Why should the rich pay at higher tax rates than they do now>

[JDPriestly]

Because they are the only economic group that has seen measurably increased income in recent years.

I don't think that any other groups have seen any gains in their earnings and wages. I think the other groups have all seen losses.

The losses really hurt when you are in a lower income group. If you had an income of $50,000 per year, and it decreases to $35,000, that can determine whether or not you can pay your rent or afford health insurance. $50,000 is slightly above average, but $35,000 is below it. Assuming it is a loss in income that hits pretty much across that pay range, it is a loss of $15,000 that can't be taxed by the government. At that pay level, your money is taken out of your paycheck. You have normally no choice but to pay your taxes. So the government loses income. And actually, $50,000 is probably a pretty high starting figure for the incomes of people who have been losing the financial tug-of-war.

As we saw with Romney, people who make millions, lots more than the $50,000-30,000 level have all kinds of ways to hide their income and protect it from taxes. At most the earner of the lower wage or salary can maybe buy a house and deduct the interest or the taxes on that. The person earning millions hires an accountant and shields his money from taxes -- finds tax shelters.

That is the way that it works and that is why those who have gained need to pay at very high tax rates while those who earn relatively little should not.

The person earning $35,000 now who earned more later may have already lost a home and may be doing two jobs now rather than the one he or she did before. I have seen that in my family.

The odd thing is that the person who earns less, say a couple with three children, has in some respects more crises in life than those who earn more. The low earners' cars break down. The electricity gets turned off. Buying the kids' school clothes is a crisis that takes mom to the second-hand store. The other kids in school have the internet and computers. Your kids don't. It's a never-ending battle focused on money.

For the families that do better, the big challenge is not buying everything their children want, not accumulating too much.

Disparity in incomes is a far bigger social malady than high taxes on the rich.

It's the disparity that is dividing our country. We were far better off when I was a child and we were ALL a lot poorer.

So yes I would like to see higher taxes on the rich. They should pay a bigger share toward educating and providing health care for all of our children.

I was born during WWII. When I was growing up, I was taught that we are one country, that we are in it together. I remember how we were all so afraid of the atomic bomb. I remember how proud we were of our response to Sputnik. I still believe that we are one country and in it together. Apparently the rich, those who have gained the most from the technological and scientific progress that our tax dollars have made possible, don't.

There would be no internet, no four-lane highways, no cell phones, no news from Mars, fewer new pharmaceutical miracles, less information about healthy diets and what is happening to our environment, especially the oceans and the how we learn and you name it less information and less knowledge if we didn't tax the rich at rates as high as possible.

Much of the wonderful information and basic science that has given us the good lives we now have was paid for back in the WWII and post-WWII years and it was high tax rates on the rich that brought progress to us. Now the rich of today want to benefit from all that free technology floating out there, and they should, but within reason. The rich are the ones who should be thinking about how they can leave a legacy of research and knowledge for the future generation.

It's not the poor suckers breathing their lasts after a life of 9-5 and longer and just surviving on their Social Security checks and Medicare-paid health care. They made their contribution. Don't take their modest incomes from them. And don't blame them. They gave at the office -- literally.

A couple of DUers asked me to post this as a new thread.

I look forward to your ideas and comments.

[Scuba]

1. Great big K & R. Thanks JDPriestly, well done!

[JDPriestly]

8. Thanks.

[bjobotts]

35. 100% of all new income went to the 1% says Bernie Sanders

[JDPriestly]

43. Yes. I have heard that, an I think it is true.

[bjobotts]

37. 100% of all new income went to the 1% says Bernie Sanders

CEOs get more...get what the workers should and used to get.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. Simple. Because they now have all the fucking money. They rigged the game and they won

We lost. Fuck em, or, the way I feel, Off with their heads!

[JDPriestly]

9. They rigged the game and won. True.

When they lose, they dump the board game over, ask for bail-outs, get them and start all over. The game continues until they lose again. They ask the poor to make sacrifices, and then they grab and grab and grab until they lose once again. But to whom do they lose? Not to the poor. To each other.

The sub-prime recession is an example of the rich cleaning out the savings of the working people and then beating up on each other's "profits." That's all it was.

[gtar100]

34. In reality, the game never ends. Any win is temporary. Even if we ourselves never see

the inevitable fall of today's wealthy, I think that thousands of years of history teach us that any situation is temporary. Our problem today, as often in the past, is that those in positions of power act out of selfishness and no concern for future generations. Hell, it's even difficult to get many of them to care about their own kids!

And for better or worse, it only takes the passing of one or two generations to forget all the hard-earned lessons of our forefathers.

[JaneyVee]

3. Because rich sacrifice absolutely NOTHING for our Nation. Poor & mid class fight our wars, build our

Nation, educate our children, serve our communities, support our local small businesses, AND pay our taxes. The rich are useless.

[NYC_SKP]

4. K/R and I see nothing wrong with disincentives to making hoards of money.

The myth that's projected, an ethic that's promoted, is that making money is great and that the more you make the greater it must be.

However, it's a myth that only serves the powerful.

Why not a new ethic that promotes charity and kindness? Because it doesn't serve those at the top.

Thus, I suggest systems that discourage ridiculous incomes, that with regulatory muscle prohibit high salaries, that actually penalize them.

That's all I got, been a long day.

[JDPriestly]

13. Good points. Who would bother to become a teacher or a nurse

or even a gardener if all that mattered was money?

Making money should not be rewarded beyond everything else. We can't collect enough in taxes or pay enough in wages to reward those who do the thankless, low-pay work. But we can even out the rewards a little.

I just refuse to think that the top guy at Goldman Sachs deserves that much more money than my wonderful, favorite sixth-grade teacher did. Makes no sense to me. She made my life so good. What a wonderful person -- and she did not do it for the money.

[YOHABLO]

63. You'd be surprised how many have gone into teaching only ...

to end up saying fuck this shit. Very low pay. Constant scrutiny from administrators and parents and their ''lovely'' children. The behavior problems that a sixth grade teacher faces today are insurmountable. Trust me on this. Now if you were paying me $50 thousand a year, I might think about it.

We need to go back to the taxation rates during the Eisenhower administration. The military industrial complex is eating us alive as well. $120 billion for an F-35 that has loads of problems. It can't fly at night, nor can it fly in cloudy weather. WTF And it carries nuclear warheads. Are we bat fucking shit crazy? Yet they want to build nearly 3,000 of them. Perhaps people have to really, really, really suffer before they wake up. You'd think we had reached that point many years ago. But the same ole - same ole. The rich in this country have eaten us alive. I say raised their GD taxes !! If Obama puts SS and Medicare on the table .. we have been betrayed in such an enormous way. I suggest we have a protest of all protests. People in this country are too damn stupid to even realize that they've had the rug pulled out from under them. What is wrong with people? I am tired of living in a country full of dumb asses.

[MichiganVote]

5. Because they don't pay any per legislative lobbying?

[Dawson Leery]

6. K/R

[Glamrock]

7. They also use a greater percentage of the infrastructure.

They should pay at least the same percentage of their income as the rest of us.

[JDPriestly]

16. Good point.

And they often make money from the education of their employees. That employees today take huge risks when they invest in their educations is completely ignored in the bankruptcy code and doesn't get the credit it should in our income tax code.

[JayhawkSD]

28. Infrastructure is not a consumable commodity

I think it's fair to say that the rich benefit to a higher degree from the presence of infrastructure, and should therefore pay more toward the cost of providing it, but infrastructure is not a consumable, so it's not really reasonable to say that they "use more of it." They probably use more utilities, such as water and power, but those are paid for by user fees.

[Glamrock]

31. Seriously?

You say tomato....

[SunSeeker]

38. The hell it isn't.

The rich use our court system to protect their wealth, and when a courtroom is taken up because of some months-long complex business case, your little case (assuming you even had money for a lawyer) will not be heard. And the rich use trucks to ship their goods around, which destroy our roads, requiring constant repaving (compare the way the fast lane looks to the truck lane). Same with the bridges and rails. And the rich use cops to protect their wealth more than you do. And when a cop is checking out a burglar alarm at a rich fuck's house--or when a sheriff is being used by a bank to evict someone from their foreclosed home, they are not available to help you.

[gulliver]

10. What's fair is decided by the democracy, period.

If the democracy decided that the wealthy had to pay 100% taxes on income over a certain amount, it would be fair. By definition. The democracy doesn't do that, but that is it's legitimate right. No apologies necessary.

In the grand scheme, I hardly think it is fair that someone born in a rich household gets to live rich their whole life while someone in a poor household faces steep odds of getting out of poverty. If we are going to talk grand scheme "fairness," then the rich should thank their lucky stars that they only have to pay big taxes rather than experience true fairness. You would think they would be bending over backwards to make sure that they help those less fortunate, and of course, a lot of good wealthy folks do just that.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with giant taxes for giant incomes. America's ideal should be that there is universal opportunity to make an honest, decent living, have good food, shelter, clothing, raise your kids, etc. Next to that, who cares if it's a little harder to get from wealthy to super wealthy? Why is that even on the radar?

[JDPriestly]

17. Well said.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with giant taxes for giant incomes.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. The brilliance of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Having done quite a bit of study on the origins, upbringing, beliefs, and pre-Presidential actions of Franklin, I have concluded that the brains in that family were firmly ensconced under those "interesting" hats Eleanor appeared to be so fond of.

But whoever was really responsible for his first 100 days and ensuing three terms, the actions taken were undeniably a flurry of sheer genius. The parasites were restrained enough to forestall the inevitable collapse of their banking system, the sheeple were granted enough leeway to run out of energy before they hit the fence, and most importantly, the system of usury and exploitation was preserved to stem the rising tide of socialism that had terrified the owners to the very stains in their shorts.

Compare that finesse and foresight to what passed for brilliance today. Like the Television God that we worship and tribute, the standard of quality has been reduced to such criteria as, "I give it a 10, I understood every word said and they didn't drool hardly at all"

[JDPriestly]

14. Brilliant! I read a lot if not all of Eleanor Roosevelt's writings.

I don't think you can get her books or the collections of her writings in print any more. Tells you how far we have sunk.

[Egalitarian Thug]

45. And what a shame that is. A shame on us, for being so dim, as well the shame of these fools

that pretend they know what they are doing. The show has always been an important part of the game, but we have forgotten that once tonight's show is over, the owners have to make sure that the game remains intact to be played tomorrow night.

[TexasBushwhacker]

12. The real question is while the hell should the wealthy pay a LOWER rate

If you have the good fortune to live on nothing but your investments, why do you get to pay capital gains rate on the growth, when someone who is busting their butt for wages has to pay a higher rate when you add income tax and FICA?

[JDPriestly]

15. Precisely!

[madville]

18. Didn't Bill Maher just say California

Was about to run him off due to high taxes, it's always good when it's other people's money I guess

[SunSeeker]

32. LOL. Bill Maher isn't going anywhere so long as the Playboy mansion is in L.A.

Taxes are not high in CA nor are federal taxes high. But I'd like to address your quip that "it's always good when it's other people's money I guess." The rich have so much money because they have taken the workers' productivity and kept the money those workers earned as productivity went up, not returning any of it to the workers. Workers' wages have flatlined for the last 40 years, but the income of the rich has gone off the charts. There's a particularly good exchange by Elizabeth Warren about that, noting that if the minimum wage kept up with productivity increases, minimum wage workers should be earning $22 an hour.

It is under 5 minutes long, I highly recommend it:

And at the same time, middle income earners pay double the tax rate of the rich, who get most of their income as unearned through capital gains, which we tax at only 15%--if that. No, it's not other people's money, it's OUR money. And the rich are stealing it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

42. California's top rate is 10.5%

He could move to New York City and pay 9% state income tax and 3.876% city income tax. He could move to one of the states like Texas or Florida that don't have state income taxes. Yeah, like that's going to happen.

[JDPriestly]

44. Bill Maher would be utterly miserable in most parts of the country.

I'd like to see him try it in Cincinnati, Ohio or Birmingham, Alabama.

I think he would soon decide that high taxes are no problem.

[Egalitarian Thug]

46. No, he didn't say anything like that. He said that he pays a lot, more than he would like, but

even that was said in the context of the urgency of making sure that everybody makes enough so that they can afford to relieve him and the other Big Winners of their burden.

[JaneyVee]

54. How can he complain about HIM paying higher taxes while YOU say other peoples money?

We're all in this together. You're frightwing talking points are showing.

[madville]

55. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy

Many rich liberals talk a good game until it comes time for them to pay their fair share. Then many shelter and dodge the tax man with the rest of the rich.

[JaneyVee]

56. Many rich Liberals are complaining their taxes are too low also.

[Ikonoklast]

62. Maher is no liberal, he's a Libertarian.

A left-leaning Libertarian, yes, but a Libertarian nonetheless.

[RainDog]

19. k&r n/t

[AAO]

20. I agree with it all! Great post, JD!

And in the end it will be for the benefit of the .01 - the current path is unsustainable. And that doesn't bode we'll for anybody.

[love_katz]

21. K&R...

Excellent post, and I am loving the discussion in this thread.

Thank you for taking the suggestion to make your comments a separate post.

I hope this thread makes it to the Greatest Page, because I would love to see lots of continuing discussion on this topic.

[socialindependocrat]

22. My take on the situation...

The increasing imbalance of income between the workers and the wealthy has been going on for the past 35 years. During this time, corporations have reduced benefits to their employees in order to increase the salaries and bonuses of the corporate hierarchy. We have given more money to the wealthy that would have otherwise been reinvested back into the businesses or would have been paid to the workers in exchange for the increase in productivity that has been shown to have occurred over that time period. In effect, we the people, have invested for a rainy day. We have given the wealthy money to grow and invest so that they would have a cushion to protect them when the time came to rebalance the incomes of their deserving employees. We are not asking for them to pay back the additional funds they have accrued over the years but we are asking for them to rebalance the employee share of the corporate earnings.

[abelenkpe]

23. K&R

[Beartracks]

24. Shared economic sacrifice requires...

... that shared economic success previously occurred.

==============

[jtuck004]

25. >"The person earning millions hires an accountant "< No, They don't EARN a damn thing. They take.

They, the wealthy, don't operate the registers, or clean up the shit, or feed the people, or fix the cars, or cut the trees, or build the houses, or...as a matter of fact, they are completely useless in the whole scheme of things. They provide a loan, and for that people give up their whole lives. If we didn't have a population that had been schooled to look to them for answers, whose training says we must be led, they would have no purpose in any of this.

And as soon as we figure out how to cooperate with each other instead of providing the means for other to take the very food from our mouths, it will stop.

It won't be easy, because they spend every waking moment taking,while we spend most of ours working. But it is likely the only way out of this serfdom.

Thanks for this.

[Lionessa]

26. Nope, I think I figured it out in a fight the other night with a suitor...

In my younger years, I was an accountant, very good, very well paid, and well respected, bonuses of both money and hams and turkeys and chocolates and so on. Now nothing,... right?

Here's why. When you tell someone who's already cleared over a million taxable dollars a year, and you say to him, y'know if you take $100K more dollars in income you'll only get to keep $35K of it, the rest will go to help those who may or may not be in your employ. They think, y'know, I may as well make sure my employees get this, because it buys loyalty and trust.

When instead that extra $100K let's one hide part of it, and then only be taxes a measely 28-35% on whatever you didn't hide,...that 100K is suddenly much more valuable than loyalty or trust.

[SunSeeker]

33. Exactly. Higher taxes force reinvestment into businesses, as opposed to what is happening now. nt

[JDPriestly]

40. Good insights.

[Demo_Chris]

27. No one else has any money

We live in a society. It has certain things that need to be paid for. The bottom 80% literally have no spare money to fund this stuff. They have nothing left over, so there is nothing there to take. All of the money is concentrated at the top.

Along with all that wealth and power comes a certain resposibility. They can either choose to shut the hell up and enjoy their obligations and privileges together, or they can lose both. No other options ultimately exist.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

29. In answer to your question...

Maybe because their idea of "problems at home" is the maid and the butler are arguing with the chauffeur.

[ErikJ]

30. Income tax is the best tax

In 1932 the unemployment was 30-50% which cut US revenue in half. The states were all out of money and the feds had to bail them out. The situation was very dire. Hoover's only option left was to increase the top marginal income tax on the rich from 20% to 63%, the largest peace time tax hike in history. The rich were the only ones making real money. Property tax defaults caused millions to lose their homes and nobody was buying anything for sales tax revenue. Income tax was the only game in town. Luckily by the time FDR got in office he had the revenue to do the New Deal which brought us out of the worst of the Great Depression.

[Progressive dog]

51. Hoover invented the Great Depression

and he did it partly by trying to balance the budget after the largest drop in GDP in our history. FDR ran enormous deficits from 1933 to 1936, when he cut spending and gave the USA a double dip depression, probably slowing recovery by 3 or 4 years.
Then he saw the results and increased spending.

[DallasNE]

36. First Target, Tax Loopholes

At the top of that extensive list, tax credits.

We have all heard about oil companies getting $5 billion in tax credits but there are plenty of others that are just as bad. Take the $700 million Apple got in 2011 and the $429 million that Facebook got -- 2 companies and over $1 billion. What did they do to earn these tax credits. They paid their top executives performance bonuses so the government gives them a tax credit so the taxpayer pays the executive's performance bonus. How does that work, you ask. Well the company declares a stock option for these executives as a performance bonus. What the government does then is gives these companies a tax credit for the difference between the option price and the closing price on the day the option is declared. Not only that but a performance bonus is actually wages but these wages are not subject to the payroll tax. While everybody getting these bonuses is already capped on Social Security there is no cap on Medicare so these wages should be taxed so we are losing out on both ends. And the list goes on and on and on.

[JDPriestly]

41. I didn't know that. Are you sure? Sounds really generous of the IRS and Congress.

[DallasNE]

47. While This Doesn't Go Deeply Into The Details

Of the language of the law it supports what I posted.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/18/facebook-stock-option-tax-break/

Shocking, right?

[DallasNE]

48. Let's Not Forget The "Double Irish" While We Are At It

Thanks to a compliant media it is hard to track down all of the boondoggles Congress has created for their corporate masters.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/15/what-money-could-buy-if-google-apple-paid-full-taxes/?partner=yahootix

$60 billion here and $60 billion there and pretty soon it starts to add up.

[JDPriestly]

49. It's astounding. They are killing the goose that laid their golden eggs.

What fools!

[DallasNE]

50. Where Is The Risk?

You're well read and knowledgeable and I assume you knew nothing about either of these. I learned about them only in the last month. Educating one person at a time takes forever and that is what is so horrible about our compliant media today. We have a right to know about these boondoggles yet learning about them is extremely difficult. In fact, it take a lucky break frequently. I stumbled across the "double Irish" doing research on the tax credit for performance bonuses since I needed a second source to confirm my first source or I couldn't post it.

[SunSeeker]

39. K&R

[historylovr]

52. K & R.

[Little Star]

53. k&r

[hue]

57. The Repukes cannot/willnot hear these words of truth! K&R

[Capt13]

58. Three Words

Campaign Finance Reform

[lumberjack_jeff]

59. Workers are far more productive than they were 30 years ago

Yet, the benefit of that increased productivity has gone to only a small number of people.

If that were fixed, the rest of the economy would return to robust health.

1) Raise the top tax rate 5%
2) use that money to expand the EITC.
3) watch the economy improve.

[John2]

60. if the Government raised taxes

on the wealthy, they would look for every trick in the book to escape paying them. Things like hiding money over seas, placing money in charities or raising the costs of goods and services by passing it on to consumers. The trick for the Government is to close all those loopholes. The Government should restrict companies from passing costs to the consumers by fixing how much a company can charge. They have done this to Oil companies when gas prices rise and there is no shortage of supply and demand. There is no shortage in demand for health care for example but the costs have risen too much. Drug companies and Hospital administrators know this, so they increased the costs for services. If the Government can regulate those spikes to reasonable levels, it will help a lot with the cost of health care. This is not asking to prevent providers from making a good living, but costs need to be at reasonable levels. There are people in the business just for profits and not really for Health care. It use to be Health care providers focused more on preventing disease than profits, but the focus has flipped more to wards greed. They can't do that in another country because the costs are more regulated. And the people who don't want to be in the profession or just want profits, can let others move in it. I rather have people concerned more about patients' health than profits in the profession.

[JDPriestly]

61. Good points. People who give a lot should be compensated well, but

the compensation has to be proportional to the real need for the value of and need for their services.

It isn't a matter of regimenting that from the government out as was tried in Communism. It is a matter of placing social pressure and using a rational tax system to achieve at least some fairness in our society.

While corporate CEOs earn millions, many, many Americans who work very hard and do vital work, work ranging from cleaning streets to caring for young children, earn so little that they have to rely on food stamps and subsidized housing to get by. And then, the CEOs and hedgefund managers have the nerve to suggest cutting those programs as well as Social Security and Medicare.

Corporations should pay taxes, and they should not get tax credits or deductions for money or bonuses they pay their CEOs that exceed specific amounts. CEOs are not that much more useful than the rest of us.