What's not to love? WSJ: "Obstacle to deficit cutting: a nation of entitlements"
Efforts to tame America's ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history.Have we reached the tipping point? We've already constructed a tax policy where the top 1% of Americans pay more in total taxes than the bottom 95%. Now Obama wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the top income brackets expire, raise the income cap on the payroll tax, and limit deductions for charity.
At the same time, the fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown—to an estimated 45% in 2010, from 39% five years ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization.
Is there some other way to punish the most productive members of society? Maybe we can egg a heart surgeon's BMW. That'll show 'em.
Extra - Reason: "Let's cut spending (just not on any of the spending that benefits me.) "
Related - Some thoughts from Maggie's Farm.
9 comments:
Have we reached the tipping point? We've already constructed a tax policy where the top 1% of Americans pay more in total taxes than the bottom 95%.
Er... no. That much-touted statistic strictly reflects the federal tax rate on declared income. Which is very different from what people make and what people pay.
Here are some more numbers. The top 1% took home 23% of all income in 2006, up from 17% a decade earlier, while the bottom 95% collected 62% (70% in 1996). In 1986, the figures were 11% and 76%, respectively.
By raw dollars, but not percentage, the tax burden for the top 1% has risen about 6% since 1996, and 14% since 1986.
Going by the percentage of income paid, the amount paid by top 1% has actually gone DOWN. In 2008, only 19% of the income reported by those making $10 million or more came from wages and salaries. Overall, the effective tax rate on the highest incomes fell by 7% during the Clinton years, and by an additional 6% under Bush.
Of all the new wealth created between 1983-2004, 42% of it went to the top 1%. The bottom 80% collected 6% of it.
As of 2007, the top 1% owned 34.6% of the nation's privately held wealth. Since the housing bubble's peak in 2007, the median household's wealth has fallen 36%, while the top 1% saw just an 11% decline.
In 2007, the very richest 0.01% received 6% of all wages-- a total which had doubled since 2000, and which was more than the bottom 120 million people combined.
We may have reached a tipping point, but it's not tipping in the direction you think.
Doesn't make much difference which way it tips over. Cut down a tree and it falls. Either on you or away from you but it's still down.
Now no more shade, soil retention and reseeding. The rich have all the trees, everyone else has to move away. What do you do with the trees?
Skip the silly tree metaphor. We've had a little less than a decade of Republican tax relief concentrated towards the rich, who were going to turn that windfall into expanded jobs and investment, benefiting everyone. How'd that plan turn out?
Marvelous, I made out well; you shouldn't have stood under the tree.
In my defense, dollar guy, I linked to a New York Times analysis that included much of what you said. So I wasn't hiding the income context; I just didn't explicitly repeat it here.
Hey, I didn't know Clinton loved the rich so much - more than Bush!
The respective Clinton and Bush economies may have played a teensy-weensy role there.
I wasn't hiding the income context; I just didn't explicitly repeat it here.
Sure, but the point - that our tax policy disproportionately hammers the richest Americans, and is getting worse - is false.
Putting half the population on the dole and demonizing the rich are features, not bugs. People paying their own way might be tempted to stay with their votes.
Sure seems like the "rich" are paying more. I know because they decided I'm rich.
Well, as long as it "seems" that way, why bother with the actual tax figures?
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