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Dr. CON;
Either you are a fox news commentator or you are from the 1%ers to skew the facts.
I do agree that Thom's headline was a mistake, but your deliberate deceit that the 1% is paying 86% is an outright lie. According to 2015 tax code, anybody making over 18. 1/3 mil. of personal income only pays 35%. Some of the lower brackets pay up to almost 40%. ya, that's fair(ytf). Making $40,000 is 25%. But a difference in profit of 11.9 mil. vs. 30,000. (ytf).
Wash. Post - 2012 - top 1% paid only 22.83% and with low capital gains taxes only paid avg. 15%. (ytf).
following from: wearethe99percent.us/incomeinequality
- top 5% has increased income 73%
- bottom 20% decreased income 7%
- 2009, richest 74 americans earned as much as 19 mil. lowest paid americans
- 2010, top 1% took in 24% of U.S. income
And this is all personal income stats.
What about the corp. screw-in the h*/# out of the U.S.?
And don't forget the feds unrecorded spending habits.
Reuters news 11-16-13. "Pentagons Doctored Ledgers"
Huffpost 3-11-13. "Corp. Tax Fraud"
Prison Planet 2010 "DOD lost 8.7 trillion dollars"
With the oil co. making billions, why are we subsidizing them? (ytf).
In the end, you will receive your JUST rewards. (YEA, THAT'S FAIR)
The phrase "Only the Little People Pay Taxes in America" is categorically false and Thom should know better.
The wikki page (2007) says the top 20% pay nearly 70% of all federal taxes (not just income). their tax rate is 25.1%, the highest. The top 1% pay 29.5%.
The bottom 20% pay only 4% in taxes, the next 10.6%, the next14.3, and the next, 17.4%. In other words, the bottom 80% of taxpayers have less than the tax rate of the stockbrokers Thom complains about, at 20%.
What makes this analysis doubly stupid, is that we now know that about half the population PAYS NO INCOME TAX. But think for a moment. They are paying INTO THEIR OWN RETIREMENT, and THEIR OWN SOCIAL INSURANCE!
It is far better to look at Federal Income taxes. Here, the trend is unmistakable. The top 20% don't pay 70%, they pay 86% of all feral income taxes! And even though their tax rate is about the same, the tax rates of the bottom 40% ARE NEGATIVE!
The fact is that the government is a massive system to redistribute wealth in the way of insurance to the poor and middle class.
rocketman...... listen.....Offshore tax havens alone cost us working people 150 billion in lost revenue each year. That means the rest of us pay higher taxes and things like budgets get cut...so things like bridges fall down!
The entire food stamp "SNAP" program costs around 80 billion, but guess what? ...for every food stamp dollar spent, almost two dollars are generated in gross domestic product. On the other hand, the trillions in offshore bank accounts generates nothing, nothing, nothing, ZERO!
I pay around 50% in total taxation every year...that includes property , sales, all taxes. if I can pay that as most other working people probably do too, then I damn well think a guy making ten million can pay a 50% rate.
Give the working class a tax break, and we spend it, give the super rich a break ,and they stash it....that's a fact, the one you need to pay the most attention to.
It should be a federal law,20 days before, and open 16 hours a day so everyone can get to the polls like night,and weekend workers etc.
Better yet, I would LOVE to make it mandatory that every person of voting age be requited to vote under penalty of the law as they do in Australia.
Thom, continue to scream about "enthusiastically" supporting Hillary Clinton because could you conclude that it is better to vote for a phony liberal than a phony conservative(?) At least with a phony conservative, their betrayal to their base would be a betrayal for leaning more to the political center/left-leaning while a phony Democrat would at least first hesitate, and then… authorize troops over to the Middle East to teach those dark-skin Muslims a few things about White Christian values.
It’s truly sickening to watch the president and the lamestream media trash first Senator Elizabeth Warren, and now presidential candidate Bernie Sanders because they know they do not speak just in words, but in their actions: (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/politics/challenging-hillary-clinto... ).
Hillary Clinton is trying to catch up to the rhetorical skill of the president but hasn’t found her voice because her truer policy positions are more moderate and counter to the base of the political party she says she wants to champion.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough may have not correctly framed his argument about Bill Clinton's governing style as Centrist, not as a Liberal, but the better point being that both Parties use their rhetorical skills to appeal to their base, and then govern a lot closer to their pragmatism than to their philosophical political leanings.
Why don't you get off your lazy ass and look it up genius.
I don't know about anyone else but I'm sick of it. I'm on dissability, you know, one of those freeloaders that broke his back working for a living. My spine is spagetti after four surgeries, pins, rods, and screws. Not to mention what has been removed from lumbar to cervical. Every year irs takes more from me and I read stories like this one. I'm not complaining, much. Now they want to cut my meager check by what 20% because I'm a freeloader. I say we gather, I can still walk, and do something about it. I feel sorry for those worse than me and there are many far worse than me that did nothing to deserve this injustice. We are not a country of freeloaders. Our work production continues to rise by the year. We have got to put an end to this. Vote Bernie and let Warren give'em hell.
So the question / argument I hear all the time in the face of this is, roughly, "Even if you taxed the 1% at 90% of their income there is not enough to pay for all the lazy welfare bums sucking off the teat of Amereica! Does anyone have any facts to prove or disprove this? (As opposed to opinion) Thanks
The French people long ago rejected Marie Antoinette for her "let them eat cake" quip. Maybe it's time to sharpen up the guilotines again!
The only way this will ever happen, and i regret to have to say it, is for the people to ban together, all working people, including police and fire fighters, doctors and nurses, lawyers and teachers, sanitation workers, all working people and revolt against the 1%. Voting will not work at this point. It might just be too late already.
KaraGirl -- Medicare pays for those drugs. Since the repugs are the puppets of the billionaires of pharma, guess how the price became so high.
mathboy -- I thought Thom said we have those rare earth elements in the US. We just quit mining them because it was not profitable enough.
Pretty sure you didnt mean it to sound that way...but the "first concern" over war should not be that "our economy would tank"...well, it is true, but, we have no one to blame but ourselves...your point on TPP is well taken
By the way I just realised it should be Berny. not Burny lol. I apologize to Mr. Sanders for misspelling his name.
In my mind this is just another example of where corporate greed superseded the good of the American people. Thank you Nike, thank you Martha Stewart and thank you to every other us based corporation that thought that it could make more money by shipping production to China and every other country in the far east. They made their money and now we are forced to look at another possible cold war, only this time we are Russia, we are the ones Who are not equiped to survive for any length of time. We are the ones that won't go bankrupt, and loose everything, we already are bankrupt, thus the plan to take down the U.S. constitution, the greatest peice of legislation ever written by man is underway. Thank you. Republicans, thank you the new world order, thank you multinational corporations for distroying America the only country that stood in your way.
Can we sit hear and let them do this, can we say that they won. Burny we need you now more than ever!!!
Burny Sanders for president!!!!! Or God help us all.........
So let me get this straight. Prices jumped from 4k a month to 9k a month in thoms example. My question is Who the f*** could pay the 4k to begin with. Why do we live in a system where drug companies produce these treatments, and Im not just talking about cancer, but everything else that for one; cause more issues then they cure, and two are for the most part expensive as hell. Why not make drugs that are affordable for everyone, instead of making something that costs 300,000, and only !% of people can Take advantage of it why not make something that costs 30 and 300,000,000 can Take advantage of it if need be. Why do we live in a society where even the people Who design the drugs to keep us safe and healthy put profit over our own well being. WHAT THE F***
mathboy -- If you think the economy is different than the government, I think you have been reading too many dictionaries. Thom's words are something like the government writes the rules of the market place.
It seems to me feudalism is the ultimate capitalism. Loren B was proposing getting rid of capitalism first without a detailed plan for what comes after. I thought the Russian revolution was a perfect example of that.
Wikipedia says Pope Francis was a chemical technician. It doesn't say he has a degree in chemistry.
It also says he was a night club bouncer. I want to see an SNL sketch of that so bad.
Great stuff -- KaraGirl, Mathboy and Mark S
China doesn't just have our factories, it has a near monopoly on rare-earth elements necessary to manufacture anything computerized, including cell phones. It may be possible to mine them from the ocean floor soon, but right now, the whole world is beholden to China because of that one thing. Recycling old electronics can help.
If those island be airports than who cares about the south china sea unless we are stuck in a time warp my kness hurt can i get out from under my desk yet?
Thom has raised an issue concerning our almost total dependence on foreign manufacturing sources to provide us with everything except the implements of war that we still continue to manufacture in this country. Our former manufacturing base and our strategic geographical location between two of the planet's largest oceans was our biggest asset in the past but now we are totally dependent on a host of basic goods that must be shipped from foreign shores over oceans that would immediately become part of an international battlefield in the event of a future World War. This is why China is currently sitting in the Catbird Seat with most of our former manufacturing located in their country and their recent partnership with Russia that has untold quantities of virtually untapped natural resources and a Cold War military, with nuclear capability, that is still intact ! The new BRICS economic order is poised to become the planet's dominant force with a growing list of countries applying for membership including E.U. Members such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal who are seriously considering a change which would most likely lead to a collapse of the E.U. and the end of America's military dominance in Europe when a crumbling E.U. also breaks up the NATO Alliance that has been in place for sixty six years now ! All in all a gift from the Capitalist that value higher profits over their obligation to this country that supported and funded their growth and expansion for over two centuries !
Question: If "Bernie" has "sparked a political revolution," what is it a revolution about? He formerly spoke out quite strongly about our poverty crisis, and the reality that it's impossible to address this without also addressing poverty relief. The fact that he then jumped on the Middle Class Only bandwagon indicates his belief that our corporate state works so well, that everyone is able to work, and there are jobs for all. In other words -- more calls for trickle-down economics.
Regardless, anyone who wants to run for president on the Dem ticket will need to challenge VP Joe Biden for the nomination.