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Originally Posted by host
ace...there is certainly a difference between the wealth owned by a household, and annual income. If a household owned a billion dollars of real estate....expenses to carry the properties could conceivably be higher than the income from the property, in any given year....but that household would still own assets of a billion dollars.
I've documented....in at least ten posts....that the bottom 50 percent of the US population owns just 2-1/2 percent of total US assets....yet you posted that they pay 3 percent of the taxes. The top ten percent own 70 percent of total US wealth.....and the top one percent owns 30 percent of total wealth.
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The data I posted was about income taxes paid. i agree there is a difference between taxes paid and net worth.
I don't doubt that the bottom 50% of the US population owns just 2.5% of the wealth. However, that may be deserving of more in depth analysis prior to drawing conclusions. For example net worth peaks when a person is in or near retirement for most people. A 20 year-old generally has little or no net worth compared to people who are in their 40's, 50's and 60's. I also question the government policies in place that actually prevent or discourage people from accumulating wealth. For example the Children Health Care Bill veto'd by Bush, in one case (in Texas) there is an asset test of $10,000. If you own more than that you may be disqualified from the program, costing your family according to DC's numbers up to $12,000 per year. Reasonable people faced with that may avoid accumulating $10,000+ in assets. In some cases a senior citizen may be faced with needing to show little in the form of assets to qualify for some assisted living programs. Marginal tax rates on phase out programs may cause some hard working middle class people to avoid exceptional high income years, i.e. a factory worker working extensive overtime at 1.5 or 2 times their normal rate. After taxes and other potential phase outs, like the loss of the child tax credit or mortgage deduction they may face a marginal rate of well over 50% given all taxes.
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...that top 5 percent owns at least 35.8 percent of total US wealth....probably more than 50 percent of total wealth. If the military budget is over $500 billion, annually....who do you think the military is protecting? You might say all of us....but the bottom 50 percent own almost none of the total US wealth. I documented, in the "How do you answer a soldier's..." thread, that the "freedoms" aren't protected, respected, or guaranteed, and that there are two sets of laws and financial rules in the US....one for the elite...much more lenient...than the other set for most of us....
So...who should pay for the costs of defense....the folks who have nothing, and work hand to mouth for wages....subject to a stringent and unforgiving set of financial and legal rules and penalties....and..if they are arrested, are mostly dependent on underfunded legal aid lawyers to represent them in court, if they are fortunate enough to be allowed access to regular criminal courts...(it took US citizen Jose Padilla two years to get "permission" to speak to a defense attorney...)...or should defense costs be paid primarily by the elite....the Mitt Riomneys with $250 million fortunes and 5 sons who support the Iraq war, but are working to "change things at home"....by campaigning to help get their daddy elected president....so he can transfer even more wealth, power, and privilege, from most of us....to the top ten percent....
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wealth is one thing the freedom to earn wealth or not earn wealth is something else. I think our military is defending our freedoms, and I consider that more important than wealth.
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The bottom 50 percent can, with a few hours notice, pack up most of what they actually own, and be off in their mortgage automobile, towards Canada, Mexico, or say...an inland area next to a mjor US military base....if there was a threat of an attack on the US mainland.....The sons/daughters of the bottom 50 percent who serve in the military would be ordered to defend the coastal districts that feature the real estate and business holdings of the top ten percent.....
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That was not true for Jewish people in Germany during WWII. The wealth they had was taken. Their freedom was taken and millions lost their lives. A tyrannical government can easily take a person's assets. In the case in the US, the IRS has had the power to take a person's wealth. For example, Joe Louis was forced into near bankruptcy unfairly because of the IRS, and it has happened to many others.
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ace....Bush's economic miracle have boosted personal income tax revenue less than $50 billion, in just six years.....personal income taxes, as a percentage of GDP...have dropped from 10.3 percent in 2000...to just 8 percent, in 2006.
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I see that as a positive. People are keeping more of their own money. Economic growth indicates they are spending and reinvesting that money.
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Note in the data tyhat I posted, that the recession that you point to as an excuse to give Bush a "pass"....never resulted in a reduction in SSI revenue collected....since it could not be cut by Bush. Since SSI collection stopped at annaul income levels above
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Well, don't we need to seperate taxes collected from income and capital gains taxes. During the dot com boom and bust, a lot of income was in the form of capital gains. People who had massive returns on investments in technology. Those gains dried up fast.
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ned....supports my contention that income during the early 00's recession, did not decline as steeply as you believe.
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You see you made a false assumption. There is income from wages, income from savings and income from investments on an individual level. True analysis needs to break that data down.
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The Bush tax cuts are responsible for a significant portion of the deficit increase in the Bush years....and the tax cuts shifted significant wealth to those who already owned 70 percent of everything, and burdened the bottom 50 percent, via their future share of the responsibility for a $9 trillion debt, instead of a $5.65 trilion debt ....
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The child tax credit was pretty real for non-wealthy people. At some income levels not only do the workingpoor pay no income tax, but from credits like the EIC and Child Tax Credit, they get money back.
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The job growth in the Bush years was less than half the number of jobs created in the comparable Clinton period...it was not high enough to cover new entires into the labor market.
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Bush and Clinton had different economic climates to deal with. Who knows what would have been different if anything if Bush had Clinton's economic climate and vis versa.
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...and ace....SSI would not be a burden for many, many years...if the federal government had not treated those collections as general revenue. If the yearly surplus collected was transferred to the SSA and invested as it's managers saw fit...instead of at an average return of 5-1/2 percent annually in special T-Bills.....as SSA is forced by the government to do....
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Can we agree that SS is broken, and needs to be fixed?
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All of that revenue is paid by employees and employers...and all income above $100,000 per year is exempted from the SSI levy. Who benefits most from the investment restrictions on the SSI trust fund, the use of the money collected as genreal revenue...and the exemption of the SSI levy on income above $100, 000...ace? The bottom 50 percent experience a 7-3/4 percent FICA/Medicare tax on their entire earnings, ace.....the top income earners pay those taxes on a much smaller percentage of earnings....
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Actually the total is 15.5% adding in what the employer pays. Imagine if young person had 15.5% going in to investments for 45+ years, in an account in their name, that they could pass on to their children.
Otherwise you are correct, but remember there is a cap on social security income that a person can collect.
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Your mindset will culminate in the top ten percent owning 80 to 90 percent of total wealth....Bush policies have accelerated that trend. If the reaction to that is not violent, a Hugo Chavez "like" figure will rise to lead a revolt against the wealth elite....and you will pronbably label him as "crzay", a communist, and or a criminal. We can have a country more like Denmark or France....or one like Mexico, ace.....it all depends on whether we support leaders like Reagan and the Bushes, or like John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich. Yhe data doesn't lie....Bush's tax policy have benefited those who needed it the least, but could afford to buy it and make it happen.....
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My mind set says that if everyone had more of their own money, they would manage that money better than the government has been doing. Poor people become rich through hard work, savings and investing. We should not tax those things, we should tax consumption. If you did that then you really would hit the rich hard.
