ahead pilot. Blow another 20 minutes on a lengthy but vapid reply.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1021 hrs
I am a little hard pressed to get the freedom thing from someone who is a corporate servant and a fan of FISA.
Swing and a miss Keith.
You guys are unbelievable. Who’s the other person who does this… Scott I think…
You guys must have a little “how to debate” trouble-shooting guide. Whenever someone points out the freedom issue the standard reply is to bring up FISA?
I’ll tell you the same thing I told Scott. (if I have scott confused with one of the other lefties on the board I apologize).
I’ve never participated in a discussion of FISA on this board or any other. So the fact that you would say I’m a fan of it is proof that you are talking out of your ass.
Why don’t you come over here so I can pull the wind-up string on your back and get your programmed reply to this one.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1042 hrs
Damn Owen, I can’t seem to generate the bitter tears you weep for the rich in this country.
Obviously words of someone whose position has them backed into a corner.
Know when to hold them, and when to fold them Keith.
What’s FISA go to to do, got to do whith this? Ohoo, ohoo, ohoo, what’s FISA got to do, got to do with this…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1142 hrs
What’s FISA go to to do, got to do whith this? Ohoo, ohoo, ohoo, what’s FISA got to do, got to do with this…
I think maybe he put the dial on the wrong picture on his mental see-n-say before he pulled the lever
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1159 hrs
Common sense? What an ironic name. Obviously reading fatigue set in since you dropped from the rest of the post, unless that’s your level of repartee.
Glad to hear pilot you are not in favor of Bush’s politically motivated eavesdropping, because there are so many ways that our freedoms can be subverted.
You of course focus on one thing and ignore everything else. When the hell bother? That is your method of so-called debate, except to get you spending hours cranking out inane rejoinders.
I’m so proud of you. I am sure everybody else who will join in to knife me or misunderstand what I wrote feel the same way.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1402 hrs
Fair share? How about what they paid under Eisenhower or even Reagan?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1503 hrs
Whoops!
I didn’t see xxxpilot was in on this, exercising his class-warfare rhetoric again.
Keith, what you don’t understand is that from his point of view, asking people to pay a proportionate share of what’s required to keep the country running is nothing more than an expression of middle and working class greed.
When we ask the people with lots of money to pay a progressively proportionate level in taxes, we’re actually robbing them of that extra 2 or 3 million they need and earned for botox, new jetskis for the cottage, and BMW’s for their kids at Harvard and Yale and Texas A&M;. They aren’t avoiding their civic responsibilities. Their wealth demonstrates, as Calvin told us, that these people are God’s chosen.
For us to ask them to pay any taxes at all is, thus, a kind of sin against God.
Does that help?
Hope you’ve been well.
Mark
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1513 hrs
Fair share? How about what they paid under Eisenhower or even Reagan?
If you want to be a tool about it, how about what they paid under Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Roosevelt or even Taft?
When we ask the people with lots of money to pay a progressively proportionate level in taxes, we’re actually robbing them of that extra 2 or 3 million they need and earned for botox, new jetskis for the cottage, and BMW’s for their kids at Harvard and Yale and Texas A&M;. They aren’t avoiding their civic responsibilities. Their wealth demonstrates, as Calvin told us, that these people are God’s chosen.
Boy you sure are a bitter and jealous one, aren’t you.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1523 hrs
I didn’t see xxxpilot was in on this, exercising his class-warfare rhetoric again.
When we ask the people with lots of money to pay a progressively proportionate level in taxes, we’re actually robbing them of that extra 2 or 3 million they need and earned for botox, new jetskis for the cottage, and BMW’s for their kids at Harvard and Yale and Texas A&M;. They aren’t avoiding their civic responsibilities. Their wealth demonstrates, as Calvin told us, that these people are God’s chosen
This guy says I exercise class-warfare? Hello IRONY!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1601 hrs
No, I was trying to be conservative Republican about it—unless even Mr. Reagan has become too liberal for the neocon psychopathology. —I imagine that’s probably only a matter of time.
xxpilot: go read Federalist 10 and get back to us. Maybe you could shine Mr. Cheney’s shoes too, while you’re out.
Posted by Mpeterson on August 21, 2008 at 1633 hrs
Yeah, I’d say the well-off (and I believe that includes you, by your own admission, xx) exercise class warfare. I’d say y’all exercise it quite successfully, as a matter of fact, as the percentage of the country’s wealth going to the top percentage is at historically high levels, while the wages of the poor and middle class have been stagnant or decreasing for quite some time, and the gap continues to widen.
And hey, good on you for making it. For those that earned it rather than inheriting it, I have nothing but admiration and respect. But let’s not pretend that government policies over the last 30-40 years haven’t made it easier and easier for the rich to get richer.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1638 hrs
Unreal…
You can not tax yourself into prosperity.
Remember how well Clinton’s luxury tax went? It put people out of work who built those luxury items.
Leave those people’s monies alone and they will invest those monies back into the economy.
The top 5% pay all but 42.2% of the load. That’s enough.
Posted by Fred on August 21, 2008 at 1639 hrs
In 2005 the USA also spent $620B on 85 federal, state and local welfare programs. The 2005 official poverty count was 37M people That means welfare expenditures were $16,750 per poor person or $67,000 for a poor family of four.
Source: Stealing from Each Other by Edgar K. Browning
Yet I hear over and over by the Democrat party that the Rich don’t pay enough tax, and don’t want to help the poor. The government IS taking away our freedom. Not through FISA, but by stealing income and throwing it away in the name of helping the poor.
Keith - You still sound like you’re cornered here.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 1754 hrs
Huzzah to Mpeterson,
Ouch, just about got hit with the green envy you’re spewing.
Here’s just a bit of microeconomics for you. Weatlh spent in the private sector begets wealth. You’ve demonstrated it yourself in the goods and services in your “things I hate about the rich”
The money spent on botox, luxury vehicles (even foreign brands) and jetskis in turn provides employment opportunities. The wages paid to the employees that produce those goods and services are spent on other goods and services, and etc. etc. It’s called the multiplier effect of wealth.
Now the difference between that and say, government spending, is that government spending is simply a transfer of wealth.
Finally, greed? Really? Well, you can donate more of your money to the Treasury, but don’t ask me to forcibly give mine. Perhaps that would be the balm to soothe your bitterness.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 2104 hrs
So it’s greed when I ask for a return to Mr. Reagan’s level of taxation but it wasn’t greed when Baby Bush cut taxes in a way that helped his friends more than it helped me??
Huh.
And forcibly? No sir. That seems unlikely since the government, under the current administration, has your back now. Maybe you don’t think you owe your country anything. Move to Russia or China then. They have a lot of billionaires there now.
I have read Friedman and Stiglitz (have you?) and Andrew Carnegie, one of my heroes. F and C provide great arguments for concentrating wealth in order to create economic development. I have no problem with that at all.
The difficulty for you is to explain why the taxation rates of the 50’s and 60’s and 70’s—during much of which we had budget surpluses and a fairly modest deficit and huge industrial development—were unfair while, by contrast, the tax rates of the 80’s and 90’s and 00’s—during which time our debt has spiraled out of sight along with our trade deficit and jobs, and wealth has been concentrated in the hands of fewer people than at any time in history (recently passing even the Robber Barons)—were, are, perfectly fair.
If we make one part of society happy at the expense of the rest, as Plato notes, is that society really just?
You seem to think it is. I couldn’t disagree more. You can’t make one part happy at the expense of the whole unless there is a concomitant good that accompanies the unequal distribution of wealth. During the 50’s and even during the 80’s, there was. Our taxes went into military spending that stretched the Soviets too thin to survive. That made billions for GE and Rockwell, but it also meant an attending good for all Americans. Lately, we’ve increased that concentration of wealth but with a much lower return for the society: blue collar jobs are being sent out of the country at an increasing rate and the education system that might prepare us for a knowledge based economy is being cut.
I’m trying to work out how that helps any of us in the long run. And Blue Collar Boy, how is voting against your own economic self-interest a rational position?
hiho
MpPosted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 2240 hrs
Our taxes went into military spending that stretched the Soviets too thin to survive. That made billions for GE and Rockwell, but it also meant an attending good for all Americans. Lately, we’ve increased that concentration of wealth but with a much lower return for the society:
Gee… I guess the money flowing into industry that employs people produces output and drives the economy is better than the money flowing into entitlements and social spending where it is given out free to someone that didn’t have to exchange any labor/output for it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 2252 hrs
Hey, pilot. Hey pilot. Did we wake you?
Yeah, wake up. You’ve been sleeping since 1982. Guess what happened? Turned out Reagan’s tax breaks for the rich didn’t work out so well. We had a whale of a recession in 1992 that defeated Reagan’s vice-president George Bush.
The guy who replaced him—you wouldn’t remember since he was only governor of Arkansas when you went to sleep—Bill Clinton, raised taxes on the wealthy to wipe out the Reagan/Bush deficit and guess what, the country got prosperous. And his vice-president—Al Gore—when he was in the Senate helped make something called the Internet possible through funding and regulation changes. The internet contributed to the prosperity.
And you know those black people that you think are sitting around collecting welfare? Clinton reformed that so no one is collecting a welfare entitlement. Well, not everybody. There still are a lot of corporations living on the dole.
But I have some bad news. George Bush had an incompetent corrupt son, also named George. He brought on his father’s equally incompetent and incredibly more corrupt secretary of defense as Vice President. If you remember Cheney he sort of resembles a villain from a Bond film.
Now as a conservative you probably won’t like this, but Bush Jr. and Cheney faked us into a preemptive war, something I know you’d be against.
In the mean time, knowing how much you guys hate government spending and deficits, Bush Jr. has cooked up a whopper, dropping the value of the dollar and kicking up the price of oil.
On second thought pilot, you’d better go back to sleep. Oh I’m sorry, one more thing pilot. A black man is running for president—and it’s not Thomas Sowell.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 21, 2008 at 2325 hrs
Keith, pull your head out of your ass would you.
Look at the actual numbers and you find when taxes are lowered incintives to participate in the economy increase and revenues skyrocket.
Works every time it has been tried, go back and look at JFK.
The key is limiting the growth of government and controlling spending, NOT increasing taxes.
Posted by Fred on August 22, 2008 at 0733 hrs
Keith, I don’t have time to give you an economics lesson in this thread.
MPeterson says he’s read Freidman. (I’m not sure it shows) but you should to. Hopefully you pick up more from it than he does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
“The great acheivements of civilizations have not come from government bureaus”
“in the only cases in which the masses have escaped the kind of grinding poverty you’ve talked about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, its exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lives of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise systems.”
“is it really true that political self-interest is somehow nobler than economic self interest?” “and just tell me where in the world you are going to find these angels that are going to organize society for us?”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 0948 hrs
That there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lives of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise systems.”
China?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1057 hrs
What point are you trying to make pjr?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1223 hrs
Keith:
I challenge you to name one…just one…only one…country/economy that has taxed its way to prosperity.
C’mon…just one!
Ever here of a flat tax? What’s more fair than that?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1308 hrs
This may be the least informative comment thread ever.
All the liberals are actively ducking the original question (if the “rich” don’t pay enough under the present system, how much should they be paying?). And no wonder - tax the rich is great as an abstract concept and as empty populism. When someone asks for details, they all run for the hills.
The conservatives are all trying to pretend that tax cuts are always the answer. By their logic, of course, government would have an unlimited supply of revenue if only they reduced tax rates to zero.
Reagan’s tax cuts may have helped in the 1980’s. Of course, the economy was naturally poised to rebound from the three recessions it had endured within a decade (1973-75, 1980, 1981-82). Democrats think Bill Clinton is the savior for raising taxes, but again, much of the economic boom in the 1990’s was fueled by the speculative overvaluation of tech companies and associated industries.
Much of what happens in the economy is cyclical, far beyond the control of our politicians. And when our politicians do try to help (as with our stimulus checks), the help often comes far too late in the game to do much good. By the time politicians react, the blow has already been dealt and is in the process of being absorbed.
It’s all about taxing as little as necessary to accomplish whatever voters decide is the appropriate aim of government. Virtually everyone, conservative or liberal, wants to tax as little as possible. As Fred alluded to a few posts earlier, it’s spending that drives taxes, not the other way around.
The bigger disagreement, of course, is over the appropriate aim of government.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on August 22, 2008 at 1314 hrs
Where does China fit into that calculus?
RS is basically on target,Much of what happens in the economy is cyclical, far beyond the control of our politicians.
depending on the definition of “control” because they can certainly influence it, often with unintended consequences.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1336 hrs
I wonder when Recess will run for office, and if he’ll admit he’s Recess.
Posted by J. Foust on August 22, 2008 at 1612 hrs
Much of what happens in the economy is cyclical, far beyond the control of our politicians. And when our politicians do try to help (as with our stimulus checks), the help often comes far too late in the game to do much good.
I agree 100%
Where does China fit into that calculus?
If you look at China’s growth and explosion of the middle class in china you’ll not that it coincides with the governments move towards recognition of private property, private ownership and free-er enterprise. A perfect case study of the quote I posted from Milton Friedman.
As our country becomes more socialistic and there is more government intervention in the economy it will stifle innovation and progress (not halt it) but we won’t have the innovation and progress we would have had with less intervention and the brunt of that stagnation will absolutely be borne by the middle and lower class.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1701 hrs
Just for you, just one.
Finland.
They have also regulated their way into prosperity.
Countries that lightly tax their wealthiest go by a different name. Banana republics. You must like bananas bajaskier?
You folks love trotting out Kennedy’s tax cuts. Those mattered then because the bite was bigger for the wealthy than it is now. Now thanks to W, there is less to cut and less to have an effect. It just simply becomes a gift for the rich.
Really Recess, you are usually a pretty sharp guy, but I usually get that “name a number” crap when being screamed at by Republican Fembots.
Your mind is more subtle than that.
And by the way pilot if you think you are going to school me using uncle Miltie, forget it. Not only do I have no respect for that dried up old fart (guess I outed myself there), as he disappears into the rear view mirror of history he is going to be discredited, though I’d say the Bush administration has speeded up the process.
Beside pilot, you still think there are welfare queens. What’s that MTV program? Living in the ‘80’s?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1711 hrs
If you look at China’s growth and explosion of the middle class in china you’ll not that it coincides with the governments move towards recognition of private property, private ownership and free-er enterprise.
And don’t forget the recognition of taxes!
http://www.worldwide-tax.com/china/china_tax.asp
Guess if they lower their tax rates we are really screwed.
A perfect case study of the quote I posted from Milton Friedman.
Really?
As our country becomes more socialistic and…..
Blah, blah, blah now that’s the sophistic BS I expect from you xxp.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 1756 hrs
Hey Keith, thanks for throwing Finland out there, really. It’s not even that I’m looking for a specific number. I’m just happy for someone on the left to cite an example, any example, of who they think handles the matter of taxation better. That’s something most Democratic politicians are certainly not brave enough to do, because it would mean the opposition could pick that plan apart. “Tax the rich” is just a really weak intellectual argument, same as many of the equally reactionary arguments from the right.
Now, I can argue that if you handed the American people the details of most Scandinavian tax systems, I don’t think you would get very far. And you can disagree. But thanks for at least sticking your neck out far enough to say that there’s something out there you would prefer.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on August 22, 2008 at 2005 hrs
Blah, blah, blah now that’s the sophistic BS I expect from you xxp
You know I just read your whole post and you’ve got little room to talk there pal.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 2034 hrs
Recess, I may not even like living in Finland, but our boy wanted a name of an economy with higher taxes doing well. I obliged.
The tax cutting thing is a not a prescription for success. Scott Walker is turning Milwaukee into Buenos Aires.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 2059 hrs
If you actually think China is a case study for Uncle Miltie I am guessing that the closest you have ever gotten to doing business w/China has been by frequenting the local all u can eat buffet.
How do you like those Chinese tax rates?
xxp, have your ghost writer get back to me on Monday.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 2111 hrs
And by the way pilot if you think you are going to school me using uncle Miltie, forget it. Not only do I have no respect for that dried up old fart (guess I outed myself there), as he disappears into the rear view mirror of history he is going to be discredited
Well… No offense Keith, but considering he is a Nobel Laureate Economist widely considered the most influential economist of the 20th century, and you are… well… sitting behind a keyboard clicking away and tossing out a few colloquialisms…
I’d say your claims are wildly arrogant and completely unsubstantiated.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 22, 2008 at 2117 hrs
Wildly arrogant and completely unsubstantiated?
This economic mess we are in right now has been brought to us by this decrepit old fart, and that’s being kind.
Let’s face it. His BS philosophies was just another way to gussy up greed.
If you think that there is no proof of the disaster brought on by his desire for an unregulated economy, then you are in a coma.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 23, 2008 at 0638 hrs
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