In Favor of a Progressive Income Tax

[Wisc Badger]

I abhor the shrubs tax cuts, I am a fervent believer in a progressive income tax model of funding the government.

Those who have the ability to pay should. The tax rate themselves should never get to the point where they impede peoples willingness to take financial risk for requisite gain, or become a disincentive for people to work because the tax rates are to high.

Having said that the rates were significantly higher in the 50's and 60's and for the most part those were prosperous times for this nation.

I believe that a Progressive Income Tax is the best way to go.
:think:

[aquart]

1. Yes, it is.

But we must also make sure that inheritances are taxed at the right level also, as vast inheritances tie up resources and destroy nations. We would be entering this century in a far better position if Richard Mellon Scaife had had to work for a living.

[Wisc Badger]

2. i could not agree more,

my mistake for forgetting to comment on the inheritance tax. Your statement is excellent>
:bounce:

[TN al]

3. Well said

[TwentyFive]

4. I hate income taxes.

I think the govt has a obligation to keep them low. I do think they should go higher as people make more money - so I agree with progressive taxation.

But the HUGE problem I have Bush's tax policies? EVERYBODY gets let off the hook for the huge bills he running up. He's screwing future generations - they will have to pay for his War Machine! But heck, kids don't vote....so lets rape their environment, send their parents & older siblings off to war, then stick'em with all bills. And then with a smile - tell people we're doing this for the children.

[demwing]

5. A Progressive Tax is populist

and populism must be a feather in the cap of the Progressive party.

I favor the tax, the term, and all that it implies.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Yes, but it must be explained to the people

many are buying into the Federal Sales Tax scam. It only becomes clear that progressive taxes are better when you explain that the sales tax doesn't tax interest income, which is the venue of the rich, but does tax basics that people need to survive. Show that a progressive tax still allows rich people to live while the sales tax could result in people having to make choices between food/medicine/shelter, and suddenly you get more people saying a progressive tax is the way to go.

[EVDebs]

7. We need to get the word out...

Good Lord, today's paper had an article in it titled "Economic Growth Rests on the Rich: Data show pay rising more than twice as fast for the top fifth of wage earners as for rest" by Nell Henderson of the Washington Post (may be under another title for other papers). If you've read "Perfectly Legal: Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else" by David Cay Johnston then you know it's not even the whole top 20% but the very top 1 1/2% of taxpayers.

Now Congress has made things even worse by adding that prescription drug "benefit":

""Looking more than 75 years into the future, (Texas A&M economist Thomas) Saving estimates that the nation faces a $62 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare -- versus a $12 trillion gap for Social Security.

Yet, he said, lawmakers created a prescription drug benefit that added nearly $17 trillion in future IOUs to that $62 trillion shortfall.

As a frame of reference, the entire U.S. economy is worth about $11 trillion this year. And Saving projected only future Medicare costs. The separate Medicaid program -- whose combined state and federal costs of $270 billion in 2003 nearly equaled Medicare's $278 billion price tag -- is also on an upward trajectory."" From

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/07/BUG0V9N54U1.DTL

"Medicare faces cost crisis
Multitrillion-dollar deficits loom over federal programs"
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer, Sunday, November 7, 2004

Keep these dollar amount numbers handy, they will undoubtedly be spun by Bush and Company in order to make the lower and middle classes pay for the wage gains we already see going along with Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest ! And corporations are already gaming this (see Businessweek's article "The Benefits Trap", where jobs are outsourced and worker's pension/healthcare benefits are dropped almost entirely).

Say, if healthcare's 15% of GDP is dropped, out of about a $12 trillion dollar GDP, that just about equals Bush's tax cuts of $1.85 trillion dollars ! So, that's how they plan on paying for those tax cuts...getting the lower and middle classes to foot the bill by making corporations and the already rich RICHER !

[stevebreeze]

9. do you have a link to the story ? (rests on the rich)

sounds like a crock.

[EVDebs]

11. No crock, real story

Was in Press Democrat (santa rosa CA) business section the other day citing Nell Henderson of the Washington Post as the author. This whole deal rests upon 'supply side' economics theology that tax breaks to the wealthy can ignore Keynsian economics ('demand side') principles of

marginal propensity to consume !

Give more tax breaks to the wealthy and supply siders say investment and job growth goes up. We are now in our fourth year of this B.S. and job "growth" has disappeared. 150,000 new jobs are required monthly just to keep up with population growth. This is not happening and the powers that be are starting to panic on Wall Street and Main Street.

The corporations are busy offshoring jobs and money. As this continues pension and healthcare benefits are evaporating. With healthcare at 14% of GNP and a GNP of about $11 trillion, this means that healthcare's proportion of GNP is being erased (about $2 trillion dollars annual) in order to pay for the Bush tax cuts (about $1.85 trillion over 10 years).

What a deal, wipe out healthcare and pensions, and redistribute that money to the wealthy ! And most new jobs are going to immigrants with visas (or illegal immigrants without)...see:

"NATION’S IMMIGRANTS ACCOUNT FOR BULK OF LABOR FORCE GROWTH SINCE 2000 WHILE NATIVE-BORN WORKERS EXPERIENCE HEAVY DECLINES"

http://www.nupr.neu.edu/01-04/immigration_jan.html

[EVDebs]

13. Flat Tax

I can't find a link to the newspaper story my local paper printed, just the title, author Nell Henderson and she's from Washington Post. I did find this


“Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign. The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.” (source: "TAX BURDEN SHIFTS TO MIDDLE," Washington Post, 8.13.04)

from: http://www.taylormarsh.com/feature_bushwatch.php?page_no=3

Overall, David Cay Johnston's book shows the US has essentially a "Flat Tax" with everyone rich middle and poor alike paying between 18% to 21% of incomes in total taxes (state, local, and federal).

[Vickiela]

8. Neither Wealthy Republicans or Dems pay their share

Wealthy of both stripes use the current "progressive" tax code to have lower rates than those working for a living.

Even Mrs. Tehresa Heinz Kerry paid a net 12% tax rate on her millions made from her inherited billions.

I agree the wealthy can afford more they should pay more.

a 20% flat tax on all income or all spending with no loop holes.

Make $ 2 million pay $400,000

Make $200,000 Pay $40,000

Make $80,000 Pay $16,000

Make $40,000 Pay $8,000

Make $20,000 - to poor exempt pay zero.

The wealthy can afford and the wealthy pay more or is this not progressive enough???

[stevebreeze]

10. In fact it is not progressive at all

look at the tax rates paid by different income groups at CTJ.org. You will find that in every state were there is a flat income tax the middle and the poor pay a far higher portion of their income in total taxes.

[EVDebs]

12. Read "Perfectly Legal" by David Cay Johnston

and learn just how the wealthy and multinational corps are being subsidized by taxes paid mostly by the lower and middle classes.

[EVDebs]

14. Flat tax

Yes, US total taxes with federal state and local taxes show that we have essentially a FLAT TAX system. Wealthy pay around 20%, middle class pay about 20% and poor pay about 20% of their incomes. "Perfectly Legal" by David Cay Johnston, points this all out. We subsidize the wealthy, especially the wealthiest 1 1/2% of taxpayers.

[left15]

15. How about a Flat Tax with high exemptions

Something Like a 35% rate, but every person gets a $20,000 exemption.

Family of 4 only plays 35% on what it makes over $80,000.

So if the family made $100,000 it would pay 35% of $20,000 or about $7,000 or 7% of total income.

Maybe 25% and $12,000, or 20% and $15,000 or whatever seems fair, and generates enough taxes. I'm for a simple system that is easy for eveyone to understand, and this way eveyone has the same rate, so no one can say they are being treated differently.

[FormerDittoHead]

16. Great thread, but has anyone thought of national property tax instead?

I mean, consider:

1)The wealthy own a disproportion greater amount of property. (like, way, way more)

2)Everyone who owns property already pays tax on it, so it's not a "new" "commie" tax (or even mentioned in the Communist Manifesto, like a Progressive Income Tax). State property taxes go back to BEFORE the Revolutionary war.

3)The idle rich (eg: Duponts) do not really make that much income, they just live off the small amount of interest / dividends, etc they get from their trust funds (which, along with foundations, should be given a good overhaul, IMO).

Without a national property tax (added to their existing property tax bills) they pay *NOTHING* toward the expenses related to protecting their wealth (military) or servicing it (federal laws).

Such a tax would have to be phased in over years, but I think it's better to tax property than people's wages...

PS: IN THE ABSENCE OF A NATIONAL PROPERTY AND/OR WEALTH TAX, A PROGRESSIVE TAX WOULD COMPENSATE FOR THIS DISCREPENCY, SO I AGREE...

[FormerDittoHead]

17. Why don't we tax ALL income the same rates?

Why make the guy making hamburgers at McDonnald's pay a HIGHER RATE than the BILLIONAIRE living off dividends?

ALL income should be taxed at the same rates...