Americans Not Overtaxed, Tea Parties Politically Motivated - Reagan Advisor

Toro

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Sep 29, 2005
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[W]hat if we compare U.S. taxes today to those in the past? Are Americans more heavily taxed than those in earlier years, and do polls show greater dissatisfaction with taxes today?

To answer these questions, I looked at the effective federal income tax rate--taxes paid as a share of income--for a family with the median income. The median is the exact middle of the income distribution--half of families are above and half are below. It's as close as we can get, statistically, to the typical American family.

As the table shows, in 2007, the most recent year available, the median family paid 5.91% of its income to the federal government in the form of income taxes. This is half the tax rate paid in 1981 before the Reagan tax cut took effect. Although the 2007 rate is up very slightly from its 2003 low point, it is still well below the rate that prevailed from the 1950s through the 1990s.

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I don't have data for 2009, but it's a certainty that the median family tax rate is well below that which prevailed in 2007 if only because in February, Congress enacted a new tax credit that will reduce the median family's tax bill by $800 over last year.

Some may wonder about marginal rates--the tax on each additional dollar earned. This year, the median family will face exactly the same marginal tax rate it has faced since 1987: 15%. This is down substantially from the 1970s, when the median family paid as much as 25% on the marginal dollar of income.

Thus, it is hard to find evidence that taxes are rising or unusually high. This is confirmed by poll data. According to Gallup, only 46% of Americans think their federal income taxes are too high--the lowest percentage recorded since 1961. In 2000, 65% of people thought their taxes were too high; last year the figure was 52%.

It is even more revealing to compare the percentage of Americans who think their taxes are too high to those who think they are about right. Ten years ago, there was a wide gap--65% thought their taxes were too high and only 29% thought they were about right. This year, 48% of people think their federal income taxes are about right. In only one other year since 1956 have more Americans said their taxes were about right than said they were too high. ...

I have problems with ... the sudden appearance of tea parties to protest taxes. First, many protesters implicitly assume that that the deficit has increased solely as a result of Barack Obama's policies. But in fact, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting a deficit of more than $1 trillion this year back in January, before any of Obama's policies had been enacted, and a cumulative deficit of $4.3 trillion through 2019. (CBO made no assumptions about what his policies might be in making its projection.)

It's true that projected deficits have gotten larger since January. But much of this resulted from deteriorating economic conditions that would have occurred even if John McCain were president. Moreover, it is absurd to assume that McCain would not have enacted any stimulus programs had he been elected.

More than likely, McCain would have proposed a stimulus plan of roughly the same size as that proposed by Obama. No doubt, it would have had a different composition--heavier on tax cuts, different kinds of tax cuts, less spending, different spending--but it wouldn't have been all that different from Obama's package given large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the pressure to act quickly. ...

[T]here were no tea parties during the years when George W. Bush was turning the surpluses of the Clinton years into massive deficits. Indeed, if concerns about deficits are the primary motivation for this week's tax protests, then these same people should have been holding demonstrations of support for Bill Clinton in 2000 when the federal government ran a budget surplus of 2.4% of the gross domestic product--equivalent to a surplus of $336 billion this year.

The truth is that the greatest addition to national indebtedness occurred in 2003 when Bush rammed through the Republican Congress a massive expansion of Medicare to provide drug benefits even though the system was already broke. According to the latest report from Medicare's trustees, the drug benefit added $7.9 trillion to the nation's indebtedness. This should have led to massive tax protests on April 15, 2004. But, of course, there weren't any. Those protesting this week were only protesting because it is a Democrat who has increased the deficit. When a Republican did worse, it's like Emily Litella used to say, "Never mind." ...

Bruce Bartlett is a former Treasury Department economist and the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.

Tax Tea Party Time, Part Two - Forbes.com
 
Interesting.

Whenever you hear conservatives arguing how much tax the wealthiest pay, they inevitably cite to statistics to the income tax, which makes up less that 50% of all tax revenues, and leave out things like the SS taxes, which the working poorer disproportionately pay (since its not taxed on income over about $100,000.

The Bush tax cuts were largely financed by taking the surplus Bush inhereted and borrowing trillions. And as your data shows, the 00s for the richest under the Republican have been the golden time of high incomes and low taxes; at least until the financial system imploded.
 
Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.
 
Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.

I think you're also missing the boat here.

I didn't vote for Obama because I thought the Bush administration was wrong in how it addressed the financial crises and mortgage meltdown.

I voted for him because of the 8 years of failed policies of tax cuts, mistaken wars and military buildups put this country another $5 trillion in debt, and because Republican "blind eye" atittude towards business regulation helped let a debacle like the mortgage meltdown happen. And McCain promised another 4 years of exactly the same.

The Bush administration did OK on handling the crisis once it happened, except maybe dolling out stimulus money without sufficient safeguards.

Thankfully Obama's administration is continuing this stimulus policy to avert another depression.
 
Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.

I think you're also missing the boat here.

I didn't vote for Obama because I thought the Bush administration was wrong in how it addressed the financial crises and mortgage meltdown.

I voted for him because of the 8 years of failed policies of tax cuts, mistaken wars and military buildups put this country another $5 trillion in debt, and because Republican "blind eye" atittude towards business regulation helped let a debacle like the mortgage meltdown happen. And McCain promised another 4 years of exactly the same.

The Bush administration did OK on handling the crisis once it happened, except maybe dolling out stimulus money without sufficient safeguards.

Thankfully Obama's administration is continuing this stimulus policy to avert another depression.

Not at all. There were plenty of people who voted for Obama because they believed in 'hope' and 'change'. What I'm saying is that there were enough people who didn't want to vote for the GOP that Obama won by default.

Now certainly, you have your own view of what happened and what should be done and I have mine. You're a Keynesian and I'm not.
 
Since inflation is a tax caused by excessive government spending, tabulate CPIs since 1958 and add that to determine rate.
 
Since inflation is a tax caused by excessive government spending, tabulate CPIs since 1958 and add that to determine rate.

1. It's not caused by excessive government spending. There is no correlatio between inflation and spending.

2. Inflation is not a tax. It doesn't go to the government and you don't pay it.
 
Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.

I think you're also missing the boat here.

I didn't vote for Obama because I thought the Bush administration was wrong in how it addressed the financial crises and mortgage meltdown.

I voted for him because of the 8 years of failed policies of tax cuts, mistaken wars and military buildups put this country another $5 trillion in debt, and because Republican "blind eye" atittude towards business regulation helped let a debacle like the mortgage meltdown happen. And McCain promised another 4 years of exactly the same.

The Bush administration did OK on handling the crisis once it happened, except maybe dolling out stimulus money without sufficient safeguards.

Thankfully Obama's administration is continuing this stimulus policy to avert another depression.

Not at all. There were plenty of people who voted for Obama because they believed in 'hope' and 'change'. What I'm saying is that there were enough people who didn't want to vote for the GOP that Obama won by default.

You have a good point. The fact that a relatively inexperienced black man beat the incumbent party certainly suggests that.

Now certainly, you have your own view of what happened and what should be done and I have mine. You're a Keynesian and I'm not.

I'm not sure if I'd adopt everything represented by a "Keynsian" but OK.
 
Moreover, I do agree that McCain wouldn't have been any different. He's a Keynesian as well. We need to have a systemic change, not just a political one.
 
Nope not over taxed at all, always room to tax us more.

Barack Obama Disciple of Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky was a Community Organizer based out of Chicago, advocate of Socialism & Communism, and author of "Rules for Radicals" (championed as the Communist Manifesto for the modern times). The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is "first to bring folks to the realization that they are miserable, their misery is a result of greedy corporations, help bond them together and demand what they deserve from said greedy corporations". Barack Obama sounds terrifyingly similar to Alinsky when he speaks of taking profits from "greedy companies" and distributing that capital to those he see's fit. Alinsky's approach to social justice relies solely on creating massive conflict between those who "have" and those who "have

Marxist Origins of Communism, III

[T]he antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle carried to its highest expression in a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in a brutal "contradiction," the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?
The Coming Upheaval
Marx makes it quite clear that the class war will not end merely because the proletariat has gained the upper hand.


o long as other classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have disappeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disappeared), it must still use a measure of force, hence governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated.
 
Since inflation is a tax caused by excessive government spending, tabulate CPIs since 1958 and add that to determine rate.

1. It's not caused by excessive government spending. There is no correlatio between inflation and spending.

There is a direct corollary between inflation and spending. The more that is spent that isn't taxed is converted into treasury bills, and sold to whoever's foolish enough to buy them, normally the Chinese and Saudis. Whenever these treasury bills don't sell, the Federal Reserve buys them. Since the Federal Reserve has no money or resources of its own, it generates the money to buy those t-bills artificially, thus an increase in the money supply, which by definition is inflation. The Fed just monetized $1.2T of debt and t-bills just the other week when the fiasco about AIG bonuses was made. The consequence of inflation is seen through higher prices, and asset bubbles, should inflation be severe. So, yes, spending yields inflation.

2. Inflation is not a tax. It doesn't go to the government and you don't pay it.

It is a tax. The government directly controls the rate of inflation through the rate they increase the money supply. This is used to finance spending. It is very much a tax, and a very regressive one at that. The tea party protests were largely against the inflation tax that was coming because of all these deficits, as well as more direct taxes.
 
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Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.


Yep--these liberals believe those that participated in the tea parties are concerned about taxes. We are--but not in the concept of their liberal minds.

First of all anyone who went through 3rd grade math knows that 5% of this nation, aka as the over 250K crowd is not capable of giving 95% a tax cut & pay for all this additional spending. Government does not have this money to spend--they have been borrowing it from China.

The current spending results in big government with a no limit credit card with future generations names on the bill. This is what these tea-parties are about. An out-of-control-incompetent federal government--that is spending OURS & FUTURE generations money like it is falling out of the sky.

DID YOU KNOW: A 20 year old college student looking to enter the work force in 2 years will be paying $114,000.00 each & every one of them during their working lifetimes--just to cover the INTEREST on this 3.9 TRILLION dollar budget that just passed the house. Therefore, they are in debt up to their eyeballs before they even get their first job.

For a person heading into their 40's--they will be paying $138,000.00 dollars, each & every one of them just to cover the INTEREST on this 3.9 TRILLION dollar budget.

So carry on with your Obama rallies! Just remember you will be paying this bill too. Maybe not this year or next but that tax train is moving & it's going to run right over you! Furthermore YOU deserve it. You voted for it, you got it. Everything Obama promised you, you're getting. :clap2:

"The problem with socialism is that eventually government runs out of other peoples money to spend." Margaret Thatcher
 
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Make no mistake either, the tea parties were not merely about federal taxation. Some individual states are being treated so badly right now by their governments, that they're literally near bankruptcy. Mine is one if them.

These protests were about EVERYTHING that is wrong.
 
Well, I think he's kind of missing the boat here. The Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, but rampant government spending that we will have to pay for one day.

George W. Bush didn't get an approval rating below 30% for being a great president. The only reason the Democrats took Congress in 2007 and Obama took the presidency in 2009 was because the "George W. Bush" Republicans failed. When Obama started continuing the failed policies of the Bush Administration, enough was enough. There were many Democrats who participated in the Tea Parties and people like Newt Gingrich put a lot of the blame on GWB.


Yep--these liberals believe those that participated in the tea parties are concerned about taxes. We are--but not in the concept of their liberal minds.

First of all anyone who went through 3rd grade math knows that 5% of this nation, aka as the over 250K crowd is not capable of giving 95% a tax cut & pay for all this additional spending. Government does not have this money to spend--they have been borrowing it from China.

The current spending results in big government with a no limit credit card with future generations names on the bill. This is what these tea-parties are about. An out-of-control-incompetent federal government--that is spending OURS & FUTURE generations money like it is falling out of the sky.

DID YOU KNOW: A 20 year old college student looking to enter the work force in 2 years will be paying $114,000.00 each & every one of them during their working lifetimes--just to cover the INTEREST on this 3.9 TRILLION dollar budget that just passed the house. Therefore, they are in debt up to their eyeballs before they even get their first job.

For a person heading into their 40's--they will be paying $138,000.00 dollars, each & every one of them just to cover the INTEREST on this 3.9 TRILLION dollar budget.

So carry on with your Obama rallies! Just remember you will be paying this bill too. Maybe not this year or next but that tax train is moving & it's going to run right over you! Furthermore YOU deserve it. You voted for it, you got it. Everything Obama promised you, you're getting. :clap2:

"The problem with socialism is that eventually government runs out of other peoples money to spend." Margaret Thatcher

Good for you Oreo!

I'm really glad that our conservative friends are finally concerned about the deficits!

I wish folks like you were around in 2001 when Bush and the Republicans took a surplus budget, and slashed revenues hundreds of billions of dollars and went from a surplus to record deficits.

Sadly, most conservatives weren't like you and sat silent while $11 trillion in debt was accumulated by the Republcians.

But you are different and folks like you can help change. Support repealing the Bush tax cuts. That will lower the deficit by around $250 billion a year.
 
Make no mistake either, the tea parties were not merely about federal taxation. Some individual states are being treated so badly right now by their governments, that they're literally near bankruptcy. Mine is one if them.

These protests were about EVERYTHING that is wrong.

Down here in Florida the problem is that the Republican government has cut taxes for years, including intangible taxes and property taxes.

It did help the rich get richer. But now the state is facing huge budget deficits and what the Repubicans doing? Slashing school budgets of course.
 
Since inflation is a tax caused by excessive government spending, tabulate CPIs since 1958 and add that to determine rate.

Inflation is not a tax, though it is a problem.

However, wages after inflation have been growing for most people since then, so it is not relevant to this discussion.
 
The title of this thread cracks me up.. "The Tea Parties were politically motivated" . My friends apparently we have a Prophet in the house, we should all just sit down and listen to the wisdom...:cuckoo:

Is there a such thing as a protest that is NOT politically motivated?:lol:

Is there something inherently wrong with being "Politically Motivated":eek:

I would venture to say that anyone posting on this board is "Politically motivated":eusa_eh:

Just my two cents..
BTW I went to the Tea party in SF, quite a diverse group, I never received a check from FOX News to pay for my parking.... I heard there was "Sponsership":cuckoo:

BTW, the reason I went to the tea party was not that my current taxes are too high (They are). Or that taxes for me are going up this year (they are) but because our unfunded obligations total $53 Trillion, and taxes will have to go up to pay for them ($384,000 per taxpayer), and we cannot make any more promises like Obama is doing. We are out of money. Debt is the problem, not the solution.
 
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why is it that so many of you see cutting taxes as a root cause of the current situation, but you never cite rampant wasteful government spending as equally if not more responsible for our lot today?

And why is it that only income taxes seem to count. What about sales taxes, gas taxes, hotel taxes, meal taxes, alcohol and cigarette taxes, taxes on utility bills etc etc etc etc

the only answer is to cut government spending. do that and taxes will be lower and you will be able to make the choices of what to be able to do with your own money.
 
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Those of you concerned with what's happening are spot on right.

Those of you who think what's happening is SOCIALISM are somewhat confused.

What's happening is CRIME operating as government and banking, folks.

If you want to call it anything call it what it is ORGANIZED CRIME
 
Those of you concerned with what's happening are spot on right.

Those of you who think what's happening is SOCIALISM are somewhat confused.

What's happening is CRIME operating as government and banking, folks.

If you want to call it anything call it what it is ORGANIZED CRIME

Redistribution of income. Compulsory confiscation of wealth. Government ownership of financial institutions. Targeted groups by government. All legal. Reminds me of something. Seems like you think it's ok, considering the posts you've been making.
 

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