Posted on 08/22/2011 1:16:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
There are fewer millionaires in America today – can you hear the celebration at the Blue Heron farm on Martha’s Vineyard where the Obama family is spending someone’s millions?
Obama at Blue Heron Farm - 2009 Pullout quote:
For the past three decades, the political left has obsessed about income inequality. As the economy experienced one of the largest and lengthiest economic booms in history from 1982-2007, the left moaned that the gains went to yacht club members.
Well, if equality of income is the priority, liberals should be thrilled with the last four years.
Wall Street Journal (great article – read it all here):
In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39%. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42%.
Those with $10 million or more in reported income fell to 8,274 from 18,394 in 2007, a 55% drop. As a result, their tax payments tanked by 51%. These disappearing millionaires go a long way toward explaining why federal tax revenues have sunk to 15% of GDP in recent years. The loss of millionaires accounts for at least $130 billion of the higher federal budget deficit in 2009…
The millionaires who are left still pay a mountain of tax. Those who make $1 million accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims don’t pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax.
What does it take to make believers of tax and spenders? We raise tax brackets on those who produce and hire and, it’s simple, they will hire less, and what they produce will cost more, which affects the sale of what they produce. Here’s a example:
Tax Policy Blog:
In 2008, Maryland added four new income tax brackets, including a top rate of 6.25% on income over $1 million. (This is in addition to county income taxes, which average 2.98%.)
As we and others have noted before, the Comptroller of Maryland has reported that the number of “millionaire” returns tumbled sharply between 2007 and 2008, a 30% drop in filers and 22% drop in declared income. Rather than income taxes from this group rising by $106 million, they fell by $257 million.
The recession is certainly a contributor: everyone is earning less. But the Comptroller did an interesting additional analysis: how many people filed as millionaires before the tax increase, then did not file at all the following year? The Wall Street Journal explains the findings:
One-in-eight millionaires who filed a Maryland tax return in 2007 filed no return in 2008. Some died, but the others presumably changed their state of residence. (Hint to the class warfare crowd: A lot of rich people have two homes.)…
Thanks in part to its soak-the-rich theology, Maryland still has a $2 billion deficit and Montgomery County is $760 million in the red.
In the meantime, the personal wealth of Congress grows significantly.
We’ve outsourced them to China and other places...
I have a few questions/observations and maybe some Freepers can answer them for me.
The left keeps going on about “the income gap”... but from what I can tell, the poor aren’t getting poorer.
Now... if the wealthy have investments and the stock market does reasonably well... doesn’t it stand to reason that the rich will get richer?
How many millionaires do hellholes like Cuba and North Korea have?
Is the stock Market doing reasonably well?
That’s your answer.
To be factual about the matter - income inequality is skyrocketing. Mere millionaires don’t make the cut; a million dollars is not what it used to be, anyway.
We’re at levels never seen before in the history of the US, levels more appropriate to places like Brazil. The reason for this is that the way to get rich in the modern economy is not to be productive, or inventive; but rather to aggressively ship production to the country with the lowest cost labor (and slave labor is fine), or alternatively to run some big money scam in the markets, or to be some influential politician’s best buddy and crony. So while the average Joe’s income went down due to unemployment pressures, the C-level economic asset strippers boosted their take by creating more unemployment (and one of the worst of all of them, Jeff Immelt, got appointed as a chief pResidential economic advisor).
What we’re seeing wrt income inequality is the result of the deliberate strip-mining of the economy as a whole. This is why China is now the world’s #1 manufacturer - US factories got stripped down to the last nuts bolts and shipped wholesale to Asia.
Bottom line: free trade ain’t so free when the other side is a big time mercantilist.
No one is getting richer now except those who invested totally in gold. If those who bought gold for many, many years waited till now,they would be wealthy. Unfortunately it took a long time to come to this juncture, the lucky ones bought gold now and made money. Most people invested in the market and are paying the price. When we have a new president the market will get better and everyone who hung in there will be wealthier.
The socialistic left view the American Economy as a FIXED PIE with a FIXED SIZE and that’s the problem right there. If you view the economy as a fixed pie, then anyone or any group of people who takes a large portion of the pie will make you think that the rest will have to subsist on nibbling at the edges of the pie.
It never occured to them that WE CAN GROW THE PIE, such that when the pie gets BIGGER, even if the wealthy gets a large portion of the pie, the less wealthy and even the poor can still enjoy a BIGGER share — more than enough or even enough to satisfy their needs.
That is why you never see the left advocating policies to GRWO THE PIE. it is always redistributing a FIXED PIE for them. The end result is of course -— CONFISCATING the share of the pie owned by those who get a large chunk. RESULT -— LESS MILLIONAIRES and a SMALLER PIE.
Now... if the wealthy have investments and the stock market does reasonably well... doesn’t it stand to reason that the rich will get richer?
In a free society with a rational and moral culture, and a just government, when the rich get richer,it benefits everyone generally, because while the rich are getting richer, they produce more and increase supply while lowering average prices, and also, are able to hire more, or increase average wages more. So, even if there is an income gap, average prosperity and average standard of living is increasing for everyone.
Ask a liberal what periods in history they think were the best, as far as income distribution between rich and poor.
(This question alone will disable 90% of liberals, although 10% will rally with either something completely absurd, or they'll simply shrug and say, 'Never'.)
While they flail for an answer, point out that the poorest standards of living are always found where the gap between riches and poorest is the smallest. The best standards of living are where the gap between richest and poorest is the widest.
Wealthy empires of old like Greece, China, or Persia had far more poor people than rich ones, but they also had roads, scientific advancement, commerce and laws. The Mongols may have had less dispersion in wealth than the Romans, but under whose flag would you rather have lived?
This will already exceed the historical knowledge of most liberals, and I generally find most of them tap out at this point and ask to come back to the present.
Once you're back to modern day, you can point out that a third world dictator might have a few billion in the bank and his people live in shacks. That's all well and good, because it's easy to envision. Now let them envision this: America has not one, but a legion of people with tinhorn dictator money, and hordes more with somewhat less. The poor people here are overweight, have cars, iPhones, PS3s and new clothes. As a historical model, you'll never find a place with more wealth, or better off poor people, than America. Historically, we know there's only two things that will happen to our relative wealth levels.
1. Make the rich less rich, and the poor less well off.
2. Make the rich richer, and make the poor better off.
Don’t answer a fool in his folly...
Their beef really isn’t about an income gap, their beef is that the “wrong people” have the wealth.
They, demonstrably, would be fine with an elite few controlling all the wealth, as long as those elite few had the “right” worldview.
“While they flail for an answer, point out that the poorest standards of living are always found where the gap between riches and poorest is the smallest. The best standards of living are where the gap between richest and poorest is the widest.”
Thank you all for responding.
I also think... if they are screaming about this gap - (and you bring up a wonderful point about the USA having the fattest poor people in the world)...
Why do they think that this GAP is a bad thing. If you are advocating for no gap at all didn’t you pretty much just out yourself as a communist looking for this “communal wealth” to be distributed simply because some have more and some have less?
I always ask first - “do you consider yourself a socialist?”
Leftists usually deny that they are socialists, and are insulted at the insinuation.
Then, I ask them by what means they intend to “right” the “problem” of the wealth gap. If it’s through government, you’re a socialist at least, if not an outright communist.
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- "...we can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK..." - Barack Hussein Obama Junior - $1,000,000 plus Canadian-built RV-bus - $100 per serving wagya beef in the White House - "...He likes it warm - the Oval Office is hot enough to grow orchids!" - David Axelrod |
It’s well and good to say, “Don’t answer a fool in his folly” ... but sometimes debates occur in an arena where people can see them.
I was asking the question here in good faith. It’s just something I see being brought up by the left as a cosmic grievance.
I think it’s good to know how to answer a fool. I’ll even admit that sometimes I’m a fool. I have read some great things that answered my questions and gave me perspective.
If fools are never answered, how can they realize they are fools?
Alvin Lee was a prophet
Tax the rich/Feed the poor/Till there are no/Rich no more
Sure, but invert that point, and it's more effective. Many young people these days don't understand enough about history to get the 'communism is poverty' angle.
Instead, ask them what their desired end state is by spreading the wealth. Is it so that poor people have a better life? Bigger houses? Nicer cars? Better medicine?
If that's what they want, then shake their hand and welcome them to the capitalist fold. It's where lots of very rich people with competing good products seek to make their customers happy by tending to their physical needs.
When they look puzzled, ask, or did you want everything to be fair instead? What if we spread around all the money from the people who were making products, hiring workers and inventing things, and spread to people who don't make products, hire workers, or invent things? What are those people going to do with money when there's nothing to buy? Sit around with the formerly rich, and burn it for warmth?
When societal wealth is equal, it's because it flatlined.
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