Chart showing Average cut ($) per taxpayer under each plan - Is this accurate?
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/08/11/GR2010081106717.gif
Chart showing Average cut ($) per taxpayer under each plan - Is this accurate?
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/08/11/GR2010081106717.gif
How do you cut taxes on people that don't pay any tax?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1
The solution is to make over $500,000 a year and vote republican. If you make less then that, vote democrat.
This chart demonstrates very well who has your best interests at heart.
Judging from this chart, and even if you make $500K+, which do you think is best for our country, the economy, and the deficit?
Two stories of dependency-- take from them what you will.
#1
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
•The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
•The fifth would pay $1.
•The sixth would pay $3.
•The seventh would pay $7.
•The eighth would pay $12.
•The ninth would pay $18.
•The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
•The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
•The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
•The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
•The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
•The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
•The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20', declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right', exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
#2
A hunter and his dog spent the whole day in the woods, walking far from home but finding no game. As night fell, both hunter and dog were famished. The hunter cuts off the dog's tail, cooks it on the campfire and eats the meat. When he is finished, he gives the dog the bones. The dog licks the hunter's hand in gratitude.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
The author is David R Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics, University of Georgia
Your lengthy and boring story neglects the fact that the distribution of wealth in this nation is a crime.
400 billionaires and 150 million people with no net worth. That is Third World country, Medievel Europe type stuff. You can have no Democracy with such a skewed distribution of money and power
beer and stew dinner wrote:
The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
They'd leave the country? Why do they hate America?
And which overseas nation are they going to go to? Which atmosphere is somewhat friendlier? Certainly not in Europe, where the tax rates are higher, especially for the rich.
You're telling me that all these people making more than $500,000 a year are going to up and move to a 3rd world country? How are they going to make their money then?
Only a handful of the super rich are in charge of transnational corporations, where their place of residence doesn't matter. The others are small business owners, farmers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals whose salary is intimately tied to the United States. They can't go overseas and make the same salary or have the same lifestyle - a lawyer in guatemala or a doctor in italy makes nowhere near what they do in the U.S.A.
Also, remember that marginal tax rates were much, much, MUCH, higher throughout the 20th Century. The 50s - where most people get all nostalgic about - had an upper bracket that paid 70% of their income to the government. Did society collapse? Did the rich flee to other countries? Nope.
Finally, think about who benefits most from the tax system. Despite the image of "welfare queens" and freeloaders, the essential services of government: defense, order, a relatively smooth economy, etc. benefits those who have money and property.
- If the government were to collapse, the poor would still be poor. The rich, however, might lose their fortune in the chaos.
- If there's a war (heck, there are two wars in the past 10 years), think about who is fighting those wars. It ain't the rich signing up, it's the poor. It used to be that we asked the poor to fight and the rich to bankroll it. Instead, in the past 10 years we asked the poor to fight and the rich to....get a tax cut.
- If you still doubt that the rich benefit from society's rules and regulations, just examine the most recent financial crisis. It was created by the rich; they made bad investments, and when it appeared that it would all collapse, we used taxpayer money to bail out millionaires (rightly, as it would have destroyed our banking system). That bailout allowed the super rich to keep paying multi million dollar bonuses to themselves, and now they...want to pay lower taxes!
(oh, and while your story is nice, it didn't come from an economic professor in Georgia - or South Dakota.
http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/howtaxes.asp)
Just for fun, I tried to calculate the wealth of the entire planet, and see how rich/poor each person would be if we simply divided the world's wealth by the world's population (six billion people).
If I use GNP data, i find that the world's total GNP is about $30 trillion (the USA's GNP is $10 trillion and the USA accounts for about 1/3 of the world's GNP). Divided by 6 billion people, that's an average of $5,000 per capita. That's yearly production of wealth. Depreciation of goods is hard to estimate, but we can assume that it is about 30% on average. So the accumulated wealth is 5000 minus 30% of 5000 minus 30% of this number minus... a series that converges to about $10-11,000
If I use the data on net worth (average USA household net worth is $182,381 as per the census, which means a total wealth of about about $18 trillion for the 100 million USA households, which means about $54 trillion for the wealth of all households of the world). That's household wealth. Now we need to add government wealth, which is approx 30-40% in the US, more in other countries. So the total wealth of the world is about $70 trillion of dollars. Thus the average human on this planet is worth $70,000/6= $11,000
So both ways we get the same number: if we distributed the wealth of the world to the people of the world in equal terms, each person would be worth $11,000
For the USA alone these numbers are: Per-capita GNP: $38,000 and Average net worth: $60,000 .
beer and stew dinner wrote:
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
The Real UncleB wrote:
Your lengthy and boring story neglects the fact that the distribution of wealth in this nation is a crime.
400 billionaires and 150 million people with no net worth. That is Third World country, Medievel Europe type stuff. You can have no Democracy with such a skewed distribution of money and power
You're one of the dumb-asses who will never understand.
Kevin52 wrote:
[quote]beer and stew dinner wrote:
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
If you can't explain it but believe it nonetheless, you have been had.
beer and stew dinner wrote:
Two stories of dependency-- take from them what you will.
#1
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
•The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
•The fifth would pay $1.
•The sixth would pay $3.
•The seventh would pay $7.
•The eighth would pay $12.
•The ninth would pay $18.
•The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
•The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
•The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
•The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
•The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
•The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
•The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20', declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right', exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
#2
A hunter and his dog spent the whole day in the woods, walking far from home but finding no game. As night fell, both hunter and dog were famished. The hunter cuts off the dog's tail, cooks it on the campfire and eats the meat. When he is finished, he gives the dog the bones. The dog licks the hunter's hand in gratitude.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
The author is David R Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics, University of Georgia
Where would the rich go that is better than America?
Honestly the rich are not going anywhere. They have it better in America than anywhere else in the world and they know it.
I would say the poor could be doing a lot better in some European countries.
If you add in state and local taxes then the percentage of overall salary paid into taxes is almost the same between people making 70k and 250k and only slightly increases above 500k.
The point of the richest leaving the country is your weakest point. You mean they will take their business out of the country yet still live in the USA. Now why would they stay here? Maybe the quality and safety they enjoy here is due to the tax structure that they hate?
They don't have to leave the US themselves - they just have to outsource all the jobs. Atlas has been shrugging for a couple decades already.
lmkmkl wrote:
Chart showing Average cut ($) per taxpayer under each plan
Let's make this clear. The main stream media and the Democrats keep talking about a tax "cut". NOBODY is getting a tax cut.
If the current tax rates are not extended, everyone will get a tax HIKE!
This isn't a discussion about cutting taxes, it's about RAISING taxes.
If you think high unemployment is a good idea, then you should back those in the government who want to raise taxes. Personally I'd rather the current rate structure be made permanent so individuals and businesses can plan for the future and Americans can be put back to work.
The tax-cuts should expire completely!Even then it would cut just about 25% of the deficit.
The problem is that actually no one wants to seriously raise taxes or seriously cut spending.
The Dems plans wouldnt raise that much and the Reps wouldnt touch the Pentagon and would barely touch Social Security or Medicare. Stuff like reducing the salary of federal employers or earmark reform sound great but they are not gonna get us much further.
oh come on wrote:
They don't have to leave the US themselves - they just have to outsource all the jobs. Atlas has been shrugging for a couple decades already.
what does this have to do with the federal individual income tax??
(hint: absolutely nothing)
beer and stew dinner wrote:
Two stories of dependency-- take from them what you will.
#1
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
•The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
•The fifth would pay $1.
•The sixth would pay $3.
•The seventh would pay $7.
•The eighth would pay $12.
•The ninth would pay $18.
•The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
•The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
•The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
•The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
•The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
•The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
•The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20', declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right', exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
#2
A hunter and his dog spent the whole day in the woods, walking far from home but finding no game. As night fell, both hunter and dog were famished. The hunter cuts off the dog's tail, cooks it on the campfire and eats the meat. When he is finished, he gives the dog the bones. The dog licks the hunter's hand in gratitude.
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
The author is David R Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics, University of Georgia
As good as this is, I do not think the good prof came up with it. I think snopes.com cleared this up years ago.
PS, for those who balk about "democracy" in the US: you should your ignorance: The US is NOT a democracy. The US is a republic or constitutional republic, but it is not a majority rule democracy and no one in his/her right mind would want majority rule. Consider 2 wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
pay the workers only a tiny fraction of management earnings and investor profits, destroy their power to unionize and force better wages, redistribute very little of the money in taxes, while deducting a high portion of subsistence money from the workers' wages, while taxing only some of the luxury extras of the management, and then come here and complain about how tough the management has it.
You have to wonder what happended to these folks who so emotionally defend those who are screwing them over
The reason I've never had a problem with wealthier people paying a higher percentage of their income while the poorest may pay no taxes isn't because I'm in favor of soaking the rich - I'm actually in one of the higher tax brackets - but because it takes a basic amount to live. Let's assume a family needs $20,000 a year minimum to survive, and up to $40,000 a year to live comfortably (made up numbers for the sake of argument). If you make $100,000, 80% of your income is going to things other than just keeping you alive. If you make $40,000 a year, 50% of your income is available for non-essential uses, while if you make $20,000 a year then you're spending every penny just hanging on.
Extrapolating, someone earning $40,000 who pays 20% in taxes is paying 40% of their non-essential income ((0.2 * 40000) / 20000) in taxes. The person making $100,000 and paying 35% taxes is paying 28% of their non-essential income ((0.35 * 80000) / 100000) in taxes.
You can argue that the person making $100,000 is paying $20,000 more in real dollars, but as long as the US wants roads, defense, and other services the money has to come from somewhere, and the income tax seems to be the compromise that has been deemed most fair. For my part, I don't want to see my taxes go up, but realizing that the current path the US is on is unsustainable, I find it totally understandable that I would pay a higher rate than a teacher, policeman, or steelworker who makes one-fifth of my salary.
