printVia Bernie Goldberg:
In case you didn’t know:
“The top 1 percent of Americans pay about 38 percent of all our federal personal taxes (according to the National Taxpayers Union)?”
“Or that the top 5 percent pay just under 60 percent?”
“Or that the top 10 percent pay about 70 percent of all the personal income taxes collected in this great land of ours?”
“These ‘fat cats’ are the ones who do the heavy lifting in this country. They’re the ones whose federal tax dollars pick up a big chunk of the tab for all sorts of noble things, such as food for folks who don’t have enough to eat … medicine and doctors for people with little money … financial aid to help other people’s kids go to college … milk and diapers for poor babies whose 15-year-old mothers and deadbeat fathers are too irresponsible to take care of their own kids … a safety net for old folks who are retired on fixed incomes … and on and on. …”
“By the way, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners pay a paltry 2.7 percent of our federal income taxes. How many poor people do you think their tax dollars are taking care of? If you ask me, they’re the ones not paying their fair share. Every time they pass a ‘rich’ person on the street, they ought to say, ‘Thank you for everything you do me and for this country.'”
Growing up, my dad was disabled, mom working in a factory, we were eating beans 3 nights a week to save money. Meanwhile a career-single-mom (acquaintance) who had 3 kids, all from different fathers, was eating name-brand expensive food, no financial problems at all, and not working any job…all from government support…that’s the true face of “welfare”…it’s not even good for the recipients.
those official figures are bogus, as all official information is. the truth is the wealthiest americans pay no income tax whatsoever . they put their money in foundations and give 5% to charities, many of which are organizations like the aclu that have an agenda. I don’t know how much you make, but down on the bottom tier things are tough. my retired mother gets @16K a year and pays income tax on it. i think that’s criminal.
as far as the fat cats that pay for everything, all they are paying is interest on the debt.
ms. mercer i like your style but you need to get out more
[How much do you think an utterly out-of-the-mainstream, totally independent, writer like this one makes? Keep a civilized tongue in your head.—IM]
I have to admit I found the “you have to get out more” comment amusing just because it is so far off of the mark! I hope you don’t need directions to get to the grocery store LOL 🙂
“those official figures are bogus, as all official information is. the truth is the wealthiest americans pay no income tax whatsoever . they put their money in foundations and give 5% to charities, many of which are organizations like the aclu that have an agenda.” Now, there is the funniest joke I’ve heard all year. Equal to my Liberal friend’s comment that we need to raise taxes on the top one percent because they have it to take. How many excuses do we have to have to justify theft?
The rich really pay no taxes at all! That’s not choice, or amusing, or street smart. It’s stupid.
It is also an evasion typical of our times, in that the rationalizer believes that facts are optional; all that really matters are his feelings about the subject.
This is disappointing.
Yes, some of the rich paying so much in taxes have produced amazingly valuable things, have steered their business morally and wisely, have well-served their fellow man, deserve their wealth a thousand times over, and the tax rates they are forced to pay is like theft.
On the other hand, to be blunt, some of the rich and powerful are scum. So they have a lot of money. So they pay a lot in taxes. So what?
For instance, I bet Bernie Madoff paid a lot of taxes in his time. So we should all thank him for all that ‘heavy lifting’?
Bernie Goldberg is here, of course, employing the phrase ‘heavy lifting’ as a substitute for the word ‘work.’ But just as having money doesn’t guarantee virtue, paying taxes does not necessarily represent or equal work. Geithner probably pays a lot in taxes. Bernanke probably pays a lot in taxes. Bush paid taxes. Paulsen. Cheney. Condoleeza Rice. The Clintons. Heck Michelle Obama paid a good bit too. And on and on. Would you call what they did work? Good work? Valuable? So they gave a little baksheesh to the regime. So what? The ship of state has been steered into a glacier. The country has been and is being, looted. A significant and growing percentage of women have been lead, guided, cajoled and seduced into the workforce and out of their virtue. We have Idiocracy birthrates and lots of wages haven’t improved in nearly 40 years. We have anarcho-tyranny and this Bernie wants to the oppressed to say, blindly, and without distinction to all wealthier, “Thank you Sir, may I have another?”
To paraphrase Jim Rogers, give me $600 billion and I’ll pay a lot in taxes too. Across the board indications of a real economy, where people live in some sort of moral order, work, and raise families, have been nose-diving for 2-3 generations now. Further, across the board indications of a healthy republic… well, it is to laugh.
Of course Bernie Goldberg is going to reply, well, sure, I didn’t mean _those_ rich people, I was only talking about the _good_ rich people. But this is the closest he gets to that antithesis in his entire essay, and I’ll quote it entirely because it’s only a two-sentence paragraph:
“No, I’m not saying the wealthiest Americans are all a bunch of selfless philanthropists. But try to imagine an America without those rich people.”
No. With respect, it’s worse than that. Some of those with a lot of money are criminals. But, according to Bernie Goldberg, they’re ALL heroes because they pay a lot in taxes. I’m sorry but the usually interesting and insightful Mr. Goldberg missed the mark here –by a lot.
Reading some of the comments here it never ceases to amaze me about the sense of entitlement people have towards other people’s money. If I have $100 and you only have $1 then I should give you what? $2, $20, 39.5$?
How about you cut my grass for the fair market value of your labor? You can call me an ass all you like while you are doing it.
Jack,
Are you talking about my comment? I ask because there were only 6 comments before yours, and other than mine, there was only one other comment critical of BG’s essay. Further, the first critical comment –incoherent as far as I’m concerned, was replied to and commented upon by our proprietor.
So you will have to pardon me if I consider your comment to be an attempt to criticize mine.
As such I’ll take this chance to be absolutely clear: I agree with you and condemn a sense of entitlement some people have towards other people’s money. I deny that my comment displayed that, and if anyone took it from my tone in that comment that they could, in justice, feel entitled to someone else’s money just because that other person has more than they do, then they would be wrong. I’m merely arguing out that BG went too far in saying the rich are paying most of the taxes and therefore they should be thanked and are heroes. Some of them are most definitely not.
I take it you would agree with the statement that it is morally significant how one gets one’s money and what one does with it?
The personal income tax is maybe 25% of the $ 4 Terabuck spending behemoth. There are also tariffs, FICA taxes, corporate taxes, excise taxes. And if you are going to cry how much the rich PAY compared to the bottom 50% – how much money do they RECEIVE compared to the bottom 50%? Are wealthy people planning on trading places with the poor?
Frankly, this economic warfare tax debate is 99.9% bull—t because the government is spending non-existent money and the country is living beyond its means. Right-wing bloviators like Bernie Goldberg seem to be sobbing over every football player and Hollywood starlet earning $ 5,000,000 and having to pay more than some grocery bagger – fine. I just say that I can’t get into the whole economic warfare sob story on either side.
We should be CUTTING the National Endowments for the Arts & Humanities; the Wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Drugs; manned space exploration; Departments of Agriculture, HUD, and Education – and that is for starters. This new trillion dollar tax-cut and spending orgy is just more bipartisan looting (which Krauthammer and Zakaria agree about) so we can go bankrupt quicker:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904472.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202760.html
The income tax is not just a policy issue but a moral one as well. I would venture to say it is more of a moral issue than a policy one. The government basically confiscates a portion of our wages, capital gains, interest income, etc to primarily redisribute it (yes I’m well aware of the defense budget!) to those it deems should receive it. And yes we have elected the bozos who have established the legal framework for doing so.
IMHO the Sixteenth Amendment should be repealed as the tax code has become the devils workshop for our elected officials. I don’t know how much of the tax code is “social engineering” but I’d guess that it is very high percentage.
I have seen the statistics that Bernie Goldberg quoted before. The tax code as it existsts now punishes those who are successful and productive.
One final obervation about taxes and the wealthy. The usual static analysis that predicts that increasing the taxes on higher inccome earners will increase tax revenues FAILS to recognize the following:
Higher income earners will change
their behavior to pay less income
tax using the legal loopholes
provided in the tax code.