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Originally Posted by Superbelt
Maybe you live in the wrong country. Progressive taxation has been in our CONSTITUTION since 1913 with the Republican sponsonsored 16th amendment.
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Actually, the Amendment says noting about a "progressive" tax. You might also want to investigate the history of the "Republican" sponsorship of the Amendment. It was based on a bill introduced by a Democrate which would levy an Income Tax and it was designed to embarrass the Republicans. The GOP, however, was split on the subject with a large liberal arm of the party actually embracing the idea (led by Teddy Roosevelt). The conservative arm of the party tried to kill the idea by announcing that it too favored an Income Tax but only if it were enacted as an Amendment to the Constitution. The idea was that this Amendment would pass through Congress but be defeated by the States. My were the conservative members of the GOP amazed when it was ratified.
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Originally Posted by Superbelt
The first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000.
Correcting for inflation 298,000 and 7,460,000 respectively. With such a high base for income tax, only 5% of americans paid into the system at the time. That compares with 80% paying in today.
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80% may pay in today but only 20% pay in anything substancial. The other thing you left out is the difference in what that money is used for today. Try detailing the difference in the expenditures then vs now and see just how justifiable things remain.
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Originally Posted by Superbelt
If you don't like it, cry me a river. You won't find many nations with our standard of living with a tax rate anywhere NEAR as low as we have.
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True but all those countries provide a bevy of national services to all for the high tax rate that we do not provide here, nor would many in this country support.
We are back to justifiable expenditure. I would be willing to pay more taxes if we could fix the health care system in this country, provide better education (although money is not really the problem here so much as poor parenting) and any number of other equally important nation issues. However, I grow weary of being the worlds checkbook, not seeing improvements at home and hearing for calls of increased taxes on the most productive people in our society.