Comments on: The Triumph Of "Trickle Up" Economics
CBS' Dick Meyer Stands On The Income Gap Precipice And Ponders The View
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- Top 1% pay 34% of all income taxes
Top 5% pay 54% of all income taxes.
BOTTOM 50% PAY (ONLY)3.46% OF ALL INCOME TAXES.
Trickle that TRICKEYDICK MEYER!
Posted by jackhighland
I haven''t analyzed this thoroughly, but haven''t those percentages always been in place (with the top % of individuals shouldering the burden of a certain high percent of the overall personal income tax take). What gets lost in just reporting those figures for that year is the tax cut Bush implemented for the top 1%. So the figure showing the top % of people paying a greater % of tax is actually a by-product of the greater income disparity.
The figure also doesn''t reflect the tax cuts Bush has given to corporations including farmers - how much have those tax cuts improved your life? This fiscal policy is thought to stimulate growth in the economy because the money usually gets reinvested back into the domestic economy. What''s different with Bush though is that much of the revenue is now being spent overseas (Iraq(!),manufacturing jobs in China, tech stuff in India). - Reply to this comment
- First of all, an income of $365,000 doesn''t come close to qualifying as even close to the super rich category. This is not an uncommon income for many people, in fact it is probably the beginning of middle-class.
The real issue is that people with sufficicent income to live their lives, use the "extra" for investment. Of course as time goes on, they will have incresing growth in wealth. Others, who spend every cent they make, deserve the hopeless financial life they will have. Anyone can improve their lot in life if they save some and invest. It''s no one fault that the wealthy get wealthier, it''s the way it should be. Be thankful the wealthy can be identified so they can pay their share of taxes.
Keep in mind, that while they earn 21.2% of all the earned income, they pay 34% of the taxes and also produce millions of jobs with their spending and investment dollars. God bless them. They pay 1% of their income into the Medicare program. - Reply to this comment
TrickIEDICK economics has just scored its greatest success and it is being covered up. I wonder why. Could it be embarrassment?
Yes, CBS tell us about this reporter. A STAR, Right?
Just like Dan WORDPROCESSOR DOCUMENTS Rather.
WHAT HAPPENED to CBS'' ETHICS????- Reply to this comment
- Why is this so-called journalist still employed by CBS?
At least CBS should get a stipend for his services from the Democratic National Committee. Or Move-on.Org. Or Putin.
ARE YOU LISTENING CBS SHAREHOLDERS? Its YOUR money CBS is spending on propaganda. - Reply to this comment
- Top 1% pay 34% of all income taxes
Top 5% pay 54% of all income taxes.
BOTTOM 50% PAY (ONLY)3.46% OF ALL INCOME TAXES.
Trickle that TRICKEYDICK MEYER! - Reply to this comment
- Too Bad Mr. Myers, who''s first name can not be displayed, could not find this- He should try GOOGLE.
What a reporter!
Federal Income Tax Burden by Income Group, 2003
Income Group%u2019s Group%u2019s share
Income Number of AGI taxes paid share of of income Average tax
group returns ($ millions) ($ millions) total AGI (%) taxes (%) rate (%)
All taxpayers 128,609,786 6,287,586 747,939 100.00 100.00 11.90
Top 1% 1,286,098 1,054,567 256,340 16.77 34.27 24.31
Top 5% 6,430,489 1,960,676 406,597 31.18 54.36 20.74
Top 10% 12,860,979 2,663,470 492,452 42.36 65.84 18.49
Top 25% 32,152,447 4,078,277 627,380 64.86 83.88 15.38
Top 50% 64,304,893 5,407,851 722,027 86.01 96.54 13.35
Bottom 50% 64,304,893 879,735 25,912 13.99 3.46 2.95
SOURCE: Internal Revenue Service, Individual Income Tax Returns with Positive Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), Tables 5 and 6;
www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html. - Reply to this comment
- jon-mccain, do you disagree with what lincoln allegedly said or are you just trying to marginalize those words because it doesn''''t fit your leftwing entitlement socialistic philosophy?
Posted by notblue
I''m saying that when your entire premise is built on error, it isn''t worth the time you took to cut and paste it let alone the time we wasted reading it. However, I would like to find the real author of that piece, I''m betting he has never put in an honest day of back breaking labor in his entire life. - Reply to this comment
- jon-mccain, do you disagree with what lincoln allegedly said or are you just trying to marginalize those words because it doesn''t fit your leftwing entitlement socialistic philosophy?
- Reply to this comment
- This is the "opportunity" that bushit and the Repugs offer--more for the billionaires, and fvck the middle class!
- Reply to this comment
- "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strenghten the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by discouraging the rich.You cannot establish sound securtiy on borrowed money.You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot buildcharacter and courage by taking away man''''s intiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
Posted by notblue
ATTRIBUTION: Erroneously attributed to ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Since the 1940s these %u201CTen Points%u201D attributed to Lincoln have been widely reprinted. They have appeared in such places as magazines, Christmas cards, and the Congressional Record. The Library of Congress and Lincoln scholars believe that any connection made between Lincoln and the %u201CTen Points%u201D is spurious.
http://www.bartleby.com/73/1117.html - Reply to this comment
- "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strenghten the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by discouraging the rich.You cannot establish sound securtiy on borrowed money.You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot buildcharacter and courage by taking away man''''s intiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
Posted by notblue at 11:22 AM : Oct 18, 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Lincoln%u2019s time ALL Americans had far more equal opportunities.
The problem today is that most of the top 1% (wealthiest) achieved their wealth either through inheritance or by utilizing past laws that prevented monopolies and government interference by corporate lobbyist. Today those anti-monopoly laws, as well as the tax laws instituted after the great depression, have been gutted and/or changed.
You quoted Lincoln: %u201CYou cannot establish sound securtiy on borrowed money.%u201D
Yet the Bush administration (not to mention Reagan) borrowed $trillions and still brags about a great economy, while paying $1/2 trillion in interest on the borrowed money, EVERY YEAR. - Reply to this comment
- "The top one percent of all taxpayers earned 21.2 percent of all the money that individuals in the country earned in 2005. - Liberal Mr. Meyers"
What our corrupt liberal MSM wolfpack press doesn''t tell the American people is that the top 1% of wage earners pay nearly 40% of ALL taxes.
If our liberal MSM wolfpack press was really interested in the "income gap" they would should push their party, the Democrats on doing something about the poverty, dispair, and injustice in America''s "deep blue" one party cities.
Like in Detroit where only 22% of innocent children ever graduate from the Kindergarten thru G12 public school system.
Detroit also leads the nation with the highest crime rate which is DIRECTLY related to the social injustice in their school systems.
The same situation exists in other Deep Blue cities like:
Washington DC
St. Louis
Philadelphia
Cleveland
Baltimore
Atlanta
New Orleans..................on and on and on.
Democrats and corrupt liberal MSM wolfpack press ............WHERE''S THE ACCOUNTABILITY???
No Justice No Peace..............until the Democrats and their wolfpack pals in our big deep blue cities put the blame where it really belongs.
American''s don''t need these liberal lies and excuses anymore. - Reply to this comment
- The article should be renamed to "The Triumph of ''GUSHING UP'' Economics". Americans used to have 2 dreams to wish for.
1) To be President of the US - nobody wants that job now that Bush has screwed up everything!
2) To work hard and become a millionare. Problem is today you work 24/7 and you have barely enough to buy a gallon of milk! To be a millionare today, you have to be born into it, like George W!
So goes the American dream, straight to CHINA!!!
SIG HEIL, BUSH!!! - Reply to this comment
- razzl...So you disagree?...You DO think it''''s a level playing field, and everyone is playing by the same rules? You DON''''T think that there''''s a "Hereditary Aristocracy" where children of the rich have a better head start, better educational opportunities, easy funding for their endeavirs, and better connections all around? NOW THAT''''S PATHETIC and NAIVE.
Posted by JJARDEN at 10:43 AM : Oct 18, 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JJARDEN, perhaps you should re-read razzl''s comment.
I believe the people he/she refers to are like those who continually waste large sums of their income on lottery tickets.
They actually are wealthy wannabe%u2019s who really believe they are going to win (become wealthy), and they don%u2019t want to pay a large part of their winnings in taxes. - Reply to this comment
- "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strenghten the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by discouraging the rich.You cannot establish sound securtiy on borrowed money.You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot buildcharacter and courage by taking away man''s intiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln - Reply to this comment
- but when it comes right down to it, it is the individual who doesn''''''''t have the drive to get out and work for it the way a lot of rich people have.
Posted by Consciousnes
You mean like fearless leader? If he hadn''''t been born with a silver spoon, he wouldn''''t have been qualified to manage a McDonalds.
Posted by jon_mccain at 09:44 AM : Oct 18, 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree with jon_mccain.
Another comparison would be; having working class children trying to win a one-mile race when the wealthy upper class children are given a three quarter-mile head start. The poor kid could be three times as intelligent as the rich kid and still lose the race
The sad part, like in jon_mccain%u2019s example, is that the entire country loses.
This has been the case with the human race throughout history.
%u201CNero fiddles while Rome burns%u201D.
Bush plays war games while America collapses from within.
and 99% of the reason why this happens is because "We the people" just can''t admit our mistake let alone effect correction. - Reply to this comment
- ibsteve2u: Suppose you earn $364,657 in "adjusted gross income". You do that by putting in 60 to 70 hour workweeks at your office so you can afford to pay the pool guy $25 per hour to come over to your house and bang your trophy wife who never sees you. Then I come along and take $100,000 of your dollars stating, %u201CI%u2019m giving your money to your pool guy and your buddies%u2019 pool guys because $25 per hour is the highest wage you will pay before you decide to clean your own pool.%u201D How would that make you feel, ibsteve2u?
Posted by eggy1620
Except we all know that the guy making $364,657 would be seething at the prospect of paying someone $25 an hour to clean his pool. He would be busily sending off campaign contributions to the RNC while simultaneously demanding they institute a "guest worker program" so that he may hire a Mexican for $5 hour. - Reply to this comment
- ibsteve2u: Suppose you earn $364,657 in "adjusted gross income". You do that by putting in 60 to 70 hour workweeks at your office so you can afford to pay the pool guy $25 per hour to come over to your house and bang your trophy wife who never sees you. Then I come along and take $100,000 of your dollars stating, %u201CI%u2019m giving your money to your pool guy and your buddies%u2019 pool guys because $25 per hour is the highest wage you will pay before you decide to clean your own pool.%u201D How would that make you feel, ibsteve2u?
- Reply to this comment
- razzl...So you disagree?...You DO think it''s a level playing field, and everyone is playing by the same rules? You DON''T think that there''s a "Hereditary Aristocracy" where children of the rich have a better head start, better educational opportunities, easy funding for their endeavirs, and better connections all around? NOW THAT''S PATHETIC and NAIVE.
- Reply to this comment
- There''s nothing more pathetic than listening to middle-class wagearners, people who are never going to control their destiny or own anything or control any part of the economy, treat the needs of their own social class with contempt and talk up the capitalist Republican agenda as though it were their own. It must be some kind of self-hating thing, wanting to put distance between one''s roots in the working class and the place one aspires too, but in filling out the ranks of the Republicans with pathetic hypocrital wannabe''s they rob the society of the leadership the working classes so badly need in order to restore fairness to the social order. The middle class must embrace unions, social security, national health care, social services, and corporate taxation or be crushed by the tsunami of money being sucked out of their lives by crackpot "trickle-up" economic philosophy. And of course, true Christians must be sincere Socialists or else give up any hope of seeing paradise...
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