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Jeez....
Some rich guy says something that conforms to the liberals' worldview and they go nuts. I've heard this repeated everywhere. First of all, it's old news. Second, just because some random rich dude agrees with your convictions doesn't mean you need to repeat it endlessly and post links to it and make threads about it on TL.
The issue is largely irrelevant, it won't make a significant dent in our ridiculous spending. I know it makes poor people feel really happy when they can shaft people who are better off than they are, but personally I've never felt much appeal for an emotion driven, envious, class-warfare mentality.
Warren Buffett is rich? Good for him. He made the money honestly, he didn't rob anyone. He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else. What I think is fair is everyone paying an equal percentage. In fact, that's almost the definition of fair. But fairness to some people means anyone who isn't successful should be subsidized until death at the expense of those who are. That sounds more like a parasite society to me, lacking in basic human dignity and self-sufficiency.
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On August 17 2011 11:19 Rassy wrote:
The rich rule the world, dont like it but its just the way it is and no tax or law will ever change it
We might not be able to completely change it 100% but we can at least make a dent, a chink in the armor. The far right Republicans have put up quite a defense though, and it will be difficult to break through if they keep getting elected by their rich constituents. It's so tough to reach the folks in the rural counties who have been brainwashed by the likes of Michelle Bachmann and her ilk....
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On August 17 2011 11:17 rhs408 wrote:
What you obviously are not grasping is that the world and economy are tremendously different in 2011 than they were 50 years ago in the 1960's and 30 years ago in the 1980's. This way of economic thinking was tried by Bush for 8 years (starting in year 2000, when the world and economy are similar to what we have today) and we are still dealing with the negative after effects of it today. The "Bush tax cuts" are still in place, and Republicans refuse to let them expire, hence the rich keep getting richer. Those are the facts, the recent facts, that actually have a bearing on our economy today. Please don't bring up Kennedy again.
Oh I'm sorry I thought we were talking about taxing the rich further though, and that it will solve all of our problems?
The Wall Street Journal editorial page states that taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled from $136 billion in 2003 to $274 billion in 2006 because of the Bush Tax Cuts.
How exactly have you proved that lowering taxes does not in fact directly tax "rich" people further. Is 2003-2006 too far back in history for you?
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On August 17 2011 11:05 Retry17 wrote:
I laugh at people telling me that lowering taxes is not effective.
History tells us that tax revenues grow and "rich" taxpayers pay more tax when marginal tax rates are slashed. This means lower income citizens bear a lower share of the tax burden.
Periods of higher tax rates (when you try to over tax the rich) are associated with sub par economic performance and stagnant tax revenues. Lets look at some nifty facts from history.
Did you know that President Kennedy implemented across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
The share of the income tax burden borne by the rich increased following the tax cuts. Tax collections from those making over $50,000 per year climbed by 57 percent between 1963 and 1966, while tax collections from those earning below $50,000 rose 11 percent. As a result, the rich saw their portion of the income tax burden climb from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.
President Reagan (an era that is commonly bashed because people don't focus on the positives of tax cuts and instead focus on government spending) proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).
The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.
Don't tell me I have strawman arguments when the facts are right in front of your face. These aren't my fucking ideas, history has proven them. I don't understand how you could argue any of these facts, but I eagerly await the posts telling me that I don't understand anything and to go back to the 10th grade.
Correct me if I am wrong. The US's real GDP (adjusted for inflation) grew by 48.2% from 1961 to 1968. Wouldn't the 33% increase in real tax revenue from the Kennedy tax cuts during that period been higher if they were no tax cuts to begin with? Yes, the economy may not have grown by 48.2% but it should be more than 33%.
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On August 17 2011 11:28 jdseemoreglass wrote:
He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else.
Read the damn article. The point he's making is that he doesn't.
If you really believed in an equal % of tax on everyone (as flawed as that is), the very rich should still be taxed more.
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On August 17 2011 11:23 hacpee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:20 Supamang wrote:On August 17 2011 11:00 hacpee wrote:On August 17 2011 10:53 sunprince wrote:On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
So how does it work if I have no idea? You tell me because this is exactly how it works.
Or you could read my previous response to you, or Warren Buffet's actual article, but somehow, I'm pretty sure it would still escape your primitive reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. There are 6 tax brackets. So when you win 6 star leagues, you continuously get less and less money. Then the decline stops. Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains. Second of all, the way the tier system works is that its dependent on different sections of the money. The top tier being 90% does NOT mean 90% of your entire government goes to the government. Say the tax brackets were: 1. 0~$10K = 0%
2. $10K~50K = 10%
3. $50K~$100K = 20%
4. $100K+ = 30%
If you made $150,000 a year, that does NOT mean you have to pay $45,000 to the government ($150,000 * 30% = $45,000). The amount you pay is going to be $29,000. The first $10,000 you earn of the $150,000 will be tax free so thats $0 taxes paid. The next $40,000 ($10K to $50K) will be taxed at 10%, meaning you'll pay $4000. The next $50K ($50K to $100K) will be taxed at 20%, meaning youll pay $10,000 of that bringing you to a total of $14,000. The final $50,000 of your $150,000 ($100+) will be taxed at 30%, meaning youll pay $15,000 of that, bringing your total taxes payable to $29,000.
This is exactly what I just said. If you win your 10th starleague, you get 90% of that starleague's prize money.
Ok....so if you opened the spoiler, you will clearly see your quote:
[B]On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains.
You said you get 10% of your money
Also capital gains are already being taxed. Short term capital gains have been taxed at your earned income tax brackets for a long time. Long-term capital gains have been taxed at significantly reduced rates for a while as well. Imma copy paste my edit from earlier too
EDIT: This means that, switching out my fantasy tax brackets for the real current US tax brackets, if you are in the top tax tier you will always have an after-tax income of at LEAST $269,133. All your excess income above the top tier will be taxed at 35%. This is even assuming that you have taken no exemptions, deductions, etc. and that this is all "earned income" rather than other classifications such as "long-term capital gains", which currently get taxed at lower rates.
EDIT: and wait wtf? endorsement income is not capital gains
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On August 17 2011 11:31 Retry17 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:17 rhs408 wrote:
What you obviously are not grasping is that the world and economy are tremendously different in 2011 than they were 50 years ago in the 1960's and 30 years ago in the 1980's. This way of economic thinking was tried by Bush for 8 years (starting in year 2000, when the world and economy are similar to what we have today) and we are still dealing with the negative after effects of it today. The "Bush tax cuts" are still in place, and Republicans refuse to let them expire, hence the rich keep getting richer. Those are the facts, the recent facts, that actually have a bearing on our economy today. Please don't bring up Kennedy again. Oh I'm sorry I thought we were talking about taxing the rich further though, and that it will solve all of our problems? The Wall Street Journal editorial page states that taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled from $136 billion in 2003 to $274 billion in 2006 because of the Bush Tax Cuts. How exactly have you proved that lowering taxes does not in fact directly tax "rich" people further. Is 2003-2006 too far back in history for you?
I think to that, this fits rather nicely:
The Wall Street Journal is the leading mouthpiece for cutting taxes for the rich. The Journal editorial board is fully in the service of that cause. An editorial at the start of this week ("Where the Tax Money Is," April 18, 2011) is a vivid case in point. The Journal claims that IRS data prove the "fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10% of taxpayers to close the deficit." The IRS data in fact prove exactly the opposite of what the Journal claims.
I direct readers to the "Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data" presented by the Tax Foundation, October 6, 2010, No. 249. There the reader will find the data they need to discover how the Journal has gotten it all wrong.
Consider the top 1% of taxpayers. Even in a year that the Wall Street Journal acknowledges "was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts," the top 1% reported to the IRS an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $1,685 billion dollars, amounting to 20% of the total reported household income that year, and around 12 percent of GDP. On this sum they paid $392 billion in taxes, an average tax rate of 23%.
The Journal writes that it is impossible to get enough income out of the top 1% to close the deficit, and invites us to undertake the "thought experiment" of taxing all of the income this group. In other words, the Journal claims that even the total income of the richest taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. This claim is nonsense.
If the tax rate were 100% rather than 23% (and assuming in the Journal illustration an unchanged AGI), the extra revenues would be $1,300 billion, or 9 percent of GDP. Even allowing for other taxes already paid by the richest 1%, the incremental federal tax revenues would be at least 6 percent of GDP. Since every baseline scenario by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget shows a deficit between 2013 and 2021 that is less than 6 percent of GDP, the total income of the top 1% would close the budget deficit entirely.
With great bravado, the Journal claims that even the income of the top 10% of the taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. The top 10% reported $3,856 billion in AGI, equal to 46% of total reported income in the United States, almost 27 percent of GDP. On that, they paid $721 billion in personal federal income taxes, or an average of 18.7% of income. If the remaining 81% of income were paid in federal income taxes, the increment in tax revenues would be more than $3,100 billion, or roughly 21% of GDP. The budget deficit would obviously be closed many times over.
The real point is obvious. The money received by the richest households is vast, and higher taxes on the rich will make a major contribution to closing the deficit. Nobody says that the rich should carry the entire tax burden or that spending cuts shouldn't play a role. The waste in military spending alone is so large that we can and should save at least 2 percent of GDP per year from the defense budget alone.
America's richest households have enjoyed quite a ride in recent decades as they've accumulated a mountain of wealth unprecedented in human history, at a time when much of the rest of society has been suffering. The average income tax rate paid by the top 1% has declined from 34.5% in 1980 to just 23.27% in 2008. During this period, the share of total income accruing to the richest 1% has soared from 8.5% in 1980 to 20% in 2008. The share of total AGI accruing to the top 10% of taxpayers has similarly risen from 32% in 1980 to 46% of income in 2008.
It's really hard to understand what the Journal was thinking in writing its flawed editorial. Whatever that might have been, they have done us a huge service by drawing attention to the astonishing incomes received by America's richest taxpayers, coupled with the declining rates of average personal income taxation paid by this group.
Despite the media machine of the corporate sector and the relentless messaging conveyed by some of the world's richest people, including the Journal's owner Rupert Murdoch and his ally David Koch, the American people are coming to understand the outsized incomes and wealth of the richest Americans and the need for them to pay more in taxes to help close the budget deficit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.html
I mean, if you're gonna pull WSJ opinions, I suppose all is fair.
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On August 17 2011 11:05 Retry17 wrote:
I laugh at people telling me that lowering taxes is not effective.
History tells us that tax revenues grow and "rich" taxpayers pay more tax when marginal tax rates are slashed. This means lower income citizens bear a lower share of the tax burden.
Periods of higher tax rates (when you try to over tax the rich) are associated with sub par economic performance and stagnant tax revenues. Lets look at some nifty facts from history.
...
The share of the income tax burden borne by the rich increased following the tax cuts. Tax collections from those making over $50,000 per year climbed by 57 percent between 1963 and 1966, while tax collections from those earning below $50,000 rose 11 percent. As a result, the rich saw their portion of the income tax burden climb from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.
...
The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.
The prosperity of the 80s was largely due to the development of the personal computer industry among others. The 50s and early 60s were also a fantastic economic time for America. You are using tax raises made in times of prosperity to say that tax cuts on the rich CAUSE prosperity -- however, usually the economic prosperity can be traced back to other factors. I can just as easily argue that tax cuts cause economic downturns -- look at the 1920s under Coolidge, then the Great Depression in the 1930s. Do I think the tax cuts actually caused the Great Depression? No, but I could "justify" it by saying the same sort of statistics you cited.
In this case, I completely agree with Buffet. The rich are storing money for a rainy day right now, rather than using the money they save with tax cuts to stimulate job creation within the United States. It's also worth noting that in this time of unprecedented globalization job creation can just as easily be outside the U.S. as within, so cutting taxes to create jobs may just be helping China. Just a thought.
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On August 17 2011 11:28 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Jeez....
Some rich guy says something that conforms to the liberals' worldview and they go nuts. I've heard this repeated everywhere. First of all, it's old news. Second, just because some random rich dude agrees with your convictions doesn't mean you need to repeat it endlessly and post links to it and make threads about it on TL.
The issue is largely irrelevant, it won't make a significant dent in our ridiculous spending. I know it makes poor people feel really happy when they can shaft people who are better off than they are, but personally I've never felt much appeal for an emotion driven, envious, class-warfare mentality.
Warren Buffett is rich? Good for him. He made the money honestly, he didn't rob anyone. He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else. What I think is fair is everyone paying an equal percentage. In fact, that's almost the definition of fair. But fairness to some people means anyone who isn't successful should be subsidized until death at the expense of those who are. That sounds more like a parasite society to me, lacking in basic human dignity and self-sufficiency.
Not necessarily. Like I said before, there are many, many ways for people to reduce their effective income for tax purposes as well as having different types of income being taxed at lower rates along with (for business) classifying your business entity a certain way for tax purposes. The tax code is not as simple as either side makes it out to be
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On August 17 2011 11:05 Retry17 wrote:
I laugh at people telling me that lowering taxes is not effective.
History tells us that tax revenues grow and "rich" taxpayers pay more tax when marginal tax rates are slashed. This means lower income citizens bear a lower share of the tax burden.
Periods of higher tax rates (when you try to over tax the rich) are associated with sub par economic performance and stagnant tax revenues. Lets look at some nifty facts from history.
Did you know that President Kennedy implemented across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
The share of the income tax burden borne by the rich increased following the tax cuts. Tax collections from those making over $50,000 per year climbed by 57 percent between 1963 and 1966, while tax collections from those earning below $50,000 rose 11 percent. As a result, the rich saw their portion of the income tax burden climb from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.
President Reagan (an era that is commonly bashed because people don't focus on the positives of tax cuts and instead focus on government spending) proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).
The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.
Don't tell me I have strawman arguments when the facts are right in front of your face. These aren't my fucking ideas, history has proven them. I don't understand how you could argue any of these facts, but I eagerly await the posts telling me that I don't understand anything and to go back to the 10th grade.
yes reagan also after lowering taxes instituted the largest peacetime tax increase in the history of the US and proceeded to raise taxes yearly. bush senior and clinton both raised taxes and what resulted? a booming economy.
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On August 17 2011 11:33 Supamang wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:23 hacpee wrote:On August 17 2011 11:20 Supamang wrote:On August 17 2011 11:00 hacpee wrote:On August 17 2011 10:53 sunprince wrote:On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
So how does it work if I have no idea? You tell me because this is exactly how it works.
Or you could read my previous response to you, or Warren Buffet's actual article, but somehow, I'm pretty sure it would still escape your primitive reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. There are 6 tax brackets. So when you win 6 star leagues, you continuously get less and less money. Then the decline stops. Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains. Second of all, the way the tier system works is that its dependent on different sections of the money. The top tier being 90% does NOT mean 90% of your entire government goes to the government. Say the tax brackets were: 1. 0~$10K = 0%
2. $10K~50K = 10%
3. $50K~$100K = 20%
4. $100K+ = 30%
If you made $150,000 a year, that does NOT mean you have to pay $45,000 to the government ($150,000 * 30% = $45,000). The amount you pay is going to be $29,000. The first $10,000 you earn of the $150,000 will be tax free so thats $0 taxes paid. The next $40,000 ($10K to $50K) will be taxed at 10%, meaning you'll pay $4000. The next $50K ($50K to $100K) will be taxed at 20%, meaning youll pay $10,000 of that bringing you to a total of $14,000. The final $50,000 of your $150,000 ($100+) will be taxed at 30%, meaning youll pay $15,000 of that, bringing your total taxes payable to $29,000.
This is exactly what I just said. If you win your 10th starleague, you get 90% of that starleague's prize money. Ok....so if you opened the spoiler, you will clearly see your quote: Show nested quote +[B]On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains. You said you get 10% of your money Also capital gains are already being taxed. Short term capital gains have been taxed at your earned income tax brackets for a long time. Long-term capital gains have been taxed at significantly reduced rates for a while as well. Imma copy paste my edit from earlier too Show nested quote +EDIT: This means that, switching out my fantasy tax brackets for the real current US tax brackets, if you are in the top tax tier you will always have an after-tax income of at LEAST $269,133. All your excess income above the top tier will be taxed at 35%. This is even assuming that you have taken no exemptions, deductions, etc. and that this is all "earned income" rather than other classifications such as "long-term capital gains", which currently get taxed at lower rates. EDIT: and wait wtf? endorsement income is not capital gains
If you read earlier, you would see what I meant when I stated that:
Nope, its more like you get less prize money the more starleagues you win.That's exactly what we have in this system.
I'll elaborate. These are made up numbers. Make 10k, pay no taxes on it. Make 20k? Pay no taxes on 10k, pay some taxes on 2nd 10k. Make 30k? Pay no taxes on 1st 10k, pay some on 2nd 10k, pay even more on 3rd 10k.
Same thing with my starleague analogy. Win one starleague? Get full prize money. Win two? You get less money on your 2nd. Win three? You get less money on your 3rd. And if progressives have their way, if you win 10 starleagues, you only get to keep 10% of the prize money.
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On August 17 2011 11:28 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Jeez....
Some rich guy says something that conforms to the liberals' worldview and they go nuts. I've heard this repeated everywhere. First of all, it's old news. Second, just because some random rich dude agrees with your convictions doesn't mean you need to repeat it endlessly and post links to it and make threads about it on TL.
The issue is largely irrelevant, it won't make a significant dent in our ridiculous spending. I know it makes poor people feel really happy when they can shaft people who are better off than they are, but personally I've never felt much appeal for an emotion driven, envious, class-warfare mentality.
Warren Buffett is rich? Good for him. He made the money honestly, he didn't rob anyone. He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else. What I think is fair is everyone paying an equal percentage. In fact, that's almost the definition of fair. But fairness to some people means anyone who isn't successful should be subsidized until death at the expense of those who are. That sounds more like a parasite society to me, lacking in basic human dignity and self-sufficiency.
but he doesn't pay a a higher percentage...that's the point of the article.
and he isn't a 'random rich dude'. he's one of the most successful investors/pretty much a financial mogul, i think his words carry a little bit more weight than some random trust fund baby or athlete.
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On August 17 2011 11:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:I think to that, this fits rather nicely: The Wall Street Journal is the leading mouthpiece for cutting taxes for the rich. The Journal editorial board is fully in the service of that cause. An editorial at the start of this week ("Where the Tax Money Is," April 18, 2011) is a vivid case in point. The Journal claims that IRS data prove the "fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10% of taxpayers to close the deficit." The IRS data in fact prove exactly the opposite of what the Journal claims. I direct readers to the "Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data" presented by the Tax Foundation, October 6, 2010, No. 249. There the reader will find the data they need to discover how the Journal has gotten it all wrong. Consider the top 1% of taxpayers. Even in a year that the Wall Street Journal acknowledges "was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts," the top 1% reported to the IRS an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $1,685 billion dollars, amounting to 20% of the total reported household income that year, and around 12 percent of GDP. On this sum they paid $392 billion in taxes, an average tax rate of 23%. The Journal writes that it is impossible to get enough income out of the top 1% to close the deficit, and invites us to undertake the "thought experiment" of taxing all of the income this group. In other words, the Journal claims that even the total income of the richest taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. This claim is nonsense. If the tax rate were 100% rather than 23% (and assuming in the Journal illustration an unchanged AGI), the extra revenues would be $1,300 billion, or 9 percent of GDP. Even allowing for other taxes already paid by the richest 1%, the incremental federal tax revenues would be at least 6 percent of GDP. Since every baseline scenario by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget shows a deficit between 2013 and 2021 that is less than 6 percent of GDP, the total income of the top 1% would close the budget deficit entirely. With great bravado, the Journal claims that even the income of the top 10% of the taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. The top 10% reported $3,856 billion in AGI, equal to 46% of total reported income in the United States, almost 27 percent of GDP. On that, they paid $721 billion in personal federal income taxes, or an average of 18.7% of income. If the remaining 81% of income were paid in federal income taxes, the increment in tax revenues would be more than $3,100 billion, or roughly 21% of GDP. The budget deficit would obviously be closed many times over. The real point is obvious. The money received by the richest households is vast, and higher taxes on the rich will make a major contribution to closing the deficit. Nobody says that the rich should carry the entire tax burden or that spending cuts shouldn't play a role. The waste in military spending alone is so large that we can and should save at least 2 percent of GDP per year from the defense budget alone. America's richest households have enjoyed quite a ride in recent decades as they've accumulated a mountain of wealth unprecedented in human history, at a time when much of the rest of society has been suffering. The average income tax rate paid by the top 1% has declined from 34.5% in 1980 to just 23.27% in 2008. During this period, the share of total income accruing to the richest 1% has soared from 8.5% in 1980 to 20% in 2008. The share of total AGI accruing to the top 10% of taxpayers has similarly risen from 32% in 1980 to 46% of income in 2008. It's really hard to understand what the Journal was thinking in writing its flawed editorial. Whatever that might have been, they have done us a huge service by drawing attention to the astonishing incomes received by America's richest taxpayers, coupled with the declining rates of average personal income taxation paid by this group. Despite the media machine of the corporate sector and the relentless messaging conveyed by some of the world's richest people, including the Journal's owner Rupert Murdoch and his ally David Koch, the American people are coming to understand the outsized incomes and wealth of the richest Americans and the need for them to pay more in taxes to help close the budget deficit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.htmlI mean, if you're gonna pull WSJ opinions, I suppose all is fair.
Thats a cool story bro, glad I could read. However is the specific editorial I was referring to in my post wrong?
User was temp banned for this post.
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On August 17 2011 06:46 FoeHamr wrote:
don't richest people in this country pay the most taxes already?
Obviously the rich pay much more taxes in absolute terms. The thing is, the pay WAY less as a % of their income. A rich guy paying 15% of his income pays a lot more than a poor guy who pays 25% of his income. This is called regressive taxation and is a means to achieve bad income distribution.
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On August 17 2011 11:40 hacpee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:33 Supamang wrote:On August 17 2011 11:23 hacpee wrote:On August 17 2011 11:20 Supamang wrote:On August 17 2011 11:00 hacpee wrote:On August 17 2011 10:53 sunprince wrote:On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
So how does it work if I have no idea? You tell me because this is exactly how it works.
Or you could read my previous response to you, or Warren Buffet's actual article, but somehow, I'm pretty sure it would still escape your primitive reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. There are 6 tax brackets. So when you win 6 star leagues, you continuously get less and less money. Then the decline stops. Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains. Second of all, the way the tier system works is that its dependent on different sections of the money. The top tier being 90% does NOT mean 90% of your entire government goes to the government. Say the tax brackets were: 1. 0~$10K = 0%
2. $10K~50K = 10%
3. $50K~$100K = 20%
4. $100K+ = 30%
If you made $150,000 a year, that does NOT mean you have to pay $45,000 to the government ($150,000 * 30% = $45,000). The amount you pay is going to be $29,000. The first $10,000 you earn of the $150,000 will be tax free so thats $0 taxes paid. The next $40,000 ($10K to $50K) will be taxed at 10%, meaning you'll pay $4000. The next $50K ($50K to $100K) will be taxed at 20%, meaning youll pay $10,000 of that bringing you to a total of $14,000. The final $50,000 of your $150,000 ($100+) will be taxed at 30%, meaning youll pay $15,000 of that, bringing your total taxes payable to $29,000.
This is exactly what I just said. If you win your 10th starleague, you get 90% of that starleague's prize money. Ok....so if you opened the spoiler, you will clearly see your quote: [B]On August 17 2011 10:48 hacpee wrote:
Now what progressives want to do is tax it up to 90%. So when you win 10 starleagues, you get 10% of your money. Then they also want to tax the money you earn on the side, IE endorsements which are like capital gains. You said you get 10% of your money Also capital gains are already being taxed. Short term capital gains have been taxed at your earned income tax brackets for a long time. Long-term capital gains have been taxed at significantly reduced rates for a while as well. Imma copy paste my edit from earlier too EDIT: This means that, switching out my fantasy tax brackets for the real current US tax brackets, if you are in the top tax tier you will always have an after-tax income of at LEAST $269,133. All your excess income above the top tier will be taxed at 35%. This is even assuming that you have taken no exemptions, deductions, etc. and that this is all "earned income" rather than other classifications such as "long-term capital gains", which currently get taxed at lower rates. EDIT: and wait wtf? endorsement income is not capital gains If you read earlier, you would see what I meant when I stated that:
Nope, its more like you get less prize money the more starleagues you win.That's exactly what we have in this system.
I'll elaborate. These are made up numbers. Make 10k, pay no taxes on it. Make 20k? Pay no taxes on 10k, pay some taxes on 2nd 10k. Make 30k? Pay no taxes on 1st 10k, pay some on 2nd 10k, pay even more on 3rd 10k.
Same thing with my starleague analogy. Win one starleague? Get full prize money. Win two? You get less money on your 2nd. Win three? You get less money on your 3rd. And if progressives have their way, if you win 10 starleagues, you only get to keep 10% of the prize money.
Ah yea thats correct, my apologies. Of course the tax brackets are much higher than every 10K but you have the idea right.
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On August 17 2011 11:31 Retry17 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:17 rhs408 wrote:
What you obviously are not grasping is that the world and economy are tremendously different in 2011 than they were 50 years ago in the 1960's and 30 years ago in the 1980's. This way of economic thinking was tried by Bush for 8 years (starting in year 2000, when the world and economy are similar to what we have today) and we are still dealing with the negative after effects of it today. The "Bush tax cuts" are still in place, and Republicans refuse to let them expire, hence the rich keep getting richer. Those are the facts, the recent facts, that actually have a bearing on our economy today. Please don't bring up Kennedy again. Oh I'm sorry I thought we were talking about taxing the rich further though, and that it will solve all of our problems? The Wall Street Journal editorial page states that taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled from $136 billion in 2003 to $274 billion in 2006 because of the Bush Tax Cuts. How exactly have you proved that lowering taxes does not in fact directly tax "rich" people further. Is 2003-2006 too far back in history for you?
Assuming that is true, it only proves that the number of wealthy individuals has increased dramatically from 2003 to 2006. That wouldn't surprise me at all, probably doesn't surprise anyone else reading this thread either. *laugh*
For the THIRD time, we are talking about raising taxes IN ADDITION to cutting spending (apology accepted). This is the difference between 2 trillion being cut from our debt and 4 trillion being cut. It's that simple.
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On August 17 2011 11:44 Retry17 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 11:34 FallDownMarigold wrote:I think to that, this fits rather nicely: The Wall Street Journal is the leading mouthpiece for cutting taxes for the rich. The Journal editorial board is fully in the service of that cause. An editorial at the start of this week ("Where the Tax Money Is," April 18, 2011) is a vivid case in point. The Journal claims that IRS data prove the "fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10% of taxpayers to close the deficit." The IRS data in fact prove exactly the opposite of what the Journal claims. I direct readers to the "Summary of Latest Federal Income Tax Data" presented by the Tax Foundation, October 6, 2010, No. 249. There the reader will find the data they need to discover how the Journal has gotten it all wrong. Consider the top 1% of taxpayers. Even in a year that the Wall Street Journal acknowledges "was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts," the top 1% reported to the IRS an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $1,685 billion dollars, amounting to 20% of the total reported household income that year, and around 12 percent of GDP. On this sum they paid $392 billion in taxes, an average tax rate of 23%. The Journal writes that it is impossible to get enough income out of the top 1% to close the deficit, and invites us to undertake the "thought experiment" of taxing all of the income this group. In other words, the Journal claims that even the total income of the richest taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. This claim is nonsense. If the tax rate were 100% rather than 23% (and assuming in the Journal illustration an unchanged AGI), the extra revenues would be $1,300 billion, or 9 percent of GDP. Even allowing for other taxes already paid by the richest 1%, the incremental federal tax revenues would be at least 6 percent of GDP. Since every baseline scenario by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget shows a deficit between 2013 and 2021 that is less than 6 percent of GDP, the total income of the top 1% would close the budget deficit entirely. With great bravado, the Journal claims that even the income of the top 10% of the taxpayers wouldn't close the deficit. The top 10% reported $3,856 billion in AGI, equal to 46% of total reported income in the United States, almost 27 percent of GDP. On that, they paid $721 billion in personal federal income taxes, or an average of 18.7% of income. If the remaining 81% of income were paid in federal income taxes, the increment in tax revenues would be more than $3,100 billion, or roughly 21% of GDP. The budget deficit would obviously be closed many times over. The real point is obvious. The money received by the richest households is vast, and higher taxes on the rich will make a major contribution to closing the deficit. Nobody says that the rich should carry the entire tax burden or that spending cuts shouldn't play a role. The waste in military spending alone is so large that we can and should save at least 2 percent of GDP per year from the defense budget alone. America's richest households have enjoyed quite a ride in recent decades as they've accumulated a mountain of wealth unprecedented in human history, at a time when much of the rest of society has been suffering. The average income tax rate paid by the top 1% has declined from 34.5% in 1980 to just 23.27% in 2008. During this period, the share of total income accruing to the richest 1% has soared from 8.5% in 1980 to 20% in 2008. The share of total AGI accruing to the top 10% of taxpayers has similarly risen from 32% in 1980 to 46% of income in 2008. It's really hard to understand what the Journal was thinking in writing its flawed editorial. Whatever that might have been, they have done us a huge service by drawing attention to the astonishing incomes received by America's richest taxpayers, coupled with the declining rates of average personal income taxation paid by this group. Despite the media machine of the corporate sector and the relentless messaging conveyed by some of the world's richest people, including the Journal's owner Rupert Murdoch and his ally David Koch, the American people are coming to understand the outsized incomes and wealth of the richest Americans and the need for them to pay more in taxes to help close the budget deficit. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.htmlI mean, if you're gonna pull WSJ opinions, I suppose all is fair. Thats a cool story bro, glad I could read. However is the specific editorial I was referring to in my post wrong?
Yeah.
Bro.
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On August 17 2011 11:28 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Jeez....
Some rich guy says something that conforms to the liberals' worldview and they go nuts. I've heard this repeated everywhere. First of all, it's old news. Second, just because some random rich dude agrees with your convictions doesn't mean you need to repeat it endlessly and post links to it and make threads about it on TL.
The issue is largely irrelevant, it won't make a significant dent in our ridiculous spending. I know it makes poor people feel really happy when they can shaft people who are better off than they are, but personally I've never felt much appeal for an emotion driven, envious, class-warfare mentality.
Warren Buffett is rich? Good for him. He made the money honestly, he didn't rob anyone. He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else. What I think is fair is everyone paying an equal percentage. In fact, that's almost the definition of fair. But fairness to some people means anyone who isn't successful should be subsidized until death at the expense of those who are. That sounds more like a parasite society to me, lacking in basic human dignity and self-sufficiency.
You didn't read the post at all did you?
He's saying he paid far less % of his income as most low/middle/high class people in our country. He specifically claims he paid 17.4%, that's lower then what I paid when I was 15 years old bagging groceries...
His whole point is the % of income the EXTREMELY wealthy pay isn't fair compared to the % of income the average person spends. Wtf dude at least read the post before arguing it and spewing political rhetoric.
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On August 17 2011 11:28 jdseemoreglass wrote:
Jeez....
Some rich guy says something that conforms to the liberals' worldview and they go nuts. I've heard this repeated everywhere. First of all, it's old news. Second, just because some random rich dude agrees with your convictions doesn't mean you need to repeat it endlessly and post links to it and make threads about it on TL.
The issue is largely irrelevant, it won't make a significant dent in our ridiculous spending. I know it makes poor people feel really happy when they can shaft people who are better off than they are, but personally I've never felt much appeal for an emotion driven, envious, class-warfare mentality.
Warren Buffett is rich? Good for him. He made the money honestly, he didn't rob anyone. He already pays a higher percentage of his income than anyone else. What I think is fair is everyone paying an equal percentage. In fact, that's almost the definition of fair. But fairness to some people means anyone who isn't successful should be subsidized until death at the expense of those who are. That sounds more like a parasite society to me, lacking in basic human dignity and self-sufficiency.
At this point it has nothing to do with being subsidized or entitled or whatever you want to call it. It has everything to do with the GIGANTIC FREAKING DEBT our country already has that we, our children, and our childrens' children will be paying for the rest of our lives.
Taxes were cut repeatedly, mostly on the wealthiest Americans, at a time when spending was skyrocketing for the wars. We could not afford the cuts when they were made and we certainly cannot afford them now. This won't fix the debt, but just because it doesn't fix it 100% doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Arguing the other side is like saying you shouldn't get a job because you won't be able to pay your mortgage off with the first paycheck.
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On August 17 2011 11:40 hacpee wrote:
Same thing with my starleague analogy. Win one starleague? Get full prize money. Win two? You get less money on your 2nd. Win three? You get less money on your 3rd. And if progressives have their way, if you win 10 starleagues, you only get to keep 10% of the prize money. [/i]
The analogy is poor. Winning a star league in and of itself does not allow its winner to have a significant advantage in every other starleague. You may get a small advantage in the next starleague as defending champion, but there is a reason we don't see too many golden mouse winners: the fact you win a starleague does not help you win all the others in the future, therefore even 3 is a large number to get. Furthermore, the people competing in Starleagues are on fairly equal ground -- all the contenders are on pro teams, have a good place to stay and eat, along with very good coaches and a network of players to play with on their team. Even less able players often practice with very able ones, as evidenced by a lot of Jaedong's interviews where he names his practice partners.
However, no one can argue that money greatly helps in making more money. Very few people are truly self-made, particularly nowadays. When I think of a self-made man, I think of Andrew Carnegie. No one who people call self-made (Trump, Romney, to name a few) among today's rich really compare. There's a reason people like Carnegie are so rare: because most people who make money nowadays started out with a good education and a well-off family.
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EPT
