Who Pays Taxes

[aneekr]

And the boat is sinking due to the dead weight of the parasite leaches. The people that consume more than what they pay for.

 

Get rid of the leaches and see how fast and far this boat will go. Right now, this country is dragging a heavy anchor of nonproductive, non progressive leaches.

Which makes an indefinite moratorium on all further immigration to the USA a necessity sooner rather than later.

[mettech]

how about the poor health choice of joining the army and getting injured?

 

 

It's a choice each one of us made in the military.

 

Do you have any idea what the injury and death rate is for a person serving in the military?

[mettech]

sure a person making 100k pays three times as much of their income in SS, but a person making 1 million pays 1/30 of what the 30k a year person does on percentage basis.

we can count dollars all day and millionaires do pay more, but there is less millionaires who pay little percentage of their income verses many poor, or less than 100k 50 k 30k or whatever cut off you choose that pay a larger percentage of their income.

from the governments perspective those who pay more pay more end of story, but from the individual perspective the poor pay more of their individual assests.

that being said lets give more tax breaks to the rich, because paying 3-5% is just unreasonable.

 

I posted Household Income tax rate data from the IRS that doesn't agree with your assessments and statements.

 

Social Security is a wash. Pay less, get less.

 

Income tax has a trend that is inverse. Pay more, get less.

Where is your data to prove your point?

Edited December 10, 2010 by mettech

[grbeck]

how about the poor health choice of joining the army and getting injured?

 

If you are injured as part of your military service, you should be eligible for federal disability benefits. In Pennsylvania, at least, you are also eligible for a wide array of training opportunities, and, if your injury was during a time of war, tax breaks.

[EdselBryantFord]

I posted Household Income tax rate data from the IRS that doesn't agree with your assessments and statements.

 

Social Security is a wash. Pay less, get less.

 

Income tax has a trend that is inverse. Pay more, get less.

Where is your data to prove your point?

which point?

[EdselBryantFord]

It's a choice each one of us made in the military.

 

Do you have any idea what the injury and death rate is for a person serving in the military?

not sure the exact numbers, but after having a few medics on my team leave for active duty several times im guessing its quite a bit higher than not joining, and when coupled with the tax burden those injuries create seams like a lose lose situation

[EdselBryantFord]

If you are injured as part of your military service, you should be eligible for federal disability benefits. In Pennsylvania, at least, you are also eligible for a wide array of training opportunities, and, if your injury was during a time of war, tax breaks.

you say tax breaks i say tax liabilities, all depends whos end your looking at yours the tax payer, or the government tax getter

[Versa-Tech]

This is quite possibly the worst idea I have ever read on this forum. The principle the US was founded on was that all [men] are created equal and that justice was to be administered without reference to wealth and station. If the poor lose the right to vote, they lose the right to demand equal justice through the electoral process. The wealthy will elect representatives who will serve their interests alone. Your idea is a perfect receipe for a feudal system where the wealthy land owners make the rules to keep themselves in power.

I said absolutely nothing about denying the poor the right to vote... As a matter of fact I clarified this in the same post... which makes me question your reading comprehension skills. The Middle class is already getting F' ed in the A by the irresponsible entitlement spongers. The rich, though far more able, are discriminated against even worse. So by your logic, we should be on a flat tax system. I agree.

 

Stop making this about the rich and the poor. As far as I'm concerned, if someone else is paying for your food, housing, and digital cable, you're not poor, you're spoiled.

Oh and newsflash, there are actually poor people out their that pay their own way.

 

 

 

[grbeck]

you say tax breaks i say tax liabilities, all depends whos end your looking at yours the tax payer, or the government tax getter

 

There is a difference between someone injured while performing a job (which is what serving in the military is), and being compensated for that injury, as opposed to someone receiving an entitlement just because they meet certain criteria (having a child, low income, etc.).

[mettech]

I said absolutely nothing about denying the poor the right to vote... As a matter of fact I clarified this in the same post... which makes me question your reading comprehension skills. The Middle class is already getting F' ed in the A by the irresponsible entitlement spongers. The rich, though far more able, are discriminated against even worse. So by your logic, we should be on a flat tax system. I agree.

 

Stop making this about the rich and the poor. As far as I'm concerned, if someone else is paying for your food, housing, and digital cable, you're not poor, you're spoiled.

Oh and newsflash, there are actually poor people out their that pay their own way.

 

 

Amen.

 

The rich is not the problem here..

[mettech]

There is a difference between someone injured while performing a job (which is what serving in the military is), and being compensated for that injury, as opposed to someone receiving an entitlement just because they meet certain criteria (having a child, low income, etc.).

 

 

Amen again..

 

And I'm not even religious.

[Versa-Tech]

not sure the exact numbers, but after having a few medics on my team leave for active duty several times im guessing its quite a bit higher than not joining, and when coupled with the tax burden those injuries create seams like a lose lose situation

Are you serious? Did you really just quantify the worth of our soldiers lives as a tax burden? What about all the parasites running up ridiculous medicare bills choking on cheezy poofs they bought with the food stamps I pay for? Edited December 10, 2010 by Versa-Tech

[mettech]

not sure the exact numbers, but after having a few medics on my team leave for active duty several times im guessing its quite a bit higher than not joining, and when coupled with the tax burden those injuries create seams like a lose lose situation

 

Comparative Mortality Among US Military

Personnel in the Persian Gulf Region

and Worldwide During Operations

Desert Shield and Desert Storm

James V. Writer, MPH; Robert F. DeFraites, MD, MPH; John F. Brundage, MD, MPH

JAMA AMA study

The reality is: Troops could expect to live longer when deployed during Desert Storm vs our troops to be at home.:reading:

This was due to consent supervison of the young troops and no drinking.

Get your facts before you state something.

[Versa-Tech]

Comparative Mortality Among US Military

Personnel in the Persian Gulf Region

and Worldwide During Operations

Desert Shield and Desert Storm

James V. Writer, MPH; Robert F. DeFraites, MD, MPH; John F. Brundage, MD, MPH

JAMA AMA study

The reality is: Troops could expect to live longer when deployed during Desert Storm vs our troops to be at home.:reading:

This was due to consent supervison of the young troops and no drinking.

Get your facts before you state something.

Makes me wonder how those statistics compare to mortality rate among people living off of entitlements...

[Roadtrip]

Just because someone else got richer doesn't mean that everyone else got poorer. They got poorer in relation to the person who got richer - but that is irrelevant.

 

What we really need to ask is whether their standard of living declined. Do they have less disposable income? Did the cost of goods change? How long does a person have to work to buy the necessities of life? These tend to be driven by taxation and regulatory policies (for example, zoning to preserve green space will drive up the cost of housing), not income distribution.

 

These are good and relevant questions to ask in regards to the rich vs. poor debate. Going back to the late 19th Century, sure, the rich (those in a position to invest) got richer during that time span. But the fact is, the standard of living for even the poorest among us has been elevated dramatically since that time. Dramatically! Simple innovations such as screen doors (that repel insects), washing machines, indoor plumbing, furnaces (as opposed to burning wood for heat -- when house fires were commonplace) for a source of household heat, vaccines, electricity, and the list goes on and on. . . .

 

And the poor (who pay relatively little in taxes in comparison to the rich) have received benefits courtesy of the tax contributions of the rich and the rest of us who actually pay taxes, including, but not limited to: rural electrification, publicly subsidized transportation, public education (as bad as it is, it can be very good in some instances), as well as the social safety net programs. And the list goes on and on. . . .

 

The standard of living of the poorest among us is at the highest it has ever been in our nation's history. As I pointed out in a previous post on another thread, Americans who at or near the U.S. poverty level (as designated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) could be considered "upper middle class" in terms of global median per-capita income. What does that mean? It means we have the richest poor people in the world. It also means that those "poor" people in the U.S. could not enjoy their relatively abundant lifestyle were it not for those who created the wealth in the first place.

 

What happened was, all those evil robber barons and captains of industry throughout the years -- in spite of amassing amazing wealth for themselves -- also enriched the lives of everyone. And I do mean everyone.

 

For that matter, what are the necessities of life?

 

Abraham Maslow pretty much answered this question in his famous "Hierarchy of Needs" pyramid. Me, I just need to get to the weekend.

 

Today people consider internet access (and thus, a computer with at least a modem) to be a necessity. In rural Pennsylvania, in the mid 1960s, there were working class people who did without ANY phone service. In the early 1940s, my paternal grandparents did without a car for many years, and, when they did get one after World War II, it was an old Ford that didn't have too much life left. And they did not live in a poor area. Today, I drive though the "slums" of Harrisburg and see nearly new SUVs and Chrysler 300s parked in front of shabby rowhouses.

 

I bet they have cell phones, too. (Tattoos and lots of "bling" as well.)

 

Anecdote: I remember when my family moved from El Paso, Texas, to Green Bay, Wisconsin, when I was a junior in high school in late 1973. I had to kiss my sweet-heart goodbye, but I promised her I would stay in touch. I got a job bussing tables and saved quarters to call Kathy on weekends. I would go to the airport and call her on a pay phone on Sundays. I am not making this up -- it took $20 worth of quarters to call her for a 20-minute phone call. That was back in 1973. More recently (before we broke up), I was able to call my girlfriend in Buenos Aires, Argentina -- 6,000 miles away -- for 2.5 cents per minute (which is $1 for a 40-minute phone call).

 

To your point: It's a testament to the wealth of our society that even poor people consider Internet access a "necessity," when one fourth of the world's population (that would be 1.6 billion people) does not even have access to electricity.

 

We also have to account for the quality of goods when considering their cost. Well into the 1970s, virtually any car was considered used up by 100,000 miles. Today, cars may be more expensive, but, with proper care, they can last for 200,000 miles (with a few exceptions - I wouldn't trust a Northstar Cadillac with over 100,000 miles on the odometer).

 

Don't get me started with the problems I had with my '67 Olds 442 or my '68 GTO! (Rochester carburetors and so forth . ..) By comparison, my '01 Mustang Cobra -- well, there is is no comparison! It's fast, it's problem free, and trustworthy of the most grueling road trips in the Great American Southwest. Ford did a great job with this car, I am proud to say!

 

One final thought in regards to where we've come from:

 

Pre-Colonial America, the Pilgrims spent almost all their time collecting firewood or hunting and gathering food. Entertainment was limited to readings of the Bible. People routinely died from tooth infections.

[RangerM]

Interesting article from the American Thinker

A funny thing happened on the way to spreading the wealth: wealth dried up.

 

A good class warrior wishes for three things (at least).

1. For tax rates to be highest on the richest. Ideally, only the rich would pay taxes. The Father of Class War, Karl Marx, made "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" one of the ten planks of his Manifesto.
   
2. For no one to be super-rich. Ideally, no one would make more than some amount considered too much. Barack Obama, the Son of Class War, once said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
   
3. For government to have plenty of money so that it can spread the wealth and help the needy. The Democratic Party, the Holy Ghost of Class War, put this in its 2008 platform: "For families making more than $250,000, we'll ask them to give back a portion of the Bush tax cuts to invest in health care and other key priorities."
   

Now think about that for a moment. If the class warriors got their first two wishes, their third wish would be impossible. If you tax only the rich, yet you have no rich, then government collects no revenue. You can't spread wealth if there is no wealth.

 

And here is the punchline: that is exactly what is happening now, just not as starkly.

 

In 2007, those making over $200,000 per year did not pay all federal income taxes -- just 52% of them. Then came the Great Recession. Taxable income of that group declined 16% from 2007 to 2008. Taxable incomes went up slightly for the middle class, or those households making between $40,000 and $200,000.

 

And what about the really rich: those with gross incomes over one million dollars? There were 18% fewer tax returns from such households and 25% less taxable income. As a result, the federal government collected $60 billion less from such households in 2008 than in 2007. (See tables at the link to this article.)

 

The Great Recession was a great time for class warriors. Incomes for the rich went down quite a bit in a single year (and only the first year of the Great Recession), while those for the middle class stayed about the same.

 

The result was predictable: much less revenue for the government. Federal income taxes from the middle class ($40,000 to $200,000) went up by $2 billion, but those from the rich (over $200,000) went down by $73 billion. This was not because of tax rate cuts; there weren't any. It was because there were fewer rich households and less income for such households.

 

Real GDP fell only 2.8% from 2007 to 2008, but federal revenue fell almost twice as much: 5.2% in constant dollars. Through 2009, federal revenues were down 21% from 2007, leaving a gaping shortfall in revenue of over half a trillion dollars (inflation-adjusted) and an unprecedented federal deficit. (Tax figures for 2009 are not yet available. I suspect they will show the same pattern: loss of federal revenue due to loss of income at the higher levels.)

 

Revenues did not fall because of a tax rate cut; there was no tax rate cut between 2007 and 2009. Revenues did not fall because of some giveaway to the rich. In fact, the problem was just the opposite. Revenues fell because there were fewer rich, and the rich made less money -- just as class warriors wanted.

 

We had a progressive tax structure that relied on the rich getting richer. Then we got what we wished for: for the rich to become like us. So now we're all broke. We had a bubble-based tax system, and the bubble burst.

 

Why do you think revenues fell by over 20% to the federal government and states like California during the Great Recession, when GDP fell only 4%? Because the federal government and states like California have extremely progressive tax structures. You get rid of the rich, and you get rid of government revenues (and job creation). Believe it or not, the rich lost more money in the Great Recession than the rest of us did. Our golden goose is cooked.

 

Discussions of how much to tax the rich are ever more akin to fiddling while Rome is burning. Before you can get money from the rich, you have to have rich households, and they have to have money. You can't tax what you've destroyed.

 

Be careful what you wish for. Or vote for.

[EdselBryantFord]

Comparative Mortality Among US Military

Personnel in the Persian Gulf Region

and Worldwide During Operations

Desert Shield and Desert Storm

James V. Writer, MPH; Robert F. DeFraites, MD, MPH; John F. Brundage, MD, MPH

JAMA AMA study

The reality is: Troops could expect to live longer when deployed during Desert Storm vs our troops to be at home.:reading:

This was due to consent supervison of the young troops and no drinking.

Get your facts before you state something.

how about the facts for nonenlisted? i bet they are different, those where the ones i was referring to, hence the 'not joining' part.

Edited December 11, 2010 by EdselBryantFord

[EdselBryantFord]

Are you serious? Did you really just quantify the worth of our soldiers lives as a tax burden? What about all the parasites running up ridiculous medicare bills choking on cheezy poofs they bought with the food stamps I pay for?

or any of the other countless government subsides that ride off my paycheck!

[30 OTT 6]

The US Government's "cut" has stayed relatively constant over the last 50 years.

 

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/

[mettech]

how about the facts for nonenlisted? i bet they are different, those where the ones i was referring to, hence the 'not joining' part.

 

 

What is a "nonenlisted"?

 

The USA is a totally volunteer force.

[EdselBryantFord]

What is a "nonenlisted"?

 

The USA is a totally volunteer force.

'civiy' civilan or a sector of our populace that isnt in the armed forces, that has lower risk when compared to someone who is enlisted, and either in action, or being drunk and suicidal in America as some one had illstrated earlier in this thread

 

back to taxes though who pays them who gets them?

do we count actual dollars that some one pays, or should we compare how much they pay to how much they make? does income tax count as tax? does sales tax? does social security?

[jpd80]

The US caving in and continuing with tax cuts shows they cant make the public take its medicine,

there is no way that deficit will come down unless everyone in the country takes responsibility.

 

Amazing how UK's politicians can band together and make things happen, the cynic in me says

that's the difference between a "politician" and an elected member representing a constituency

and doing good for the greater community. The self interest in American politics is staggering.

 

You don't have to be a socialist to do the right thing, all it takes is to be a good capitalist

and realize that impoverished workers are bad for business, they can't buy your products.

 

The way out of this is the opposite to most people's notions, the money cycle has to be sped up not down

and to do that you need inflation - raise taxes, allow pay raises and let's get people back to work and to

start buying American made products again. That would do far more to stimulate the economy than just

throwing money at the problem.

 

I only hope some people read my post in the proper light and take it a step further...

Edited December 12, 2010 by jpd80

[mettech]

The US caving in and continuing with tax cuts shows they cant make the public take its medicine,

there is no way that deficit will come down unless everyone in the country takes responsibility.

 

Amazing how UK's politicians can band together and make things happen, the cynic in me says

that's the difference between a "politician" and an elected member representing a constituency

and doing good for the greater community. The self interest in American politics is staggering.

 

You don't have to be a socialist to do the right thing, all it takes is to be a good capitalist

and realize that impoverished workers are bad for business, they can't buy your products.

 

The way out of this is the opposite to most people's notions, the money cycle has to be sped up not down

and to do that you need inflation - raise taxes, allow pay raises and let's get people back to work and to

start buying American made products again. That would do far more to stimulate the economy than just

throwing money at the problem.

 

I only hope some people read my post in the proper light and take it a step further...

 

 

The way out of the problem is huge budget cuts. In all areas.

[RangerM]

The way out of this is the opposite to most people's notions, the money cycle has to be sped up not down

and to do that you need inflation - raise taxes, allow pay raises and let's get people back to work and to

start buying American made products again. That would do far more to stimulate the economy than just

throwing money at the problem.

 

I only hope some people read my post in the proper light and take it a step further...

If you look at what has happened to commoditys' prices in the last six months (wheat, corn, etc), you can see that inflation is on the way.

 

People will need the extra money in their paychecks just to feed themselves.

 

You aren't going to get payraises AND more hiring at the same time. More hiring has to come first.

[suv_guy_19]

The way out of the problem is huge budget cuts. In all areas.

 

I don't now if a 40% cut from current levels is even possible. It might be, but it wouldn't be easy.