Stimulating the rich

[Johnny Mayberry]

No, what I'm saying is that if I had $100 million, giving an extra million to the governemnt wouldn't change my lifestyle a single bit...but if I made $100,000, giving up an extra $1,000 would affect me alot more.

 

[HeavyStick]

I think he is saying if his life is effected tremendously by income tax, so should the lives of the rich?

Everybody feels the same pain.

No.


Some economic pain is self induced. (credit card debt, spending instead of saving).



If successful people are penalized excessively than what incentive will others have to try to improve themselves financially?

 

[CoolidgEffect]

No, what I'm saying is that if I had $100 million, giving an extra million to the governemnt wouldn't change my lifestyle a single bit...but if I made $100,000, giving up an extra $1,000 would affect me alot more.

How do you know that. Maybe you could buy that island in the south Pacific now.

 

[Xodus]

Well I think it's been pretty well understood for quite a while that a person that makes 200k a year is able to afford to pay more income tax percetage than a person that makes 40k a year.
If they both pay twenty percent. The person making 40k is now down to 32k while the one making 200k is now only down to 160k.

 

[Johnny Mayberry]

How do you know that. Maybe you could buy that island in the south Pacific now.

LMAO!!

Wow, look at the sacrifices that we are asking of the rich!! What was I thinking?!? How could I think of denying someone their own island so that someone else could maybe get a decent education, or maybe a kid could get free medical care?

 

[Johnny Mayberry]

Well I think it's been pretty well understood for quite a while that a person that makes 200k a year is able to afford to pay more income tax percetage than a person that makes 40k a year.
If they both pay twenty percent. The person making 40k is now down to 32k while the one making 200k is now only down to 160k.

Obviously, some people DON'T understand that!

 

[HeavyStick]

Regardless of someone's net worth, no one should have to pay more than 33.3% in taxes.

Right now the top tax rate is 38.6%

100 million taxed 38.6 million. At what point and time should we stop taxing them. Yes 61.4 million is still very healthy, and it's unlikely a million here or there will set them back.

However, with the exception of a lottery winner. I can almost guarantee anyone with more than 100 million in the bank has more than their family depending on them. So by continuing to tax the super-rich may cause them to take all their taxable assets out of country.

 

[Xodus]

Right.
The difference in the two might be that the one left with 32k now can't afford to send his kid to college, and the one left with 160k no can't afford to go on that around the world cruise.

 

[Johnny Mayberry]

Regardless of someone's net worth, no one should have to pay more than 33.3% in taxes.

Right now the top tax rate is 38.6%

100 million taxed 38.6 million. At what point and time should we stop taxing them. Yes 61.4 million is still very healthy, and it's unlikely a million here or there will set them back.

However, with the exception of a lottery winner. I can almost guarantee anyone with more than 100 million in the bank has more than their family depending on them. So by continuing to tax the super-rich may cause them to take all their taxable assets out of country.

No, I understand that, to an extent...but really, do you think any rich person actually pays all 38.6%? Especially when you factor in corporate welfare, loopholes, offshore accounts, and the like?

 

[Xodus]

We should stop taxing them more, when every child in the country can get a good education and good food. When everyone in the country has good medical coverage. When the elderly in the country all have a comfortable life, etc.

 

[Xodus]

According to the numbers posted here, the rich are paying less than you are. Are you paying 38%?

 

[busybody..]

REDWAVE

You have been screaming about ENRON for a while.....and how it "tainted" Bush.....

Did you know Paul Krugman WORKED for ENRON and got $50,000????

BTW.....Krugman is BIASED and full of shit!


KRUGMAN WINS AGAIN!: The website, "Lying in Ponds," does an annual survey of who, among the major newspaper columnists, is the most reflexively, viscerally partisan. Paul Krugman's columns - "a lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption" - win first prize for the second year in a row. Here's the summary:


After evaluating all 2,129 columns written by our 37 pundits in 2002, it's time to draw some conclusions. I've stressed all along that Lying in Ponds is attempting to make a distinction between ordinary party preference (there's nothing wrong with being opinionated or having a political ideology) and excessive partisanship ("blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance"). While it's obviously difficult to draw a definitive line, the top three pundits in the rankings clearly revealed excessive partisanship by the remarkable consistency of their extremely one-sided commentary throughout the year. The New York Times' Paul Krugman took the partisanship lead early and lapped the field. In a year in which Mr. Krugman generated lots of buzz and won an award, his 18:1 ratio of negative to positive Republican references and 99 columns without a single substantive deviation from the party line were unmatched in the Lying in Ponds portion of the punditocracy.


The details are fascinating as well. Among the most relentlessly partisan: Mike Kinsley. The most one-sided columns in a newspaper: the Wall Street Journal. The most diverse: the Washington Post.
- 1:03:54 AM

 

[Worm]

The thing I really don't like about Bush's plan is that it cuts out completely the tax on dividends.

I work hard for my money, which is just barely keeping my family above water, yet I pay taxes on it. Some fucker who belongs to the group known as the "idle rich," who does zero work but makes millions as his wealth accumulates, will pay nothing in taxes? Fuck that.

Edited to add: I'm no economist - if I am incorrect in my above assertions, please correct me. I don't WANT to believe this is true, but it wouldn't surprise me.

When you own stock you basically own a percentage of that company. The companies profits are then taxed...that means your profits are taxed...then your dividend is taxed wich is part of the profits. So these people are getting taxed twice. What Bush is saying is that these people shouldn;t be getting taxed twice.

 

[HeavyStick]

People need to plan for the future.

College
http://www.wallstreete.com/education.htm

How many people have actually drawn up a budget?

If a person were to see how much money they waste, they'd be sickend at what they could do with it. I "forced myself" to save an extra $300 a month. I make under 50K. I'm saving a decent sum.

 

[teddybear4play]

Re: Re: Re: Stimulating the rich

Yeah, trickle-down worked so well in the 80's.

It did, actually.

TB4P invites everybody over to his house to swim naked in a big pool of money. You get to take home whatever you can grab, too. PM him for details.

I don't own a small business. I'd like to, but I don't currently have the capital. It's something I'm working on.

But until then, I don't have enough Monopoly money to swim naked in.

Naked swimming at my place is not a bad idea, though.

TB's views are in line with one school of economic thought, that of Milton Friedman, Richard Epstein, etc. There is also a liberal, Keynesian school of thought, which to me makes much more sense. Krugman, an academic heavyweight at MIT, belongs to the Keynesian school. This economic model says that in hard economic times, the best thing to do is put money in the hands of those who need it and can be counted on to spend it, mainly on necessities, and quickly. That will increase consumer demand, and stimulate business investment, "priming the pump" for a recovery. A twenty six (26) week extension of unemployment benefits, the core of the Dems' plan, will stimulate the economy much more than will Bush's plan, and will actually cost less!

Keynesian pump-priming has never led to anything more than a temporary relief period. Krugman believes in it, but there are plenty of economists, past and present, who don't.

Take, for example, the recent tax-rebate program that started as a Democratic idea attached to Bush's tax plan in 2001. According to FED chairman Alan Greenspan, only 18% of that money was spent. The Democrats, whose idea it was in the first place, used that to proclaim Bush's tax plan a failure. Exhibit A: former "CrossFire" host Bill Press. When, in reality, it only showed the fallacy of demand-side pump-priming.

In a climate where job security is not exactly high, most people will sit on their tax rebates. Giving away more unemployment won't put anyone to work faster; it will in fact make the problem worse by keeping them out of jobs longer. They won't spend their money; they'll hunker down with it in preparation for lean times.

The people who are more "guaranteed to spend it" are the wealthy, who have the assets to weather economic hard times and can therefore still invest or buy things.

When the money the demand gets runs out (in 2001, only $300, not a whole lot of money), it changes nothing in the end. It's back to square one. If you're going to use demand to stimulate supply, why not just stimulate both, thereby circumventing any possible problems?

In short, I don't buy that Keynesian models "stimulate the economy much more than will Bush's plan."

And as for "costing less," cutting taxes modestly increases government revenue. That's been proven, too.

TB4p

 

[Viper Vic]

Re: So what are you saying?

"Since the poor don't pay taxes, screw 'em."

Is that it?

I say tax the poor. The poor use more govt resources than do the rich. It would also motivate them to stop being poor. Poverty is a mental illness.

 

[HeavyStick]

No, I understand that, to an extent...but really, do you think any rich person actually pays all 38.6%? Especially when you factor in corporate welfare, loopholes, offshore accounts, and the like?

People making less than 100k have similar loopholes.

Go to a tax preparer besides H&R Block and you'll be suprised at what you can deduct legally.

At the end of the year when a family gets their tax refund back. Deuct that from what they "paid" and you'll see that percentage wise they pay less than everybody else.

My neighbor makes 45K wife two kids, will pay a blazing $1100 for the whole year in taxes. (His refund knocked that down alot)
That's almost 2.5%

Do the math after you get your refund back.

 

[Xodus]

Actually the rich use many more government resources hehehe
Costs them a lot to buy off all those politicians!

 

[medjay]

Re: Re: So what are you saying?

I say tax the poor. The poor use more govt resources than do the rich. It would also motivate them to stop being poor. Poverty is a mental illness.

Yeah! You have to light a fire under the asses of those shiftless leeches!

 

[HeavyStick]

Re: Re: So what are you saying?

I say tax the poor. The poor use more govt resources than do the rich. It would also motivate them to stop being poor. Poverty is a mental illness.

Hmm, not entirely true.

Some poor don't have the job skills needed for improvement.

 

[Viper Vic]

The top 1% SHOULD pay more than ten times what the bottom 50% pays, because the top 1% MAKES more than ten times what the bottom 50% makes.

So your solution is "Punish the sucess of some to reward the failures of others by gunpoint." And the govt is authorized to use a gun to come get your money.

 

[CoolidgEffect]

LMAO!!

Wow, look at the sacrifices that we are asking of the rich!! What was I thinking?!? How could I think of denying someone their own island so that someone else could maybe get a decent education, or maybe a kid could get free medical care?

But you'll put poor Tattoo out of a job! What about his children?

 

[zipman]

Regardless of someone's net worth, no one should have to pay more than 33.3% in taxes.

Right now the top tax rate is 38.6%

100 million taxed 38.6 million. At what point and time should we stop taxing them. Yes 61.4 million is still very healthy, and it's unlikely a million here or there will set them back.

However, with the exception of a lottery winner. I can almost guarantee anyone with more than 100 million in the bank has more than their family depending on them. So by continuing to tax the super-rich may cause them to take all their taxable assets out of country.

But many people who are not making millions pay close to 38%

Take someone earning 100K and that takes them down to 62K.

What is the motivation for someone to work hard to get ahead so that their hard earned money is taken away?

 

[Xodus]

Heavystick:
The numbers posted here (if they are correct) prove that a person that makes a billion a year is paying no more of a percentage of income tax than a person that makes 40 or 50k a year.

edit: I might add that under the new economic plan, that top 1.5% will be paying even less taxes than they are now.

 

[miles]

After reading some of the replies here, it's no surprise why Clinton was re-elected.