Hot Air: "Do the rich pay their fair share?" Um, yeah.
In 2009, the top 20% of earners brought in an income about 10 times that of the bottom 20% of earners. However, they paid about 221 times as much in taxes.We already have a progressive tax system but it's never enough to feed the beast. This is the ongoing infantilization of America where it's all candy and no consequences. Somewhere along the journey we decided to make "somebody else" pay for everything because, hey, we can vote that way.
The top one percent of earners made about 50 times as much money as the bottom quintile in 2009, but paid about 1,500 times as much in taxes
Flashback from Hit & Run: "Top 1% pay 37% of income taxes."
12 comments:
Wow. And it would be even higher if Mitt Romney paid his taxes.
Or Tim Geithner.
"This is the ongoing infantilization of America where it's all candy and no consequences. Somewhere along the journey we decided to make "somebody else" pay for everything because, hey, we can vote that way."
CEOs of deregulated and bailed out financial institutions vote a straight GOP ticket for that very reason.
You're thinking of Jon Corzine.
"Top 1% pay 37% of income taxes."
Who are these leeches and freeloaders who pay no federal income tax? The ones who are inconvenient to the meme earn all of their money from investments, on which they pay capital gains tax. Millions more are old people who do not pay income tax on their investment and Social Security income. Millions of others are teenagers who work either summer jobs or part time jobs during the school year and get a full refund of their federal income withholding. And a large number of them are poor.
The Republican response is to increase taxes only on W-2 wage earners so that they'll finally have some "skin in the game" (as if they don't pay all sorts of other taxes already).
Because Econ 101 teaches us that the best way to stimulate an economy is to increase the tax burden on the people who spend 100% of their paychecks on consumer goods and to reduce the tax burden on people who shove a nice portion of their paycheck into the bank.
Well, let me put it this way: how about in the interest of "shared sacrifice" we raise the income tax rates by 1% across the board?
The rich would pay an overwhelming portion of the overall (new) tax revenues and the poor and middle class - by sheer numbers - would benefit from the funded government programs.
What's wrong with asking people to pay for their government?
Why don't we make it 90%? It's the same principle. And Warren Buffett would still be richer than his secretary afterwards.
Are corporations, which are famously people my friend, also obliged to take part in your guilelessly fair proposal? Because a 1% increase would raise many of their federal tax burdens to 1%. But of course, they aren't infantilized, entitled, or among the drainers of our country's unsustainable future.
Sure, why not? We already have the highest corporate tax rate in the world but they can take another for the team.
Hmmm...I wonder why they're not hiring.
That's just more of the narrative vs. reality. Businesses are hiring, just at a slow rate. They're hiring at a slow rate because we're recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. A recession brought about by a massive collapse of a deregulated financial industry. This morally hazardous industry is run by CEOs who at the worst get a spectacular golden parachute, or, more typically, continue to pull in huge tax-sheltered earnings while they demand taxpayer-funded bailouts to rescue them from the ramifications of their poor decisions and risk management.
But first things first: let's reform welfare so those slaggards who keep getting laid off stop suckling at the teat of Big Government.
"a deregulated financial industry"
Good one.
Ha ha! When you type "good one," it's as if you make it not have happened, even though it totally did!
Calgon, take me away!
Aw, come on, guys. Maybe the real-life expressions of core conservative financial philosophy have hit one or two small bumps in the road over the last 12 years, but that's no reason to give up so soon. We have to ride this premise out, if we want to see the benefits at the end of the road.
Voter I.D. laws, though, THOSE need to be changed IMMEDIATELY! The damage that voter fraud has caused is - quite literally - incalculable.
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