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Top 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes


cooltigger21

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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is flowing away from them.

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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is fl;owing away from them.

Yes but, the real concentration is to the top .1%. 99.9% of us are steady or in decline. Of course, that is a generalization that is only absolute as a mean, median, or average. You have to be careful with numbers, particularly when expressed as percentages/fractions/ratios (same thing).

But yes, the most significant to me also is the the decline in the middle.

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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is fl;owing away from them.

Yes but, the real concentration is to the top .1%. 99.9% of us are steady or in decline. Of course, that is a generalization that is only absolute as a mean, median, or average. You have to be careful with numbers, particularly when expressed as percentages/fractions/ratios (same thing).

But yes, the most significant to me also is the the decline in the middle.

We arent disagreeing. I was trying to be polite. You are far more accurate.
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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is fl;owing away from them.

Yes but, the real concentration is to the top .1%. 99.9% of us are steady or in decline. Of course, that is a generalization that is only absolute as a mean, median, or average. You have to be careful with numbers, particularly when expressed as percentages/fractions/ratios (same thing).

But yes, the most significant to me also is the the decline in the middle.

We arent disagreeing. I was trying to be polite. You are far more accurate.

He was agreeing with you.

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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is fl;owing away from them.

Yes but, the real concentration is to the top .1%. 99.9% of us are steady or in decline. Of course, that is a generalization that is only absolute as a mean, median, or average. You have to be careful with numbers, particularly when expressed as percentages/fractions/ratios (same thing).

But yes, the most significant to me also is the the decline in the middle.

We arent disagreeing. I was trying to be polite. You are far more accurate.

He was agreeing with you.

Like I said...
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How about a little perspective?

The top 10% in this country "earn" 47.9% of the income.

The other 90% in the country "earn 52.1% of the income.

The top 10% own 85% of assets (the top 1% alone own 42%)

The bottom 90% own 15% (down from almost 25% in the 1980s)

With both income and wealth concentrating at the top, do you expect sympathy for the wealthy?

Now here is the rub. The top 1% ARE over taxed and, they do not accurately depict where most of the wealth is concentrating. Someone in the top 1% earns over $400,00.00/year. Many of them are very hard working entrepreneurs. They hardly constitute the "idle rich". However, if you look at the top .01% (no, that is not a mistake. I did not mean the top .1%), you will find that they earn $24 million/year.

So yes, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who owns a small business, works 60 hours/week and, by the time he pays all of the taxes imposed upon him, he gets to keep about half. However, someone who earns $24 million, enjoys the capital gains tax rates (not to mention the loopholes and deductions that only the best tax accountants can provide), and therefore, keeps 80% of it, no. Please do not expect me to feel sympathy or gratitude towards them.

When wealth and income become too concentrated, the velocity of money slows, real investment slows, economic growth becomes impossible. There is an inherent benefit to some "equality". You simply can not have consumption without production or, production without consumption. You will have stagnation, recession, depression, social and political turmoil.

:thumbsup:/>

The real problem is that even with all that wealth accumulating toward the Top 10%ers, the wealth is actually flowing towards them more and more.

The flow is not turning back toward the Middlers. It is flowing away from them.

This.

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The rich keep doing what made them rich, and the poor keep doing what makes them poor.

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The rich keep doing what made them rich, and the poor keep doing what makes them poor.

But everyone wants to demonize those who are the wealthy and accuse them of being horrible people who don't pay "their fair share" We want to listen to the guy who has never made more than 20,000 in his life over a guy who has made mulit millions.
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The system is being gamed perpetually now.

Maybe we are indeed heading for a new revolution, political revolution, where we turn our backs on Harvard Elitists and the perpetual money machine that is Washington DC.

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...said the people who didn't read.

Did read & do listen.

Then address what people are talking about and not just vapidly repeat the talking points.

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The system is being gamed perpetually now.

Maybe we are indeed heading for a new revolution, political revolution, where we turn our backs on Harvard Elitists and the perpetual money machine that is Washington DC.

We do need to do that. I won't argue with that at all. We need to do one of two things with regards to taxes. First option is to go to a flat tax of 10-15% with no deductions, credits or anything else. Second option is to get rid of the income tax and go to a consumption tax. There are different versions out there. My personal choice among consumption taxes is the fair tax. The most important thing is to dismantle the federal government and rebuild it in the model envisioned by the founders. Get rid of about 2/3 of the federal agencies and make these people go work in the private sector. The K street lobbyists would no longer have any incentive to lobby for their favorite exemption or credit or whatever else they wanted to give their particular client an advantage.
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We do need to do that. I won't argue with that at all. We need to do one of two things with regards to taxes. First option is to go to a flat tax of 10-15% with no deductions, credits or anything else.

I'm pretty sure multiple studies have shown that flat tax rates that low won't generate nearly enough revenue. Even one of its biggest advocates, Rand Paul, is touting 17%. But even if they could generate enough revenue, if the rate ended up being 15%, that would result in a minimum $453 per year tax increase on people making $36,900 or less. 17% would mean a $635 increase over what they pay now. And that doesn't even count credit and deductions they get to reduce their taxable income. So the net increase would actually be much bigger on those who can least afford to be losing money.

Second option is to get rid of the income tax and go to a consumption tax. There are different versions out there. My personal choice among consumption taxes is the fair tax. The most important thing is to dismantle the federal government and rebuild it in the model envisioned by the founders. Get rid of about 2/3 of the federal agencies and make these people go work in the private sector. The K street lobbyists would no longer have any incentive to lobby for their favorite exemption or credit or whatever else they wanted to give their particular client an advantage.

I like aspects of the consumption tax, especially decreasing the ability of people to avoid it. All those folks getting paid cash under the table still have to buy stuff. But if it's not structured right, it can be very regressive to people on the bottom end. There's a certain level of spending that people *have* to do just to live. It's unavoidable. I don't think taxing someone on the minimum amount it takes just to have food, clothing, shelter and basic needs like that is the right way to go either. So that would need to be addressed (as some of the proposals attempt to do with "pre-bates" and such).

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I didn't remember the flat tax proposal from President Clinton, but perhaps this could be a workable version of it:

When in office, former President Clinton proposed a very simple flat personal income tax system for the Federal government. There would be a standard deduction of $100,000 for all persons and a single tax rate applied to all income above that dollar amount.

Senator Kyl of Arizona proposed a similar system. There would be a standard deduction of $75,000 for all persons and two tax rate brackets. One bracket would be for income between $75,000 and $100,000. The second bracket would be for income above $100,000.

Using U.S. Treasury personal income tax data from 2009, one can take President Clinton’s one-tier system and see how it would play out.

Let’s assume a standard deduction of $66,000 instead of $100,000. With such a standard deduction, 75 percent of all tax filers would have no income tax liability. To be “revenue neutral”, those incomes above $66,000 would bear all of the income tax liability. On the surface, this seems unfairly tilted. As it turns out, this group is already paying over 87 percent of all personal income taxes already. But, it’s a little more nuanced.

In order to be “revenue neutral”, the flat tax rate on income above $66,000 would need to be 30 percent. Again, on the surface, this seems unfairly tilted. But, again, it’s a little more nuanced. For someone with an adjusted gross income of $100,000, the effective tax rate would be around 10 percent. Remember, the first $66,000 of adjusted gross income is not taxed. This is lower than what one’s effective tax rate would be under the current system. In fact, most individuals with an adjusted gross income below about $340,000 would have a lower effective tax rate under such a system than under the current system.

But, wait! There’s more! Such a system as proposed would eliminate Satan’s own creation: the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Am I missing something? Wouldn’t at least 75 percent of income earners be in favor of this concept? Might we reduce the staff of the IRS?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddganos/2012/07/06/a-simple-federal-flat-personal-income-tax-system/

Of course, the devil is in the details. If there are no deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and such, I think my taxes would actually go up. And we don't make a ton of money. And while this certainly simplifies the tax code, it doesn't seem to hit the target a lot of folks who favor a flat tax seem to be after.

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We don't even need revenue neutral. All of these proposals still leave the leviathan in place. That is the reason for all of the problems we have in the first place. I know we could lose half of the federal agencies that exist now and still maintain an effective federal government capable of performing its constitutionally mandated functions. It sounds like fantasy and maybe it is but unless you do that then all this other stuff is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

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The rich keep doing what made them rich, and the poor keep doing what makes them poor.

Curious as to what the poor "keep doing" to make them poor.

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We don't even need revenue neutral. All of these proposals still leave the leviathan in place. That is the reason for all of the problems we have in the first place. I know we could lose half of the federal agencies that exist now and still maintain an effective federal government capable of performing its constitutionally mandated functions. It sounds like fantasy and maybe it is but unless you do that then all this other stuff is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are in debt up to our ears and running deficits. Even if we cut spending to get us back in the black on a yearly basis, the cost savings need to go toward knocking out that debt or at least getting it down to a more manageable level. So at least in the near term, they would need to be close to revenue neutral.

If I run up crazy credit card debt at home, I may need to take a second job to generate more income to pay it off. I can cut spending (get rid of cable, go to a basic cell phone plan, sell a car/get rid of car payments, refinance my mortgage or move to a less expensive house) but that doesn't mean I should decrease my income accordingly. I'll never get out from under the debt unless I take all that savings, use the current level of income with my extra job and really attack it.

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Not to completely derail, but to piggy back off what Titan said-- we have lost the ability to understand the difference between consumption spending and investment. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of MoCs who think all spending is bad. All spending is not bad, and some government spending, particularly on investments is good. By investments, one example is infrastructure (transportation, power, water systems) which keep our country competitive. Without investment in these basic things, we start to see our edge against the rest of the world diminish.

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Not to completely derail, but to piggy back off what Titan said-- we have lost the ability to understand the difference between consumption spending and investment. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of MoCs who think all spending is bad. All spending is not bad, and some government spending, particularly on investments is good. By investments, one example is infrastructure (transportation, power, water systems) which keep our country competitive. Without investment in these basic things, we start to see our edge against the rest of the world diminish.

Nobody ever said get rid of government and that it didn't play a role or have a function. I'm not sure how power comes into play as a government function but even if it is, it has gotten way out of hand. You can't even go to the bathroom anymore without having to fill out a federal form of some kind. I know we haven't gotten that far YET but we're creeping ever closer. The federal government has a role, specified in the constitution and we should, by any means necessary, keep it within those boundaries. It's long since jumped out of that but it's time to start putting it back in there. You can call anything an investment and justify spending money on it. That is what we do now.
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