Reagan, Clinton, 'Shrub', Obama and "fair share"

[ET]

[Haruo]

So since some of "the rich" famously pay next to nothing, for the average to be so high some of the other "rich" must be getting seriously gouged.

[Sandy]

The "share" of tax paid by the rich in those statistical analyses are calculated based on the tax table and the census demographics. It does not reflect the actual tax paid by those in any specific income bracket, only the estimated tax they were scheduled to pay. It does not account for loopholes or percentages of income paid in taxes for those who utilized them, such as Mitt Romney earning $200 million and paying a middle class tax rate of 15%.

I'd be fine with leaving the tax rates and income levels where they are right now, and simply eliminating the exemptions, shelters and loopholes. If your income is $200 million, and the tax table says your tax rate is 34%, then you pay %68 million in tax, not $30 million.

[William Thornton]

ET, facts will get you nowhere on this forum but a bunch of neat graphs might land you a trophy.

[Tim Bonney]

Truth is a hard thing to get ahold of sometimes when you only listen to those who agree with you.

[Neil Heath]

Timothy, I think you've set a record for the longest link I've ever seen on these pages. Congratulations!

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Ed if you watched an Fox news the night of the election you'd not think too much cherry picking was going on. Rove and company looked like they'd dropped into an alternate universe. He was so convinced by their "unscued" polls (as in they tinkered with the polls when they didn't like the numbers) that he about had a meltdown when Ohio went Obama as if it was just beyond belief.

I've not said that Obama has a "mandate." He got elected. He took a very convincing number of electoral votes which tells me he did a really good job in the swing states of getting the vote he needed.

The wild thing is that Tea Party types are saying that if Romney had been more conservative he might have won. They just don't get it that it is moderate candidates that take the day not far left or far right candidates. Romney's cow-towing to the Tea Party is what lost him the election.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Tim, I don't even know what channel Fox "Propaganda" News is on over here.

[Tim Bonney]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[ET]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[Neil Heath]

[ET]

[Ed Pettibone]

Here is a link with several charts which provide a somewhat more clear picture. Look at # 8
in particular. I think it tells the story most fully.

[William Thornton]

The problem that you find here, ET, is not represented by any graphs or charts. It is the concept of what is "fair." Some of my mod/lib friends would be positively gleeful if our gummit would use guns and force to impose their idea of fairness on the rest of us.

A better starting place would be for the redistributionists here to go ahead and tell us the following:

What percentage of income should be paid in income taxes? Max?
How much wealth is "too much" to the end that it should be taken away?
Is wealth acquired by legal means other than compensation for labor somehow illegitimate and therefore should be subject to greater confiscation rates by gummit than that earned in compensation?
The income tax system is already progressive. How much more progressive should it be?


Keith, for example, favors the government confiscating any income for company heads that is greater than a certain multiple of that company's lowest paid employee. He has not said but if this principle is valid, why should it only be applied to CEOs? Why should A Rod be paid so much more than the ball boy who shines his shoes or the janitor who cleans up the dugout after games, or, highly paid scientists more than the clerical employees who arrange their travel schedules? But why keep this within a single company? If fairness is the goal, why should a teacher be paid $40,000, a policeman $30,000, but a mid-level manager who sells colored sugar water $100,000? Should not someone impose a fairer system so that we could all feel better?

[KeithE]

[Ed Pettibone]

[William Thornton]

[ET]

Hehe....I noticed Keith picked up that chart referencing the 1997 levels. Conveniently, he didn't post the subsequent chart: