Where did the myth of "historically high taxes on the wealthy" come from?

So when the full tax cuts were inacted in 2003, the revenue went where?

They really aren't the end all be all of solotutions in every case. They have always brought the slumping economy into a surging increase. The Bush Tax cuts should have only been in effect for 5 years istead of 10 years, but that is beside the point. Every time there has been a Tax cuts during the slumping economy, it turn the economy around.

 

People with money have "privilege" OMG Nooooooss!

What "facts"?

What? People with money can buy land? OMG.

People with ideas and inovation can profit off their abilities? Noooooo!

Private banks can't create debt, or money. That is all from our pals at the FED.

Again, this is not a rich person privilege, anyone with money can get a piece of the prectrum.

Minerals on their land? No. I guess those that are renting their land to natural gas companies really have no right huh?

Poor people get limited liability as well.

Farmers getting subsidies, OMG, no. Although I do agree we shouldn't be paying people not to grow food when the price of food is going up and people are having harder times feeding their families, but this also goes for the government to stop doing that ethenol crap too.

Yes, we need to stop allowing trial lawyers from driving up the price of malpractice insurance, in turn increasing Drs costs, with frivolous lawsuits. Guess Obama should have tried to reform TORT before doing the universal healthcare.

Right, cause complaining about people that have more than you has no preception of jealousy, it is all just a misunderstanding. You just want what they have...no jealousy there.

 

Good solid arguing platform. "I don't like what you are saying, you must be lying."

There are a lot more poor, it is tough to give out that much to those that reproduce like wildfire. And even still, it is the rich that actually give more back to society than those that only get money FROM society.

Proof? This is one that I really don't 100% doubt you on, but I would like a source.

Really? These guys got bailout money?

Oprah got bailout money? When?

I have not problem with admitting I was wrong...if I was. If you are talking about someone other than "Honoré de Balzac (French pronunciation: [ɔnɔʁe də balzak]; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon", then I will admit I was wrong. [/quote]

Sure, he was jealous too. So what? Wealth is not finite, you can make your wealth too.

 

The biggest by far tax cut was enacted in 2001. Everyone can see for themselves where revenues went.

The economy has always turned around, regardless of the tax policy.

And, if I can borrow the chart James Cessna has posted who knows how many times:



What we see does not support your contention.

The three worst recoveries were periods where the top tax rates were 35% or lower.

The four best recoveries were where top tax rates were 50% or greater for each one.

So while the economy always turns around, what we see empirically are that the turn arounds are much slower when taxes have been lower.

 

An interesting statement related to tax rates but the following is also true,

The four best recoveries were when the IRS tax codes had the most itemized tax deductions.

 

So sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, social security contributions and fees for using public services like parks and pools don't count as taxes? Only focusing on income tax misses the majority of taxes paid in this country and those taxes fall much harder on the poor and middle class than they do the rich.

Try reading the following;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States_income_tax
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly11/wealth-inequality-6-11.html

The rich are getting wealthier in real terms (net worth) while the rest of us are not. That's the real bottom line and apologists like Wildjoker5 can't explain away that basic fact.

 

Answer: Greedy, manipulative LIARS.

 

We can explain why the wealth are getting wealthier though in a single word:

INFLATION

Inflation steals labor that was exchanged for commodities but which is being retained in dollars. The wealthy overwhelmingly have their wealth stored in assets and commodities other than dollars and are far less effected by increases in the money supply which reduces the value (stored wealth) that is in dollars.

It really isn't about the wealthy earning more money but instead its related to the government printing more money.

 

Absolutey, Johnny-C, the government is full of greedy manipulative liars.

 

Other than using flawed lagic of using the 2001 as an example of the largest tax cut, since the tax cuts were being incrementally enacted and the bulk of 2001 was a stimulus like the one we had in 2008 and the next one in 2009 and one more this year with the payrole taxes, you should look at 2003 as being the primary tax cuts cause that is when most of the cuts took place. To try to say a one year tax exemption or refund is anything like a 5-10 year tax reduction is dishonest.

 

The best government corporate money can buy!!

 

Yes, and the people that pay the bulk of those taxes are the rich as well. But since you are so infavor of these flat taxes, how about we do the same to the income tax as well, that way the poor can actually say they paid their fair share.

It is not like the poor is starving or will starve if their deductions are taken away like the rich. Poor already pay taxes all year round, and they don't seem to be starving as is, so stopping the tax credits that allow for the poor to get back more than they paid in during their refund, would only stop the spreading of wealth.

There is a very simple reason as to why that is, they don't spend all their money or take out loans to go see the Eagles play in the superbowl. They actually take care of their money. If you restarted the world and everyone had the same amount of money, it would be a very sort matter of time when the former rich are rich againg and the former poor are poor again.

This is why when most people win the lottery or go from the ghetto and make it into professional sports, they usually spend all their money when their careers are over.

Pro athletes usually go broke after sports days.

 

Why should we ignore 2001 and 2002, other than to cherry pick the data to make it look better for Bush apologists?

The 2001 tax cut was by far the biggest, and according to the Center for tax justice, knocked $55 billion off of revenues in 2001 and $125 billion off revenues in 2002.

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/gwbdata.pdf

Without those tax cuts, revenues would have risen those years, not fallen.

 

You mean the revenues went down in 2002 because of tax cuts and not because of that whole 9/11 thing? When the stock market fell from 13k to 8k? There was also that DOT com bubble busting that led to many people loosing their jobs as well, thus leading to lower income tax revenues. Talk about cherry picking your data. The tax cuts where not the only thing to happen to the financial situation in 2001 or 2002 or even 2003. To blame on the tax breaks as the reason for loss in revenue is dishonest. And to ignore that 2003 tax cuts only sped up the incremental step down in tax cuts from 2001, and immediately the revenues kicking back up and the unemployment going down can only show that you are not willing to look at the whole picture to try to make your side look good even when they have continuously failing policies is just sad.

 

<yawn> Yes, almost all of them do. That is how they get rapidly richer without making any commensurate contribution to production.

The ones you are so frantically trying to evade:

Yes, just as they used to be able to buy slaves. The difference is that when you bought the privilege of a deed to a slave, you became legally entitled to violate all of one person's rights without making just compensation; when you buy the privilege of a deed to land, you become legally entitled to violate one of all people's rights without making just compensation.

People with ideas and innovation were able to profit from their abilities before there were any such things as intellectual property monopoly privileges. You just refuse to know all such facts.

That is objectively false. Demand deposits are money, and they are created by private banks.

You are simply ignorant of monetary economics. Please read, "Modern Money Mechanics," published by the US Federal Reserve.

And the Fed is a privately owned bank.

?? One hardly knows how to respond to such bald self-contradiction.

But more on public land.

Yes.

Where would they get a right to charge others for access to what nature provided for free?

The liability of the poor is limited by the fact that they have few assets.

Yes. Except that only landowners -- mostly rich, and always privileged -- actually get the subsidies, not the working people who actually grow the food.

Certainly. The fact remains, the people pocketing the ethanol subsidies and other agriculture subsidies are rich, privileged parasites. You just refuse to know that fact.

You cannot address the fact that the supply of doctors is held artificially low to drive up the price of their labor by legal privilege.

One Sisyphean task at a time.

No, it's a blanket assumption with no basis in fact.

You have no grounds whatever for claiming I want what they have. I have stated many times that I advocate abolishing and eliminating privilege, not transferring it to myself. You are just flat-out lying.

 

I have proved your claims are lies, as no one could possibly believe them.

False. Total spending on the poor is about 4% of GDP. The privileges of the rich net them about 40% of GDP.

?? A source for the fact that WalMart invariably gets land rezoned for its stores? Get serious.

They got privileges. Why do you feel such an intense, almost sexual need to lie about what I have plainly written?

Were you intending at some point to do something other than lie about what I have plainly written?

Lie. I have proved you wrong repeatedly, and you have no intention of admitting it.

That's the guy. Not a screen writer. You were wrong.

LOL! A charge you again level on no basis whatsoever, other than your blanket assumption that anyone who does not kiss, lick, and suck the nether parts of the rich and privileged as assiduously as you do must be jealous of them.

It is much easier to steal a large amount of wealth by means of privilege than to earn it by commensurate contributions to production. The only qualification for the former is lack of conscience.

 

This is true but it is also true that increased government spending was the cause of deficits under the Bush adminstration. Clinton left the government with close to a balanced budget and the tax cuts under Bush provided a huge benefit to low and middle income workers. What Bush failed to do was to maintain a balanced budget after the tax cuts were enacted. It wasn't the tax cuts that created the problem but instead expendatures that should not have exceeded revenues that was the problem. If expendatures are not reduced to balance the budget then reducing revenue cannot be justified. When the Bush adminstration began to spend more than revenues then the tax cuts should have been repealed because of the spending.

 

And now we turn our attention to the new man in charge, Barack Obama ...

"Now even liberals are trying to put their finger on what is wrong with President Barack Obama. Does he lack leadership abilities or competence? Is he arrogant and out of touch with America? Is he a pleaser first and foremost, rather than someone who cares about getting the job done? Does he not understand how the economy works? “‘Yes, we can!’ has devolved into ‘Hey, we might,’” Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times."

Most of us just wish he would stay at his work station long enough to come up with a credible and workable plan to solve our lingering economic problems.



Mr. President, 408,000 more Americas are out of work this week than last week and our core inflation rate has unexpectedly risen to 2.0%. Why are you going on vacation? Please, please stay in Washington and work on our economy!

 

The recession was created by two fundamental factors:

1) Too many homes being built based upon "easy credit" and real estate speculation by individuals and between 2.5-3 million homes were built that lacked actual market demand. There are still over 2 million excess single family homes more than market demand.

2) Personal debt that was also driven by "easy credit" that exceeded 134% of annual income.

What can President Obama actually do about either of these factors?

The shock of the recession has resulted in individuals paying down personal debt but in doing so it also reduces their consumption of goods and services. I believe the last number I read was that the average personal debt was down to the 120% of annual income level but it will need to go below 100% of annual income before people really start consuming again.

As for addressing the two million excess homes on the market today I guess Obama could order HUD to start bulldozing the ones it owns. That would reduce the number of excess homes but it would also cost the US government billions of dollars in lost revenue. We must also realize that most vacant homes are owned by banks so the impact would be minimal at best. Until these homes are either destroyed or sold and demand returns there won't be a recovery in the residential construction industry and it is key to ending the recession.

Temporary employment subsidized by the government does little related to either of the above problems. Even promoting new business does little if the people aren't buying.

So what can President Obama or the Congress really do?

 

I see who I am talking to, a real tree hugging hippy liberal.

Anyways, its not jealousy, it is your willingfulness to have everyone in poverty instead of allowing a few to prosper. Got it, we should all go back to living in mud huts or teepees.

 

Sources?

Sorry to say, but you are not a creditable source. Just cause you have written it down on an internet form doesn't mean it is the God's honest truth. Sorry, but you just saying "You lie, and what I have written is the truth, why don't you believe me?" Does add credibility to your arguments.

Also like how you tried to throw in the insult into your ranting to try to discredit me.

Oh, my bad, a "Playwright". Still a jealous liberal origional hollywood type. Tell me, why are so many liberals the ones that make up the majority of actors and thesbians who make a living off of the world of immagination land? But yet you still take them seriously.

You complain about the rich having "privilages" and wealth. That is the epitomy of jealousy.

Sounds like you are lazy too. You don't want to actually put forth an effort as many, MANY others have. Or are you just scared of failure?

 

I always remember the lyrics from the 1960's group, Ten Years After:

"Tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more" and then the poor starve to death.

I know, I added the last line but it is ultimately true.

 

What a total distortion of a song. The rich need the poor much more than the poor get from having the rich.

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Which just goes to show the more things change the more they stay the same.

 

It isn't a total myth...... because the aristocracy of several centuries ago were in actually tax collectors......

and passed the burden of taxation entirely on to the lower classes?!?!

Didn't they?