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God Bless Those who Protect our Liberty
Past, Present and Future.
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Posted on 10/14/2003 8:45:25 AM PDT by mikeb704
Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) is worrying more these days. Understandably. Even in a field of remarkably lackluster candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, he finds himself falling behind.
Wesley "I have more waffles than IHOP" Clark is ahead of him in recent polls. Even Dr. Dean, he of the grim intensity that borders on creepy, is running even with the party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee.
The contenders, like contenders of all parties for all races, claim they have new visions, new ideas, and new paradigms. They’ve got fresh, innovative answers for today’s problems.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. So Joe’s picked up the Democratic playbook looking for something, anything, that’ll boost his popularity among the original thinkers who vote in Democratic primaries.
He’s decided to try an oldie but a goodie. The rich, Senator Lieberman has determined, aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.
On Monday, Mr. Lieberman pledged to "restore fairness to the tax code." Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
It should. Democrats have been singing that tune for a very long time.
In 1972, George McGovern’s campaign literature charged that the average wage earner was forced "to pay more than his fair share in taxes" because those blankety blank rich folks exploited so many loopholes.
Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s look at how the rich are treated when it comes to taxes.
In 2002, taxpayers in the top one percent bracket coughed up more than 37 percent of all the Federal personal income taxes paid. The top five percent provided over 56 percent of personal income taxes paid.
By contrast, taxpayers in the bottom half carried less than four percent of the entire income tax burden.
These figures weren’t conjured up by the vast right-wing conspiracy. They came from the Internal Revenue Service.
And who are the rich that the Leftists want to soak? Be careful here, because you might be one of them.
If you had an adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2002 of $27,682, you’re in the top half. $55,225 places you in the top quarter.
Insisting the wealthy (without identifying precisely what they mean by that term) pay their fair share is a diversion that draws attention away from the basic problem of how expensive government is.
Right now, the Federal government spends over $69,000 per second. Gouging the wealthy to pay for that may have some appeal to the uninformed who don’t know what the Left means by "wealthy", but the cold reality is there simply aren’t enough rich people to do it.
Unless, of course, you characterize those with an AGI of $27,682 as obscenely affluent.
Congress passed an income tax law in 1913. At the time, fewer than one American out of a hundred had to pay. Rates started at one percent and ended at seven percent for those making more than half a million dollars a year.
In "David Brinkley: A Memoir," the journalist writes that the income tax "was voted into law by people who were confident it would punish the rich they despised while they themselves would never have to pay it. Envy and resentment carried the day. In the U.S. Congress it still does."
That’s true. If Senator Lieberman wanted to suggest something genuinely fair, he’d recommend that we throw out the current system. It’s filled with exclusions, credits, deductions, preferences, loopholes and suffocating amounts of red tape.
Replace it with a flat rate mechanism, perhaps one based on consumption. Everyone pays the same percentage.
Special interests will no longer congregate in Washington to lobby for special tax treatment. Taxpayers will finally understand the system and will no longer need armies of advisors, accountants and lawyers to complete their returns for them.
Catching cheaters will be easier because the system will much simpler.
Now that’s what I call fair.
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God Bless Those who Protect our Liberty
Past, Present and Future.
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In many areas of the country this is not even close to affluence.
International House of Pancakes.
Maybe they meant Waffle House?
Jeeze
It's definitely a "red zone" chain. . .
There are going to be some red faces among the Democrats who didn't come up with that idea first.
You will probably have to read it to them, right?
That struck me as an excellent way of emphasizing the "progressivity" of the tax code:
"The top 20% of income pays 40% of the income tax."IMHO there's no need to add that the top 20% of income goes to 1% of the earners; count on the Democrats to point that out.
But in fact the percentage of taxes paid by the top earners went up when Kemp-Roth tax cuts went into effect. So raising more revenue from "the rich" is not as simple as just jacking up the tax rate and raking in the dough.
Some should create a set of charts to show just how very short this would go. I remember calculating it many years ago and you realize REAL quick that the even the Uber Rich don't have enough money to pay for everything. The government would be able to apend their assets in a matter of a couple months, then you're stuck.
"Math is Haarrddd...! That technology stuff confuses me..!"
J. Peter Grace wrote in 1984 that ". . .if we take all income above $75,000 a year that isn't already taxed, take it all, leave no one above $75,000, we'd raise the sum of $17 billion, enough to run the government for about ten days."
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