Keep in mind I have no delusions about where I fall.....even when I had a job that paid significantly higher than average.....I was ultimately still middle class. If every true middle class American ever woke up to his/her reality the GOP would be in trouble: http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2011/04/15/6472653-good-graph-friday-whos-footing-the-us-tax-bill?GT1=43001 "Solving our national debt problem might be more of an income dilemma and less about a debt problem. A recent chart compiled from IRS and Tax Foundation data suggests the rich have been paying fewer taxes as compared to the middle class for over 20 years" Incredulously though.....the GOP suggests that if the tax burden on the rich was reduced even further that these rich guys and corporations will get off their ass and create jobs for the heavily burdened middle class because that's the only thing keeping them from doing such a great thing. :roll: :lol: :lol:
That doesn't show who pays those taxes.....the fact is that the top 10% of wage earners pay 70% of the personal income taxes in this country. The bottom 50% - shoulder virtually none of this burden(less than 3%). No wonder they continue to vote for Dems...... We cannot tax our way out of the fiscal problems....the numbers just don't work. We can continue down the path of the European fiscal demise and other examples of socialized failure for a while, but then ask yourself this very simple question......the EU is struggling to fund and implement the bail outs of the failed states in Europe, who is going to bail us out? How good is your Mandarin?
That I agree is a small fix....not very effective. I just have to laugh though at the monotonous pounding we get from the right that says if the tax burden was reduced even further that the corporations would suddenly find greater market share and increased product demand leading to greater sales revenues that would lead to job hiring. 8)
Take the challenge, Dave. Start your own business. Then you too can make a fortune and sit on your ass just like the big guys! I don't know what you do for a living or for whom but try this. Take a mental inventory of all your neighbors in your middle class neighborhood and count how many of them have the skill set ( aptitude -education - training - experience - intestinal fortitude ) to run your company. Or drive up and down the poor sections of town and pick out a boss from the street corner.
That's ridiculous.....everybody knows that the money saved with a lesser tax burden would simply go under the mattress or some other mysterious black hole where incremental investment has no benefit or the historical evidence of human behavior and economic science has no meaning. Of course we should rather send it to Washington to let some bureaucrat decide where it should best be deployed......what do those damn Nobel prize winners know nuttin' anyway.......insert Milton Friedman rolling over in his grave here. :roll:
BT I think you may be guilty of lumping in some well paid middle class people with the upper reaches of rich people who pay taxes: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html In 2008 the top 1% - the upper class if you will...paid 38% of the taxes The middle class paid a whopping 59% of the taxes that year. The lower class paid in around 3% of the total tax bill.
You of course realize that the "middle class" is 49 times as large as the top 1%. Yet they pay much less than twice as much in taxes. The big problem is that the middle class have to pay 20 times more than the "lower class." An awful lot of folks riding in the ship of state aren't pulling any oars. All they do is vote for demigogues whose mission in life is to make the oar pullers work harder.
Gipper hits the nail on the head. There are so many people in our country who contribute nothing to the cause yet avail themselves of food, shelter, medical and everything else that it has become a tremendous burden on those of us fortunate enough to be eaking out a living on our own. This group of dependents has been carefully cultivated as a secure voting base by the democrats. They have also expanded this base by allowing our borders to be invaded thus increasing their voting bloc. The democrats are like drug dealers; keep their constituents hooked on entitlements and make sure they vote to keep those freebies coming. The middle class is getting crushed from below, not above. Of course the democrats need a bad guy so they attack the wealthy. That's the irony; the one group that generates wealth and opportunity is targeted for punishment. Sounds like Lenin's playbook to me.
Remember that when this country was founded the only ones allowed to vote were those who paid taxes. Somewhere along the line we fell into the trap that was warned about over two centries ago by a Scottish academic.
I'm guilty of nothing of the kind - check your own link.....I stated as follows: ....and that IS a fact. I just don't happen to believe that the upper 10% - whose AGI is almost 4x the average household - is the middle by any definition except your own......I mean seriously, how can the top 10% be the middle????? So, when you are on a 5 lane highway and driving in the left lane - which would be the left 20% of the road, are you really driving in the middle of the road? When your Gators are in the top 10, which would be approximately the upper 10%, would you really characterize them as a middle of the road, average quality program?????
Uncle Milton setting us straight yet again on "taxes" and where they really come from and who actually, ultimately pays the price..... <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YmqoCHR14n8" frameborder="0"></iframe>
More wisdom from Uncle Milton.... <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FtBskFDiOC4" frameborder="0"></iframe>