Posted on 08/06/2007 6:14:14 AM PDT by Loyal Buckeye
progressive taxes are communistic and laid out by marx in the manifesto, so are flat rate taxes. if i had to chose any i would go with a flat fee.
My Wife and I have an income well exceeding $100K, and we have nothing more than a home mortgage deduction along with state taxes (income and property). We pay about 25%.
I make at least $60K and I certainly don’t pay 30%!
No way that is true. A married couple with young children bringing in this income should be paying somewhere around seven or eight percent of their income in federal taxes after all the deductions, credits, etc., that they would get. If she’s single with no children she’ll be paying a higher percentage of her income, but nowhere close to 30%. Most of her income would be taxed at a much lower rate than that. She will though pay a much higher percentage of her income in social security taxes though because those are capped such that after you pay on the first sixty or eighty thousand or whatever it is you don’t have to pay in anymore for the year. Even when you include state taxes and medicare/medicaid taxes along with fed taxes I doubt this lady would be paying in 30% of her income though.
Hmmmm! Maybe we should forget about taxing income as Marx and Engles laid out in their manifesto and start taxing consumption as the founders of this great country reccomended.
Buffett could not have been clearer about the pernicious consequences. He said tax disparities have expanded income inequality in a way that has hurt the economy, by constricting opportunity and stifling motivation.
That is true but not the way the author, and maybe Mr. Buffet, intended. By taking so much of the sectretary's money it stifles her opportunities and motivation. It obviously hasn't stifled Mr. Buffet's.
The most well-adjusted and decent societies are those where the government provides basic social services (good schools, health care, police and fire protection), invests in infrastructure, including human capital, and promotes a thriving middle class.
That's what they promise. Who could possible be opposed to this? What they deliver is wealth redistribution - ie. legalized theft.
As for the AMT, it is Congress, not the President that has failed to act, because unlike Berkeley economists, they know who pays the freight and it's not the super-rich like Warren Buffett, but small business people and entrepreneurs, with "income" between $150K and $400K per year. Most of the profit from such business is reinvested and not, as imagined by the Left, used to light cigars or buy necklaces for trophy wives. The Left's view of private business and wealth is still stuck in the 1920's, and it looks like the Monopoly Man: a big, fat plutocrat with a huge cigar, a gold pocket watch, and greenbacks falling out of his pockets.
If the author thinks that we ought to return to the tax burden as existed in 1960, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, she's an idiot. Berkeley does that to people. Such confiscatory tax rates (once as high as 90%) caused economic stagnation in the late '50s and early '60s, which is why JFK sought successfully to decrease them.
Today, in a global marketplace, with most Americans invested in the stock market either directly or indirectly, our economy would be utterly devastated by the re-imposition of high taxes, as billions of dollars in asset value would dry up and flee to more favorable tax climates.
But don't expect Socialists to ever understand this: they want to penalize wealth, period. They also still seem to believe that corporations pay taxes, when in fact they do not - it is a legal fiction. As Milton Friedman pointed out more than 30 years ago, corporate taxes are paid by customers in the form of higher prices for goods and services, and any effort raise them only hurts the consumer.
Taxes for America's wealthiest are at historic lows, according to the economists.
That got me to wondering if pre-1913 America ever existed, but then I realized that for her (and most other liberals) history starts anew every morning with breakfast.
And you can be 99 and 44/100% certain you're dealing with the squishy when the words "fair" and "share" are strung together.
That would absolutely bankrupt the government. To get enough money to come anywhere even remotely close to their current budget, to get remotely close to even half or maybe even a quarter of the current budget, the flat fee would have to be so high that most Americans couldn’t pay it. Collection efforts would cost a fortune and put a huge segment of our population out on the street, and before long we’d see rioting and outright revolution.
Sur looks like they used aritmtik taught at some gov’ment skool and hope the reeders used our as dum as they r.
Taxing income is inherently, morally wrong.
Your income is a measure of and compensation for your contribution to the economy and society, so we’re basically punishing people for what they produce.
Sales taxes “punish” based on what you consume. Consume more, pay more.
This is all the MSM has to keep the useful idiot core of the National Democrat Party. DBM groupthink to keep the ususal playbook in play.
This is the same old crap that Clinton used to get elected. And, once again, none of those who spew it will be asked to define "fair share" or "rich". C'mon Robyn, how much is rich? $1,000,00 a year? $100,000? $50,000? How much is "fair"? 50%? 75%? 90%?
The writer is talking about two different things here.
Income is what you made this year and acquired wealth is your cumulative assets over time.
Is the writer a proponent of taxing existing assets as opposed to income? More than likely. So-called "progressives" would like nothing better than to see estates taxed away year-by-year, as long as their beloved tax-exempt foundations are left alone.
I would not go with a flat fee but I think it is time to seriously consider imposing a flat percentage tax. Our bloated budget is, to a large extent, the result of people being able to vote for programs for which they will not be required to pay. Early in American history, if I recall correctly, it was felt that if one did not have to pay a tax (i.e., was a property owner), one should not have the right to vote it in. The same ought to hold sway now. Not that people should be disenfranchised but that everyone should have to pay a share of the costs of programs. Tax spending ought to affect everyone proportionately and if it did many of the programs would never pass. Politicians push programs simply because they know they can benefit a large segment of their constituencies who are exempt from paying the costs of the programs.
I am calling BS on that about $60K being taxed at 30%. $60K falls in the higher bracket of around 30% but the federtal income rate is a graduated scale and $60K in all, gets taxed at about 17% - 18%.
If she is paying 30% on the total of $60K, she's a moron.
Or unless she's married and filing jointly with a high earner
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.