Video on Wealth Distribution.

[shittygsxr]

Clintons tax bill passed in 1993. Tom foley was speaker then. Newts contract wasnt until 1994. so, your wrong. and once again. every republican voted against it. Clintons economy created 20 million jobs and balanced the budget. reagan tripled the deficit. TRIPLED. Every aspect of the reagan presidency was a disaster. the savings and loans crashed, had to be bailed out. iran/contra. etc. Reagan was senile and bearly knew where he was. he regularly confused real life with movies he had been in. And that how we got star wars. Reagan saw it in one of his movies. star wars is the single greatest boondoggle in history. Everyone told him it wouldnt work. it never worked and not one missile was ever successfully shot down. Those are just facts, and i dont understand your rudeness.

So Clinton created the dot.com industry?

[twowheelsnake]

That article merely points out that those statistics, presented in that format, are wildly misleading, and leave out much information. I dont understand those numbers. Does that represent just federal taxes? Because that would make sense. Assuming those numbers are real we can say This. The bottom people dont pay federal taxes because they dont make enough money to qualify, as the video shows. Many couples who work two full time jobs, and have children, dont qualify. But EVERYONE pays payroll taxes, state taxes, local taxes. sales taxes , government fees, gas taxes ,etc, The video just demonstrates that the wealth in america is all moving up.

The wealthy don't pay payroll taxes, they don't earn an hourly wage.

[jblosser]

I did, it's still not the IRS

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/national-taxpayers-union

More rich people trying to convince you that they are actually paying taxes.

No, it's the IRS. Really. Try it.

[shittygsxr]

The largest users of welfare in the country are wal mart employees. Wal mart simply uses welfare to provide food and healthcare to its employees. But welfare uses very little of our taxes and its not true or fair in any sense to say anyone wants to tax rich people so they can give it to the poor. Welfare is not responsible for the federal deficit. Its also important to remember welfare is children, who not fault of their own have no health insurance. Medicare for all would fix that, but republicans are against that too.

Welfare is not responsible for the federal deficit, it is the result of everyone collecting welfare is not contributing income taxes

[robdot]

The wealthy don't pay payroll taxes, they don't earn an hourly wage.

yea, i know. i already pointed that out. I meant the bottom people we were talking about.

[twowheelsnake]

Welfare is not responsible for the federal deficit, it is the result of everyone collecting welfare is not contributing income taxes

No, no it's not. More money goes to corporate welfare than social welfare

[twowheelsnake]

yea, i know. i already pointed that out. I meant the bottom people we were talking about.

My bad. The fact of the matter is we the working class shoulder most of the financial burden. The rich don't pay their fair share and the poor don't earn their keep. I don't know about you guys but there's not much more blood left in this turnip for either side.

[robdot]

So Clinton created the dot.com industry?

The fact remains that clintons tax and deficit reduction bill passed before newt was speaker, and every republican voted against it. And when clinton left office the budget was running a 600 billion dollar surplus. He did this by taxing the so called "rich".

[twowheelsnake]

No, it's the IRS. Really. Try it.

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

This is not the IRS, that was the link. It's this stupid ass right wing organization headed by wealthy people to make you think they actually pay taxes. Please try and pay attention.

[jblosser]

20% of Fed spending in 2011 (~$750 billion of ~$3.6 trillion) was welfare and Medicaid.

Add another ~$250 billion from the states, and we're over $1 billion in assistance to the poor.

2009 personal (not corporate) income tax revenue just under $1 trillion, at $953 billion.

[jblosser]

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

This is not the IRS, that was the link. It's this stupid ass right wing organization headed by wealthy people to make you think they actually pay taxes. Please try and pay attention.

Jesus, try the link IN POST 13. It links to a .PDF from The IRS, at IRS.GOV.

edit: I created the link in my post, I know to where it links.

you say "the rich" don't pay their "fair share". How much more should they pay?

You're right, though, that individuals are paying more now as a percentage of total revenues than ever. Cannot continue.

Edited March 5, 2013 by jblosser

[twowheelsnake]

Jesus, try the link IN POST 13. It links to a .PDF from The IRS, at IRS.GOV.

edit: I created the link in my post, I know to where it links.

you say "the rich" don't pay their "fair share". How much more should they pay?

You're right, though, that individuals are paying more now as a percentage of total revenues than ever. Cannot continue.

Lol sorry man! Anyway, that link does kinda prove a point. Why do they not break out incomes lower than 245,000? Something to hide here maybe! Also, this is income. Wealthy people generally don't have an income so to speak. They have investments. And those are taxed entirely differently than what we are looking at in this chart. We're basically "pay to play" on this field.

[jblosser]

Lol sorry man! Anyway, that link does kinda prove a point. Why do they not break out incomes lower than 245,000? Something to hide here maybe! Also, this is income. Wealthy people generally don't have an income so to speak. They have investments. And those are taxed entirely differently than what we are looking at in this chart. We're basically "pay to play" on this field.

Had to get you to read somehow...

As to why it's not broken out - Fuck-all if I know, it's the IRS. but, it's just the snapshot, I'd venture the details are on the site somewhere, but I need to get some shut-eye. If you really wanna know, have at it...

Income is income, whether it's a paycheck or a distribution from Merrill Lynch. It is taxed. Yes, at a lower rate than "regular" income, but it is still taxed.

Edited March 5, 2013 by jblosser

[JackFlash]

You don't see poor people providing jobs for the rest of us. It's the rich who employ us. They provide the jobs that feed, house, and clothe our families. The benefits they provide to this country through jobs, services, manufacturing, and agriculture allows most of us to live better than if we tried self employment. Income tax is collected because of those jobs, and lots of it. It's those tax dollars that feed the have-nots, the do-nothings, and those unable to provide for themselves.

When the rich spend money on cars, planes, a 3rd home, or a dinner out, the economy is stimulated and gives us work, which means we have income. And the government collects taxes on all of it, more taxes than 100 of us pay in a year.

We need the rich to keep this country running and to keep us all employed. And we need them to stay in this country. However, many of them are leaving to other countries that welcome them with open arms. When they feel abused and vilified by the government, their love for this country will evaporate and they will take all their wealth with them, along with our opportunity for a better life.

I won't even get into how much they contribute to charities which benefit many of us when we have a need. And without them, many of these charities would not exist.

They have the know-how and the ability to succeed and we could all learn a lot from them. If you divided all our wealth up evenly, because they know how, in ten years it would be redistributed to it's present day levels. The poor would be poor again and the rich would be back on top.

Be glad we have wealth in this country and don't make the ones who have it the bad guys.

.

[ScubaCinci]

Taxing the rich means the rich move their money and the burden lies with the rest of us. If that isn't true' date=' why are there hundreds of banks just outside our borders filled with American currency?[/quote']

It's definitely true...same goes for corporations.

[ScubaCinci]

When my wife and I were in Geneva last year, we fantasized about heading to a bank and opening a Swiss bank account. I kinda wish we had.

[Bad324]

didnt watch it, don't care to no matter what it says.

The only wealth I'm going to distribute is my anger. Stay the fuck away from my money

With all due respect and shit

[Bitani]

Well, I feel poor now.

[jblosser]

When my wife and I were in Geneva last year, we fantasized about heading to a bank and opening a Swiss bank account. I kinda wish we had.

the Swiss talk - you're about 15 years too late.

The other (formerly) safe havens, e.g. Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, also talk these days - especially since the G20 in 2009...

Geneva's a fantastic city. I need to go back, visit the homeland again.

[Bubba]

Boy howdy! I must be one of those "rich" folk because I get 100% of my income from investment dividends and have since I retired in 2006. Yup, that's right. I don't have a defined, guaranteed monthly pension, don't collect SS, SSDI, welfare, food stamps or any other US or state government money. I worked my ass off, traded 40 years of my life for a weekly income, raised two kids and put 'em thru college, bought fixer-up houses and put sweat equity into 'em and resold 'em to move into something bigger. I made do with used cars and never owned anything new until I turned 50. There were months in my early career when I paid mortgage and bills and ate Mac&Cheese and balanced my checkbook down to less than $1.00, and still I thought I was King-Shit having the time of my life! BTW, for those of you who may think I don't pay taxes on my investment income now, I just finished calculating how much I owe and it's plenty!

Whenever one of these threads pops up, it never fails to devolve into an argument about either politics, haves-v-havenots, us-v-them, or sometimes even into religion (Christian-v-nonChristian-v-atheist). Fact of the matter is the human animal is inherently self-serving and greedy--that's how we managed to survive for millions of years (or thousands of years, if you're a fundamentalist) before things like society, nationalism and government came into the picture.

With the wisdom of 60+ years of putting up with bullshit--or maybe it's simply the Alzheimer's--I see that there are two crucial questions that need to be asked for our continued existence on planet earth:

1) Is it moral?

and

2) Is it sustainable?

If the answer to either or both of those questions is "NO"....then we are ultimately doomed. I compare it to the US defense policy our government espoused toward Russia when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s of "mutually assured nuclear destruction"....I mean, WTF?!? Moral? Sustainable? Does that sound like a win-win situation? So, where does that leave us?

Well, the only way out of the reality of what we ALL face in the next 100 years or so, assuming we make it that long, is that we need to suck it up and shoulder an increasing burden and increasingly painful load to help mitigate the excesses and abuses of the last 50 years. Yup, I'm part of the problem, and you are too. We've got to stop postponing the inevitable--kicking the can down the road, so to speak--and start FIXING SHIT NOW. And there's a ton of ways we can fix this.

One is to keep relying on the same system we've been using lately--and that our Washington "policy spinners" have been calling Capitalism--and believe we can "grow our way out" of this situation. Out of necessity, this would eventually have to include the entire world's population. How many of the Third-World nations' poor will it take buying Cadillac Escalades and 60" HD TVs to grow our economy? Sound sustainable?

Or we could allow our "free market economic system"--there's that "Washington spin" again--to further stratify the world's wealth and ensure that only the poorest and the weakest shoulder the bulk of the pain. Afterall, there's way more of "them" to spread the pain around to, and the ultra-rich deserve another couple of billion apiece for 'creating' corporations and jobs, right? Sound moral?

Or we could come to the realization that we're all stuck here on this stupid rock, with no way of getting off and no other place to live no matter who you are and how much money you have.... and agree that allowing one man's over-zealous accumulation of the world's finite resources at the expense of another man's suffering, is NEITHER MORAL NOR SUSTAINABLE.

I'm not trying to pose a solution, nor am I attempting to lay blame. Merely my personal opinion. Consider the discussion started.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Bubba

[rubbersidedown]

Well stated Bubba.

So much of this thread is missing the big picture. We are arguing taxes, politicians, and policies while missing the point, INCOME.

I doubt that there are any 1%'ers or even 5%'ers on this forum, because the would not be associated with us vagrants. Yet still we argue and defend them???

This video was eye opening. I knew it was bad but was under the "think" model. Until we stop believing what super pacts like Americans for Prosperity tell us (they devide and conquer us), realize that we are all in the middle, and start acting in a common interest (that is democracy) it will get worse until it colapses.

[ScubaCinci]

I doubt that there are any 1%'ers or even 5%'ers on this forum, because the would not be associated with us vagrants.

I beg to differ.

[Bad324]

I am the 1%!!! maybe not today, but in 5 years no doubt

[shittygsxr]

Well stated Bubba.

So much of this thread is missing the big picture. We are arguing taxes, politicians, and policies while missing the point, INCOME.

I doubt that there are any 1%'ers or even 5%'ers on this forum, because the would not be associated with us vagrants. Yet still we argue and defend them???

This video was eye opening. I knew it was bad but was under the "think" model. Until we stop believing what super pacts like Americans for Prosperity tell us (they devide and conquer us), realize that we are all in the middle, and start acting in a common interest (that is democracy) it will get worse until it colapses.

Not a 1%er but we will be in the other category in the next couple months. If you want to give away the money that you worked for to those less fortunate by all means do so. There is nothing stopping you or any liberal.

Liberals fall under "do as I say" rather than "do as I do"

You worry about your money and ill worry about mine

[Tonik]

We are all 1% in terms of the world economy. Even the poorest of our poor are 1%'ers compared to the worlds poor. Stop fucking whining and give more of your money to those people if you think the 'rich' should pay their fair share.

In the meantime, Washington does not have an income problem. It has a spending problem. Anyone that does not realize that is a fucking retard. FFS the big tax increase we had in January was spent on ONE bill already. A whole year of that increase on one f'ing bill.