Reply #1: yeah, that is so stupid he ought to be embarrassed to say it [View All]

[hfojvt]

one or two or even thirty people, even very rich people, cannot do what we can all do collectively. Let's say a dozen people like Buffet are worth $30 billion and they decide to give half of their wealth to the government. A big sacrifice for them but only a one time gain of $180 billion for the government.

Now look at just the top .1%. The richest 130,000 people in America by income. In 2001 they paid an average tax rate of 28.2% and paid 28.49% in 2002. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts this was reduced to
2003- 24.6%
2004 - 23.1%
2005 - 22.52%
2006 - 21.98%
2007 - 21.46%
2008 - 22.69%

If, instead of getting their taxes cut, they had paid the same average rate that they did in 2002, the total extra revenue would be $281.7 billion.

Yet, each one of those people, whose average income was a little over 6 million dollars, would not be giving up 50% of their wealth. They would only be giving up - at most, another 7% of their income and still would be keeping over 60% of their huge incomes (at least, figuring 28.5% for federal income taxes, and another 11.5% for state taxes and FICA taxes (if any) which is likely to be a huge over-estimate in most states).

You see Mitch, it does not help if one or two people give lots of money if the other 95% are gonna do nothing. Taxes are a way to get everybody involved, so nobody rides for free. Buffet should not have to pay for all the other deadbeat millionaires. That would not fix the problem, and it wouldn't be fair.