Brain
Posts: 3792
Joined: 2/14/2007
Status: offline
|
I don't think so, read the following:
Top 1% got 2/3 of all U.S. income gains - 2002-07 | National Union of Public and General Employees
Gap between top 1% and bottom 90% now worse than at any time since 1928.
Ottawa (10 Sept. 2009) - Two-thirds of all American income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1% of U.S. households, giving that privileged minority a larger share of income at the end of the period than at any time since 1928.
During the period, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1% of households soared by 62% compared to a gain of just 4% for the bottom 90% of households.
http://www.nupge.ca/node/2544
David Sirota: The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd - Truthdig
I’m also fairly certain that when many of you run into the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd, you don’t feel like confronting the faux outrage. But on the off chance you do muster the masochistic impulse to engage, here’s a guide to navigating the conversation:
What They Will Scream: We can’t raise business taxes, because American businesses already pay excessively high taxes!
What You Should Say: Here’s the smallest violin in the world playing for the businesses. The Government Accountability Office reports that most U.S. corporations pay zero federal income tax. Additionally, as even the Bush Treasury Department admitted, America’s effective corporate tax rate is the third-lowest in the industrialized world.
What They Will Scream: But the rich still “pay close to 60 percent of this nation’s taxes!”
What You Should Say: Such statistics refer only to the federal income tax. When considering all of “this nation’s taxes” including payroll, state and local levies, the top 5 percent pay just 38.5 percent of the taxes.
What They Will Scream: But 38.5 percent is disproportionately high! See? You’ve proved that the rich “contribute more than their share” of taxes!
What You Should Say: Actually, they are paying almost exactly “their share.” According to the data, the wealthiest 5 percent of America pays 38.5 percent of the total taxes precisely because they make just about that share—a whopping 36.5 percent!—of total national income. Asking these folks to pay slightly more in taxes—and still less than they did during the go-go 1990s—is hardly extreme.
Stripped of facts, your conversation partner will soon turn to unscientific terrain, claiming it is immoral to “steal” and “redistribute” income via taxes. Of course, he will be specifically railing on “stealing” for stuff like health care, which he insists gets “redistributed” only to the undeserving and the “lazy” (a classic codeword for “minorities”). But he will also say it’s OK that government sent trillions of dollars to Wall Streeters.
And that’s when you should stop wasting your breath.
What you’ve discovered is that the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd isn’t interested in fairness, empiricism or morality.
With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance and with Warren Buffett paying a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd is merely using the argot of fairness, empiricism and morality to hide its real motive: selfish greed.
No argument, however rational, is going to cure these narcissists of that grotesque disease.
David Sirota is the bestselling author of “Hostile Takeover” (2006) and “The Uprising” (2008). Find his blog at OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at [email protected]
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090806_the_me-first_screw-everyone-else_crowd/
quote:
ORIGINAL: LookieNoNookie
quote:
ORIGINAL: Brain
This is what happens when rich people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
By the way....just for the record (not that anyone cares)...the "rich" have been paying an ever increasing share of the total taxes paid since the early 80's....and they now pay close to 90+% of the total share of taxes (depending on who's counting....and how you measure the "rich").
It's the "not rich" who are paying an ever decreasing share of the taxes paid....(but who's counting?).
|
US Debt rises from 41% to 53% of Gross National Product... - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread