http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/07/taxing-rich.html

The middle fifth, with income of $56,200, pays 13.9 percent. And the top fifth, with income of $207,200, pays 25.1 percent.

At the very top of the income distribution, the C.B.O. reports even higher tax rates. The richest 1 percent has average income of $1,259,700 and forks over 31.1 percent of its income to the federal government.

What matters is the rate, not the total paid. And they include corporate paid dividend taxes as paid by the person without including payroll taxes etc for poorer people.

> as paid by the person without including PAYROLL TAXES

"When the C.B.O. studies the tax burden, it includes all federal taxes, including individual income taxes, PAYROLL TAXES and corporate income taxes."

> What matters is the rate, not the total paid.

pays 13.9 percent....pays 25.1 percent....forks over 31.1 percent.

Those are all rates.  There is no mention of total paid in the article.

Without reading it I can tell the study is bullshit.

13.9%? How do they pay their 15% SSI out of that?

Does this account for sales tax? state tax? local tax?

My tax burden is around 50% of income and I get off pretty well compared to others I know.

> Without reading it I can tell the study is bullshit.

Since it's not a study you've certainly lived up to your usual everything is bullshit reply.

His source is this NYT propaganda piece:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html

"Since it's not a study you've certainly lived up to your usual everything is bullshit reply."

>  the C.B.O. STUDIES the tax burden


SoP -- three sentences and three mistakes in this thread!

"your usual"

A person doesn't need to read the analysis to know that 2+2=1 is not a true statement.

Is SS deduction a tax?

OK, download the pdf from the CBO.

Their data is heavily tweaked.

SSI is credited as a tax paid to the EMPLOYER, not the employee.

Medicaire, Medicaid, school lunch, subsidized energy, food stamps, subsidized housing, emergency room medical costs, etc are all counted as untaxed income for the poor.

Of course it is a tax and it's included in the CBO study under the term payroll tax.

Social Security tax is 7.65% to the individual which explains how people making 50K a year can end up with a 13.9% effective tax rate. 

PE is an idiot.

As is SoP.

As are you.

This place is shit.

> emergency room medical costs

Liar.

Rick, FICA is indeed a tax, and it has been decided so by the Supreme Court. FICA goes into the general fund and is spend from there as part of the total budget. There is no personal account, and if you die before retirement age, there is no account waiting for your offspring to inherit. It's a special tax in that the poor pay a higher rate than the rich since above. For 2004, the year of that data, any income made above $87,900 is not subject to FICA and is thus a massive tax break for the rich.

Someone making $170,000 pays a FICA tax rate 1/2 that of a homeless beggar. Someone making $340,000 pays 1/4 the rate of a homeless beggar. Someone making $700,000 pays 1/8 the rate.

Go way!

"Liar"

No, but you are an ignorant person who did not read the source documents which lay this all out:

"Comprehensive household income equals pretax cash income plus income from other sources. Pretax cash income is
the sum of wages, salaries, self-employment income, rents, taxable and nontaxable interest, dividends, realized capital gains, cash transfer payments, and retirement benefits plus taxes paid by businesses (corporate income taxes and the employer's share of Social Security, Medicare, and federal unemployment insurance payroll taxes) and employee contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Other sources of income include all in-kind benefits (Medicare, Medicaid, employer-paid health insurance premiums, food stamps, school lunches and breakfasts, housing assistance, and energy assistance). Households with negative income are excluded from the lowest income category but are included in the totals. "

Doesn't say anything about emergency room costs there.

The real article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15view.html?ex=1342152000&en=26407d2d93c122b8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

"According to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, for the richest Americans — those in the top 0.01 percent of the distribution — the percentage of income derived from capital fell to 25 percent in 2004 from 70 percent in 1929."

So, where does the 75 percent come from?

what 75% are you talking about?

"the percentage of income derived from capital fell to 25 percent in 2004"

75% refers to the percentage of income not derived from capital.

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/

Hm. Another afternoon of reading!

(Nothing to do since it's rainy outside.)

It comes from working. Salary.  Jesus Rick you are almost to dumb to be real.

I don't believe it :)

Anyway. Go way. Don't disturb me reading.

hi j, wotz ^. M dumpd u? ruok. xo. ftf. ru redE 2 pRT? LOL. IM. How :-) iz d bf-less vestal's lot! d wrld 4gtting, by d wrld 4gt.

> I don't believe it :)

OK.  so you have some mass media gut informed sense of this and the research of the CBO shows differently.  You're too stupid to deal with.  You win.

This whole discussion makes me yearn for a flat-tax system.  In Hong Kong it takes about 10 minutes to do taxes.

Sigh. You didn't even read the whole thing before you respond. Good job.

Btw, that statistic is from the report by the U.C. Berkely economist Prof. SAEZ, not CBO.

Ok. fine some professor at berkley or the cbo either one I believe more than you.

>This whole discussion makes me yearn for a flat-tax system.
>In Hong Kong it takes about 10 minutes to do taxes.

Took me 10 minutes to do it. It would have taken a big fat 0 minutes to do it, had I not lived outside of the country for 4 months.

And the UK does not have flat tax. We just have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAYE

Be careful though. The professor from UC Berkely believes that the top 1% income earners share 16% of total income in 2000s relatively to 8% in 1980s.

Canada has source deductions, but that doesn't reduce the time spent doing taxes.  You still have to plug your own numbers into a form, add info on any deductions e.g. charitable donations, etc. etc.

Deductibility of charitable contributions works the other way in the UK too. You sign something and the government adds a percentage of what you gave to the charitable donation.

In Holland, they seem to be even more conscious about bureaucratic excess. I actually got about 40 euros a month extra which was for "expenses". If that month my expenses were under 40 euros I didn't submit anything. If that month my expenses were above 40 euros I submitted receipts and got reimbursed.

The real paper :)

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf

The most important figures are from table 1 on page 5 and figure 5 on page 16.

The top 0.1% of income earners include 130,000 "tax units" with minimum income of 794,000!

And for them about %45 to %58 of their income are from salary, and the rest from business income and capital gains.

Anyway, the rich gets richer!

the US, by way of tax income, guarantees the wealthy's savings to a quarter million dollars

the US, by way of tax income, maintains a military and foreign policy that exerts muscle to overlook and safeguard the wealthy's foreign investments

the US, by way of tax income, does more in the name of the very small number of wealthy than they do for the large number of poor.

Rich people benefit more from our system of government, so rich people should pay a higher percentage. It is only fair.

Yes, and that is exactly a big part of the fudged numbers by the CBO. They take into account several government programs for the poor, such as school lunch programs and food stamps as 'income', but the government programs that are for the benefit of the extremely wealthy, like the war in iraq that is being waged solely for the benefit of oil companies and their investors, none of this is credited as income to the rich in the same 'summary'.

> government programs that are for the benefit of the extremely wealthy, like the war in iraq

Hey, does that mean I can use Schedule D to write off the Iraqi war as one big fat capital loss?

Cuz, I aint' no seeing no oil coming out of Iraq. I guess if Iraq was a stable democracy selling oil to the West, lefties would be making exactly the same claim.

>like the war in iraq that is being waged solely for the
>benefit of oil companies and their investors, none of this
>is credited as income to the rich in the same 'summary'.

It was waged on behalf of the arms companies (and Halliburton-esque type companies). The oil companies *weren't* for the war since they knew it would destabilize the region.

"The oil companies *weren't* for the war since they knew it would destabilize the region."

Source?

I never understand why people ask for a source. I'm not going to educate you. I don't care about you.

I've seen it (or in this case heard it, it was from an insider in the oil industry). I know it's true.

You can know it's true as well by doing a little research of your own.

Or you can believe me uncritically (probably not a good idea).

Or just wallow in your ignorance.

I think asking for a source is a polite way of saying you're a fucking liar.  That the "oil companies" didn't and don't have a coherent view on middle eastern politics anymore than "milk companies" or "fashion industry insiders" do.  You're an idiot who just makes stuff up. Strings together words because they sound clever to you.  Then you get pissed off ("I don't care about you.") when called on it.

>I think asking for a source is a polite way of saying
>you're a fucking liar.

What's the point of being polite? It's the Internet. If you can't say what you think online, then you really have a confidence problem.

>That the "oil companies" didn't and don't have a coherent
>view on middle eastern politics anymore than "milk
>companies" or "fashion industry insiders" do.

Of course they do. The oil companies have a vested interest in the state of Iraq for really fucking obvious reasons. They jointly lobbied to be allowed to do business with Saddam.

I don't recall fashion industry insiders lobbying for the right to sell Gucci headscarves to Baghdad socialites.

Naturally, they didn't feel *that* strongly about it, since Bush was obviously going to hand over a bunch of juicy contracts, but really they'd rather have just done a deal with Saddam.

>You're an idiot who just makes stuff up. Strings together
>words because they sound clever to you.

Source???????

"What's the point of being polite? It's the Internet. If you can't say what you think online, then you really have a confidence problem."

Many people can combine saying what they think and being polite.  The fact that you can't is indicative both of your immaturity and your stupidity.

"Hey, does that mean I can use Schedule D to write off the Iraqi war as one big fat capital loss?"

Same answer to that as do you have to declare school lunches as income. You tell me. Are school lunches income?

Would you be willing to pay to have lunch brought to you for a year?

re: oil companies

You are coming to this with the wrong perspective. You assume that the only purpose of the war was to secure cheap oil.

Q: Does cheap plentiful oil benefit oil companies? Or does uncertainty in the middle east benefit oil companies? Which one, historically, has been more profitable? Are oil company profits and shareholder earnings higher or lower when there is a war in the middle east?

Questions:

1. how many days from when Saddam Hussein announced that oil would no longer be sold in US dollars was it before it was announced that Iraq had WMDs and war was necessary?

1. how many days from when Iran announced that oil would no longer be sold in US dollars was it before it was announced that Iraq had WMDs and war was necessary?

Questions:

1. How many days from when Saddam Hussein announced that oil would no longer be sold in US dollars was it before it was announced that Iraq had WMDs and war was necessary?

2. How many days from when Iran announced that oil would no longer be sold in US dollars was it before it was announced that Iran had WMDs and war was necessary?

ANSWERS (partial key):

1. In September 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN's Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq's oil export currency.

2. This is your homework question.

1. repost dildo

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm

It's a repost because it's been discussed elsewhere in the world?

Nevertheless, that's a pretty awesome link & I thank you for it since I did not realize there was anyone in Congress that shared my views on these subjects.

"http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm"

Wow.  Pretty much sums it up the way I understand it.

The dude is such a intellectual, but with common sense... it's kind of mind blowing to see that.

And willing to open his mouth and speak it.

He's certainly no economist. The gold standard? wtf.

I found that odd too.  But I agree with the idea that the government printing new money all the time is a tax.  They print money for free and my money becomes worth less through inflation.

What's wrong with the gold standard from a mainstream economic view point?  My GUESS: the federal reserve needs freedom to manipulate the money supply to dampen the extremes of the business cycle?

I can see how a true capitalist libertarian opposes that.