Let’s get rolling again

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/da ... rg-n872481

So, what pushes news that Trump is dumping the Iran nuclear agreement, and now making it possible for Iran to fire up its reactors and start manufacturing a weapon, off the front pages? The fact that the Russians followed through on the "collusion" with Trump, and started putting money in his bank account.

Yes, it is that bad. No, you can't make this stuff up.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/factchec ... spartandhp

[Haruo]

I always thought not having rich parents was a choice...

[Dave Roberts]

[ET]

Maybe I've assumed too much over the years - you do realize that if almost 50% of households pay almost no personal federal income taxes, it's hard to give an income tax cut of any significant size to someone who doesn't pay taxes or pays very little in them? A simple $9/month tax cut to someone who might pay $500 in federal income tax is a 20% reduction in taxes.

If you don't work, you don't get paid. If you don't pay income taxes, you get no tax cut. You shouldn't get a slice of what someone else has earned as a "participation trophy" in this economy. Some 50% of households pay 2% of federal income taxes while the top 1% pay around 37%. Lot of moochin' going' on. (Take that will all the sarcasm intended or inferred.)

For some context, the top 1% of incomes earners pay 37% of federal income tax. The top 3% of earners pay 51%. The top 25% of earners pay 86% (should be 2012 or 2013 stats if I recall correctly). How much does your household have to make to be in the top 25% of households? $85,400. That would be a two-couple household making about $42,000 each.

Also note that those percentages regarding income don't change depending on where you live, so I'm sure some folks in NYC and San Fran making $200k or more a year don't think of themselves as "the rich" or the "evil 1%", but they are.

When the politicians talk about raising taxes on "the rich", my friends, they mean you.

[JE Pettibone]

ET writes If you don't work, you don't get paid. If you don't pay income taxes, you get no tax cut. You shouldn't get a slice of what someone else has earned as a "participation trophy" in this economy. Some 50% of households pay 2% of federal income taxes while the top 1% pay around 37%. Lot of moochin' going' on. (Take that will all the sarcasm intended or inferred.)

Ed: Work is not the only way to have income I haven't had a job for several years but that does not mean I have had no income nor paid income tax.

[Haruo]

[JE Pettibone]

[Sandy]

If you really want to research this, and find out exactly what the upper 1% wind up paying, not just theoretically according to the structure, but in actual dollars, you have to dig into the exemptions and loopholes that don't kick in until you get to the higher brackets. A person can sustain a one year loss of, say, $1 million, spread that out across the income tax returns for the next decade, and wind up paying zero tax, even if he earned it back across the course of that decade. And you can see a bit of inequity in the fact that while the top 1% pays a theoretical 37% of the tax, depending on who you cite, they earn over 80% of the income.

Discussions on this board related to income inequity, taxes and similar matters, from the conservative side, always seem to weight heavily in the favor of the wealthy, who are perceived as entitled to their wealth, and never to be held accountable or responsible for having it. Maybe there's a bit of reticent belief, misinterpreted Old Testament holdover, that wealth is a sign of God's blessing, at least for males. The Bible is the verbally, plenary inspired, inerrant, infallible, literally interpreted word of God except for select passages of Matthew 5-7, Matthew 19:16-22, Mark 10:17-22, and the better portion of Acts from chapters 2 through 7, and a few other places here and there.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

We are all selective literalists. Some of us are just willing to admit it.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Haruo]