Well, I've been planning for quite some time to make a post about taxes and the problem is I have so much supporting material that the final post keeps getting farther and farther away as under each rock I uncover is yet another rock.
I have a couple of video selections like George Carlin ranting about who controls this country, which leads to a video on where the wealth is distributed in this country made more obvious by this follow-up video illustrating how ridiculous the disparity is leading me to the conclusion shared here that the Bush/McSame tax cuts are bad for the economy.
I think it would be a great topic of discussion this week as it's probably one of the key issues that really define the two parties. The following are my comments from a post on Aug 4th that got me started on this topic. Hopefully over the course of the week I can get around to fleshing it out, hopefully with your input:
Taxes – Well I would think that seeing the top 1%, who the article fails to mention makes 60% of all money (80% for the top 10%) pay 1/2 the taxes of even the top 10%, who’s level is skewed by the inclusion of the top 1%.
Seriously, this is what I do not get about Republicans. You are being reamed by the guys in the top 1%, you more so than the poor, who are screwed no matter what happens… If you are in the top 10%, but not the top 5% (well over $1M per year in income) then you are paying more than 44% of your income in taxes while people who make 100 times more than you, perhaps 1,000 times more than you, pay just 19% of their income. Clearly if they paid 44% of their income in taxes, you wouldn’t have to pay any (nor would the poor), yet you scream and curse and fight for the right of people who would have you arrested if you crashed their party to screw you over 6 ways to Sunday.
By creating the opulant wealth of the 400 richest, you drive up the price of the things you want. You like a home in Apsen – they have 3 and money was no object so they took the best locations and drove up prices. They buy up all the good caviar and champagne and turn it into something you can’t afford because, again, no matter how rich you think you are, you are a rounding error to our nation’s 500 Billionaires. They buy up the beaches and book all the good places for parties and gas up their boats without quibbling over price and tie up the yacht makers for 3 years making a boat that yours is not fit to be a dingy on.
This is the driving force of inflation in the upper class, the 3,000 people who have such stunning amounts of money that there are whole industries aimed at taking care of their needs. They use $500,000 worth of marble in their summer house and you end up paying $50,000 for your kitchen counter, they buy wine and art at auctions and drive up the price of every drop you drink, they hire good help for ridiculous prices and drive up the cost of all your "people."
Did the government take 44% of your $1M? Well they only took 19% of TBoone’s $3.6Bn. That’s leaving $900M on the table, you entire income 900 times over is NOT being paid by TBoone while you shuck over 44% of your paltry million. When you look at that chart there should really only be one thing that strikes you – The top 1% pay 1/2 as much of their income as the top 10% and 1/3 as much as the top 25% and, if they paid just 38% of their income in taxes, it would take care of 74% of all US income taxes and the rest of us could work out how to share the other 26%.
Better yet, if the top 1% paid the same 66% of their income in taxes that the top 25% of all earners pay (roughly $100K-$500K), then that would cover 100% of all US Federal income taxes. That’s right, if TBoone could manage to survive on just $1.2Bn a year after taxes, the rest of us could pay NONE.
I can never, for the life of me, understand why anyone who is not actually in the top 5% would ever support such ridiculous crap. We all get saddled with the deficits their lack of contribution creates, we all suffer with roads that don’t get built, dirty cities, crime, lack of health care, lack of retirement benefits etc all because what? So you can be "aspirational"??? Are they really better than you? Do they deserve to live better than you and keep more of their income than you do? What does TBoone do with the extra $1.68Bn that is the difference between 19% and 66%? More importantly, what does he do for you that you will fight to support a system that robs from the poor to give to the rich when poor is pretty much defined as anyone making less than $10M a year.
