Top 1% tax cuts worth more than bottom 99% salaries

[kpete]

Via Pat Garofalo at Think Progress, another depressing data point about income inequality in America:

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

“The super committee failed to grapple with the extraordinarily costly Bush tax cuts for the richest—tax policies that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cost more in added federal debt than they add in additional economic activity,” explained Jo Comerford, NPP’s Executive Director. Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, added in a statement yesterday, “the high-end Bush tax cuts are a big part of the problem – not the solution…It’s obscene to keep slashing infrastructure and services for everybody on Main Street to keep up tax giveaways for millionaires and multinational corporations.”

MORE:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/23/375654/bush-tax-cut-one-percent/
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/top-1-tax-cuts-worth-more-than-bottom.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. FUCK THIS SHIT!!!

x(

:banghead:

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. I'm with you!

FUCK THIS SHIT!

:argh: :nuke:

[Capitalocracy]

2. And each of those rich people will hire one person with that money.

Any minute now.


Aaaaaany minute now.

[PSPS]

3. It's hard to fathom the vast wealth of the top 0.1%

The top 1% are doing mighty fine, for sure. But the top 0.1% amasses wealth so vast that it is difficult to comprehend.

As for the Bush/Obama tax cuts for the rich, you have to realize these two facts about it:

1. This "tax cut" itself amounts to only a 3% difference in the top marginal rate.

2. This "tax cut" alone is responsible for half the budget deficit.

This helps shed some light on just how vast the difference between the 99%, the "haves," and the "have mores."

[Kaleko]

6. !!

[unkachuck]

4. "...tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income..."

....compare the spirit and sentiment of Thanksgiving to the Ungrateful Taking of Wall Street and the Uber-Rich....is it any wonder that most people dislike capitalism?

[animato]

5. Wow. That is some statistic nt

[indepat]

8. Would have sworn the Bush tax cuts had expired: didn't BHO sign the current tax cuts

into law. :shrug: :patriot:

[HughBeaumont]

9. Shared.

Anyone STILL need an explanation for OWS? My RW friends talk pork waste in the millions - yet somehow, this waste in the multiple BILLIONS gets a free pass, as does all of the CORPORATE pork (which is used for retreats, vacations and other assorted "leisure").

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

[Rex]

10. Plutocracy...we live in one and it gets worse every single day.

I would say we should return to capitalism, but I don't think the PTB will allow it.

[Huey P. Long]

11. 1934-

Huey Long's Share Our Wealth Speech

===

How many of you remember the first thing that the Declaration of Independence said? It said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that there are certain inalienable rights for the people, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and it said further, "We hold the view that all men are created equal."

Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men are created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing?

Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?

That was not the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that all men are created equal or "That we hold that all men are created equal."

Nor was it the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that they held that there were certain rights that were inalienable—the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Is that right of life, my friends, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it by 120,000,000 people?



http://www.hueylong.com/programs/share-our-wealth-speech.php

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. misleading headline.

Better to say 1% tax cut is higher than median household income.

[socialist_n_TN]

13. Like I said in another thread, tax the 1% at 99% of their wealth

If the Koch brothers are worth 22 billion dollars each, that 22 THOUSAND million dollars. Taxed at 99% that STILL leaves them with 22 MILLION dollars. Who on here couldn't live on that for the rest of their lives? I know I could.