Theft

[Duchess Jack]

I started working in the field every summer when I was 13... (stuff, stuff and more stuff) ....Why don't you try to keep the comments on the topic at hand instead of trying to insult someone who disagrees with your political views.

 

Congrats on your success.

 

You're right - I don't know you and how hard or little you work - just as you don't know or understand how hard or little people not in your position work. Perhaps I should not have hinted one way or the other about how much or little you were handed. Perhaps you should do the same, because you regularly make broad judgments about folk that aren't in your situation (low income people, people that are struggling, people who have not been blessed with as much opportunity, etc) all of the time. You also tend to put people who disagree with you politically in a box and paint them with the same clumsy brush.

 

In my defense - at least I had all of your rhetoric and slander to base my opinion off of. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe you are a pretty good and compassionate guy. This is a chat board after all and it’s not unknown for people to assume ridiculous personas. I point to spain as one of the most dramatic of examples.

 

Being somewhere between where you find yourself and the unwashed masses - I am thankful to be afforded a fair understanding of both sides and am thankful for the empathy that comes with that understanding. This is not an understanding based on some biased agenda ridden rhetoric, but one born of growing up a welfare kid and now finding myself a reasonably prosperous adult. I have no illusions that if my mom did not receive government assistance, that I would not be where I am now. I have no illusions that if I did not have the right role models and people who took an interest in me and helped me along (a couple of them being super conservative), that I would not be where I am now.

 

You always wine about folk attacking the messenger rather than the message, but you bring these comments on yourself. You are very rarely positive or open minded. You toss around a lot of names and shticky lingo and invite the responses you get. You set the tone and then cry when folk humanly respond in a similar manner. When you put people in a box that you so clearly detest based upon what you think (or are told) they believe, you are inviting folk to do the same to you.

 

I can only speak for myself, but the reason I don't address your links is because most are super biased opinion pieces based on what I feel is your flawed morality. The links tend to have an agenda and if there is anything factual or statistical hidden inside the links - they are facts and statistics cherry picked to support what I believe is this flawed morality.

 

You'll not find many posts where I lift Obama or smash Bush. You won't find many posts where I make broad generalizations about a group of people or insult a group of people. I try not to paint with so broad a brush. There are a lot of republicans and conservatives on this board, but you'll find that while I disagree with many of them, I get along with most. That is because my issue is not with your politics, but your morality.

 

I am sure that if you commit to not forcing Obama into posts that don't directly deal with Obama and if you don't try to force politics into posts that don't directly involve politics - that many on this board would happily commit to keeping their comments 'on topic' when you post your numerous opinion pieces and attempts to paint people who disagree with you politically, in a horrible manner.

 

Seeing as you have such a hard on for keeping on topic - would you agree to that?

Edited April 10, 2010 by Duchess Jack

[SayItAintSoJoe]

I think the lesson here is to not pre-judge people, both the fortunate and less-fortunate.

 

Just because someone inherits (or buys out) a business from their father lets not assume that the person has had everything just handed to them and hasn't worked hard a day in their life. They very well may have worked even harder and longer than most.

 

On the flip-side lets not assume that because someone is collecting welfare they are lazy and simply sponging off of the government. They may very well be working hard to improve their situation and raise children that will someday become prosperous adults thus breaking the cycle of government dependence.

 

In the famous words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?".

[bpwallace49]

Tax Rates for Top 400 Earners Fall as Income Soars, IRS Data

David Cay Johnston* for Tax Analysts

 

 

The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low, newly disclosed tax data show.

 

In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16. (For the report, see Tax Analysts Doc 2010-3372 .)

 

The figures came at the peak of the last economic cycle and show that widely published reports in major newspapers asserting that the richest Americans are losing relative ground and "becoming poorer" are not supported by the official income data.

 

The long-term data show that under current tax and economic rules, the incomes of the top earners rise when the economy expands and contract during recessions, only to rise again. Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007.

 

Taxpayers on the 95th to 99th steps on the income ladder paid an effective income tax rate of 17.52 percent, according to calculations by the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group that favors less taxation and lower rates. Taxpayers in this category earned between $255,000 and $451,000 in 2007, compared with an average daily income of almost $945,000 for the top 400, who paid lower effective tax rates on average.

 

Payroll taxes did not add a significant burden to the top 400, not changing the rounding of rates by even one decimal. With payroll taxes taken into account, the effective tax rate of the top 400 would be 17.2 percent in 2006 and 16.6 percent in 2007, my analysis shows -- the same as not counting payroll taxes. As a point of comparison, about two-thirds of Americans pay more in Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes than in federal income taxes.

 

The top 400's share of all income grew from 1.31 cents out of every dollar earned by all Americans to 1.59 cents.

 

Adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars, the top 400 enjoyed a 27 percent increase in their income, or nine times the rate of increase for the bottom 90 percent, based on an earlier analysis of tax data published by Profs. Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists at the University of California at Berkeley who have been studying global income trends.

 

 

Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with an increase of 399 percent for the top 400.

 

The annual top 400 report was first made public by the Clinton administration, but the George W. Bush administration shut down access to the report. Its release was resumed a year ago when President Obama took office. The Statistics of Income Division at the IRS created the top 400 reports at the urging of Joel Slemrod, a business professor at the University of Michigan.

 

The top 400 reports understate actual top incomes because of deferral rules. For example, managers of offshore hedge funds who deferred their gains may not be counted in the top 400 reports, which are based on the figure on the last line of the front page of Form 1040.

 

At least three hedge fund managers made $3 billion in 2007. It is not known how much, if any, of their income they deferred.

 

Most of the income going to the top 400 tax returns is from capital. Salaries and wages accounted for only 6.5 percent of the top 400's income in 2007, down from 7.4 percent in 2006 and 26.2 percent in 1992. The average salary rose from 2006 to 2007, however, just at a slower rate than overall income growth.

 

The biggest source of income was capital gains, which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent. Gains accounted for 66.3 percent of 2007 income for the top 400, up from 62.8 percent in 2006 and 36.1 percent in 1992.

 

Only 7 of the top 400 have shown up in the report every year, the IRS data showed. Of the 6,400 returns covered by the 16 years of the report, the IRS said that 2,515, or almost 40 percent, appeared one time.

 

The report shows that the number of the top 400 who paid an effective tax rate of 0 percent to 10 percent declined slightly, to 25 in 2007 from 31 in 2006. In 1992 only 6 of the top 400 paid an effective income tax rate of less than 10 percent.

 

Another 127 paid 10 percent to 15 percent in 2007, up from 113 in 2006.

 

Only 33 of the top 400 paid an effective tax rate of 30 percent to 35 percent, which is the maximum federal tax rate.

 

*David Cay Johnston is a former tax reporter for The New York Times. He teaches at Syracuse University College of Law and is the author of two books about taxes, Free Lunch and Perfectly Legal . His current column on taxes appears in Tax Notes and Tax Notes Today.

 

talk about theft . . .. Perch I hope you are upset about the fact that these wealthy people are paying less percentage in tax than someone that makes an income in the low 6 figures.

 

I will wait for your righteous outrage against this "theft" against the American middle class. . . . lest you be branded a hypocrite?

[westvirginia]

talk about theft . . .. Perch I hope you are upset about the fact that these wealthy people are paying less percentage in tax than someone that makes an income in the low 6 figures.

 

I will wait for your righteous outrage against this "theft" against the American middle class. . . . lest you be branded a hypocrite?

 

You didn't know we're not a democracy, and now you don't know enough to know that those people are paying CAPITAL GAINS TAXES, NOT ORDINARY INCOME TAXES. The rates are quite different. Unless you're being like grungie did the other day and using information completely out of context to basically lie again. You guys are like a friggin baptist trying to use three little scriptures from the whole darn bible to tell some sheep why they shouldn't have wine.

 

Oh, and Brewer - you really need to learn this little economic truism - business don't pay taxes, period. Only individuals do. So I don't give a rats tail what rate businesses end up with. If the corporations did cut a check to the IRS then it's just reducing the shareholders income anyway. Make sense?

[Perchoutofwater]

talk about theft . . .. Perch I hope you are upset about the fact that these wealthy people are paying less percentage in tax than someone that makes an income in the low 6 figures.

 

I will wait for your righteous outrage against this "theft" against the American middle class. . . . lest you be branded a hypocrite?

 

I think I've been pretty consistent. I want to do away with the income tax and replace it with a sales tax that taxes everyone on what they spend. Short of that, if you insist on keeping an income tax, I'm for a flat tax with the only possible deductions being for charitable donations. I think everyone should pay the same percentage whether it be in a sales tax or an income tax. It is liberals that want the inconsistency, so they can continue class warfare, and continue to exchange social programs for votes.

[WaterMan]

One thing I see that's bad about a flat percentage, and I'm sure there's an argument against this and would like to read it, is 5 or 10% of a poor man's paycheck may be less than a rich man's paycheck but it's much harder to stretch lesser amounts of money to cover that. A rich guy would have no problem selling a boat or moving stock to adjust. The only way a poor person is going to be able to adjust is by getting more government assistance such as food stamps.

[bushwacked]

Oh, and Brewer - you really need to learn this little economic truism - business don't pay taxes, period. Only individuals do.

 

If this simplistically shticky catch phrase was accurate, then corporations wouldn't spend millions upon millions lobbying politicians for tax breaks.

[westvirginia]

If this simplistically shticky catch phrase was accurate, then corporations wouldn't spend millions upon millions lobbying politicians for tax breaks.

 

I know anything you can't wrap your little mind around must be "simplistically shticky". Why don't you prove me wrong? EVERYTHING a business does is passed off to the business owner(s), thus, an individual.

[Perchoutofwater]

One thing I see that's bad about a flat percentage, and I'm sure there's an argument against this and would like to read it, is 5 or 10% of a poor man's paycheck may be less than a rich man's paycheck but it's much harder to stretch lesser amounts of money to cover that. A rich guy would have no problem selling a boat or moving stock to adjust. The only way a poor person is going to be able to adjust is by getting more government assistance such as food stamps.

 

If you do a sales tax you exempt unprepared food, medical supplies, drugs, etc.. from the sales tax. If you do a flat income tax, make it so that the first $20,000 a person makes isn't taxed but every dollar after that is.

[Perchoutofwater]

Great illustration.

[dmarc117]

If this simplistically shticky catch phrase was accurate, then corporations wouldn't spend millions upon millions lobbying politicians for tax breaks.

 

 

you really dont get it

[Ursa Majoris]

those people are paying CAPITAL GAINS TAXES, NOT ORDINARY INCOME TAXES. The rates are quite different.

Begs the question about why people get so worked up about the top rates of income tax, doesn't it? Seeing as how they are all paying just capital gains.

[Perchoutofwater]

Begs the question about why people get so worked up about the top rates of income tax, doesn't it? Seeing as how they are all paying just capital gains.

 

Because more than just the top 400 households fall into that top tax bracket. Most small business owners fall in the top tax bracket. Most of them are looking at that business for income, not to sell it for capital gains.

[Ursa Majoris]

Because more than just the top 400 households fall into that top tax bracket. Most small business owners fall in the top tax bracket. Most of them are looking at that business for income, not to sell it for capital gains.

The top rate affects only those dollars earned over $372,950 and that's income after deductions so most likely it doesn't kick in until a gross of around half a million.

[Caveman_Nick]

Begs the question about why people get so worked up about the top rates of income tax, doesn't it? Seeing as how they are all paying just capital gains.

 

I think you are inferring too much from the statement....that admittedly was not clear on the part of WV.

 

What he is saying is that these people pay income and capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes paid do not affect the income tax bracket you are in, but they can get you an income tax deduction. Of course, that income tax deduction still only saves you in income taxes approximately 1/3 of what you paid in capital gains taxes, so you are still paying more in taxes overall. It just happens to skew income tax numbers because some income is getting classified as capital gains.

 

It's a dumb system IMO, and just another reason why I advocate all income be treated as income, and all income after a fixed amount be taxed at a flat rate with no deductions.

[SEC=UGA]

The top rate affects only those dollars earned over $372,950 and that's income after deductions so most likely it doesn't kick in until a gross of around half a million.

 

What's the point? If someone is making over half a mil they shouldn't be bitching about taxes?

[Ursa Majoris]

What's the point? If someone is making over half a mil they shouldn't be bitching about taxes?

I can tell you flat out that if that was me earning a half million a year, I wouldn't be bitching about jack chit. I'd be doing what I usually do - telling people that bitch about money all the time to take a good look around.

[SEC=UGA]

I can tell you flat out that if that was me earning a half million a year, I wouldn't be bitching about jack chit. I'd be doing what I usually do - telling people that bitch about money all the time to take a good look around.

 

I'm all for doing the same thing with the faux "poor" here. I'll make a deal with all of them, pack your poopy up and go to the outskirts of Tarsus, Turkey, I'll pay the airfare, and see how the "poor" live out there, take a good look around. After two years you can come back and tell me about how bad life sucks here. We have made it too easy to be poor and pampered here. And yes, I'm dead when I wore my first dressing serious.

 

Some of these unwed mothers with 3 children would be living in a one room shanty with no running water, a pot belly stove to cook and heat with, dirt floors and accepting handouts from the local mosque and neighbors to get by (they would have free healthcare, though.) These men too lazy to work, well, poopy, I don't know what they'd do, because at least from what I've seen over there most men work, herding sheep, making bricks, construction work, selling fruit, farming... will get you a little bit bigger place but not too much to write home about.

 

Don't get me wrong, there are derelicts that live off of the system in other countries, but it is no where near the level of coziness that they have here. And yes, I have been through a good bit of Appalachia and Louisiana (not to mention South GA).

[cre8tiff]

Some of these unwed mothers with 3 children would be living in a one room shanty with no running water, a pot belly stove to cook and heat with, dirt floors

 

Sounds exactly like one of my best friend's family growing up. They had an outdoor pump, dirt floors and an outhouse in 1982.

 

So don't kid yourself this isn't happening in America already, in order to illustrate the point that all poor people are lazy and indulged.

[westvirginia]

I think you are inferring too much from the statement....that admittedly was not clear on the part of WV.

 

What he is saying is that these people pay income and capital gains taxes. Capital gains taxes paid do not affect the income tax bracket you are in, but they can get you an income tax deduction. Of course, that income tax deduction still only saves you in income taxes approximately 1/3 of what you paid in capital gains taxes, so you are still paying more in taxes overall. It just happens to skew income tax numbers because some income is getting classified as capital gains.

 

It's a dumb system IMO, and just another reason why I advocate all income be treated as income, and all income after a fixed amount be taxed at a flat rate with no deductions.

 

This is what I was after - very busy at work today. I lost a lot of respect for Warren Buffet with his little "I pay lower tax rate than my secretary" comment. It's because so much of his income is Cap Gains that rate is diluted, and he pays less as a percentage of total.

[Ursa Majoris]

I lost a lot of respect for Warren Buffet with his little "I pay lower tax rate than my secretary" comment. It's because so much of his income is Cap Gains that rate is diluted, and he pays less as a percentage of total.

Buffett the Dirty Commie.

[SEC=UGA]

I figure I'm going to have to elaborate on my post sooner or later, so while I have some time I may as well go ahead and get it out of the way.

 

In the US we treat our "poor" better than most of the countries in the world and we clasify people as being poor at a higher level than do many countries in the world (my opinion).

 

In my travels I have had the good fortune of going to countries where Ihave friends or guides who have taken the time to introduce me to the culture and life of said country. I have had dinners with families at all strata of society. I have been to towns in Ecuador where there is one phone in a village, it operates from 5 to 10 in the evenings and people line up to use it. I've been to homes in Turkey, most of them the oppulent dwellings of a friend of mine either on the 16 floor of a tower that looks out over the mediteranian or his home in Istanbul from which you look out over a manicured golf course down the mountianside across roman aquaducts. But have been to his family members homes where a family of 5 lives in a three room 800 sf hovel with no central heating or cooling and the most spartan of lifestyle implements (their prized posession is a roughly 15 inch black and white television on which they get three channels all the time and on a good day 5 or 6, from what I can tell.)

 

These people are POOR. They often don't have money for food, have one or two change of close and maybe a nice suit for church or mosque (depending on the country.) They struggle every day to put food on the table and they WORK. They don't bitch and moan about what they don't have. They don't sit there and constantly harp about the fact that the man is screwing them over. They wake up in the morning and they go to work.

 

The sad part about their station in life is that they don't have a means to "move up". There is not the rampant ability to achieve the "American Dream" in many of these countries. But, they don't sit by idly and lament how if only they had the same opportunity as the rich guy down the street, you know whym the guy down the street is poor too. That is the way life is, move on, quit bugging me, I've got to spend time with my family before I've got to get up and go to work tomorrow.

 

Those who do have the opportunity to get an education in these countries move to the US in droves in many instances, you know why, because the US offers opportunity to those who want to work hard enough to achieve it. Their kids have the opportunity to attain any level of education they desire and can achieve. To them "test bias" is a joke, eveything on the test is foreign to them and they achieve at a higher rate than do many Americans and native english speakers.

 

We have codled "poor" Americans for too long, we have given them excuses for their plight and thus have perpetuated a whiney and underachieving class in this country. A group that envies those who have more than them but have not the ambition or desire to work hard to achieve that success for themselves. It is pervasive, you can walk down any street in America and see those that have been reasoned, rationalized into poverty.

 

And who do I blame for their lack of achievement, government and "progressives". These people that wnat to make excuses for other's failures. Those that want to ascribe lack of one's success to an external force, an invisible hand that props up the wealthy and tears down the common man. Those that say big corporations are using you, exploiting you, while big government is here to pick you up. It is asinine and perpetuates mediocrity. The "poor" have become dependent upon the state to take care of the ills that plague their lives and they have not the fortitude to cast of the shackles of government that are the major opressor in their life.

 

The poor in the US need to realize that their is opportunity in the private sector, that there is a place for them. They need to come to realize that they and they alone can drag themselves out of the depths into which they were spawned. They can work toward a goal, they can get an education, despite what the society at large around them thinks of those who excel in education. They can work at McDonalds and move through the ranks to a solid middle class lifestyle, though there is not prestige and people may mock them at the start of their journey. And overall they must be strong and independent, they must think independently, removing themselves from the group think that has been hammered into them throughout most of their lives... the group think that says you are black, you are a woman, you are poor... you can not achieve what those rich people can, because they are going to be there to bolck you at very turn, they are going to be there to break you down...

 

Believe me, the rich are to busy working to concern themselves with purposely breaking down whole segments of society. When you go to a rich person for a job, they are looking atthe person in front of them, they aren't looking at the kid that grew up in "abject poverty" in Harlem, they aren't looking at the son of a poor share cropper from South GA. They are looking at a resume, a piece of paper that delineates ones successes, accomplishments. They are looking at the person in the suit across the tabl, they are studying his/her dialect and answers, they are looking at the persons hair and trying to get a grasp of how this person can help them make more money. They don't give a when I wore my first dress where you came from or what you did, if you are educated and present yourself well, the sky is the limit in this country... Something that can not be said for most of the countries in the world and many here are too lazy and indoctrinated to realize that this is the case.

 

But to get back to my main premise, the poor in this country have things too good. Would I want to live in their shoes, no, and I have chosen a path so as not to. They, the poor, can make that same choice, they have free will and the same opportunities that I had. But, in many cases they choose not to pursue them, they choose to take the easy path, the path of least resistance and that is to maintian the staus quo of what they know, what they have been indoctrinated to know. "You don't have the opportunity that those other boys have. People are against you and will go out of their way to make sure you fail. The world is against you so don't even try. You don't have the same shot at an education and if you do get one no one is going to hire you because you are not one of them."

 

It is a sad state, a sad testament, that we still see people get up there every day, politicians espouse these untruths everyday, that the only opportunity that many of the poor have is to get help from the government... the very entity that is keeping them down, enslaving them, perpetuating an amorphous idea of inequity that only they the government can correct.

Edited April 12, 2010 by SEC=UGA

[SEC=UGA]

Sounds exactly like one of my best friend's family growing up. They had an outdoor pump, dirt floors and an outhouse in 1982.

 

So don't kid yourself this isn't happening in America already, in order to illustrate the point that all poor people are lazy and indulged.

 

Yeah but that was by choice, you dirty hippie...

[Perchoutofwater]

Sounds exactly like one of my best friend's family growing up. They had an outdoor pump, dirt floors and an outhouse in 1982.

 

So don't kid yourself this isn't happening in America already, in order to illustrate the point that all poor people are lazy and indulged.

 

Your best friend was Bode Miller?

[cre8tiff]

Your best friend was Bode Miller?

 

Not the actual guy, no, but he certainly was a wild one. Best natural tracker and hunter you ever saw. Of course, he practically lived in nature so I suppose it was inevitable. ;-D