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Banned
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
......Because some of "us" want to become "them".
Because some of "us" believe in fairness.
Do you understand the "fair tax"? Do you understand the difference between taxing consumption rather than income from work? Don't you see that taxing consumption in principle means that those who spend the most (the rich) will pay the most by far?
Read the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad".
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ace....you've, IMO, swallowed a line of "sheee-uttt" bought and paid for by the Richard Mellon Scaifes/Olin Foundation/CNP Billionaires who have created the cato/heritage/aei "think tanks" who inject heaping helpings of bullshit into the American psyche that persuade so many to vote against their best economic interests....
If "they" invest in convincing you to vote in ways that result in them paying less, either you will pay more, or, as we've seen in this decade, US Treasury debt simply increases hugely, and the tax bill gets transferrred to our grandchildren to pay "someday"......
Is it even possible to overtax war profiteers like Neil and William Bush, and Erik Prince? I don't see how that is possible.....
Here's some "stuff" that shapes my opinions:
Quote:
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspi...e_fairtax.html
Unspinning the FairTax
May 31, 2007
We look at the numbers behind the numbers.
<center><img src="http://www.factcheck.org/demos/factcheck/imagefiles/Image/Fair%20Tax%20Revised%20Slide.JPG"></center>
Americans for Fair Taxation rejects the Treasury Department analysis, objecting that Treasury considers only the income tax. By leaving out payroll taxes (which are actually regressive) Treasury’s chart makes the FairTax look worse by comparison. We found that including all the taxes that the FairTax would replace (income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes), those earning less than $24,156 per year would benefit. AFT’s Burton agreed that those earning more than $200,000 would see their share of the overall tax burden decrease, admitting that “probably those earning between $40[thousand] and $100,000” would see their percentage of the tax burden rise.....
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Quote:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=3&gl=us
The Political Uses of Public Opinion: Lessons from the Estate Tax Repeal
Page 6
......Many analysts, and even strong advocates of repeal, reported being surprised by how wide-
ranging were the contours of opinion that became apparent. <h3>After all, considering that only the
wealthiest two percent of Americans pay the estate tax and that the estate tax is the most progressive
part of the tax code, the vast majority of the public could only lose from estate tax repeal.</h3> Yet,
many polls show that most people support repeal when it is presented as a standalone issue—even
those least likely to pay the tax and most likely to be beneficiaries of the roughly $30 to $40 billion it
raises each year. This amount of revenue boosts the federal budget by one to two percent, nearly
enough to fund, say, the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education. <h3>Is the
explanation that people do not understand their self-interest? There is indeed clear evidence that, in
light of misunderstanding and misinformation, many do not.......</h3>
Page 7
Perceived and Misperceived Self-Interest
If we were to impute preferences based on accurately-perceived expectations of economic
self-interest, those who never expect to pay the estate tax should favor keeping it, given the
likelihood that repeal would entail either a relative shift of the tax burden to them, or a reduction in
services that might benefit them. It would be reasonable to anticipate no more than a modest
showing in support of repeal: those several percentage of persons who might realistically risk paying
the tax upon death, plus their likely heirs. Yet, many polls since the late 1990s have shown
widespread public support for estate tax repeal, in the realm of 60 or 70 or 80 percent. Moreover,
supporters appear to be spread more or less equally across income groups, contrary to what self-
interest would predict.
3
More sophisticated economic models may impute preferences based on potentially
inaccurate perceptions of economic self-interest; and misperceptions certainly do help to explain a
good portion of the public support for estate tax repeal. People know very little about estate tax
levels and rates and rules, as evidenced by a January 2000 Gallup poll, in which most people (53
percent) admitted they simply didn’t “know enough to say” whether the “federal inheritance tax”
was too high, too low, or about right. Obtaining accurate information can be difficult, especially
when others have an incentive to mislead you. With little background knowledge, many people
seem to guess that nearly everyone is taxed at death—a misperception sometimes encouraged by
question wording. For example, in a 2003 National Public Radio / Kaiser Foundation / Harvard
Kennedy School (henceforth NKK) survey, two-thirds of respondents either thought “most people
have to pay” the estate tax (49 percent) or said they didn’t know (18 percent); and 62 percent of
those opposing the estate tax said one reason was because “it affects too many people.” Controlling
for socio-economic and demographic factors, and general attitudes towards the tax code, Joel
Page 8
Slemrod (2003) uses results from this survey to estimate that the misconception that most families
pay the estate tax “increases the likelihood of favoring abolition by 10.6 percent.”
4
In keeping with this, surveys consistently show that the number of people in favor of repeal
drops when respondents are given information on exemption levels or how many people pay. For
instance, in the NKK poll, 60 percent of respondents say they want to eliminate the estate tax when
the exemption level is not specified. Yet the percentage who favor repeal drops to 48 percent when
respondents are asked to consider an estate tax with an exemption of at least $1 million—which is
what the actual exemption was slated to be even before the repeal law passed. When asked to
consider an estate tax with an exemption of at least $5 million—which was one of the proposed
reforms rejected in the Senate—even fewer, 35 percent, still favor repeal.
Precisely how misperceptions about the estate tax change people’s views is difficult to say,
but it may be through affecting a person’s perception of self-interest in repeal or through affecting
her unselfish evaluation of the social fairness of the tax. In practice, these reasons are entangled
because, even provided with correct information, people may misunderstand their own self-interest
and their perceptions of social justice may correspond to their misperceived self-interest. For
instance, once given more information about who pays the estate tax, and hearing arguments both
for and against repealing it, the percentage of people believing that they or someone in their
household would have to pay the tax fell from 37 to 30 percent in a 2002 Greenberg Research Poll,
while support for repeal correspondingly dropped from 60 percent to 47 percent. Some of the
change in views might thus be attributed to a change in respondents’ perceptions of self-interest.
Yet, more remarkable than the difference made by the presence of correct information is the
difference that is not made. After all, a full 30 percent of informed people still believed someone in
their household would have to pay the estate tax. This result is even more extreme than another
often-cited July 2000 Gallup poll showing that 17 percent of informed respondents believe they will
Page 9
personally benefit from estate tax repeal, even after being told that only estates valued at over $1
million would be subject to estate tax. In the 2003 NKK poll, 69 percent of those supporting repeal
said a reason was because “it might affect [me] someday.” <h3>Like stereotypical lottery ticket holders,
Americans’ judgments about their likely future wealth seem wildly optimistic.</h3>
5
Principles of Fairness
Despite the important role of evaluations based on self-interest—and confused self-
interest—they do not seem to account for the majority of public support for estate tax repeal. A
surprisingly high percentage of people—26 percent in the NKK poll—still want repeal even with an
exemption of $25 million or more.
6
People’s particular judgments about tax fairness are a central to
accounting for the high support for repeal, and repeal proponents learned to “message” their goal in
terms of principles of fairness.....
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I am not impressed with "Rich Dad, Poor Dad".....everyone cannot "Double down" and "roll the dice", as a reliable path to "riches"......but the book's author and I agree on two points:
Quote:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/9775
Only the Rich Survive
by Robert Kiyosaki
Posted on Monday, September 18, 2006
....The Chickens Come Home to Roost
In Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, which I highly recommend, a poor man reports that he voted Republican because he wanted to get back at Wall Street.
Can you imagine that? I always suspected that a lot of people aren't very bright. To paraphrase a popular statement, a poor person voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders......
.....In the next five years, the United States and the world will go through some of the most financially disturbing times in the history of the world. Once again, the rich will become very, very, rich, and the unsuspecting will be left like the passengers on the S.S. Titanic, heading straight for an economic iceberg.......
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Last edited by host; 08-01-2007 at 10:56 AM..
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