Posted on 08/23/2011 4:07:31 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
(Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.)
... It is not class warfare to suggest that the richest 1 percent of people in society pay one-third of their income to the federal government, as they did under Ronald Reagan. Keep in mind that dividends were taxable as ordinary income every year of his administration, and in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 he supported taxing capital gains as ordinary income as well.
Higher effective tax rates on the rich could even be achieved without raising the top tax rate bracket to 50 percent, as it was under President Reagan. There are many tax preferences that largely benefit the well-to-do that could be scaled back to avoid raising marginal rates.
The important thing is for people to accept that we can no longer afford such low effective tax rates on those with the greatest capacity to pay at a time when total revenue as a percentage of G.D.P. are at their lowest level in 60 years and we are facing a debt crisis. The issue is not whether the rich should pay more, but how best to accomplish it.
(Excerpt) Read more at economix.blogs.nytimes.com ...
It’s none of his business how much someone makes. For those guilty rich leftists who suffer from affluenza, let me remind you: There’s no limit how much money you pay in taxes to the gobmint. Eliminate all your deductions, file a 1040 EZ, and let Obama take care of it. Otherwise, you’re a hypocrite.
Better yet, the government can make do with less. Much less. A couple trillion per year less. Obama has blown the roof off the budget with his big spending.
The government has proven itself to be the least trustworthy and responsible steward of other people’s money.
Not one more dime.
S we take even more money out of the productive economy and divert it to the wasteful destructive government. No thanks. Frankly not interested in what Reagan did or thought. He was no god.
“... It is not class warfare to suggest that the richest 1 percent of people in society pay one-third of their income to the federal government, as they did under Ronald Reagan. ...The important thing is for people to accept that we can no longer afford such low effective tax rates on those with the greatest capacity to pay at a time when total revenue as a percentage of G.D.P. are at their lowest level in 60 years and we are facing a debt crisis. The issue is not whether the rich should pay more, but how best to accomplish it.”
WOW! Truly frightening! This is supposed to be an expert! Taxing the top one percent at 33% will make NO DIFFERENCE! It’s the spending stupid!
The Libs keep screaming about the capital gains tax. I’m almost tempted to take them up on their ploy. If they agree to cut spending in real terms this year by 15%, I’d agree to an increase of the capital gains tax to ordinary rates for any asset held less than, say, 3 years.
And the Slimes can afford to give its paper away to everyone because its message is sooooo important.
I agree. the super rich bloviating about raising their taxes rarely touch that 15% cap gains rate where they make their billions.
Anyone who believes a bill that comes out raising the tax’s on the richest Americans isn’t going to bust open he Middle class is a damned fool.
I happen to live in Maryland and here ,the idiot we have for Governor has already promised us higher tax’s this year., We got higher tax;s under him last year and the County also raised tax’s.
The people who are swearing that we can stand higher tax’s are forgetting that we are already getting higher State and county tax’s and they want to increase federal tax’s
We get our sales tax raised by the state our real estate tax,s raised by the county, our gasoline tax’s raised and our use tax’s such as car registration raised, our electricity goes up ,our food goes up, our insurance rates go up, we are getting ready to get jammed by Obama care and these dipsticks think we can afford to have our tax’s raised more. They are planning on the death panels for older Americans ,rationing health care, prescriptions are in the range of $10.00 per pill for some medications.
It’s rapidly getting to the point where they are squeezing blood out of the turnip and that is not going to work.
Pulling capital out of a struggling economy will damage it further. The rich don't keep their money in their mattresses or in holes in their backyards. It has been reinvested and relent.
Taking capital from the rich will mean taking it out of its end use, where ever and what ever that is. It will mean less money to lend, money taken out of companies, out of payrolls, out of things purchased, out of things built and being built.
And then once taken out of the economy, it will be redistributed (after the government takes and wastes a big chunk of it) to parts of society which are not productive and are in fact themselves wasteful).
And if the goal is to payoff government debt (which I doubt it is), the time to pay off debt is not when a family or country is struggling to put food on the table.
The problem today (if we call the government's fiscal mess a revenue problem) is not that tax rates for "the rich" are too low. It's that the government derives no revenue whatsoever from an increasing portion of the population. If Bartlett really wants to compare today to the 1980s, he should look at how personal exemptions, the earned-income credit, and other factors (including the real level of unemployment in this country) have removed massive numbers of people from the Federal tax rolls.
The rich can surely afford to pay more taxes. The government can’t really afford the diminution of revenue that would result as the rich shelter more of their income and invest less of it in the USA.
the rich are tired of fueling a gigantic ponzi scheme
The new Generation is not very smart business wise.
Not very smart when is comes to investments
$95 million listing for the 263-acre, former Sulzberger estate on the New York-Connecticut border
Coverage of the listing has been all over the news in the last few days, including in a piece on CNBC this morning. Known as Hillandale, the estate is owned by travel company owner Gilbert Haroche and his wife Charlene, who purchased it in 1992 for $6.7 million.
Dummies
How about a fricken pay freeze for a few years (dare I suggest a pay cut like the rest of us had to take in the private sector). I help pay the government workers salaries. I get pay cuts and no raises/bonus. The government workers get yearly pay raises and some get bonuses? What an assinine system. They can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned, included Maxine...
There is a provision whereby the rich can give the government their money freely.
They don’t use it now.
So for all the breast beating and bleating from the millionaires on the NYT and in the government run news media not one of them will voluntarily give it up.
Do away with all those loopholes, foundations, and offshore accounts. Do away with all those special regulations and trusts and deductions to shield the millions and see them scream.
So, does Katy Couric or Brian Williams give his fair share? What about the celebrities? What about Soros and Buffett? What about calling hypocrites for what they are?
The Rich Can Afford to Pay More Taxes. They certainly can, but since they are the only ones who can start economy going, finance factories; and a gazillion other things poor people cannot. Then let them begin to get America back to work! Oh and this is something these Obozo idiots have not been able to do in three long years.
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