Yeah, a real intelligent response to a fact-based assertion. Thanks for the good insight. Provide me with some facts and assert your case. I’m open to it. But stupid comments like yours, virgincfahooker, don’t do anything to propagate your cause.
I hate taxes and feel for what Joe is saying but like you, Joe is mistaken on multiple fronts. Obama did a good job of explaining his plan, as does Buffett. For one, of course capital gains tax IS an income tax. What else is it? You pay it on your income tax return. It’s a type of income. The government taxes different types of incomes at different rates. Farmers and clergymen pay different tax rates. All taxpayers pay a lower tax rate on capital gains (as a %) even if you’re poor. Anyone who makes long term cap gains gets this rate (ironically rich people often end up NOT getting it because of amt). The government gives poor people lots of tax breaks that rich people don’t get, or can’t use (mortgage interest deduction just to name one, many credits and deductions phase out as agi goes up). I can’t explain why poor people should keep paying a lower overall tax rate than the rich people but I’ve read a lot of stuff about it and it makes good sense. For one, extra disposable income for poor people gets spent immediately (stimulative effect). Our govt’s revenue needs are so high and poor people’s disposable income is so low that it seems obvious rich people will have to continue to handle more of the tax burden. Is that fair? No, but is the gov’t going to cut spending? No way. The gov’t has to keep improving society. They have to fund all the gse bailouts… GSEs don’t help rich people but they make society better by helping people get houses. They are distributing the wealth.
>>>I can’t explain why poor people should keep paying a lower overall tax rate than the rich people I can. It’s because every additional dollar that someone makes is both 1) easier to make than the previous dollar, and 2) has a smaller proportion of it spent on necessities. That is why a progressive tax is the fairest way to do it.
The top 1% of wage > earners pay 32% of all taxes! What kind of system > do we live in where this is acceptable? What’s wrong with this? The top 1% has a similar (probably more, ~40%) proportion of the net wealth in society. They should be taxed on the proportion of wealth that they hold. In fact, they should be on the hook for more, just think about how much more they derive from the US gov’t then everyone else e.g. military security, a solid legal system to conduct business, etc. The fact that the top 1% pays such a high percentage of taxes doesn’t reflect inequalities in the tax code; it shows, for better or worse, how unevenly wealth is distributed in this country.
The question Obama won’t answer is one McCain finally asked on the last debate. Why does anyone need to pay more taxes? Why do we have to shift the burden to someone else? Why can’t we tax less and spend less?
The government owes over $10 trillion dollars and runs an ongoing deficit (i.e. it gets worse every year). You have a choice which you really don’t get to make but here it is: (1) pay more taxes (2) have your kids pay more taxes (3) drastically cut spending The easiest route will always be “have the rich pay more” since they are always the smallest % of the voters.
Naturalight, where did you get that “every additional dollar that someone makes is easier to make than the previous dollar”? I know it is intuitively true but I wonder how it could be proven or shown to be true.
i imagine that there is a threshold where it becomes true. right around the amount where you are exceding the cost of living. Once a person is able to pay the bills, and then have money to save/invest… then that next dollar is going to be easier to obtain than the previous one due to compounding interest.
virginCFAhooker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I hate taxes and feel for what Joe is saying but > like you, Joe is mistaken on multiple fronts. > Obama did a good job of explaining his plan, as > does Buffett. > > For one, of course capital gains tax IS an income > tax. What else is it? You pay it on your income > tax return. It’s a type of income. The > government taxes different types of incomes at > different rates. Farmers and clergymen pay > different tax rates. All taxpayers pay a lower > tax rate on capital gains (as a %) even if you’re > poor. Anyone who makes long term cap gains gets > this rate (ironically rich people often end up NOT > getting it because of amt). The government gives > poor people lots of tax breaks that rich people > don’t get, or can’t use (mortgage interest > deduction just to name one, many credits and > deductions phase out as agi goes up). > > I can’t explain why poor people should keep paying > a lower overall tax rate than the rich people but > I’ve read a lot of stuff about it and it makes > good sense. For one, extra disposable income for > poor people gets spent immediately (stimulative > effect). Our govt’s revenue needs are so high and > poor people’s disposable income is so low that it > seems obvious rich people will have to continue to > handle more of the tax burden. Is that fair? No, > but is the gov’t going to cut spending? No way. > The gov’t has to keep improving society. They > have to fund all the gse bailouts… GSEs don’t > help rich people but they make society better by > helping people get houses. They are distributing > the wealth. First of all, brother, I WORK for one of the GSEs–the GSEs have not made anyone’s life better–they have made buying a home unaffordable for the average American. They have put literally trillions of dollars in artificial liquidity into the housing markets, which has served to do a number of things: 1) Enrich a few people 2) Inflate home prices to the point where few people have the DTI to actually afford the median home price 3) Enrich politicians with campaign contributions from the spoils of GSE operations 4) Ruined the credit of low-income people who shouldn’t have been able to purchase homes in the first place and later defaulted on those loans. 5) Is the primary reason the American financial markets are in dire straights This is the harvest of government intervention. You reap what you sew. If there were any other jobs left in commercial finance in my geography, I couldn’t justify working here. Second of all, the debate is about Obama’s plan to raise income taxes! You understand that the rich AVOID income taxes via stocks, real estate, hedge funds, municipal bonds, trusts, creative accounting and offshore accounts, right? The capital gains tax IS NOT income tax–it is a flat 15%. You can raise the top income tax rate from 36% to 39% all you want, but at the end of the day, the mega millionaires and billionaires easily avoid income taxes–this was the purpose of the alternative minimum tax implemented decades ago and foolishly not adjusted for inflation. The gov’t has been ripping off the middle class for years now with the AMT. So again, I ask–what’s the purpose of raising income taxes on the rich when the rich–people with high net worth–avoid income taxes? Raising taxes only serves to punish people with average wealth who earn–often with 2 household incomes–$200,000-$500,000? Raising income taxes doesn’t in any way serve the purpose of forcing rich people–that is, people with wealth, that is, people with high net worth–to pay a greater share. This is the inherent problem with liberal tax policy–it avoids the OBVIOUS! It doesn’t take a CPA to understand these basic concepts. As the Senate has been for more than a century, it is the millionaires’ club. Rich liberal senators can talk populist all they want, but at the end of the day, they are already rich and have tax-sheltered income. Hell, they could raise the top rate to 80% and not feel it a bit.