The Top Takes Off
Take The Top Off
Posted on 05/07/2006 4:28:30 AM PDT by edpc
THE QUEST for ways to reduce inequality begins with taxation. Unlike spending programs, redistribution through taxation is administratively simple; besides, putting money directly into people's pockets allows them to spend it on whatever they need most. But the tax tool has been wielded badly. Rather than using it to offset rising inequality, politicians have contrived to do the opposite.
The Bush administration refuses to acknowledge this extraordinary fact. It argues that the tax system has grown more progressive because the rich provide a larger share of government revenue than in the past. But this isn't because tax rates for the rich are higher; it's because the pretax earnings of the rich have taken off. While the income of the families in the middle fifth of society has grown 12 percent since 1980, the income of the top tenth has grown 67 percent, and the income of the top 1 percent has more than doubled. In short, the rich have grown a whole lot richer: That's why they pay a larger share of total tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Since the rich make greatest use of loopholes, closing them is good for equality and good for efficiency.
Right. Are we supposed to believe the executives at the WaPo refuse to use personal and corporate loopholes for taxation? What hypocrisy!
....increase taxes on the top 1 percent by 5 percentage points....sharing that revenue among the bottom three-fifths of households would give each family $970 a year.
Write the executive staff at The Washington Post. Ask them when you can expect a $970 check from them.
Meanwhile, closing loopholes does reduce the time Americans devote to gaming the tax code, freeing their energy for more productive things.
This statement is beyond ridiculous. Even if I did spend all of my time (which I don't) looking for tax loopholes.....IT'S MY TIME!!! I can do whatever I wish with it. If society's do-nothings spent more time doing something productive, we would not have to even consider the idea of what the WaPo calls inequality.
Those damn rich! It's all their fault!! /s
What kind of idiot Commie bull$h!t is this? Who says we NEED to, or even want to, reduce inequality? I sure as hell never read in our Constitution (at least the non-living one) where it said that there was any need, or right, to "reduce inequality". This sort of thinking always makes me want to ask the writer, "What sort of emotional pathology makes you hate the rich so much? Are you bigoted against people with money?
And of course, we mean economic inequality, right? I sort of think it's unfair that Angelina does Brad more than she does me. That ought to be spreadh around, too. After all, it's unfair that a lot of people are better looking than me.
The problem is that the "rich" are composed of our country's INVESTORS and EMPLOYERS. Punish them through tax policy and the "poor" get hurt too.
The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes (The top 1% pay more than a third: 34.27%)
All we could ever do is make everyone equally poor and miserable. The hypocrites at the top of this rag would never stoop to join the "common folk."
I hate the way they call taxing highly productive people at higher rates "progressive". It's absolutely poison to any progress historically. Since pro is the opposite of con I suggest that any future reference to tax levied in such a way be called "congressive" taxation. Or even better yet "aggressive" taxation.
john kenneth galbreath is still alive and well and is dwelling in all the liberal minds he has permanently infested with his brand of economic socialism.
The WaPo's new pastime, driving newspaper sales even lower? Screw em.
The Top Takes Off
Take The Top Off
Man. My eyes are bleeding. Who is that hideous, pitiful creature? She looks like a Helen Thomas clone. (I REFUSE to put a sarcasm tag after this post).
Inequality is not only bad in itself; it also will intensify pressure for bad policies that threaten growth more acutely than higher taxes would.
This sentence encapsulates the inherent conflict in liberal thinking. You can't have equality of results and growth too, at least not in this world. The producers of growth will quit if their rewards are eliminated.
It is also an example of liberal linguistics concerning their meaning of equality, just as is affirmative action in relation to fairness. They confuse the meaning of fair with the meaning of just, probably purposefully. Justice is what we deserve, fairness is what we decide to do with what we deserve.
Justice is the responsibility of the government, fairness is not. Fairness is the province of moral values, values which the left distorts and corrupts and then tries to impose on the rest of us. Moral values usually come from religion, something the left wants to eliminate. Liberalism/socialism/communism are all based on confusion and are inherently philosophically conflicted.
Let me get this straight....
Demonrats say the govt needs more revenue, raise taxes.
Pubbies cut taxes, revenue rises.
Somehow, acording to WaPo this is bad.
Liberals basically set up a system extracting trillions of dollars from taxpayers to support their screwball social schemes, and then whine when it turns out that their stupid schemes/scams are constantly "underfunded". It's never enough for libs.
The key phrase here is common sense of which you have a large amount and of which the editors at the WaPo have nearly none.
This is also the reason that jobs are being outsourced, labor is cited as the culprit but the crap you have to go through to start and run a business is staggering.
If the US had a few smokestack industries those young persons who graduated from our educational system would have a much better economic future.
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