Quote of the day:
Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said in a floor speech that the compromise was an essential first step toward addressing the nation’s deficit, by “cutting off the spigot’’ of tax income to the federal government to force Congress to make spending cuts.
The Republicans have an agenda which is to cater to the corporatocracy and the affluent. However, in order to do this they have to "sell" their agenda to the average American. And this they do very well. Traditionally, they have done this with deceit and subterfuge.
Lately, they are not even trying to conceil their true intentions but are outright announcing that they want lower taxes for the top 2% and that they want the government to make spending cuts. If you read between the lines, it means cuts to social programs like public schooling, unemployment insurance, social security and medicare. They're not that keen on infrastructure either so even our civil servants aren't safe.
It doesn't matter if the government increases the deficit by spending or by tax cuts. Either way the corporatocracy wins when the government doesn't have money for social programs.
The corporatocracy consists of the biggest corporations that have the most influence on government like banks, defense contractors, energy companies, big pharma, etc. The corporatrocracy has another name - the "military-industrial complex" and Dwight D. Eisenhower dropped the bomb on it in his farewell speech:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.Two points come to mind. One, why wasn't anything done about it after it had been exposed by Ike? And two, we must fight for democracy as well as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I still don't understand why the Dims don't call them on their idiocies. The Repugs seem ripe for flattening with well planned refutations. I just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteThe top 2% of income earners already pay 38% of all taxes and the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes. The bottom 50% pay 2or 3% of taxes. Why is it that the rich are vilified constantly. They already pay an disproportional share of the of taxes. I am beginning to think that they want the rich to pay their way because they are jealous of others wealth. Why don’t the takers spend their time making their own money instead of coveting others who do work and make money. That is the capitalistic system of the country.
ReplyDeleteAbout raising taxes, Reagan lowered taxes and by so doing increased the revenue by more than double. Coolridge lowered taxes and reduced the size of government by 25%. In the end only the top 2% of income earners paid taxes – not only that, he also managed to reduce the debt. That was the roaring twenties. The economy thrived until FDR started taxing and spending again. JFK also lowered taxes by 25% again resulting in more revenue. About big corporations – take a look who heads up Fannie and Freddie, GM, Al Gore and his Global Warming, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street – George Soros - who are these people – yes you guessed it – liberals
About Democracy – the Tea party fought for lower taxes and they promptly kicked out all those Repubics ans Dems alike who voted for spending, Obamacare, Cap n Trade, Omnibus etc. They did this not by a revolution but by simply voting them out. Isn't that what Democracy is all about. That is what the American people want – you should respect that and stop whining about the big corporations. You are starting to sound like Michael Moore, another wealthy radical left wing loon who made his money via the capitalistic system and now preaches that capitalism doesn’t work. Who cares about them – they alone don’t make the economy go around.
The numbers in the 1st 2-3 lines are correct(at least approx if not exactly); they feed nicely into the standard "repug BS" argument which goes as follows:
ReplyDeleteEveryone should pay the same % of taxes as everyone else (=1 man,1vote, 1share of tax liability) ... since the top 10% pays 70% of all the taxes collected(essentially correct), this is clearly disproportional and they are being unfairly punished for their success.
In hypothetical JonKerryKerry'smomLAND where Kerry makes $50,000, Jon makes $20,000 and Kerry'smom makes $50,000,000, Jon pays $3000(15%), Kerry pays $8500(17%) and
Kerry's mom pays $11,000,000 (22%); what do you think Kerry's mom will say? "It's grossly unfair, I'm paying 99.9% of all the taxes! Those lazy envious bastards, Jon and Kerry
want to raise my rate to 39.5%?? $%!*& 'em!!!! If I only paid $1,000,000(2% rate), that would still be 98.9% of all the taxes; EVEN THAT'S WAY TOO $%&^#@! much!!!! "
That is what your mom and all the conservatives/repugs are saying PERIOD!! Every citizen should pay the same amount.. the top 10% should pay 10%(or 20% if they really want to be "patriotic" :)) of the total taxes collected AND NOT A NICKEL MORE. Instead of an average tax rate of 22%(see next paragraph), the top 10% should pay at 1/7 that rate (approx 3%) to make the 70% they DO PAY into the proportional 10% they SHOULD PAY. Of course they would prefer to pay nothing since they are the "engines of job creation"; without them, all the
rest would become the starving unemployed.
As I mentioned in one of my bush tax cut blogs, the average tax RATE paid by the top 10 (or 5%, I forget) of earners IS 22% (from IRS), while a single filer earning 50K without itemizing deductions pays an average tax RATE of 17% .... The existing system (with all the cap gains,div, write-offs and shelters) allows the 35%+ brackets to pay at 22%.... If you look at my "welfare for the rich" blog, you'll see that lower tax rates are regressive in terms of their effect on the PERCENTAGE increase or decrease in inflation-adjusted mean household income, good times AND bad...
As far as the Reagan crap, I believe I already debunked that in earlier email or blog..gross tax revenue always goes up in virtually any 10year period because the GDP and population always
grow..historically, the increase in revenue under Reagan as a %age in inflation-adjusted $$ was less than average for 10 year periods which preceded and followed(remember the 21% short-term interest +high inflation rates of the early 1980's?)...As far as "Coolidge, 'liberals about democracy' (???) , FDR,JFK,'what the people want' " = lunatic fringe stuff, not worth trying to debunk. After all, everyone KNOWS the recession of 2008-2011 was caused by the liberal DEM bankers and politicians who put all those poor people in houses they couldn't afford!
Good luck with your mom! You and I are lazy, covetous bastards.. nothing you say or write to her will change her mind... your best bet is to get quotes from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and
any of the "millionaires for higher taxes" .. I'm sure that were your mom an American citizen, she would be only too happy to have her medicare and social security cut by her beloved tea party to pay for the tax cuts, never-ending wars and corp welfare+greed. Also, is it possible her main source of info on these subjects comes from emails and Fox TV?
re: your stats.
ReplyDeleteYour stats are from the 2008 IRS data which was recently released. It's actually the top 1% who paid 38% of the tax in 2008. I've attached some charts from http://www.taxfoundation.org but to summarize:
top 1% 20% income 38% tax
top 2% 25% income 46% tax
top 10% 46% income 70% tax
top 25% 67.4% income 86% tax
Looks like the 80-20 rule applies to tax revenue: the top 20% of income earners pay 80% of the income tax. Also, these statistics do not include social security tax, sales tax, hidden taxes and property taxes all of which tend to flatten the average rate of income tax per bracket.
Right now the country has a serious unemployment problem with almost 10% of the population officially unemployed. Unofficially, it's probably close to 20% if you count the discouraged unemployed and severely underemployed. The best way to do this is to create jobs whether they are private sector jobs or government paid jobs. Neither cutting taxes nor extending unemployment benefits is the best way to get the people back to work. Better to spend the government's precious tax revenue on job training, subsidizing private hiring and actually hiring the unemployed themselves.
The rich aren't asking for these tax cuts. Here's what Buffett has to say (from http://www.advisorone.com/article/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-talk-taxes-and-philanthropy):
Buffett has been outspoken in his quest to get the federal government to raise taxes on high income earners, and repeated his support of higher taxes on the program. Amanpour asked if he thought that all Bush-era tax cuts should come to an end, as advocated by Alan Greenspan, but Buffett said, “No . . . actually you might extend them further for the lower class, middle class and maybe upper middle class but I think that you should raise taxes on the very rich.” He pointed out that during his life, capital gains taxes had been at 39.6% and taxes on earned income had stood at 70%, “and our economy did just fine.”
He also pointed out a previously much-publicized fact—that he pays less income tax than his employees; something he does not consider fair. He told of how he’d done “this little survey” in his office, with 16 people who responded. “And I had the lowest tax rate of the 16.” He explained further that he didn’t have tax shelters or a planner to cut his tax bill; “It was all courtesy of the U.S. Congress. I mean, they did my tax planning for me. And, literally, the average for the office, counting payroll taxes, was 32% and mine was 16 and a fraction percent.”
What we are really talking about here is CEOs and high executives salaries. Are they really worth that much? Did they really earn it?
From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html:
ReplyDeleteThe richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
and
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
re: Reaganomics
What you don't realize is that the economy was just coming out of a recession, much of the tax revenue came from government hiring at the expense of the deficit. The statistics are very misleading. Look at what the Bush Tax Cuts did - nothing. Right now we've lowered interest rates as far as they can go and we've lowered income tax rates as far as we can go. There's nowhere to go now - we're all out of tricks to prop up the economy.
re: Corporations
Of course there are good corporate citizens and bad corporate citizens. Some have terrible records of employee abuse, sweat shops, bribery, pollution, illegal activities, corrupting governments, overthrowing governments, murder, etc. It's the government's job to police these "bad apples" as they don't necessarily police themselves. Of course, when their people are the top ministers of the government it's like having the fox in charge of the hen house.
re: Big Government
Hey I'm all in favour of cutting down the military which is currently 40% of the US government's budget. Turning over worldwide policing to the UN. Shutting down covert organizations like the CIA, NSA and any covert activities of the Department of Homeland Security. I've been reading about an interesting story regarding the FBI and 9/11 here:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html
Your version of capitalism is lawlessness. Leave the big corporations alone. Don't worry about pollution and other externalities,ecology and the environment, the water supplies, the animals, global warming, the indigenous people.
Here's where we come together - fairness. We're both interested in making this world fairer and a better place for our children. I think there is too much power and corruption in the government and big corporations and you think there is too much power and handouts from the government. I equate government handouts to when US corporations ransack a developing country into extreme poverty while making billions of dollars and then having the red cross hand out food rations in ghettos.
I'm finished with Repugs vs. Dims. I have bigger fish to fry. Stay tuned.