If you could decide the Income tax rates...

If you could decide the Income tax rates, and the top bracket was for people with a personal income of $1 mil per year and up, what would you make the top marginal rate on income of $1 mil per year and up?

(in other words, ONLY the income above $1 mil would be taxed at this rate - the first million would be taxed at the lower rates)

I'd focus on cutting spending and then figure out the fairest way to pay for it.

You're asking people to solve the problem backwards.

I guess the country ground to a halt?

Your first million would be taxed at a lower rate, you know...

away? Why do you seek to punish the successful (not everyone at the top got there by cheating or stealing)?


The point is NOT to start with the approach that we are going to "punish the wealthy" but instead, figure out the fairest way to pay for the necessary government spending. And in no way am I advocating that the existing tax code is either sane or good.

But during Clinton's years, some of the biggest economic growth in history, the tax code was not even close to 50% and we were able to pay down the deficit.

capital? How about reading and exercising to improve oneself?

even though they will need that income later (their careers are typically only 3-5 years in some sports).

Why should anyone seek to be the best if the best they can achieve is 1 million.

Do you think we would have had innovators like Jobs or Gates if they thought 70% or more of their income would be taken away and HOARDED by the government?

The gap doesn't have to be 1:100; wouldn't 1:20 or 1:15 be enough "profit incentive" (which is not neccesary to humans but is to many Americans).

with all the EXTRA money it has? Believe me, you could pay for EVERY Democratic cause without going above 40%. The problem is spending. Look at what Clinton was able to achieve and the top brackets didn't even get that high.

You mean gutting welfare and raising government fees? (another regressive tax)

I guess I missed it when he funded national single payer health care.

Oh yeah, the rich did well in the 90s - that's who you're concerned with.

The poor stayed poor, bankruptcies and personal debt skyrocketed, and the poverty rate fell only briefly in the latter part of the decade. It's better than Reaganomics, but not much.

There is so much that could be done with unused capital.

:)

people would strive to be the best because of a desire to be the best

yes, we would have innovation without Gatesian profiteering.

who said anything about hoarding? (I mean except you.)

without people who make that much and more, large chunks of the service sector would be greatly impacted...as would many charitible organizations.
and as far as the people who do make that much in salary/bonuses- i'll bet that if you ask the people who paid them, they'd all say that they were/are worth it.

When someone is already making millions of dollars a year, at what point do they reach in their wealth accumulation where they really don't NEED to make more than they already are?

For example if someone is making 6 or 7 million bucks/yr...and there are plenty of people who are...how much is it really going to hurt them if their net income is lowered by an increase in their taxes?

Big deal, so instead of having a 230' yacht with 2 helicopters on top, they can only have a 205' yacht with a single helicopter.

because they DO give so much to society.
So there were no innovators in the 50s when the top bracket was 70%?
What an odd thing...

"...hoarded by the government"
Why should anyone seek...blah, blah, blah..."

Now, just where have I heard those phrases (and some of the other ones you used in your post above) before? Hmmm? I know it will come to me soon...

The warping of values to reward some occupations so highly while others are denigrated with sub-standard wages is a major destructive weakness of capitalism. Even in a perfect world where monopoly capitalism/fascism did not exist, just how much money does one person need? It leads to a wasteful way of living that says "Fuck you" to the rest of us sharing this planet.

As for me, I worry about underfunded schools and undernourished kids, not the idle rich.


And personally, I could live a lifetime on $imillion, invested well. What you're talking about is their ability is to continue living in the manner they've become accustomed to.

...then yes.

A 70% top tax bracket is probably unnecessarily high. The real question is how much does society need to function, and how should that be distributed. The tax brackets should be created with that in mind, not other considerations.

A pro athlete who "retires" at 32 with "only" a few million in the bank deserves less sympathy than a janitor who retires at 65 with nothing.

They were salesmen. Wozniak and Allen were the innovators. They came out good, but not nearly as good as their marketers.

Speaking in general terms only, pro athletes are the most spoiled fucking people on the face of the earth. From the earliest times in their youth, the elite athletes have been hand dressed, spoon fed, and baby sat by everyone under the sun. Most of these adult-sized babies don't know how to wipe themselves without someone standing by to give them instructions. Almost every single one of them wouldn't think twice about ripping off the fans if it meant an extra million or two in their salary, despite it meaning such high ticket prices that the average fans can only afford random tickets in the nosebleed sections.

Take Bryan McCabe of the Toronto Maple Leafs, for example. When faced with the hockey lockout last season, McCabe whined to the press as to how he could afford to get by with only 3 or 3.5 million dollars a year if the owners got their way with a salary cap. Huh? Here we had a guy making over $4 million dollars a year at the time, playing a childs game hitting a puck around the ice, and he's complaining that he couldn't survive on a measley 3 or 3.5 million dollars/yr for the good of the league??

Yeah, I feel real sorry for them! :sarcasm:

... while "the profit motive" does.

Duh.

for anyone. A rate of 70% would maybe do something to cut the obscene and conspicuous consumption that is plaguing this country.

How many Mercedes or Hummers does one person need?

We, the many who earn less than $1 million per year, have a collective interest in ensuring that those who most benefit from our social arrangements, pay for those arrangements.

If I am part of the 40% of our population who own a meager 0.4% of our net wealth -- with little hope of bettering myself (since empirically less than 10% of us are able to advance out of the socioeconomic class we are born into -- the worst performance in first world economies), then it matters little to me if we maintain a $450 billion military that keeps markets open and ripe for corporate transnational exploitation. It matters little to me that we maintain courts, police, a legislature that ensure the enforceability of contracts entered into under duress (asymmetry of bargaining power). It matters little to me that we spend billions to help offshore jobs that improve the "competitiveness" of transnational corporations that happen to have a headquarters in the U.S.

Now, if I was earning $1 million per year, I might have a vested interest in these governmental expenditures. Therefore, it is only fair that the person earning $1 million plus per year should pay markedly more in taxes through a progressive tax structure.

Really
the police try to protect
the banks - and everything else
is secondary
-- D.A. Levy, Surburban Monastery Death Poem

Further, it is in our collective self-interest to avoid the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the few, as it diminishes aggregate demand; all previous hyper-concentrations resulted in significant economic depressions. The reason is obvious. Hand a dollar to someone in the aforementioned bottom 40% and he or she is likely to spend 100% of it in a struggle to acquire the basic necessities of life. Hand that same dollar to someone in the top 1% (or 532 dollars, to reflect the highest imbalance between CEO and lowest paid worker in recent decades), then much less, up to 90% less, is spent. Aggregate demand slows. Depression results. We are currently exceeding the concentrations witnessed in 1929.

It only makes sense to lower marginal tax rates at the top when there is a crisis in capital formation. That is not the case today. There's plenty of capital flying around ... to build that new data center in the Phillipines, that software development center in Bangladore, that manufacturing plant in China. The principle owners of our transnational corporations will do just fine when selling to the growing middle classes of these nations despite the abyss our own middle class will (is) falling into.

Given that the transnational corporation has abandoned us, I say abandon them -- eat the rich, tax the f*ckers at 90%!!!

For every dollar the boss has and didn't work for, one of us worked for a dollar and didn't get it.
-- Big Bill Haywood

(O oh, the NSS of the United States, 2002 version, pretty much says Bush will enforce low marginal tax rates around the world with bombs and bullets -- does that mean he'd unleash the troops on fair play "agitators" here at home? Is that what the Halliburton contingency is all about, that third-of-a-billion-dollar on-call status to build detention centers here for "other programs"? Yikes!!)

...but why didn't the folks back in the 50's give up?

If anything, people seemed more motivated then...

That notion has to go.

"Muffy, if they raise my tax rate, we'll have to summer at the compound on Martha's Vineyard and cancel the mediterranean cruise because I wouldn't be able to pay the staff on the yacht!"

"Oh, Rutherford, NO!, How could they commit such an injustice on us? Boo Hoo!"



:eyes:

People will always try to make more money no matter what the tax rate is. You're repeating Republican talking points.

Right now we're punishing the middle class with the tax structure. Clinton also raised taxes on the highest income brackets.

no matter how high the taxes, the wealthy aren't being "punished", so much as made to pay their fair share- those who have benefitted the most by being in this country to make their living should be expected to pay the most to support the conditions that allowed them to become successful.

how is that "punishment"?

Back in those days everything in the world was deductible.

You could deduct credit card interest until the mid-eighties, and car loans. There were limited partnership investments where you could invest $ 10,000 and deduct $ 25,000 from your taxes the first five years.

There may have been a 70 % rate, but no one paid it. The tradeoff was supposed to be lowering the rates and eliminating the deductions at the same time.

It's been pretty much done as there aren't anywhere near the deductions as there used to be.

that portion of income that is over $1M, right? just pointing that out for the sake of clarity.

...would be deductible...

The point isn't to set a bracket first then figure out what to do with all that money later, it is to figure out HOW MUCH MONEY IS REQUIRED and then tax appropriately. I garantee that this country could solve ALL it's economic issues (debt, deficit, fully fund social security, provide full health care, etc) and the upper bracket would not need to be above 40%. The key is to tax FAIRLY based on the money that is REQUIRED to operate the government.

maybe clear out some of those IOU's in the social security entitlement file cabinet...?

for starters.

of Voodoo Economics

Before you FLAME OFF on me, you may want to read my BLOG entry on Taxes: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/berni_mccoy/2

"Communism," as practiced in the USSR and China, was state capitalism.

Besides, I'm a socialist. I'm not even a "communist."

I'm full aware of what communism means and represents. What are you going to do with all the money in the government? YOU do realize, don't you, that by bumping up the top tax bracket, you are giving the government money it doesn't need?

the unfunded and underfunded education programs are imaginary

the lack of universal health care is imaginary

the near-zero investment in pure research is imaginary

the zero investment in technological infrastructure is imaginary

Clinton was well on his way to doing it and if Gore would have been president, we would have no deficit, we would have universal health care, and just about every Democratic cause could be paid for with careful spending and REASONABLE tax rates.

with America falling behind the rest of the developed world in technological infrastructure

in research

in education

and in manufacturing technology

(all the above because capitalists don't give a shit about anything except their own money)

And here I thought that once I joined DU I wouldn't have to hear people lying out of their tuchus about small govt. is better, small govt is great, small govt is wonderful, small govt is great for everyone. That small govt speech is mere bs.

We need a govt. that provides for the needs of all of us. If the rich can afford health insurance, well fiddledeedee, congratulations to them. How nice for them. However, if other Americans cannot afford it, there has to be provision of this for them. That's what govt. is for. Govt. is a joining together of a people that live in the same place, to take care of basic needs: highways, health care, defense, shelter and food, etc.

As for where that money is to come from.. Money to maintain our infrastructure and build security for all of us (national health insurance, not just missiles, we don't live off missiles), is either taken out of the rich, the poor, or the middle class, two of the above, or all of the above. If it's not taken out of the rich's pockets, there won't be movement of money in the country. They'll just hang on to their wealth as they always do when they have too damned much, like they do now.

The money taken out of our pockets is either given out as subsidies and special contracts to the rich (and their corporations), or it goes to our infrastructure and our security. I vote for the latter. The former just puts even more money into the pockets of the rich.

I've heard just about enough right wingerist bs they pass off as "economics." I think it's time to look around, the horror of what Reaganomics has brought us, and call right wing economics by its rightful name, "bullshitomics."

You may want to read my blog on a simple change to the tax code that would allow those in poverty to not have to pay taxes at all: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/berni_mccoy/2

Oh, yeah, and it can all be done with ONLY CHARGING 0.5% of the 1 million+ income earners.

I'm no right-winger, but I'm also going to call BULLSHIT of those who think RIDICULOUS TAX LAWS ARE GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD. Get real. MONEY IS NOT THE SOLUTION. Cutting spending is. And what I perceive as unnecessary and necessary spending is WHAT MAKES ME A DEMOCRAT.

-on weapons and wars.

But even if you cut that, more taxes would probably be necessary to balance the budget and provide national health insurance.

Unfortunately, because the puss-bellied masses decided that the best way to protect themselves was to pump all of their hard-earned cash into national-brand names, for-profit commercial ventures that could have been avoided with cooperatives, abandon unions, become consumer sheep, and turn over their brains to mass media, it has become necessary to protect those idiots from the people who bought their democracy, while they were beating off to Britney Spears and picking out matching towels.

Cry me a fucking river. Make the government bigger -- let's get it in every corner of our lives, because god forbid that people should make a responsible choice with their money and their labor.

Every bit of wealth concentration, in this nation was a contract between the buyer of horseshit and the seller of horseshit. Rich people didn't get rich by busting into your house and forcing you to buy Chinese knife sets at Wal-Mart. While you were buying them, however, the person who was selling them shipped the knife factory to China, drove mom & pop out of business and sold you shit under a "brand name," that cost ten times its use value.

I think the government is good for somethings, but when I hear people rip on community-based, non-governmental solutions, I cringe. As long as the populace doesn't believe in or exercise their independent efficacy, nothing will change. Suggesting that everything be handed to "big brother" to fix is the path to the fascism that we have today.

...anarcho-syndicalist, to be more precise. I bet your Political Compass score was something like minus 9/minus 9 (which is about what I score). However, I think you go way too easy on the elite over-class if you don't think they have manipulated the institutional levers of power (governmental and non-governmental) to exercise a high degree of social control. I find you blaming the victim here and elsewhere on this thread; more attention needs to be paid to the victimizer, don't you think?

Rich people did too force many people into buying Chinese knife sets at Wal-Mart. How? By not paying a living wage, by thus forcing people out of necessity to search for the best price on basic commodities, by dumping cheap goods on the market to undercut the market share of local producers, by establishing themselves as the lowest cost brand, by subsidizing their P&L by leaving healthcare to the surrounding communities instead of shouldering the costs that fair-compensation companies struggled to pay. It resulted in a narrowing of opportunties. Left with little money and few choices, Joe and Jill Workingfolk make the only possible choice they can when knives are needed and paychecks are dwindling, it would be unfair to expect them to do otherwise.

What would be fair, however, is democratic changes to the rules of the game that counter the unfair and undemocratic advantage inherent in the concentration of corporate and private wealth. A national political party that actively opposes formation of near-monopolies would be very useful now. Worker Councils and similar collectives would otherwise be crushed out of existence -- by means of friendly fascism, of course.

An aside: I bristle when I hear that the rich somehow deserve their wealth and poor their poverty, as if we all got to choose our parents, the stability of our childhood homes, our educational opportunities. By the time Joe and Jill Workingfolk's children turn 18 they've already been bludgeoned by forces they neither control nor are responsible for; meanwhile Banker Charlie's kids went to the best prep schools, never went to bed hungry, were never sick without a doctor's care, and were introduced to the "right" people when they come of age, leapfrogging over the factory floor to the executive suite. This is not an expression of class-envy, it is a cry for social justice and equality. Speaking of, there just is no such thing as an equality of opportunity in America and anyone who thinks there is, well, Dahli Ani (as you call her down thread, Cats), she's truly singing to you.

that anyone "deserves" anything -- rich or poor. I do, however believe in responsible labor, discriminating consumerism and non-governmental, community-based solutions to problems.

I watched a show on Wal-Mart, and it has only been in the last 15 to 20 years that they've become the megaconglomerate that they are. For a long time -- and I remember, from my childhood -- they were just another discount store, amongst discount stores, and, while Sam Walton was a much more responsible businessperson than his successors, at the time, the store was still driving mom & pop out of business. Wal-Mart's revenues didn't fall from the sky, in a rainstorm of gold coins. It came from years and years of concentrating and up-drawing wealth from people who liked the a)convenience of the catch-all discount store, and b) the brand name of "Wal-Mart."

If no one had ever shopped there, and maintained a relationship with their independently owned neighborhood grocer, neighborhood clothier, neighborhood hardware store, neighborhood gift store, neighborhood housewares store, etc., Wal-Mart would have had a store full of goods, with a really brilliant buisiness plan that no one was buying. This, however, was not the case, and the slow and steady concentration of consumer wealth is what made the store so powerful. Unlike technological advances, where there may be limited resources, in the early to mid 1980s, there were plenty of independent retailers. Marketing and advertising, and the love for the "brand name," and the comfort of a familiar big box store, drove them out of business. And I'm sure Wal-Mart thanks the consumers because they couldn't have done it without 'em.

When I was a child, in a small town in rural Illinois, we had two independent jewelers, two independent hardware stores, a locally owned shoe store, three locally owned discount stores, two smaller chain discount stores (Pamida, Ben Franklin), three independent clothing stores, a Christian gift store, a housewares store, a train salvage store, two secular gift stores (one paired with one of three independent pharmacies), three independent grocery stores, an independent electronics store and a independent bakery.

Now, 20 years later, the only places left are the Christian gift store, one of the clothing stores, one of the jewelers and the drugstore/gift shop combo. That's IT. And guess what? THAT TOWN DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A WAL-MART!! The closest Wal-Marts are a half-hour drive. The closest shopping mall is about a 40 minute drive. And guess what else? Except for a brief period in the late 1980s, when my Dad was out of work, everyone I know who abandoned the small stores were not some below-the-poverty-level, struggling-to-make-it disadvantaged family. They were simply consumers, who just wanted more and more and more for less. They didn't shop at Wal-Mart out of necessity, or convenience -- just greed and ignorance. These are people who want to buy their fifth cheap TV at Wal-Mart.

And, I didn't say that the consumer, alone, was responsible. For certain, they skipped off, pinkies locked, with Wal-Mart in the handbasket to hell. And so goes what follows -- to maintain the cheap prices, cheaper and cheaper sources must be found. Small businesses are shut out -- and this isn't just told in the tale of Wal-Mart, it's told in the tale of just about every brand-name consumer product.

I know this family who, I swear to Pete, went to visit NYC, and only ate at chain restaurants. Friday's, Planet Hollywood, McDonald's, etc. -- and here's the really fucked up part -- these people a) eat at these places in Podunk, IL (except for PH), and b) ate at these places when they went to Minneapolis, Orlando, Chicago, Indianapolis, Seattle and ad frickin nauseum. How many Niketowns can one visit? A relative of mine could probably set the record. Let's get in our giant car and tool around to see, year after year, how many Niketowns we can see. And I know that this happens with FAR, FAR more people than I know -- why would there even BE a T.G.I. Friday's in Times Square, if this wasn't the case? Why would there be a T.G.I. Friday's at the San Jose Airport in Costa Rica -- first damn thing I saw, when I got off the plane. In America, who the hell would go to eat at Friday's -- you'd have to be raised in a cage to have not have the opportunity to eat at a fridaysredlobsterolivegardenapplebees your entire life. Who keeps these places open? Tourists from other countries? Whatever -- you can eat at fridaysredlobsterolivegardenapplebees in every industrial nation in the whole god damn world.

I'll tell you who keeps them open -- the same people who warned Jeffrey Sharlet not to go downtown, to the ethnic restaurants in Colorado Springs, CO -- but referred him to T.J. Cinnamon, instead. My relatives who FREAK OUT because someone tried to serve them goat meat in MEXICO. People who consider that hopping on a cozy flight, sleeping at a cozy resort in St. Thomas or Cancun, and maybe venturing out on the Plastic Prozac Fun Hoverhydro Bus makes them world travelers. And these are the MAJORITY of people.

You want to save them? Because THOSE are the people who all this crap saves. And it's not just them -- most of the poor that "break our little bleeding hearts," are simply living out a pseudo-fantasy of being just like them. The only difference is that they're on drugs, or too "affected," or just don't give a shit enough to be able to go out and grab the brass ring of crap that will make them rise up to ranch-house-with-puffy-couch status. I've worked in social services -- I know.

I think Ani's living in the pseudo-downtrodden intellectual bubble that most of the quasi-socialists are living in (I say "quasi," because few of them are willing to actually BE socialists or examine the true constructs of hierarchy, myth, dreadlocked hair or the cult of "hipness"). It's a disease that I had for a long time, before I became an anarchist.

To be truly multi-cultural and diverse, you must be willing to let the disasters in this world happen, let lessons be taught, and pick through the rubble to find the diamonds. If you can't find any, it means we haven't earned it. It means that there are still lessons. The quasi-socialists know nothing about true sacrifice, suffering or dedicated self-effacement. The politics of large-scale organizational institutionalism, under the guise of tolerance and diversity is just another kind of authoritarianism waiting to fall against the one selfless moral act of the lone individual. Against the lone, selfless act of a collection of moral individuals. I say, let the cream rise. The only way to do this is by cutting away at the "burden," and letting everyone suffer the consequences of their actions. If one must suffer with them, that is the true sacrifice.

...we mix several issues here.

If innocent children are told from their earliest days via the actions of the adults around them, via the messages absorbed from television and radio, via elementary, high school, and even university education, via peer groups equally bludgeoned into blind consumerism -- if the subtle soporific message heard over and over again is conform, consume, survive -- then how can you look down on individuals that do just that?

If the results of this slavish, trendy consumerism (middle class) and failed consumerism (lower class) has allowed a rise (again) of monopoly capital (extracting monopoly rents), is it more the fault of the slaves or the engineers of slavery? In that lies my quibble with you.

Not everyone is as gifted as you and able to rise above the social definitions given to them by circumstances they did not make. A few can break free of the shackles, see another world, and work to make it happen. Others can break free and decide to selfishly steel their own financial fortresses and the hell with everbody else. But most struggle blindly to maintain the illusion of success according to definitions others have made for them. The fact that the illusion is something to awaken from speaks much to the success of those who define "success" in terms of their own self-interest and punish (sometimes brutalize) those who fall out of line.

So what are we to do in these circumstances? Shout songs of praise for the self-made man, remain religiously commited to the Horatio Alger myth, and shame those who, frustrated by forces not of their own doing, can only muster enough energy to vegitate on a couch with a six-pack in front of cable news? How... Calvinistic of you.

Speaking anarchist-to-anarchist now -- although I wonder if what I hear from you, Cats, is more "libertarian" than "socialist" -- I'm an anarchist in crisis. I sometimes wonder if Lenin was right, there is a role for a vanguard party steering us to some stateless future, but in the meantime I think a big collective is necessary to counter the undemocratic power represented by too great a concentration of corporate and private wealth.

There are two votes in America, Cats, the dollar vote followed by the democratic vote. The problem with the first is that you get to vote a lot more if you have more dollars (very un-democratic). The result is that money sets the agenda and class interest prevails. Both Republican and Democrat represent monied interest first and foremost before they differentiate along the lines of their various coalitions. One of the ways to counter the dollar vote is to take dollars away from the top. I don't care if those dollars are burned or redistributed (in the form of social services, reduced fees, reduced state taxes, reduced sales taxes, etc.), as long as it serves to level the disparity of power now observable.

Reducing the income and wealth disparity between the few and the many is a first necessary step to securing some form of self-determining democracy. Otherwise...

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1809

I'd rather not live in that jungle. So, no, don't let the "cream" rise to the top, not if the rise is as much politically determined and class based as it is merit based, and not if in so doing it means misery for an emerging third world nation right here in the United States. I respectfully disagree with you, Cats.

And the government is STILL not providing single-payer national health care like in every CIVILIZED nation.

"Communism" as practiced in the USSR and China was total state socialism (and a clusterfuck of). True communism is stateless. "Socialist," these days, in America, mostly means "Social Democratic," which is about half-way in between say, the (real) US Democratic Party and total state socialism. I'm a libertarian socialist. Just so we know.

Wasn't aware of that.

Also, I don't appreciate your use of "communist" as a pejorative.

There are a lot of fine people who are communists and socialists.

Wasn't aware of that either... sounds regressive to me.

And 70% is approaching a "communal" system of wealth. Sorry, but that *is* communism. I'm sorry you don't like the sound of it.

Last I heard, we had the reverse: big business ownership of the government.

Which is why you needn't worry about my taxation plan becoming a reality - at least with our present government.

I don't like the sound of it because it's untrue. I'm not an anticommunist, so I don't take "communist" as an insult, but progressive taxation has a long history in this country and is not communist.

of progressive vs. regressive taxation schemes. Fairly basic.

Also, it's amazing to me how few people understand the concept of "marginal tax rate".

...is a 70% marginal tax leaves 30 cents of evey additional dollar in the pockets of the lucky person in this lofty bracket. We have not discussed the brackets beneath $1 million and 70%, but such a person still gets to take home $300,000 on their second million. We're not leaving that person unrewarded. Meanwhile, they shoulder more of the cost for the kinds of things that secure their ability to make that kind of money. That is only fair.

Another fallacy is the discussion of the FIT share paid by the top 1%. Someone (you?) say the top 1% pay 38% of the FIT. I think that's accurate. And they only earn 19% of income. So FIT is progressive (at least it was in 2001, which my figures are from). However it is unfair to look at FIT in isolation, as it is only a piece of the total tax picture. I quote downthread (I think) data showing that aggregate taxation is now very regressive -- the progressive FIT tax served to flatten overall tax burden across the income spectrum, by removing FIT progressivity, it tilts the overall burden away from those most able to pay (and who most benefit by our arrangements) onto the lower end of the spectrum. It is fallacious to focus on FIT alone.

Also, a 70% marginal tax rate on high incomes has absolutely nothing to do with "communism". The means of production are still owned by private parties; the 70% tax rate merely creates the opportunity to redistribute some of the value appropriated by the high earner back to the many that helped create it. Taxation alone does not guarantee this redistribution, but it is a first step (how the money is spent is equally important).

Note: The middle class as we've come to know it is a historical abberation. Before WWII such shared prosperity was seldom if ever seen in history, not at the numbers seen at the peak (1973). We rode up to that peak for many reasons, but it should be noted that we had some of our highest marginal rates during much of that period. Income was redistributed via many paths from the few to the many; the CEO earned 40x to 50x the lowest paid worker in the firm, not the 400x to 500x seen today. Many things have contributed to the plateau and to the beginnings of the slide we've seen since then. One of the things was a massive reduction in the upper bracket marginal tax rates beginning with Reagan. It disproportionately returned more money to the upper class than any other class, and income concentration trends show the result. Basically, from 1981-1992, the money not collected in taxes but borrowed from future generations showed up on the balance sheet of the top 1% (I don't have more current info handy, but I doubt the trend has been reversed).

So today we sit on the brink of an abyss similar to 1929. And it's mostly due to conscious policies of politicians put in office by the dollar vote that precedes the democratic vote. The fate of the many decided for them by the few.

Who put that kind of tax structure in place.

Again, proves DU has a bunch of success-punishers.

I believed that keeping the rich fat and happy, would, in turn, feed the rest of us. I used to believe that when the rich had a small tax bracket and lots of money, they invested it here in the U.S., so the rest of us could work and make money and feed ourselves. I also used to believe that holding the carrot of wealth in front of the noses of Americans, would lead to great inventions and advancements. Then my world fell when I found out that was all bullshit. Those are all lies, in the same way that the fear of Communism was something the U.S. rich worked at overtime and spent lots of money on, till the rest of the country felt that Commmunists were demons.

I've seen that plan in action, where the rich are allowed to keep nearly all the money. In fact, we're seeing it in action now, during Bush. Let's stop for a moment and take a nice long look around and see just how much "better" the country is, by letting the rich keep nearly all their money.

There're only 3 things the rich want: 1) to keep their money, 2) to make more money, 3) to make money off the backs of other people, not them. Any notion that the rich somehow, magically, will have the well being of anyone else in mind is bs.

High time for a progressive tax. A highly progressive tax. You want to live here? This country making you a fortune? Then pay your way. Not paying your way if you're making a fortune, means you're trying to get it for free. This country makes money for you? Pay your way. Period. The rest of us do.

And again, why did America's prosperity not die during the decades when the rich had to pay 70%?

...reality is dense, thick molasses, not reducible by us or by you to a single issue like 70% tax brackets, yea or nea. Maybe we want to advocate for that 70% to counter the social costs not included on the owner's P&L statement. Maybe it's an inexact way to extricate social justice, but it is better than acquiesence or capitulation, because in the end it is just and fair.

Maybe we just want to be a bunch of fairness-junkies and reward those who don't extract oligarchic rents out of the value stream we all work hard to create.

However, I'll grant you there is room for debate here. If not a 90% marginal FIT rate, then maybe 70% ... I could even be persuaded that 50% is fair -- if we eliminate all special treatment of income and tax dividends, interest, and capital gains at rates equal to earned income. And if we eliminate the ceiling on FICA taxes. Then yer talking!!

While it is true the USG is essentially the banker's policeman, so what it appropriates and spends today is very suspect, I can conceive of things we choose to do collectively that require taxation, like national healthcare, or guaranteed housing, or, hey, let me go German on you, perhaps paid for education through the undergraduate level. Spending is an issue, especially spending on what, but I don't advocate the Bush lie of putting more of our money in our pockets when our government can and should be, in the end, actively and democratically counterbalancing the power inherent in accumulated wealth.

I think Ani DiFranco was singing to you, here:

...we start out sugared up on kool-aid and manifest destiny
and we memorize all the president's names
like little trained monkeys
and then we're spit into the world
so many spinny-eyed t.v. junkies
incapable of unravelling the military industrial mystery
preemptively pacified with history book history
and i've been around the world now
and i can see this about america
the mind control is steep here, man
the myopia is deep here

and behold
those that try to expose the reality
who really try to realize democracy
are shot with rubber bullets and gassed off the streets
while the global power brokers are kept clean and discrete
behind a wall
behind a moat
and that is all
that's all she wrote

...and big government should not stand between a man and his money
i mean "what's good for business is good for the country"

our children still take that lie like communion
the same old line
the confederacy used on the union

conjugate liberty
into libertarian
and medicate it
associate it
with deregulation
privitization
we won't even know we're slaves
on a corporate plantation
somebody say halleluja!
somebody say damnation!
cuz the profit system follows the path of least resistance
and the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked
makes it serpentine
capitalism is the devil's wet dream
so just give me my judy garland drugs
and let me get back to work
cuz the empire state building
is the tallest building in new york
and i always got the feeling
you just liked to hear it fall

-- Ani, Serpentine

they'd be laughed at from all sides.

I'm definitely in favor of FAIR taxes (they presently are not). I'm also in favor of returning to pre-Bush taxes. Even though that would mean I would pay MUCH MORE in taxes, I would do so GLADLY. In fact, I donated the gains from my Bush tax cuts to Democratic causes during the 2004 election cycle.

I'm also in favor of raising CAPS, such as FICA/SS. This is the only way to solve some of the problems without cutting NECESSARY programs.

This thread is just turning into a BASH-THE-WEALTH thread. If we end up bashing what most of America wants, then we will become a party that no one wants to belong to.

Whose fault is is that people are kool-aid junkies and TV addicts? The rich? Hardly.

The people who want protection are the people who fucked it up in the first place, hand-in-hand with the predatory rich. We don't fix that by making the government have more power. As long as the koo-aid addicts and the TV watchers are with us, they provide the labor and the cash flow that will allow the rich to buy the government, every time, turning it into the fascist police state that the authoritarians dream of.

...is Stuart Ewen's Captains of Consciousness, the manufacture of anomic consumerism was as important to the captains of industry as was churning out Model-T's from the assembly line. :)

However, I am 150% with you with regard to the consequence of continued spectatorship.

When the rich were taxed at 70% there was no point in corporations giving their CEOs 200m dollar "compensations" when the tax man took seventy five percent. They would rather give it to their employees than the government. And they did. Now they get to keep it all. And they do! Lowering the tax rates for the rich was a social disaster for this country. It didn't just make the rich richer. That wouldn't have mattered much. But it is a zero sum game. It made the poor destitute and has practically destroyed the middle class.

in income every year.

I certainly wouldn't tax anyone's first 50,000 at 70%, but I can imagine a tax structure where a guy making 500,000,000 a year might see a 70% rate on a very high level of income (especially if it were capital gains, dividend or inheritance income).

you can't separate the two.

If you find this hard to accept think of the deficit you will bequeth to your children and grand-children. Bush and his voodoonomics are beggaring America today and for generations to come.

Tear up those no-bid contracts and re-tender while raising punitive taxes on those war profiteering traitors as well.

Anyone who can't scrape by on $1mil a year needs serious psychiatric help and a few lessons in frugality.

Sorry, but if you take more than half of what people make over any arbitrary figure, the desire/motivation to make that amount is much less. Tax fairly, and use the money wisely. (and this is from a person who never complains about taxes/user fees).
dumpbush

:sarcasm:

The 'argument' that the motivation to strive and achieve would somehow be diminished by a high marginal tax rate is belied by the fact that we've never had a shortage of 'new millionaires' nor has the entitlement to profit from the labor of others ever lost its siren-song attraction.

I would start at 100,0000 a year at 50% and then index it on upward making it 70% at approx. $2,000,000. No tax on savings accounts instruments (saving, CD's, Money Markets).

We need the savings desperately so that we can keep our debt within the US.

I don't think anyone's taxes ever should have to be more than 30-35% of their income. I think the tax rate should be much less for lower income families and I think more deductions should be available for combined income of say less than 100,000 (with more deductions available the lower you go). I think the flexible spending accounts for childcare should not have a limit as long as whatever is put in can be legitimately used for daycare expenses by years end. I think for those that make over a million, however, that their tax rate shouldn't be more than 30-35%, but that they shouldn't be allowed to have as many tax breaks and deductions as they have today. But anyone who makes money should have a right to keep their money, without having to give more than a third of it to the government. Matters not to me how wealthy they are.

Sorry, it's the combination accountant / tax policy wonk in me.
And, it makes a big difference.

But that's just me.

My only interest is in making the world a better place.

you don't think some rich asshole CEO can get by on 25 times the minimum wage?

that's because you're wrong and you lack imagination.

250% is 2.5 times the minimum wage. Do you mean 2.5 times minimum or 25 times minimum?

5.25*40*52*250%=$27,300.00 YEAH let's take 100% of all income above $27,300...that make a shitload of sense...

Hell, increase the minimum wage 400% and you still are wanting to tax people at 100% of just over $120,000 ... yeah ... good way to encourage people to excel ...

sP

Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

You'd increase the deficit/debt exponentially with that level of taxation.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates-graph.php



Source: http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php


ETA: Progressively, of course. Looking at that graph, something terribly wrong happened in 1982-90. I wonder what it was? :freak:

about the economy, taxes and government spending and think they punish the wealthy in order to solve all of our problems.

berni_mccoy, berni_mccoy, what am I gonna do with you man?

:popcorn:

:think:

Why would you want to punish the movers and shakers who risk the capital and as a very important byproduct, provide the rest of us with jobs. I made my living all of my life working for people that had a lot more money, than I did.

a job than a poor man"
But the evening is still young...

I did not have to say it... You just did. I do not know about you but nobody, even the rich, owes me a thing.

Then by that same token, does the society which enabled any individual to become "rich" not owe that individual anything further? Bernie upthread invokes socialism and communism, which seem IMO nothing much more than attempts to spread the risk of living in this vail of tears yet the same principles when applied to businesses in the form of tax rebates, deductions, write offs, and exemptions are considered the height of capitalism. I, for one, am really sick of the double standard by which a business blackmails a community saying give us tax breaks, build us the tax-supported infrastructure our business needs to proceed or we'll take our jobs elsewhere to find someone who will accede to our blackmail.I'll agree to a point that no one owes you anything except maybe a level-playing field chance to provide for yourself and your loved ones.

That is what is so wonderful about our system. You may rise as far as you ability and ambition will take you.

Granted we are all not equal. Some are better looking. Some are more talented. Some are smarter than others. And last, probably the most important some just work harder than others. I once heard a successful salesman remark "The harder I work the luckier I get".

This is elementary but a person will never succeed by just whining about someone being successful and they are not. We seem to have a lot of that going on.

As far as businesses blackmailing communities it is called negotiating. When a community has the opportunity have that business establish there they have to weigh the benefits of having that business there. If it is not worth the breaks the just tell the business it is not worth it. It is just like negotiating for a car, house, or anything else. If you do not like the deal, you do not buy.

when we got a better looking,more talented, and smarter guy for President, Right? And I guess it is no coincidence you both attach great importance to "hard work"...But unfortunately for you most of us DON'T like the deal, DON'T buy facile bullshit and ARE going to impeach the bastard!

working smart, and good looks? You don't think working hard is important? Well maybe you can find somebody that will just hand things to you for nothing.

You will rise as far as your abilities and ambition take you.

are attributes I admire (though good looks don't rate that highly). I mentioned the president because he is a PERFECT example of how one can lack all of the other three and STILL seize riches thru family ties and coniving....unfortunately for this sad example of wasting the planet's precious oxygen,calling something "hard work" is not the same as performing hard work....any more than printing large banners extolling "mission accomplished" can make it so....Many of the wealthy DO deserve their earnings-but certainly do NOT deserve the governments aid in keeping more of it than is historically the case.In Bush's case,how can you claim that an adolescence of at least drugs and booze and rock and roll,c- grades and the fact that his adolescence apparently extended until he was AT LEAST 40 years old shows he "earned" a life of wealth???
As to your suggestion I find someone who will just "hand me things" for nothing, I find I am so far, shit out of luck,-George's family is already tied up keeping him happily afloat and even after much hard work I have failed to find anyone willing to lend me money and help me buy into a major league baseball team....So, to your suggestions-they suck-I tried as hard as the president and never got ANY "luckier"....no sports team, no oil company floated by Dad's cronies-nothing but that I earned myself....Wake up and smell the reality-for every Gates or Jobs there is a forrest of Bushes...worthless non-productive plants sucking their sustenance from the rest of the planet....

worrying about the Bushes, Kennedys,Rockefellers, Hiltons, and the rest. I am a retired electrician and am doing okay.

I had my chance to go into several businesses but chose not to because of the risks and just did not want the responsibility of a business.

I know of several families that have inherited fortunes only to loose them because they couldn't manage. I have also known of several who inherited a lot and managed to make their fortune grow.

That is just the way life is and it is fruitless to worry about it. I would not trade our system for any other in the world. We really have it pretty good here and I am glad I was born here in the United States.

on sharing them-other than saying that SOME rich folks win and that SOME rich folks lose never even realizing what a thrill it might be for someone born into the "lower" classes to ever have enough cash flow to consider themselves "rich"-if only briefly...I love your example-BOTH inherited enough for a privileged childhood-private schools,colleges, and the very best connections-and THEN, some fail and some prosper...And your answer is that is how "life" is-which would be valid if the poorest in the nation had the exact same shot as the richest did...But instead,some of us had to somehow force ourselves to living on chicken parts and 75% hamburger and competing with rich kids from New Haven Ct...like G. Bush...and though I never got to the skull and bones thing,I did have a brother DRAFTED into the 101 Airborne...And in the end I can tell literary license from Horseshit....one of us is mistaken and I doubt it is I...

"I regard large inherited wealth as a misfortune, which merely serves to dull men's faculties. A man who possesses great wealth should, therefore, allow only a small portion to descend to his relatives. Even if he has children, I consider it a mistake to hand over to them considerable sums of money beyond what is necessary for their education. To do so merely encourages laziness and impedes the healthy development of the individual's capacity to make an independent position for himself." -Alfred Nobel

to inherit a fortune. I wish I could leave my kids a fortune. It is not going to happen but good for those that can. They do not owe me a thing.

I guess you're right.

All the resources (media, oil, gas, water, gold, silver, bauxite, etc...) in this country belong to the rich. They inherited all that stuff fair-and-square. Doggonit, who am I to say that I'd like my share, too? You're right. Let's leave them alone. They'll take care of us. They always have.

I do think that families with little discretionary income should have to pay extremely little tax at all. I think families should be able to use every single dollar they earn in order to reasonably provide for their family and only those dollars above that amount should be taxed. For the wealthy, I don't think they should be penalized at all, not even for capital gains. I think they should pay a fair tax rate, but they should be expected to actually have to pay it. Too many tax breaks and deductions available to the wealthy. Other then getting rid of some of their deductions, I say they have the right to keep the rest as much as any of the rest of us do.

The problem is the people who are making that kind of money annually are getting out of paying what taxes they already owe. The rate will never matter - if they can afford to pay someone to find the loopholes, they will never pay that rate.

or are deserving of a decent standard of living?

And it would seem you also support the destruction of the middle class just so you can keep your fortune (either the one you have or the one you imaging you will earn because you are such a wonderful person.

Why don't you start the second French Revolution then if you think it's that bad?

:eyes:

From a lefty libertarian:

I think more than a few suffer from simple envy.
Your tax thread actually makes perfect sense.
Don't let the Chavez Wing of the Democratic Party get you down.

We members of the "Chavez Wing" won't let the members of the "Proud To Haul Big Rocks For The Pharaoh Wing" get us down

the poster's overall view. I am a libertarian socialist -- but to call those who wish to make progressive change "envious" is about as right-wing and ignorant as it gets.

Like the rich aren't constantly at war with the poor by trying to keep their labor costs down...

:eyes:

:eyes:

Full of people who know nothing, but one person who knows everything, I'm not sure that balances out, but you go head on berni keep spouting the frightwing talking points, and I'll keep on believing that the figure that really matters is not what one pays in taxes but what one has left of the "fruits of their labors" after taxes to provide for themselves and their loved ones.

Maybe there are other boards whose posters would be more to your liking?


Not that I have any in particular in mind...

obviously there can be no "losing cusps"-no 10% jumps,the transition must be done in percentage points and reward just like workfare and social security disability....ie:each dollar earned MUST cost you less than a dollar in additional taxes....so that nowhere along the scale does X=60% but X plus $1 equal financial loss....reindex to represent 1950 dollars and let the chips fall where they may-if $2 mil meant 600K take home and $2 mil+$1 meant $600,000.28 the problem disappears.Those who say otherwise are lying....

It was a full 90% during the prosperous 50s.

Personally, I think it should be confiscatory over a million a year. Nobody is worth that kind of money.

I'll bet it was just a handful.

Funny, even at that rate, they managed to get richer. Money put into circulation at the bottom invariably makes its way toward the top, something the supply siders vehemently deny but which has always been the case.

The money pump works from the bottom up. Concentrate it all at the top, the pump shuts down.

Let's do a good bracket:

everything up to $25,000--0 percent
from $25,001 to $30,000--15 percent
from $30,001 to $60,000--22 percent
from $60,001 to $125,000--29 percent
from $125,001 to $999,999--34 percent
from $1 million to infinity--40 percent, maybe 45 if you'd allow it

I'd eliminate the cap on FICA contributions, too.

I'd also index Alternative Minimum Tax to inflation; all the complaints the Repukes have about AMT are directly attributable to its lack of indexing. "It affects more and more people every year!" Index the fucking thing so it only applies to the seriously rich people it was supposed to in the first place, and they can't say that.

on the pittance she makes to the tune of 40%?

What are you going to do about those starving kids? Watch and clap?

the question was what to do with people who make over 1M

I would start at 40 for people who make over 1M and raise it after that to 50.

I hate to come out on the side of not eating the rich on a DU Forum, but seriously, what would be the purpose of that?

Are not the Alternative Minimum Tax and Inheritance Tax sufficient to discourage excessive concentrations of wealth and power?

What would the government do with all the extra cash it brought in? Much of what it spends on now, e.g. the war in Iraq, is bad. Why give it more ammunition?

BTW - Does anyone really believe that people with incomes over $1 million won't find and exploit ways of avoiding the 70% tax?

will, they will hit the door and become tax exiles just like many Brits did in the 60s and migrate their money to countries who will take a smaller piece of their pie...there are plenty of countries that will accept these folks and with a much smaller cut dramatically increase government income.

Berni has hit the nail right on the head: there comes a point of diminishing returns. Tax income too much and income grinds to a halt and stationary money does no one any good. BTW, if you are thinking well then "we can tax wealth", that is a completely unsustainable and destructive to the overall economy as investments move offshore and without investments the whole economy stagnates.

...right now has more to do with the tax floor, not the tax ceiling.

First, because we spend 150% of what we bring in (federal deficit), investments ARE moving off shore, as in the second great American fire sale -- i.e., foreign funds traded for dollars, used to snap up American assets (the first sale followed James Baker's Plaza Accord in 1985, aided and abetted by then Vice President GHWB). By way of illustration, if Dubai Ports completed the recent port operations deal, 30% of every dollar spent to ship goods in or out of America would flow offshore, adding to the current accounts deficit (ok, ok, I know a Brit firm owned operations prior). This is hugely destructive: We are simply eating our seed corn today.

Second, American productivity has more than doubled these last 25 years, yet wages for most of the income spectrum remained nearly flat (the bottom 20% actually earn less today, measured in constant dollars). That is not true for the top, no, they appropriated more of the value stream than ever before, and thus they've enjoyed a doubling of their share of the American pie. It is why, along with tax cuts, we now have a concentration of wealth and income rivaling 1929.

This is a big problem because give a dollar to someone near the bottom and they will spend 100% of it pursuing the basic necessities of life; give it to someone near the top and they will spend much less, up to 90% less. By shifting income upwards, demand is weakened. We follow the pattern seen before every great depression.

This shift is NOT because what the American worker does is any less valuable than it was a generation ago -- our sweat and thought still contributes to the value of product or service created -- it's just that, by working MANY levers, capital has managed to (again) appropriate a greater share of the value created. Profit has been great!

One of those levers has been the reduction of progressivity in the tax system. Every dollar not collected by someone in the upper brackets and not spent on consumption is invested. Some, for example, in the Treasury Bonds necessitated because we did not collect that tax dollar in the first place. So the upper classman gets to keep his dollar and make a claim against future value created by the working children and grandchildren in the form of interest. Wealth compounds for the lucky lotto-policy winners while the risk of calamity grows for everyone else. No wonder some rush to fill the campaign coffers of the borrow-and-spend Republithugs, encourage near-monopolistic control of the major media, cheer a Bush onto neo-imperialistic war -- a few are making out like bandits (which is just what they are!).

I remember reading a good little book by Michael Harrington in the late seventies (Twilight of Capitalism). Back then the marginal FIT rate was 70% and FICA pre-Greenspan low. When aggregating all taxes paid (FIT, FICA, state, local, sales tax, user fees, etc.), the so-called progressive tax system was ... flat!, averaging around 30% across the income spectrum. Aggregate tax did rise to 35% at the extremes of the spectrum, meaning the person in the bottom 1% bracket was paying the same proportion aggregate tax as the top 1%. So what do you think, have things gotten more or less progressive after 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of GHWB, and 5 years of GWB? Here's the answer: Much more regressive overall.

By 1985 the bottom quintile shouldered an aggregate tax burden of 28%; the top 10% shouldered just 24% (the top 1% just 22%). See Graph 2: Tax burdens, 1966--1985, using regressive assumptions, at bottom of web-page. I ask again, who thinks things have gotten more progressive since 1985? No hands? I'm not surprised. Unfortunately I don't have similar information handy for today, but I don't go out on a limb when I say that this regressive imbalance has worsened since then. So another way the top has bolstered their income while incomes for the rest stayed flat is just plan stupid, rich-man serving tax policies. America was lulled to sleep while the magistrates of the mighty arranged things to add further to their economic might. When we wake, we'll be left with the bill.

(Other levers include union busting starting with the Traffic Controllers under Reagan, offshoring, inshoring and illegal immigration, the dumbing down of the American public, the bought-and-paid-for major media, stacking the courts, and on and on -- it's been intense class war and the upper class has been bowling us over for a generation.)

I think this situation is highly unfair as the top 1% benefit from our social arrangements far far more than the bottom quintile. Someone is not paying their fair share! And every step to reduce marginal FIT rates at the high end just worsens the situation. So I say again: Eat the Rich, tax the f*ckers at 90%!!! Justice and fairness demands it.

not collect more in taxes. I'm a firm believer in unionization, employee ownership, and higher wages for workers -- but put that money in the worker's pocket -- not the governments. If there are enough living wage jobs out there, few people (sick, children, elderly), should have an excuse not to make enough money to get by. Let the consumer decide where to spend it, and let's hope he or she makes a responsible choice.

...out there, I say in the meantime Eat The Rich.

When the rich were taxed at 70% there was no point in corporations giving 200m dollar "compensations" when the tax man took seventy five percent. They would rather give it to their employees than the government. And they did. Now they get to keep it all. And they do! Lowering the tax rates for the rich was a social disaster for this country. It didn't just make the rich richer. That wouldn't have mattered much. But it is a zero sum game. It made the poor destitute and has practically destroyed the middle class.

They would still have their garish mansions and luxo cars, but the serfs who work for them would have health care, at least.

It's about having a more egalitarian society, not punishing the rich.

That would make more sense to me than increasing the size of the federal government.

...are also advocating for bigger gubermint. That's a red herring.

(I agree, however, that we could pay for 1 year of national healthcare if we simply did not engage in neo-imperialistic, pre-emptive war in Iraq.)

have 90% of available cash....the rest of us are fighting for the 10% so, all of us combined should only have to shoulder 10% of the taxes

Everything below $40,000 is automatically exempt, period. Then on a progressive scale to the 90%, $1 million mark, and all taxpayers / citizens shall have retroactive adjustments for the past five years. Of course, that will bring up CORPORATE taxes that need to be adjusted, so Corporations pay their fair share and no longer have Corporate Welfare payments from the Government.

Think it is too drastic?

Fuck'em! It's not nearly as drastic as what working Americans have been facing the last five years. Success is an pathetic empty word, while that "success" has been achieved at the expense of working Americans, who have watched their livelihoods and well being disappear. The wealthy are not the ones who have been getting raped, looted, pillaged, and killed without any defense in the Class Warfare that has been taking place against working class Americans (middle & lower classes).

How about completely changing how taxes work. Instead of having everyone making over a certain amount pay 70 % taxes, everybody get the first million they ever make WITH NO TAXATION. I.e. when your a kid working at mc d's , you have no taxes. When you working as a young person to get through school or buying your first house, no taxes. But once you make you first million (or 500 000 or whatever we pick), then you start paying 50 percent taxes. After you make your first 5 million, it shoots up to 80 percent. Its fair cuz everyone gets an equal first shot. If you inherit money, though, that money goes into your "first milllion" and the rest is taxed. This way, we would "punish" less the young people who are starting out.

I like the creativity of it.

to build up a personal retirement savings account for the individual from whom the taxes were deducted. Otherwise there could be a nasty shock when the taxes first become payable.

The personal retirement savings account might simply be government bonds. Who else is going to keep on buying them when they need to be rolled over?

Anything less is unpatriotic and unAmerican. Dare I say: TERRORIST! ?

It's on the high end, but it's still middle class.

That means the rest of the nation....

You must have pretty extravagant tastes to need a million dollar income to struggle by in the middle class.

By that standard, my wife (teacher) and I (researcher) better go right out and apply for welfare because we obviously are destitute on one-tenth of that.

I'm serious. I really want a source for that.

Less than 5% of Americans even have a NET WORTH of $1 million dollars. The number who earn that much in a year is less than 1%. There is no possible way to characterize that as "middle class".

The median family income is about $45,000. A family earning twenty times this is not middle class.

Less than 1% of the population is in that range.

Source of data: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96981,00.html

Those 181,283 tax returns reported $1 million or more in AGI.

By changing the top tax bracket to just 50%, these 181,283 tax returns would generate MORE TAX REVENUE THAN THE GOVERNMENT TAKES IN TODAY.

If you changed no other brackets (everyone making less than $1 million per year), you'd generate nearly double the tax revenue we take in today.

Instead of doing that, why don't we repeal ALL OF THE BUSH TAX BREAKS TO CORPORATIONS and Raise the top tax brackets to PRE-BUSH LEVELS. You'd have enough money to reduce the deficit and pay for much needed social programs.

Sorry for the abuse you took from the openly socialist-wing of the Democratic Party. It's sad. The strongest economy in the world (yes, we are STILL)produces a GDP that is the highest per-capita of any place in the world. Things need to be better, more equitable, but we do not need state-run socialism. To think we would be debating the merits of capitalism over socialism - ah, forget it. You know exactly what I mean. Some here are far, far, far left and forget the power and corruption that comes when the *government* runs everything. Yes, Mr. Chavez, in America, we can be good Democrats and NOT be radical socialists. Surprise!

Dick "Mr. Chavez" Nixon.

:eyes:

Or Dwight "Castro" Eisenhower at 91%.

:eyes:

Whether measured by the Nominal or the Purchasing Power Parity method

Nominal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita

PPP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita

...the U.S. is 4th in the world in per-capita income. Finfacts have us listed as follows (2004):

1. Luxemborg, $56,230
2. Norway, $52,030
3. Switzerland, $48,230
4. United States, $41,400

(The CIA Worldbook has us 4th, too.)

Further, of these 4 nations we by far have a more intense concentration of wealth, meaning our top 20% compare favorably (even better) than their top 20%, but after that we look to them like a third world nation.

Nice triumpalism there, m.s., but inaccurate.

As someone with anarcho-syndicalist sentiment, I shy away from "state-run socialism", but I do believe in the value of collective organizations coming together to solve common problems. I also believe that uncorrupted democratic institutions can and should counter the un-democratic power of accumulated wealth.

I kinda' take this to heart, too:

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Annapolis Citizens, 1809

This just goes to show how warped the discourse has become: that a policy that was in effect during our entire postwar expansion, an essential part of the greatest expansion of the middle class in history and what soundly trounced communism and overt socialism in raising the standard of living of our people, is now treated as an anathema!

"Openly socialist wing"? Do you realize you're using the same language as a John Burch Society pamphlet, and all the other right-wing nutballs?

A mixed economy with a progressive tax system isn't socialism, it's what BEAT socialism.

I guess this is why this has "turned into a blame the rich thread." It seems that pointing out that such "socialist" policies were in effect here and the nation got rich anyway is beyond the pale. I've lost track of whether it "helps the terrorists" or "makes baby Jesus cry", but apparently a few facts aren't enough to burst the bubble of three decades of conservative economic propaganda.

10% control 80% of the wealth. But pay 60% of taxes.

:think:

:P

do away with all the loopholes that are only available to the wealthy.

That is where the big problems are. Even when the top rate was 70%, NOBODY paid that much! Even Jack Kennedy admitted that!

I say investment income should be taxed at the sam rate as income, the home interest deduction should stay, the dependant deduction should stay, charity donations, and perhapse a few allowances for buying fuel efficient or alternative fueld cars. That's IT! Nothing else. No freebies for offshore investments, no special rates for investment income. Just plain and simple tax return that could be completed in 30 minutes by almost everybody!

Those 90% and 70% rates back in the day should be taken with a grain of salt, there were a hell of a lot of loop-holes so most rich people didn't pay that much, IIRC.

The top marginal rate of 70% lasted from about the Johnson era to the first Reagan/Bush term.

Let's also remember that there was an estate tax and nowhere near the privilege for unearned income (income from someone ELSE's labor) as today.

have had a windfall in the last week of December and all the accountants and tax lawyers would have had to have been on vacation for you to have paid that rate of tax.

sliding scale, upwards from there on..

I agreed with it wholeheartedly.

It would be a hell of a boost to the economy.. Fed wh per week on my husband's check is about $250 a week.. That's an extra $1000 a month ...multiply that by millions of people, and you have a BOOM on your hands..and re-employment instead of unemployment..

If the govt has less to spend, then so be it.. we have been on a leash for decades, and it;s their turn now.. They have just squandered what we sent them anyway..

Sure there was a high tax rate in the 1950's, even higher than the 70% you claim. I'm pretty sure it was 90%. The reality however, is that nobody actually paid that. The tax code was so full of loopholes that rich people never actually anywhere near even 40% of their income in taxes. The key question in the whole question is this: who should decide where money should be spent? Do you believe the decision should lie in the hands of representatives elected by the people or the people themselves?

And the rich availed themselves of them.

There are still loopholes today, and much lower rates. If the rich were not going to save a ton of money in taxes, would they have gone to the trouble of getting people like Reagan into office?

I often have people (usually tax-whiner rich fux) tell me that they pay "35% of their income in taxes", and I always know they are lying, since even today, nobody pays that much in income taxes. First of all, that rate only applies to income over a certain amount, and there are all kinds of deductions to bring the liability down.

The fact is that the rich DID pay a larger share of the tax burden back in the 50s and 60s. It's not just that the income tax has become less progressive, as the federal government has cut funding from the states, the states have been forced to raise their own often regressive taxes to make up the shortfall. Excise taxes and government fees (regressive taxes) have gone much higher in recent years as well.

Add in the fact that the minimum wage buys much, much less than it did 20 or 30 years ago, and the fact that the bottom half of income earners have seen their incomes stagnate or drop over the last 30 years, and you have an economy that it starting to resemble Mexico's more every year, except that instead of a tiny class of ultra-rich people and a vast minority of the desperately poor, we're creating a quasi-rich class that make up about the top third or so of income earners, with 5% or so being "filthy rich" and the other 65% being either desperately poor or debt-straddled wage slaves.

More people than ever are spending more than 50% of their incomes on their rent or mortgage payment alone!

To me, all of these things add up to a very deliberate and concerted effort to destroy the former broad middle class and replace it with a more affluent and larger upper-middle class and a much larger number of people in debt slavery or poverty.

As for those who claim that the rich would flee to lower-tax havens - they might, but those countries often do not offer the benefits of living in the US. Also, I believe the government could restrict people's ability to move their money offshore...

The fact is that the rich DID pay a larger share of the tax burden back in the 50s and 60s.

Do you have a link to prove this? I wonder because today the top 1% income earners generate more than 50% of the income tax revenue. Are you saying it used to be even higher?

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5746&sequence=1


See the table: "Share of Individual Income Tax Liabilities"

And keep in mind that the top 1% of income earners control about 90% of the wealth in this country...


Now, it is fair to point out that the top quintile pay about 78% of the income taxes, but that doesn't mean they are taxed at onerous rates. The US is much kinder to its wealthy than most advanced nations.

And you are conveniently ignoring the fact that an ever larger portion the federal revenue is being shifted away from income tax, and being collected through more regressive excise taxes, fees, shifting tax burden to the states, etc.


More on how the tax burden has been shifted downward by Bush:

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/fsl2004.pdf



Unfortunately I couldn't find tax burden data going back to the 50s and 60s, when the income tax was more progressive, but when you see this graph, you see that in the years from 1977 to 1995, the top quintile did indeed shoulder a bit more of the burden, as did the lowest 20% (!)




But look at income inequality during the same period and it becomes clear who is being screwed.

http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/

See "How Much Do They Make?"

And you will see that the income of those in the top 1% has nearly than doubled from 356,000 to $660,000 (and you can be assured that this is even more pronounced during the Bush years).

During the same period, income of all earners has only grown from $42,900 to $45,700.
And people in the bottom quintile actually lost ground, from $10,000 to $8,100.


Since it has become clear that corporate America is only going to continue in its drive to keep the wages of most workers lower and lower, it seems to me that redistributionist tax policies are the only remedy to prevent our society from becoming totally third world. Progressive taxation could be used to offset the income losses by the poor by providing national health care, day care for all children, etc. Both of which would have benefits to all segments of society.

I guess it merely confirms what I've always believed--that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. I mean, can you really look at a system where the bottom 20% pay nothing and the top 10% pay 65.3% and say it isn't progressive? What, in your mind would be fair? The top 10% paying for everything?

Why on earth should they pay income taxes when they don't even have a subsistence income?

The next quintile are barely able to afford a decent apartment. They should be taxed at a low rate, if they have no children.

As for what I think would be fair - in a perfect world, every person would be paid a decent living wage for their labors, but that is obviously not happening.

So I do think the top 10%, and especially the top 1% should bear more of the tax burden, especially on capital gains, as others have mentioned.

The increased revenue, if used to fund the initiatives I mentioned would go a LOOONG way toward redressing the explosion of income inequality (which as you know destabilizes societies) of the last 3 decades. And we obviously would not need a 70% top rate to accomplish that. 40% would probably do it. Hell, we could probably start paying down the debt again, too.

I wonder why anyone would believe that people who buy mink-lined carriers for their DOGS are paying their fair share in taxes? Sorry, but there is a point at which affluence and conspicuous consumption becomes OBSCENE.


Oh yeah, and after the health care and child care are accomplished, how about we re-hospitalize all the mentally ill people Reagan threw out on the streets?

Why on earth should they pay income taxes when they don't even have a subsistence income?

Apparently you didn't read closely enough. The bottom 20% don't pay any taxes. I think that is fair.

The next quintile are barely able to afford a decent apartment. They should be taxed at a low rate, if they have no children.

Again, apparently you didn't read closely enough. The next quintile is taxed at a very low rate--0.6%. I think that is fair.

As for what I think would be fair - in a perfect world, every person would be paid a decent living wage for their labors, but that is obviously not happening.

Agreed.

So I do think the top 10%, and especially the top 1% should bear more of the tax burden, especially on capital gains, as others have mentioned.

You think they should pay more than the 65% they are currently paying. I guess I'd have to disagree with that. I think the top 10% paying 65% of the income tax is very progressive.

The increased revenue, if used to fund the initiatives I mentioned would go a LOOONG way toward redressing the explosion of income inequality (which as you know destabilizes societies) of the last 3 decades. And we obviously would not need a 70% top rate to accomplish that. 40% would probably do it. Hell, we could probably start paying down the debt again, too.

I wonder why anyone would believe that people who buy mink-lined carriers for their DOGS are paying their fair share in taxes? Sorry, but there is a point at which affluence and conspicuous consumption becomes OBSCENE.

Oh yeah, and after the health care and child care are accomplished, how about we re-hospitalize all the mentally ill people Reagan threw out on the streets?

Are you aware that anti-poverty spending rose from 9.1 percent of all federal spending in 1990 to 16.3 percent in 2004? You make it seem like there have been cuts...

Because I'll bet it's mostly not welfare or food stamps. (both of which HAVE been cut, as well as school lunch programs)

It no doubt includes things like "enterprise zone" loans & tax breaks (read: giveaways to the rich) like the one that allowed the owners of the Parrot Jungle amusement park in Miami to borrow millions with no obligation to repay, so they could move their park (and it's dozen or two minimum-wage jobs) to a more heavily-trafficked area which, despite being an uninhabited island in Biscayne Bay, was still classified as an "enterprise zone"

That's the new con game both democrats and republicans are pulling to pretend that they are doing something about poverty, while giving pork-barrel to the rich yet again.

Watch when this country finally does set up a national health plan - they will make sure that as many private corporations are in on it as possible to the point that costs ten times as much as other country's single-payer plans to run. But that seems to be the American way...

School lunch programs have not been cut. In 1990 the program received 3.7 billion and served 24 million children. In 2003 the program received 7.1 billion and served 28.4 million children. Even after you take into account inflation and the increased numbers, there were no cuts over that period.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/NSLPFactSheet.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/02/AR2005110203007.html

And you've conveniently ignored my point about how much of what is being called "anti-poverty spending" is actually just more corporate welfare pork.

because you offered no proof. If you would provide a link describing what percentage of welfare spending is actually corporate pork I'd be happy to look at it though.

Even the thing about the school lunches. Any minute I expect to hear the Reaganist school lunch definition of a vegetable: ketchup.

In 1981, then-president Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman (one of Reagan's favorite people), proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable as part of Reagan's budget cuts for federally financed school lunch programs. This was intended to make it cheaper to satisfy the requirements on vegetable content of lunches.

We did NOT have our most prosperous periods with a 70% tax rate. The best economic periods in U.S. history have occurred with an upper marginal tax rate of 36 - 50%. I think that an upper level of 40%, but with some tighter controls on deductions. I see ZERO reason why a mortgage deduction cannot have an upper ceiling (they do it with health expense deductions!), and there is little reason to allow a deduction for a 2nd home. If you NEED a tax deduction to cover the expense of a 2nd home, you can't really afford it.

Also, if that demand goes down, so do prices which frees up liquid capital for the middle class buying first homes, which increases the velocity of money at the retail stage, further enhancing the economy.

The Professor

If so, what should the difference be? Why should net income from the labors of others be taxed at lower rates? Is there anything 'wrong' with deferred compensation? What ever happened to 5-Year Income Averaging for earned income?

Inquiring minds want to know. :dunce: :silly:

:sarcasm:

In spite of the shamelessly skewed choices (I hope you're not really a pollster, if you are I'd have to believe * actually won), I choose a flat tax as follows;
up to the first $25,000 per adult: 0%
up to the first $8,000 per child: 0%
every dime after for every person, business, corporation, etc. 15% - 17%
and an amendment to require the government to operate within its means

Rank everyone based on income. Divide the income data into 50 groups of equal size. Those 50 groups would be brackets, the lowest group being 1% tax, the highest 50%

and effectively taxed the most wealthy in this country, we would have plenty of money to go around.

Or, if we held the Pentagon accountable and shifted our priorities away from military spending, we would have PLENTY of money to go around.

We could be a very rich, educated, and prosperous nation if more than half of our wealth wasn't spent on warfare.

I'd rather have him running the US economy than any of the clowns in the administration right now. At least he knows what to do to keep things generally fiscally balanced.

Mark.

Something like this perhaps:

0-$20,000: no federal tax liability

$20,001 - $60,000: 10%
$60,001 - $150,000: 15%
$150,001 - $250,000: 20%
$250,001 on up: 25%

You can live like a King in a way none of us can even comprehend on $1million per year. Tax the fuck out of them!

you'd probably really freak at the lifestyles of those who make tens or HUNDREDS of millions/year.

but they're out there.

and they would be HORRIFIED to have to live on 1 mil a year or less even.

Whats the combined income tax rate for Nassau County NY. Anyone living there would be close to 100% in taxes on any income over 1 million. Would really suck to hit the MegaBucks while living there.

illustrates a problem in what is perceived as liberalism... Some of us are just not realistic at all when it comes to matters such as this. 70% is not progressive at all.

on this thread?

I have read just about every bullshit shibboleth and bit of cant those motherfuckers have ever had implanted in their stooge-like brains.

and it works fairly well.

:toast:

They suffer so damned much it isn't even funny. Poor dears.

there should not be a bizarre situation where one pays in taxes more than one gets to keep.

But you cannot look at income tax as a separate issue. There are the payroll taxes (social security and medicare), capital gain taxes and dividends and, of course, the estate taxes.

For many people, they pay more payroll taxes than income taxes. They did not benefit from the "tax cuts" of 2001.

Then there are people who make a living from investments and from having wealth parents, who do not "earn a living." For these, their taxes on capital gains and on dividends was slashed to only 15% and if Bush gets his way, they won't have to pay taxes on their inheritance.

Thus, we will generate two classes of people: the working stiff who will pay taxes on every dollar that they earn, at least the 7.15% in payroll taxes, and the wealthy that will get to accumulate more and more of their wealth with less and less taxes.

I'm all for higher taxes, but only if the revenues are going to help me and other Americans.

If they are going to go to preemptive war, and that kind of bullshit, then I'd really rather not pay them...

I voted 70% by mistake, I would have voted for a maximum wage if such an option was availiable, the max wage would be set at 15 times the minimum wage.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/trickle_down.htm

...... As in the example above there are three basic possibilities for economic growth (and many variations in between): Either the growth of the economy can be spread equally among everyone, the growth of the economy can be shifted towards the bottom of the population in which case the poor see a rise in relative value, becoming "less poor," or the growth can be shifted toward the top in which case the rich see a rise in relative value, becoming "more rich. "

The general economic policy of "Trickle-Down" that was put in place by Reagan has gone fundamentally unchanged since it was adopted by the country in the 1980s. The claim of Reagan was that "all boats would rise" by giving huge tax cuts for the wealthy. This did not happen. The majority of boats stayed the same or sank, while only between 5% and 1% of the boats actually rose.

The effects of "Trickle-Down" policy are evident. As would be expected from the policy, the largest beneficiaries of the "Trickle-Down" system have been the wealthy. Individual earnings inequality as reported by the U. S. Census Bureau was falling or stable from the 1960s through the 1970s, however, beginning in the 1980s, along with the economic reforms of "Trickle-Down" policy, income inequality began to rise and has continued to rise dramatically ever since, as shown in the figure below........

I guess I'm not as liberal as I thought I was.

The rate for incomes over $3000 was 20%, and there was a $600 deduction for each dependent. Most families didn't pay income taxes, since $3000 was a good salary at that time. Corporation taxes were 50%. JFK reduced it to 70% for the maximum tax rate.

and the many, many loopholes which the rich are able to take advantage of. If these loopholes were closed, the rich would be paying a significantly closer amount to the REAL rate of taxation, and not getting away with much less.

If there is a way for them to get out of paying something they should be paying, they are already employing lawyers and accountants to help them do so. But once all their earnings and profits are properly taxed, and they have no recourse other than to pay those taxes fairly, their contribution would be corrected.

I think trying to tax someone above a 50% amount is ludicrous, as it simply gives them more reasons to find ways out of the situation, including leaving the country to live elsewhere, and to take their entrepreneurial skills and companies with them.

This also does not take into consideration all the companies that register in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and elsewhere to escape the taxes in this country. A fair import fee should be assessed against all such countries and companies, comparable to the income taxes that are put on all such U.S. companies, making the idea of registering their companies outside of the U.S. unnecessary.