Kalibah

Why did kerry drawn the line at $200k saying bush is giving money (back) to millionares? Why not simply draw it literally at a million? would that not be more fair? There are a HUGE AMOUNT of people out there who make over 200k but are FAR from millionares ( small buisness owners included). Would not this take away some of the political arguments over this?

This is a political dicussion but also an economic one but it pertains to politics

TheFu

Why draw the line at all? Why do the rich have to pay more so the poorer don't have to pay anything. I am far from making a million a year but it bugs me that someone who makes a little more than nothing gets a tax credit which is basically my money.

thefictionweliv

What they need to do is say that every working american pays so much % of their income fuck all of this exception bonuses credits for kids and stuff

OpieCunningham

Ah yes. The price we pay to live in a society.

Kalibah

Id abolish welfare in a second. WorkFare im fore. Disability- sure.


Take money from the most productive members of society ( those with jobs) and give it to the least ( those who dont). If you arent disabled, you should have unemployment. if you dont have unemployment and you need to be on welfare THEN it should be looked at HOW long youve gone without working. If its a reasonable amount of time, then fine. Years upon years? Then get a job and get off the dole. I feel you should have to PROVE to a judge that you are activly seeking employment that is fit for your credentials ( we all know one person who is holding out for the upper mangement job when they barely got their GED).


I think that a FLAT 15-17%ish taxrate ( i give range becasue someone else can do the math and thatd be fine.


But Im just bringing up the point that there are a massive amount of people who make over 200k but arent millionares. We draw a line somewhere? well if kerry is getting votes because he wants to cut breaks for millionares- then cut them for millionares not for small buisnesses.

But i still disagree with not giving everyone a taxcut. The top two brackets pay 80%+or- of the taxes- why not give them a break too?

Kalibah

Kerrys whole plan is
I'll give you more.

Healthcare : You deserve more
Taxes: you deserve a break and small buisnesses and others dont
Seniors: you deserve more


Whos going to pay for it? A massive majority would be the upper-middle class and small buisness owners.

The true rich ( like Tersia Hienz Kerry) can hide from taxes- %12 is laughable

OpieCunningham

I don't recall Kerry claiming he intended to repeal a tax cut for millionaires by repealing tax cuts for anyone making $200k or more. Which seems to be your argument. I'm not going to argue something that doesn't even exist.

Progressive taxation is required to assist in remedying the inherent power imbalance in our system. Sorry, but a flat tax is unfair to most for exactly the reason you most likely feel it is fair.

Kalibah

Im agruing, and sorry if it isnt clear, is that instead of claiming that Bush, gave tax cuts to millionares, and thus repealing tax cuts for anyone making over 200k, it would be more in line with his argument to repeal the cut only for those that make over a million. A vast number of small buisness and upper-middle class families make over 200k, but are nio millionares.

Does that make my point more clear?

OpieCunningham

I personally don't care if someone is a small business owner, a medium business owner, a large business owner, or a non-business owner. I don't see the logic in having cut taxes for the upper class so I naturally agree with repealing those cuts.

And again, I don't see Kerry pushing any claim that Bush gave tax cuts to millionaires and that the solution is to repeal those cuts for $200k-aires. My understanding is that Kerry claims Bush targetted tax cuts to the upper class (which is accurate) and Kerry's intention is to repeal those cuts - with a $200k cutoff (which I support).

host

Power imbalance.....are you referring to glaring disparity in U.S. wealth
distribution? Isn't 2.8 percent (a lil' under 3 percent) of all the wealth in
the country enough for the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. households?
Why should they enjoy a lower tax rate? It just isn't fair for the wealthy!
Thank God that Bush has come along to shift the total tax burden from the
wealthiest Americans on to everyone else....including the bottom 50 percent!
<center><center><img src="http://me.to/net2001.jpg">
<a href="http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html">http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html</a>
<center><center><img src="http://me.to/worth.jpg">
I also read that as recently as in 1970 the top one percent of wealth holders
only controlled 13 percent of the total U.S. wealth. Now they contol more
than 32 percent. Here's a word or two on this subject from a Princeton Univ.
economist turned nytimes.com columnists. As you can guess, not too popular
with Bush fans......

GMontag

Here's two good reasons for you:

1. Progressive taxes help the economy because people with less income spend a higher percentage of it on consumables. You give extra money to the poor, they will spend it, driving the economy. You give extra money to the rich, it sits there doing nothing but collecting interest.

2. Progessive taxes help combat the natural tendency for wealth concentration inherent in capitalism. Excessive wealth concentration is dangerous for democracy because it gives one person or a group of people too much power.

SirSeymour

I find it amazing how so many can favor the redistribution of wealth (called theft by many of us) but only favor the concept with regard to wealth. I mean, hey, if it is good for doing with my hard earned money, why not do it with something like hard earned grades too. Those students who earn A's in college really don't need them all now do they? So why not just take a grade point or so from them and give it to the students who are not as diligent in the studies or as mentally gifted or who party too much? You know, the ones who have C or D average. That way the current A students will still have a B average and the C or D students can feel better about themselves and have a B/C average. Sound good?

Please.

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GMontag

Wow. Someone needs a course on logic. Look up the fallacy of false analogy.

The point of wealth redistribution is not to make the recipients "feel good". The point is to create a stable economy, reduce crime and lawlessness, and to prevent threats to democracy due to excessive wealth concentration.

I find it amazing how many people try to base economic systems on naive notions of fairness and rights, instead of on reality and practical methods of creating stability. After all, what is the point of a "fair" system if it simply collapses under its own ill-conceived rules?

Kadath

People who are making over 200K need to cry me a fucking river. Try supporting a family of four on less than 40K. That is why they get more of a tax credit than you do.

And all this shit about getting rid of programs and cleaning accounting house to make room for the flat tax won't wash either. I did the rough math in a previous thread that showed the government would have to cut $500 BILLION in spending in order to institute a flat tax of even 20%.

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Superbelt

Her tax rate, I am guessing, is probrably a result of Bush's staggered abolishment of dividend taxes. I am willing to bet* that most of Teresa's wealth is tied up in Heinz stock. Thus, her earnings for the year are virtually untouched.

Only about 7% of tax filings claim capital gains. Not exactly a tax cut for all of america. What that tax cut does is allow those who contribute nothing to society and live off their savings in the market to get by virtually paying nothing for the privilege of living in American prosperity. That tax cut has done a good job of depleting our treasury, that's a plus for Bush, right?

irateplatypus

as i understand it: a large portion of small businesses are arranged as sole proprietorships where the business is filed as personal income. cutting out the top percentage of those people from the tax cut would also hurt every small business in that category.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Superbelt

Maybe you live in the wrong country. Progressive taxation has been in our CONSTITUTION since 1913 with the Republican sponsonsored 16th amendment.
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.

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.

Superbelt

More evidence for you moving somewhere else:

Estate Tax,
It was created to prevent the concentration of wealth. It was established in 1916. Was heavily championed by Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft
Roosevelt said that an inheritance tax on "such enormous fortunes as have been accumulated in would be one of the methods by which we should try to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity..."

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis saw the estate tax as "a practical, democratic restraint on massive concentrated wealth and power. And in fact repeal of the estate tax today would widen the growing gap in economic and political influence between the wealthy and the rest of America."

“The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.”
-President Theodore Roosevelt

“It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property can sleep a single night in security.”
-Adam Smith Wealth of Nations

The wealthy individual needs to pay for the “protection” that the State provides for his or her property a military force that defends private property from foreign threat and a legal system/police force that protects private property from domestic theft.
Shorter: Progressive Taxation is insurance premiums for the rich.

irateplatypus

even as a conservative i believe in the economic necessity of a progressive tax system. as always, it's a question of degrees...

-there is a certain point where you could target the wrong people w/too steep a curve, such as small business owners who file taxes in a particular way.

-steep tax curves could hurt entrepeneurial motivations... something we need to keep a vibrant economy.

-oftentimes increased taxes on the rich aren't about giving the poor a fair shake, just increasing the size and scope of the government... empowering an institutional overhead that may keep poor people poor and stagnating avenues of mobility.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

roachboy

taxation is a mechanism developed over the history of capitalism as a way of assuring minimum social stability--which capitalism requires to develop at all--it is in itself not about mobility across class lines, but it is about raising the standard of living at the economic bottom end in the name of overall system stabilization. taxation is also about rationalizing the funding for modern style warfare--remember that the french revolution was possible because the monarchy effectively went bankrupt after undertaking intervention in the american pseudo-revolution by floating bonds that it later defaulted on--a move that was necessary only because there was no rationalized taxation system. taxation is about funding public goods, the infrastructure that has to be in place for capitalism to operate at all.

no-one likes being taxed, but the idea that you coudl dismantle the system of taxation is simply insane.

it is objectively false that the primary economic player in america are small businesses.
the focus in recent years on the "entrepreneur" is ideological. nothing more.

it is alse false that taxation is in itself about increasing the size of the administrative apparatus--that is a function of a choice, a system-level choice--the american have chosen not to take full employment seriously, they have chosen not to take questions of social justice seriously, have chosen not to implement the basic markers of a civilized version of capitalism, which would being with the understanding of health care as a basic human right. because the americans have chosen not to use state intervention in social/economic activity as a productive element, the arguments made about taxation above are possible. but they have nothing to do with anything other than the longer-term consequences of particular choices made by ealier generations of americans themselves.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

SirSeymour

Fully versed in the idea, thanks. Had logic in college. Yes, this analogy is a bit out there but unfortunately it takes these kinds of analogies to get a lot of folks to think about it from a different view.

My apologies if I gave you the idea that I thought the point was to make recipients "feel good". Not my point at all. My point is actually directed more at the idea that if society is going to penalize me for working hard and being a success, where is my motivation? I have none.

And I find it amazing how many people try to justify stealing from the rich to give to the poor while maintaining the naive notion that those with real ability and drive will continue to allow themselves to be used by that society indefinitely. There has to be balance. I doubt that any person of wealth in this nation would argue against some form of taxation. It is not reasonable to expect to run the nation without it. It is just as unreasonable to expect our best and brightest to be the checkbook for the whole country.

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Superbelt

Well looking at post 17 and 18, you see the rich have been living with it since 1913. In fact, since that tax America has become the richest most powerful nation in teh world.
Name me one place the rich would rather be? Anywhere you can name that has less taxes also have proven to be unable to protect the interests of the rich as well as the USA has.
You probrably don't want to go back to 1930's to 1960's america, the period where we emerged from the Great Depression as the undisputed world Superpower. The rich were paying upwards of 80% on their income then. They still found a will to stay in america with their checkbooks open.

SirSeymour

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.


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.

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.

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host

Many of the arguments stated on this thread, in the press, and in the recent
televised, pre-election debates, primarily from Republican party candidates, have
been in defense of proprietors of small business with income in excess of
$200,000 per year, who fall into Kerry's proposed income threshold targeted for
tax increases, if he wins the election. The primary objection to tax increases for
these small business owners is that they will be impeded in their creation of new
job opportunities unless they can keep more of their profits to reinvest in their
businesses.

Assume that many of these businesses do much of their activity in their local
community. They either sell a product, or offer a service. With half the households in the country now controlling a little less than 3 percent of the
wealth, much of it a suburban population, affected adversely by the rise in the
cost of transportation fuels and energy to power and heat their homes, how
much disposal income do you think that this large segment of the population
have to left to spend after the pay for necessities? The personal bankruptcy
rate reached another new record number of filers again in 2003. Those not
in bankruptcy tend to pay higher interest rates on their consumer credit than
the wealthy do, very high rates when compared to inflation. For the past 8
years, Republicans in the house and the senate have pushed a "bankruptcy
reform" bill, that, if passed, would make it much more difficult for the bankrupt
to discharge their debts, effectively removing them from any ability to get
back on their feet in a reasonable amount of time, because post bankruptcy, they would still be obligated to pay of much of the debt that they now are
able to discharge. The bulk of debt that they discharge is owed to consumer
credit lenders and banks, who charge much higher interest rates than
are justified, making the excuse that they must protect themselves from
consumers defaulting on their debts. The bankruptcy reform bill offers no
provision to regulate the interest rates the banks/credit card lenders will
charge if the reform becomes law. The credit card accounts that you are
offered by mail are extremely profitable to the banks, even with the rising
bankruptcy rate.

My point is that wealth distribution trends make it less likely that small businesses will have the lower half of their communities households as
customers, unless they sell food, toilet paper, fuel, or other necessities.
It is a two way street. The top wealth holders are so successful in transferring the country's wealth to themselves, that there is a squeeze on
the ability of the bottom 80 percent to retain a "fair share". In 1913, when
Henry Ford's business of building model T cars began to boom, he was
wise enough to offer his workers the unheard of sum in that day, of $5.00
per day in wages, at a time when most workers made less than half that
rate. Ford realized that it was a smart business strategy to make it possible
for his workers to be able to buy one of the cars that they were building in
his factory. It also raised the bar for a fairer wage in the entire country,
making it more likely that a new, more prosperous class of workers would
emerge; wealthy enough to also purchase his model T's. The efficiencies of
Ford's innovative assembly lines and the rising demand for his product allowed
him to produce vehicles in increasing numbers at lower prices. Ford's larger
profits from an economy of scale allowed him to cut the price he needed to
sell his vehicles profitably for a number of years.

There is a 1950's story that UAW union leader Walter Reuther was touring a highly automated Ford Assembly Plant when someone said, Walter, you're going to have a hard time collecting union dues from all these machines. Reuther simply shot back, not as hard a time as you're going to have selling them cars.

The hard fought battle of the first half of the 20th century to organize labor
into unions, along with the creation of a progressive federal income tax and
inherittance taxes on the rich, were major catalysts for the rapid creation
of a U.S. middle class; consumers who drove ever increasing demand for
new and more innovative products. Eisenhower's administration launched the
building of the interstate highway system, spurring new growth in the oil and
auto industries, the creation of numerous suburban communities, hotels,
tourism, restaurants, shopping centers. The casualties were the old infrastructure of city centers, and the railroads. This created demand in the
airline industry.

Union organizers fought the battles and made the sacrifices that brought us
paid holidays, the 5 day work week, pensions, medical benefits, a safer
work place, overtime and minimum wage laws, higher wages, and legislation
that created the National Labor Relations Board, and unemployment insurance. Government forced concessions out of the wealth holders, like
John D, Rockefeller, who had become obscenely rich via railroad and oil
monopolies, because the wealthiest and most powerful did not possess the
wisdom and foresight that Henry Ford did.

Many of the gains have been given back to the rich. Union membership dwindled as old nothern manufacturers moved first to the sunbelt where
"right to work" laws stripped unions of the power that they held in nothern
states where laws allowed compulsory union membership. Then they moved
their labor intensive businesses overseas, chasing cheap labor as they would
any other commodity. Lower skilled U.S. workers lost out first, now even
computer programmers and engineers are feeling the loss. Union members
became prosperous enough to vote for Republican politicians who they
perceived to better represent them vs. Democrats who taxed their rising income at higher rates. Then, even the Democrats sold out the middle class
by courting the wealthier, liberal Republican class. The sunbelt working
class can now be counted on to vote against their familys' own economic
interests, helping to elect anti union and anti middle class candidates like
Reagan and the Bushes. The trend now is for an American majority with
declining househeld wealth and earning opportunities, shouldering the burden
of a higher percentage of total taxes paid to government, an expanding and
crushing federal and state debt burden, a busted paper currency that will drop to a state of near worthlessness, scarcer and much more expensive
energy and building materials, and an ever wealthier top class who will favor
overseas investments and seek to create jobs in the lowest cost locations.
U.S. workers will continue to observe the rise in wealth of the Chinese and
Indians, as the wages and benefits of U.S. workers continue to decline
until there is uniform, lower compensation for all workers in the industrialized
portions of the world. I havr lost faith that innovation will reverse these trends. The proliferation of the internet has only accelerated the move of
back office financial industry and computer and customer service jobs
out of the country. Realize that politics is class warfare. Abandon the notion
that the wealthy got where they are without the help of the government
infrastructure and corporate welfare that you owe the bill for.

OpieCunningham

In a sense.

There is the common knowledge argument that it is both unfair to people without money that the people with money have their taxes decreased and unfair to people with money that they pay proportionally more than people without money.

Both are incorrect.

It is a question of fairness, but not in the I-can't-buy-stuff-and-you-can kind of way. It is an issue of fairness in power within this country, a capitalist democracy (and for all those reading, please spare me the "but we're a republic, not a democracy speech"). The vast majority of politicians are upper class, and the higher you go, the higher they go in their class. Most information the middle and lower classes receive is filtered through companies owned by people in the upper class, and the more people you can reach through your company, the higher you go in your class. So, essentially, the upper class is the gov't and the information the middle and lower classes receive about the people they elect is controlled by the upper class. The only way such a system would not lead to a power imbalance favoring the upper class is if humanity was essentially kind and greed-free. Alas, this is obviously not the case. Progressive taxation is a (very small and highly ineffective but) necessary method of restoring some degree of balance to the power structure of our society. The upper class, by virtue of controlling everything, filtered somewhat (some might say, marginally) through the election process, will promote itself. This is done in many ways - including the use of spreading the concept that it is "unfair" to require the upper class to pay larger percentages of their income to society. This is then furthered by the strange concept that rich = hard working and poor = lazy.

Progressive taxation is a very imperfect, but required, solution to this power imbalance problem.

Maybe when we're all greed-free, we can institute a flat tax. But then, if we're greed-free, we could probably just continue our society off of donations and get rid of the mandatory tax thing alltogether.

quicksteal

Wow, this tax thread got long fast. First of all, to answer the original question, Kerry wants to repeal the tax cuts of those earning $+200K. Increasing the taxes for millionaires would require creating a new tax bracket, which is something that Kerry is not trying to do.
Second, progressive taxes are good. If we didn't have progressive taxes, Wal-Mart would have all of our money by now. (For more in-depth arguments, see above.)
Third, the problem with the estate tax is that it hurts farmers. When grandpa, who owned the land, dies, he passes it on to papa. Then, the government wants a cut of the property value because it's part of the estate that grandpa passed on. Not only that, when the money in the bank changes hands, the government wants some of that too, even though grandpa was already taxed on it when he made it.
Finally, the reason that the upper-class tax cuts were good is because it pulled our economy out of recession, resulting in the shortest recession in American history, and current GDP growth that is just as fast as it was during the Clinton era. How this happened: rich people and companies invested in the economy, hired workers, and bought really expensive crap. Whether to keep the upper-class tax cuts now that we're out of the recession is a more difficult issue, but I believe they should stay in place for now, and at least for as long as the job market is not strong.

Kalibah

Actually municiple bonds was what the WSJ suggested- something which Divendend taxes wouldnt cover

Also of note was the Former WSJ editors quote ( forgotten name)
The true rich dont mind taxes, because they already have there wealth


I think when it comes down to it- its true

Kalibah

"creating a new tax bracket, which is something that Kerry is not trying to do."

No he just wants to raise the % for the top two brackets