Amaros
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ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
Get the facts straight...
1. the portion that the minimum wage earner is responsible for is 7.5% not 15%. The employer is responsible for the other 7.5%. The only people who are responsible for the full 15% is those who are not W-2, which is normally NOT minimum wage earners.
It is generally accepted in economics that much as in other costs, the employers half o the payroll tax is "passed on" to the consumer, and in this case, the worker - i.e., it is likely that were the employer not required to pay half the payoll tax, it would free up capital for higher wages.
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ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
2. Social Security may be a tax, but it is not calculated into the funds that the IRS collects. The Congress actually decides who gets that money...unfortunately, the Congress has decided to "borrow" money from the SSA to make the federal budget.
No, income taxes are referred to as "general revenues", and includes a few odd excise taxes, meant to pay "on budget" expenses: pay for federal workers, military expenditures, interest on the private debt, and miscellaneous congressional programs, foreign aid, etc..
Income taxes plus payroll taxes are referred to as "total revenues", or "the unified budget", but payroll taxes are not collected by the IRS to my knowledge.
When Clinton-Gore announced a surplus in the unified budget, the wing nuts all started screaming that it meant income taxes were too high - in fact the surplus was in payroll taxes, not income taxes. In short, the Bush tax cuts are funded with payroll taxes, there never was any surplus in general revenues, although Clinton Gore did manage to balance on budget expenditures with general revenues.
This is in fact what created the surplus, since SS has been in the Black since it's inception, wheras the general federal budget has been in the red for the last thirty years or so, congress has been borrowing the money from surplus SS revenues to pay for the overdrafts in the federal budget - when the general budget was balanced, and excess appeaared in the unified budget projections, from excess payroll taxes.
Again, when republicans bitch about taxes, claiming that taxes are 20% of GDP, they are referring to total revenues, not income taxes which were about 12% of GDP at their high under Clinton - this was part of a bi-partisan effort to control the debt, and taxes were being cut under Clinton Gore as the debt was brought under control.
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ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
3. The majority of the wealth that is controlled by that top 20% resides here in the U.S. is by persons who have worked VERY hard to get what they've got (or by the descendents of those people). Would you trade 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for 15 years for the billions of dollars that people like Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey has accumulated? Personally, I'll be happy on what I make and how many hours I work to make it. I spoke with my CEO's son once about his dad's work habits which is anecdotally how I came up with the 16 / 6-7 / 15 figures mentioned above.
...with a little help from the fed. In the Eighties for example, the Fed tightened up the money supply in order to end the inflationary cycle begun by the Kennedy tax cuts - i.e., the demand pull inflation Laffer failed to predict. So far, so good, except that Fed policy since has been a tight money policy, period, and any hint of inflation above 3% or so and interest rates go up.
They maintained a stranglehold on the money supply until almost 1986, long after the inflationary spiral was under control, but by that time, the bulk of the family farms in America had gone bankrupt, the "Strong dollar" having killed agricultural exports. They were bought out for back taxes by agribussiness, who got record breaking subsidies from this administration.
A similar thing happened after the civil war, although in that instance the federal government paid off the war debt in record time which knocked the bottom out of the commodities market, and wiped out all the sharecroppers who had just been put into business under Lincoln - agribussiness again, with mechanization, small plot farming had given way to monoculture, houses were burned and bulldozed, and the relatively self sufficient rural population driven into the cities.
Similarly the S&L scandal was basically a smash and grab - CEO's bankrupted select S&L's, giving out bad loans to friends and overbuilding commercial property - when congress liquidated these S&L's, these same investors turned around and bought them out lock, stock and Barrel for a fraction of what they were worth - again, the taxpayers footed the bill.
Real estate fraud was a particular specialty of the Reagan administration, if the steady stream of indictments is any indication - which included the SoI, and the HUD sec. building gated communites on properties and with funds set aside for low income housing development. Catherine Fitt's goes so far as to accuse the Bush administration of funneling cocaine into the inner city to drive down property and default rates - take it or leave it, the CIA was running cocaine, that much is verified and a matter of public record, and a lot of people got rich off the building boom that crack made possible.
This makes it all the more egregious when republicans make the claim that the top one percent are hard working small business owners, not fat moguls - which is true, except that we're not talking about them, or highly paid athletes, university presidents, etc., we're talking about the top 1/2 of 1%, with incomes in excess of a mill - which the IRS does not keep seperate records on.
The house you live in is owned by the bank, who owns the bank?
Bottom line is, when you control the wealth, you're gonna make money regardless - wealth isn't just money in the bank it's capital, it's the "means of production" - everything you buy, everything you eat, every dime you spend finds it's way back to whoever controls the wealth - every time you flush the toilet, somebody makes money.
It's neither here nor there, that's the way the world works, but to turn around and pretend you don't benefit from the government, have no obligation to the community, and piss and moan about buying milk for some kids... well, I already told you, the top 1% has seen a 17% decline in income, that is the fact. Hard working? Maybe. Smart? I don't think so.
Oh, and look up the figures on hours worked - the family income gains that Reagan worshippers crow about weren't because people were better off, it was because they were working longer hours, and the single income household dissapeared - nobody can afford to live on a single income, most not on a single job - the biggest single indicator for living below poverty level is whether the household has one income or two.
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ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
4. The thread wasn't necessarily how we *spend* the money, but how we get the money. I'll agree that the spending policies and taxation sucks.
Anything specific there, or just generic bitching?
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ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
5. The proportion of non-income-based taxes (regressive taxes like sales tax) that people pay works out to about the same percentage of income from the highest to lowest tax brackets because rich people buy more expensive "stuff". As a percentage of income, sales tax (and other 'regressive' taxes) actually becomes a "flat tax".
According to...
Not the rich people I know, they're stingy bastards, that's how they got rich - maybe your nouveau riche silicon valley buddies, but watch yer back, these guys hate the information revolution, thay can't keep up which is why they have to scam the taxpayers - they can't compete on a level playing field.
quote:
ORIGINAL: QuietlySeeking
And you aren't taking into account actual market rates....here in Atlanta,GA the actual rate that someone working at low-end jobs is around $8.25 an hour. Hmm, it seems market pressures HAVE made a higher "minimum wage".
Depends on the labor market where you are, supply and demand - as I say, nobody can live on minimum wage, much less find time to "improve themselves".
Also, in America, about 50% of profits go to inputs, i.e., expenses to keep firms operating, materials, energy, etc., the remaining half split about evenly between labor and managment - globally, the figure is more likely to be between 60/40, and 70/30 in favor of labor, and American firms typically lay off workers rather than cut managment compensation or stockholder dividends. Partially this is because top mangment often get's the bulk of their compensation in the form of stock options, which is why CEO of companies that lose money still make exorbitant haul off huge bonuses - stock options incentivize playing games with stock prices rather than maximising value and productivity.
< Message edited by Amaros -- 1/22/2007 5:51:29 PM >
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RE: Who Pays Our Taxes - 
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