Obama's plan is to redistribute the wealth.

[AllieBaba]

Hey, but he's no socialist.

Breitbart.tv Obama Tells Tax-Burdened Plumber the Plan is to ‘Spread the Wealth Around’

 

[Epsilon Delta]

Hey, a little redistribution never hurt anybody.

Just take a look at this: What could $700 billion do for the rest of us? | SocialistWorker.org

That's hilarious.

 

[midcan5]

What is a socialist? When words are only sticks you know there is no mind included.


"This is the Bush-McCain economy. Senator McCain may have forgotten, but President Bush already tried his economic policies and the results are not good. We have just been through a business cycle in which the wage of the typical worker and the typical working family fell. This is the first time that has ever happened."

The Whiner's Recession | CommonDreams.org
The Conservative Nanny State
CEPR - America Since 1980: A Right Turn Leading to a Dead End
>

 

[rayboyusmc]

Bull crap and more of the same.

 

[editec]

Oh no!

The socialist are coming! The socialists are coming!

Quick everybody!

Go shopping!

 

[jreeves]

When Barack Obama responded to the Ohio plumber who didn't want his taxes raised that Obama wanted to "spread the wealth around," I wanted to tell him to spread his own wealth around. It was in any event a rare moment of candor on the part of Senator Obama.

Obama all but told the plumber that his wealth should be seized in the name of equity. The encounter played out one of the old themes of democratic politics: the appeal to the many to take from the few. It's traditionally an easy sell in democratic regimes.

Despite Obama's implication to the contrary, however, It doesn't represent much in the way of change. According to the most recent (2006) data released by the IRS, the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent paid 60 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent paid virtually no income taxes (3 percent of all income taxes paid).
The personal income tax, the federal government's main source of revenue, is collected overwhelmingly from a relative handful of Americans. The large majority of all Americans pay little or no income tax.

Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warns Aristotle.

The founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle's worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." James Madison and others therefore made it a "first object of government" to protect personal property from unjust confiscation. Numerous provisions were included in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect the property rights of citizens.

Given that one of the causes of the American Revolution was a tax, the founders understood very well that taxation could become a way for one group to prey on another. So while the Constitution empowered the federal government to levy taxes, it limited this power mostly to indirect taxes like tariffs, duties, and excise taxes. For much of American history the federal government subsisted solely on those fees.

The Constitution did grant the federal government the power to levy "direct" taxes on a "per head" basis, but required that all money raised this way must be given to the states according to their population. The aim here was to preserve a decentralized federal system of rule, and to make it "difficult to place a direct tax on capital, the most destructive tax in terms of economic growth and economic initiative," according to Professor Edward Erler.

Until the Civil War, the idea of a tax on individual incomes would have seemed preposterous to most Americans. Only as an emergency wartime measure did Congress adopt an income tax in the 1860s, and the measure was allowed to lapse with little fanfare in 1872. Estimates vary regarding the percentage of citizens affected by the income tax of this era, but none places it at more than 10 percent.

The modern income tax begins with the Progressive era in American politics. In an influential 1889 article entitled "The Owners of the United States," crusading attorney Thomas Shearman argued that the lion's share of the country's wealth was in a limited number of hands. If an income tax was not adopted, he warned, within 30 years "the United States of America will be substantially owned" by 50,000 people.

This marked the beginning of a never-ending campaign. Many activists since have characterized America as a permanent plutocracy. And their prescription has generally been more and higher taxes.

Shearman's advocacy of an income tax found a receptive audience in populist politician William Jennings Bryan. Exploiting the dire economic circumstances created by the depression of 1893, Bryan avidly promoted the adoption of an income tax. His proposal succeeded when Congress passed a 2 percent flat tax on incomes over $4,000 in 1894. The following year, however, the Supreme Court held the tax to be unconstitutional.

In response, Progressives condemned the Constitution as an instrument crafted by the rich to protect their selfish interests (Allen Smith), and a document rendered obsolete by intellectual progress in the century since its drafting (Woodrow Wilson).

The Progessive condemnation of the Constitution climaxed in 1913 with the publication of An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution by Columbia history professor Charles Beard. Beard purported to expose the Constitution as the handiwork of a propertied elite serving its own interests to the exclusion of the majority.

Few works of American history have been more erroneous than Beard's, as later shown by debunking historians like Robert Brown and Forrest McDonald. But by the time scholarship caught up with Beard's book, a lot of damage had been done. Frenzied attacks on "the rich" and "the wealthy" culminated in the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, authorizing federal taxation of income from all sources without limit.

So why hasn't the majority in America helped itself to more of the minority's wealth, as Aristotle and our founders feared? Partly because the protections for individual property erected by the founders have worked. Partly, too, because many Americans' political convictions are (thankfully) based on principle rather than immediate economic self-interest. And partly because the fraction of Americans who think of themselves as rich, or likely to become rich in the future, is quite large, undercutting the incentive for bashing the rich.

Obama's appeal for higher taxes to "spread the wealth around" nevertheless harks back to an old theme in political philosophy and American politics. You can believe in it, but it's not exactly change, and it is more to be worried about than hoped for.
Power Line - Spread your own wealth around
Obama's tax plan is the largest expansion of Welfare since the beginning of the War on Poverty.

 

[editec]

Why is the economy in trouble?

 

[jillian]

Why is the economy in trouble?

That's easy... because it's the logical extension of everything the right said they've said they wanted since Reagan.

Trickle down? RAFLMAO!

 

[PeterS]

Why is the economy in trouble?

Because of the lack of government regulation and oversite.

 

[PeterS]

Despite Obama's implication to the contrary, however, It doesn't represent much in the way of change. According to the most recent (2006) data released by the IRS, the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes; the top 5 percent paid 60 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent paid virtually no income taxes (3 percent of all income taxes paid).

.............

So why hasn't the majority in America helped itself to more of the minority's wealth, as Aristotle and our founders feared? Partly because the protections for individual property erected by the founders have worked. Partly, too, because many Americans' political convictions are (thankfully) based on principle rather than immediate economic self-interest. And partly because the fraction of Americans who think of themselves as rich, or likely to become rich in the future, is quite large, undercutting the incentive for bashing the rich.

So the poorest pay only 3% of personal taxes and you think the latter true? That's funny....

 

[jreeves]

So the poorest pay only 3% of personal taxes and you think the latter true? That's funny....

The article doesn't say the poorest, it says the bottom 50% of wage earners. Furthermore, the poorest receive tax refunds from the government in the form of tax credits which is a type of welfare.

 

[jreeves]

Why is the economy in trouble?

You really think something as complex as the American economy can be explained in a simple post?

 

[PeterS]

The article doesn't say the poorest, it says the bottom 50% of wage earners. Furthermore, the poorest receive tax refunds from the government in the form of tax credits which is a type of welfare.

So if you are in the bottom 50% of wage earners you aren't the poorest? Explain. Also the CTC means tests at 110K. That's not exactly poor is it?

 

[DavidS]

Why is the economy in trouble?

Because when left to their own devices, rich people will screw this economy up moreso than middle and lower class people.

 

[Red Dawn]

"powerlineblogspot.com"


ROTFLAMO!

 

[jreeves]

So if you are in the bottom 50% of wage earners you aren't the poorest? Explain. Also the CTC means tests at 110K. That's not exactly poor is it?

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) sometimes called the Earned Income Credit (EIC), is a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals and families.
It?s easier than ever to find out if you qualify for EITC

 

[jreeves]

"powerlineblogspot.com"


ROTFLAMO!

It's an opinion piece using facts, due you dispute any of the facts in the article due to their obvious bias....?

 

[PeterS]

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) sometimes called the Earned Income Credit (EIC), is a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals and families.
It?s easier than ever to find out if you qualify for EITC

CTC is also a means tested refund. What is your point?

 

[Chris]

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) sometimes called the Earned Income Credit (EIC), is a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals and families.
It?s easier than ever to find out if you qualify for EITC

You really are an evil fuck.

Poor working mothers get an income tax credit, and the rich real estate guy is against it.

Fuck you.

 

[Turboswede]

Yes, this is the familiar argument against a graduated income tax and is yelled from the mountain tops by almost every high net worth individual (but not super HNWs, they are smarter than that). The reason the top 1% income individuals pay 40% of the income tax is because that is (proportionately) how much they benefit from government spending.

You may be thinking “What… that doesn’t make any sense, rich folks don’t collect welfare, they don’t use food stamps, so what gives!?!!

Say you have HNW guy, let’s call him Sam and Sam as an annual income of around $1,500,000 (that’s about the median for the top 1%). Sam does not have a job (per se) but in a typical month receives the following:
$25,000 Stock dividend income
$40,000 income thrown off by family trusts
$26,000 in interest income
$6,000 in partnership income
$2,000 in income as a contractor (Board Member)

According to 2006 figures (I know out of date, but they are on my desk) his income would be subject to a marginal rate of tax of about 23%.

Sam has monthly living expenses of, say $24,000 per month so he is being taxed at a 23% rate on his gross income of $99,000 so after tax his net monthly saving would be about $52,230 or about 52% of his gross taxable income.

Now look at what Sam’s taxes pay for.

$608 billion Social Security-
If the private sector covered these costs rather than the US government, Sam would have a smaller income from investment earnings.

$386 billion Medicare-
If the Federal Government didn’t cover these costs, Sam’s business (Sam mart?) my need to provide retiree health insurance, and that cuts down on Sam’s investment income.

$209 billion Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program
If the Federal government didn’t provide this, the workers generating dividend and interest income for Sam may want to be insured by their employer and could for a union (Sam doesn’t like unions), that would cut down Sam’s investment income.

$324 billion Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
Without Unemployment benefits people who are without work wouldn’t be able to buy stuff and the sale of stuff is what pays Sam’s investment income. Without Unemployed people buying stuff Sam makes less money

$261 billion (+9.2%) - Interest on National Debt
Sam needs a stable economy with stable interest rates, without economic stability, Sam looses income.

$481.4 billion United States Department of Defense
Without a strong defense people could come and take Sam’s stuff away, besides he has Boeing Bonds and FMC stock so the more the Defense Spends, the more money Sam makes.

$145.2 billion - Global War on Terror
See DOD above.

$69.3 billion - Health and Human Services
As plagues and the rampant spread of communicable disease would negatively affect worker productivity, DHHS decreases absenteeism and that increases dividends.

$56.0 billion (+0.0%) - United States Department of Education
The businesses that pay Sam’s dividends need managers, accountants, engineers, etc. If subsidized student loan programs and grants were eliminated businesses would need to pay professional workers more, thus profits go down, as does Sam’s monthly dividend.

$39.4 billion - United States Department of Veterans Affairs
See DOD above

$35.2 billion - US Department of Housing and Urban Development
Sam has been trying to get rid of this one for years because he doesn’t realize any benefit from its existence.

$35.0 billion (+22.0%) - State and Other International Programs
Sam likes to be able to go to other countries and not be shot at. Sam also receives payments from companies that do business overseas in foreign markets.

$34.3 billion - Department of Homeland Security
Hold up, this is a whole separate line item from the DOD and Global War on Terror? Anyway, see DOD above.

$24.3 billion - Energy
Part of Sam’s dividend income comes from an oil trust

$20.2 billion - Department of Justice
Kind of like DOD but now its US citizens that want to take Sam’s stuff

$20.2 billion - Department of Agriculture
Sam has shares of ADM, supermarket to the world. ADM receives massive government subsidies.

$17.3 billion - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Sam thinks space stuff is cool. Oh, and did I mention he has shares of Boeing stock already?

$12.1 billion - Department of Transportation
Sam’s investment income comes from businesses that turn stuff into different stuff, all this stuff moving needs roads. How much would it cost private business to maintain the road network? That would really lower Sam’s ability to buy more Stuff

$12.1 billion- Department of Treasury
You need the treasury otherwise no one will pay for all these government programs.

$10.6 billion - United States Department of the Interior
Sam likes parks, and the stuff the DOI buys helps pay Sam’s dividends.

$10.6 billion - United States Department of Labor
Sam doesn’t like the DOL but knows that if it didn’t exist more workers may organize.

$51.8 billion (+9.7%) - Other On-budget Discretionary Spending
Don’t know, but if they buy stuff, Sam gets a cut.

$39.0 billion - Other Off-budget Discretionary Spending
See above.

So, as you can see the reason Sam’s income is what it is stems from all these different areas and all of them benefit his bottom line through the additional profits they provide business.

Oh, and we are not even talking about Sam’s CAPITAL income.