Well...if we do some algerbra...we can figure out the

Post #74,056 by Simon_Jester 1/11/03 10:35:27 AM Reply	Well...if we do some algerbra...we can figure out the Their tax rates Paid 0 / Bill 100 = 0% Paid 0 / Bill 100 = 0% Paid 0 / Bill 100 = 0% Paid 0 / Bill 100 = 0% Paid 1 / Bill 100 = 1% Paid 3 / Bill 100 = 3% Paid 7 / Bill 100 = 7% Paid 12 / Bill 100 = 12% Paid 18 / Bill 100 = 18% Paid 59 / Bill 100 = 59% Of course, this completely compares poorly to the US Federal Tax rates (2002): 10% 15% 27% 30% 35% 38.6% [link\|http://taxes.yahoo.com/rates.html\| Source ] (And this totally ignores standard and other deductions) Mind you, if we still lack the incomes of the 10 men to complete this puzzle. Assuming the #1 man is the poorest and married, the max they could make without paying taxes (standard deduction) would be $13,850. ($7,700 if single) Assuming the #10 man is the richest, and is taxed at 38.6% what would he have to make to pay 59% of the bill. (59% of x = 38.6% of y). If we set X to $100 as in the example, I get y to be $152.84. Of course, I'm now comparing apples to oranges, because man #1's income is based on the Federal Tax bill and man #10's income is based on the $100 in the example. So what was the Federal Tax bill? Well, in 2001 (according to the IRS's 1040 Instructions) the Federal Income was $2.0 trillion dollars. Of that amount, Income Taxes (what we are discussing) was $1.0 trillion dollars. So our #10 man's income is $1.52 trillion dollars.
Post #74,069 by bepatient 1/11/03 2:22:37 PM Reply	Your comparing the wrong things. Nice try though. [link\|http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincome.html\|Try this] According to preliminary data released by the Internal Revenue Service and a new Tax Foundation Special Report, the top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned more than two-thirds of the nation's income (67.3%) and paid more than five out of every six dollars collected by the federal income tax (84%) in 2000. After deductions and "loopholes"...the middle to lower end up paying even less a percentage of their overall income as income tax. Haven't you noticed that the itemized deductions all have income qualifiers. Make to much, you get no deduction. It works out to be the top 10% pay roughly 60% of the collected taxes. And no matter how you slice it...the income tax system will NOT stop the polarization of the wealth. And the more you try to take it from them...the harder the wealthy will attempt to protect it, which results in the exact opposite effect of what you all seem to want. To get that money back into the system the rich people have to be convinced to >spend< it and >invest< it in other's ventures. This is why high cap gains taxes are a bad idea. The dividend exclusion would do alot of good for the economy short term. But I don't agree with it because it will also encourage companies to pay them at the expense of re-ivenstment. And long term that will hurt employment. The important objective is to get long-term, sustainable growth in sectors OTHER than services. You do that with cap gains. But that has the "taboo" attached to it. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #74,111 by Simon_Jester 1/12/03 9:47:34 AM Reply	No I'm not... I may not be solving the problem you wanted me to solve, but I am solving the one I was interested in. I was interested in the relative incomes of the 10 men. Quoting your source, to be in the top 1% of income earning Americans, you have to make $313,469. A high sum, but certainly not astronomical. (Hell, to be in the top 25% you have to make $55,225 - ie: about what a programmer makes). By comparison, one CEO last year made $25 million. (And no, that wasn't Kenneth Lay). So that top 1% has a LOT of range to it. Now, there's been a lot of talk in certain sectors of making the lower classes "pay their fair share", but like bank robbing, to pay for taxes, you have to go where the money is. In our example, we've got the #1 man making (at most) $13,850. We've got the #10 man making $1.52 trillion dollars. And we equilant $1.52 trillion to $100. What's the #1 man making in the 100 dollar scale? (1,520,000,000,000 * x) = (100) (13,850) x = 13,850 / (1,520,000,000,000 / 100) x = 0.000000... (it blows out my calculator). Basically, the guy doesn't have any money. Trying to bleed him of money isn't going to do anyone any good. (BTW: for the record, I have never agreed with the concept of using taxes as a means of redistribution of wealth, and I support the idea of flat taxes with no deductions.)
Post #74,122 by Brandioch 1/12/03 12:59:21 PM Reply	You don't understand. The same reason Ben's posting on this subject isn't relevent. This isn't about facts or applicability of anything else. This is about marketing a tax reduction for the rich to the populace as a whole. This is about hoping that the people who read it will NOT understand the tax system nor their place in it nor the reasons behind cutting (certain) taxes while increasing the cost of government.
Post #74,154 by bepatient 1/12/03 4:53:22 PM Reply	Nice misdirection. Still irrelevent to this analogy. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #74,155 by bepatient 1/12/03 5:39:17 PM Reply	I understand what you're saying. Honestly I do. But the reality of the situation is very simple. The top 10% pay 60%...the top 25% pay 84% etc...the math was there. Saying this isn't the case is misrepresenting reality. Thats the way the current system works. This is not a question of whether this is good or bad. It just is. And...in order to make an impact to the economy, >real< money has to shift. 100 million isn't going to do anything to move a ten trillion dollar economy. And so, any >breaks< given on income taxes that will be enough to have any impact are >necessarily< going to favor the richest xxx% of the population....simply because they are the ones who are paying. Income taxes changes cannot benefit the poor...the bottom 40% don't even pay. How can you reduce >their< burden any more. And while the analogy shows the top guy just leaving the table, which isn't a real option at this point, the effect of hammering them over and over will make them shelter income, or not bother to earn it at all. Another example of this extreme are the "dissappearing" businessmen in Atlas Shrugged. Sooner or later it isn't worth it any longer...and the effect of these men quitting impact far more people than just themselves. England and several other European countries see this all of the time. Prize athletes, F1 drivers, entertainers...the super wealthy...[link\|http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/1997/swimsuit/karen/monaco/monaco.html\|move to Monaco] to avoid taxes. If it gets much worse here...you might start seeing the same thing...and in some cases...it probably already does. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #74,180 by ben_tilly 1/12/03 8:18:21 PM Reply	Right, the rich will shelter income The first stop to doing that is to create nice income shelters of course. Like the proposed dividend giveaway. BTW did you know that above a fairly low national average income the single largest factor in lifespan is income disparity? Apparently large disparities cause stress, and stress very literally kills. Just noting that while trickle-down has not been proven to make the masses better off, it does seem to put them out of their misery sooner. It is not entirely a coincidence that the US has one of the lowest life expectancies in the industrialized world... Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #74,198 by Ashton 1/12/03 10:55:54 PM Reply	Zoooom.. the sound of - -
Post #74,187 by Simon_Jester 1/12/03 9:31:10 PM Reply	Chuckle... I think we agree. although I don't think the economy is going to get stimulated by a tax cut. (I think the economy follows a cycle regardless of what the goverment or others do). But, politically speaking, the President has to try to get the economy moving and a tax cut (of a substantial amount) is the only way to do it and it's going to favor the highest earners.
Post #74,178 by ben_tilly 1/12/03 8:13:54 PM Reply	Let me translate that "We shouldn't try to tax the rich, only count on their being generous because they are too smart for us." Why does that sound like bullshit? Going beyond that, some of us are talking about the rich and here you are equating that with the top 25%. Waitaminute. I know what rich is. I know what top 25% is. Rich ain't top 25%. It ain't top 10%. Top 1% is getting there, though not really. Top tenth of a percent, now that is the ballpark. Totally different kettle of fish. Million dollars a year, like Bush. I can't find the figures that I want, but I found some that I find interesting. Visit [link\|http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/irsfigures.guest.html\|http://www.rushlimba...igures.guest.html] and ignore the spin there. From 1986 to 2000 the amount of money that you had to make to get into the top 1% doubled. The portion of the income that was made by the top 1% went from 11.30% of the US income to 20.81%. The tax rate on that money fell from 33.13% to 27.45%. The total portion of tax paid by the top 1% therefore rose, but nowhere in line with their actual income. Now that is an amazing trick. Make more. Pay a smaller portion in tax. How do they do that? Because they are smarter than us? Wow, good accountants, don't you wish you could afford that! Nah. It is really pathetically simple. What has happened is that the very well off have realized that it is cheaper to buy politicians than it is to pay taxes. So they buy politicians, get exemptions, and then don't pay tax. And then apologists for them say that we can't tax them, we have to hope and pray for their generousity! Wouldn't it make more sense just to cut out a ton of the special rules that make life easy for them (like a proposal making it possible for those who live almost entirely off of existing investments to stop paying income tax entirely) and cut rhetoric that lumps the fraction of a percent of the top quarter that really makes money with the rest of us in that category? Oh sorry. Guess Bush wouldn't like that because guess how HE makes his money... Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #74,202 by bepatient 1/12/03 11:15:10 PM Reply	Nothing objectionable there. Your translation is a tad loose. But most of the rest is fairly reasonable. And glaring examples of why silly things like campaign finance reform and tax code revision are necessary. I'm not a big fan of the elimination of taxes on dividends. It does, however, have short term benefits that will do good things for the market and thus consumer confidence. Problem is you can't really >undo< it and maintain the positives. And long term...encouraging dividends will reduce re-investment and cost jobs and long-term growth. Neither one of these is a good thing. I think your solution is acceptable. There should be alot of rules tossed out. Make it too extreme, though, and you encourage capital flight. (like the mega-rich in Europe moving to Monaco). The objective is to find the right spot on the Laffer curve and stay there...the hard part is knowing where that is ;) You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #74,207 by ben_tilly 1/12/03 11:41:51 PM Reply	The translation might be slightly loose... But I think it accurately captures the perception that people are actually reacting to, as fair or unfair as it might be. Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #74,209 by bepatient 1/12/03 11:52:05 PM Reply	Fair enough You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]

Welcome to IWETHEY!