Runaway Greed Is Destroying America: Should There Be a Lid on...

[Brewman_Jax]

Runaway Greed Is Destroying America: Should There Be a Lid on How Much Someone Can Make?

http://www.alternet.org/economy/154088/r..._can_make/

From the article:

Quote:Social decency, most Americans today would agree, demands a minimum wage, a floor that keeps working people out of dire privation. Does social decency also demand a “maximum wage,” an income ceiling that discourages wealth from dangerously concentrating?

Philosopher Felix Adler certainly thought so. We remember Adler today as the tireless reformer who led the national effort to end child labor in the early 1900s. Adler also founded the Ethical Culture movement and introduced the kindergarten concept into American education. Much less well known: Adler advanced America’s first serious maximum wage proposal.

The exploitation of workers young and old, Adler believed, generated grand private fortunes that exerted a “corrupting influence” on American politics. To curb that corruption, he proposed a steeply graduated income tax — with a 100 percent top rate at the point “when a certain high and abundant sum has been reached, amply sufficient for all the comforts and true refinements of life.”

This 100 percent top rate, Adler told a packed 1880 lecture hall in New York City, would leave with the wealthy individual “all that he can truly use for the humane purposes of life” and tax away “only that which is to him merely a means of pomp and pride and power.”

...

The basic fact that most of the rich get their income by capital gains and dividends and other non-wage sources and pay so little tax on it is just shameful! The stupid and uninformed still whine about how the rich are "taxed for achievement" and "burdened by the death tax" while the people that do the lion's share of the work are taxed at a much greater rate relative to income. The income and economic disparity continues unabated. The rich that caused the economic crash will likely go unpunished.

There should not be a maximum income level, but they shouldn't get away with all of the business and personal tax breaks that no one else gets and too many have to pay for. Bring back the high income tax rates. If the corporations paid a fraction of the taxes they owed, there would likely be no deficit and the burden would not be on the working class.

[SeattleGirl]

I don't know about a maximum income level, but I certainly think that those who make a lot of money (or receive it in dividends, etc.) could pay their fair share of taxes. THAT's what really gets to me -- the more you make, the less you have to pay in taxes. Those people can still use the roads, the electricity, etc. that the rest of us use, yet we-the-lesser are the ones paying the lion's share for those things through our taxes.

[fonz]

(02-20-2012 01:56 PM)SeattleGirl Wrote:  I don't know about a maximum income level, but I certainly think that those who make a lot of money (or receive it in dividends, etc.) could pay their fair share of taxes. THAT's what really gets to me -- the more you make, the less you have to pay in taxes. Those people can still use the roads, the electricity, etc. that the rest of us use, yet we-the-lesser are the ones paying the lion's share for those things through our taxes.

I used to be a democrat, now I am an independent, and it is because of people, such as you SeattleGirl, who don't have a clue. You just parrot the lies you hear.

The fact is, the top 25% of income earners in the US, pay 87.3% of the taxes, yet they only earn 67.38% of the income. If they paid their fare share of taxes, they would only contribute 67.38% of their income in taxes, not 87.34%.

These statistics come right from the IRS, so no, they are not made up by the rich.

btw, I would like to be in that group one day, why demonize success?

I don't know how to upload a table image, but you can verify the information at the IRS.gov website.

[SeattleGirl]

(07-17-2012 11:51 AM)fonz Wrote:  

(02-20-2012 01:56 PM)SeattleGirl Wrote:  I don't know about a maximum income level, but I certainly think that those who make a lot of money (or receive it in dividends, etc.) could pay their fair share of taxes. THAT's what really gets to me -- the more you make, the less you have to pay in taxes. Those people can still use the roads, the electricity, etc. that the rest of us use, yet we-the-lesser are the ones paying the lion's share for those things through our taxes.

I used to be a democrat, now I am an independent, and it is because of people, such as you SeattleGirl, who don't have a clue. You just parrot the lies you hear.

The fact is, the top 25% of income earners in the US, pay 87.3% of the taxes, yet they only earn 67.38% of the income. If they paid their fare share of taxes, they would only contribute 67.38% of their income in taxes, not 87.34%.

These statistics come right from the IRS, so no, they are not made up by the rich.

btw, I would like to be in that group one day, why demonize success?

I don't know how to upload a table image, but you can verify the information at the IRS.gov website.

Please, drop that tired old saw. The fact is, many of the very rich do NOT pay the same percentage of tax that those in lower income brackets pay, particularly those in the middle class. Yes, they may pay more in actual dollars, but that is not the same as percentage, and I bet you know that.

I pay taxes in the upper 20%; Mitt Romney admitted he paid less than 14%. That is just flat out unfair.

And no, I am not demonizing success (thought I do believe the only thing Romney was successful at is firing people and outsourcing jobs -- oh, and putting his money into offshore accounts so he doesn't have to pay all his taxes in the US). I've run into people with your attitude before, and I have to tell you, you couldn't be more wrong. I don't hate people who have more money than I do; but I DO hate it that they can often get away with things that I would probably be jailed for if I tried, like not paying all my taxes. Mitt Romney and all the other really rich people in the world are just that -- people. Why should they get away with paying less than their fair share?

Tell me, if you and Romney or another really wealthy person went to dinner and you ordered something in the mid-price range and Romney ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, do you think it would be fair if Romney only paid 14% of the total bill and left you to pay the rest? Even if he could afford to pay fully for his own meal?

[pappy]

(07-17-2012 11:51 AM)fonz Wrote:  

(02-20-2012 01:56 PM)SeattleGirl Wrote:  I don't know about a maximum income level, but I certainly think that those who make a lot of money (or receive it in dividends, etc.) could pay their fair share of taxes. THAT's what really gets to me -- the more you make, the less you have to pay in taxes. Those people can still use the roads, the electricity, etc. that the rest of us use, yet we-the-lesser are the ones paying the lion's share for those things through our taxes.

I used to be a democrat, now I am an independent, and it is because of people, such as you SeattleGirl, who don't have a clue. You just parrot the lies you hear.

The fact is, the top 25% of income earners in the US, pay 87.3% of the taxes, yet they only earn 67.38% of the income. If they paid their fare share of taxes, they would only contribute 67.38% of their income in taxes, not 87.34%.

These statistics come right from the IRS, so no, they are not made up by the rich.

btw, I would like to be in that group one day, why demonize success?

I don't know how to upload a table image, but you can verify the information at the IRS.gov website.

Define "income" as it relates to your statistics. Much of the wealth that is increasingly concentrated at the top is simply not reflected in your numbers.

I think it is fair to ask you what proportion of the wealth of this country is controlled by that top 25% you use as your sample and is the income reported as taxable in proportion to that wealth or is it sheltered from taxes?

Further what proportion of their wealth or income does that 25% pay out in payroll taxes, sales taxes, use taxes (ie auto license plates), local and state income taxes, real estate taxes or "sin" taxes? All of these taxes take a much more severe toll on ther lower income earners and non-working poor than they do on your 25% sample.

Cherry picking stats is a common practice for those choosing to deceive. Perhaps you should ask the folk you post for why they would do that to a nice fellow like you.

[Brewman_Jax]

(07-17-2012 11:51 AM)fonz Wrote:  

(02-20-2012 01:56 PM)SeattleGirl Wrote:  I don't know about a maximum income level, but I certainly think that those who make a lot of money (or receive it in dividends, etc.) could pay their fair share of taxes. THAT's what really gets to me -- the more you make, the less you have to pay in taxes. Those people can still use the roads, the electricity, etc. that the rest of us use, yet we-the-lesser are the ones paying the lion's share for those things through our taxes.

I used to be a democrat, now I am an independent, and it is because of people, such as you SeattleGirl, who don't have a clue. You just parrot the lies you hear.

The fact is, the top 25% of income earners in the US, pay 87.3% of the taxes, yet they only earn 67.38% of the income. If they paid their fare share of taxes, they would only contribute 67.38% of their income in taxes, not 87.34%.

These statistics come right from the IRS, so no, they are not made up by the rich.

btw, I would like to be in that group one day, why demonize success?

I don't know how to upload a table image, but you can verify the information at the IRS.gov website.

If you're going to go thread-mining, could you at least be original? Cherry-picking stats and overlooking non-wage income and whines of "demonizing success" isn't news, it's lying.

[Fire1]

Why does it always appear (at least to me) that so-called independents have the same or similar ideology as the dyed in the wool, card carrying Republican? At any rate, well said pappy.

[azmouse]

There has never been a tax rate in this country that discouraged people from wanting to be wealthy.
And no one in the top 2% will stop making money if capital gains taxes go from 15% to 20%. Won't happen.

They live in a great country that assisted them in the acquisition of wealth. They should be willing to give something back to help in this time of shortages.

[OptimistesMaddie]

we just need to pay attention.