The Wealthiest 1%

[Mister T]

ElFenix,

I am arguing principle here. I too might think it might be a bad idea to leave too many billions to my kids.
They might never discipline themselves to understand the concept of hard work.

But I really hate having the government come in and say, you have worked too hard during your life
and amassed too much money. Now we have come to take 1/2. Who I leave my money to is my business.

 

[Jmman]

I thought the article about the estate tax in Time magazine was right on. Sure, these billionaires don't care about the estate tax. They will still have billions to give away. It is the small business owners who amass 2-5 million who have the most at stake. These guys account for half of all the people who pay estate taxes, and they are not signing any petition to keep this "death" tax...

 

[ElFenix]

i'm against double taxation on income too. my previous post was about that article that was in times that said of course those guys don't care about estate tax, they have so much to give away. the ludicrously wealthy can afford to support the estate tax. the only double taxation i'm not against is corporate income taxes, since a corporation is a legal person anyway. (and if the corporation is a small-business its pretty easy to get around double taxation anyway, i know one guy whose company owns the house, the cars, the swimming pool, etc. and he owns the company. fun!)

 

[Zucchini]

Well it is obvious the death tax needs reform so it won't hurt small business's, even the utlra rich say this.. but bush goes too far. he just wants to get rid of it. Must be that thick skull of his.. or he wants more from daddy when he dies

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

Elfenix, read some Rand, read some Browne.

My favorite book is "How I found freedom in an unfree world", by Harry Browne(who I voted for in the election).

Yes most people want to trade freedom for security, but they are sheep and I will never be bound down by sheep. As Eli wallach said, "If god did not want them fleeced, why does he call them his sheep". Government does the fleecing, and I will continue to sit back and laugh. I will outrun this, it is up to each individual to outrun the government because as long as most people do not mind being fleeced, the government will continue to do it.

First thing, kill all the politicians!(adapted from shakespeare)

 

[ElFenix]

ayn rand?



<< Yes most people want to trade freedom for security, but they are sheep and I will never be bound down by sheep. >>



so you would like to live outside of society, fearing for your life, property, and well-being at almost every instant? most would believe there is a happy middle between freedom and security, and that is the best place for society to be. people argue over where exactly the middle ground is, but not that it exists. how about some john locke or sigmund freud?

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

&quot;In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'&quot; (Dosteovsky's Grand Inquisitor.) He might have also been talking about the US imperial federal government.

Dosteovsky forsaw the modern democratic voter(and some republicrats too) didn't he. Of course, all he had to do was see what kind of welfare state ended the roman empire, and the athenian empire, oh well..history does repeat itself don't it! As long as americans have &quot;bread and circus&quot; like say, survivor..then government will continue to rape the liberty of its citizens in broad daylight.

 

[chess9]

All of the major industrialized nations have a progressive tax system.

Perhaps having an undergraduate degree, or even a graduate degree, isn't enough to help you understand the complicated political and social reasons for such an approach. If you would like to have revolution in the streets, again, then implement an unfair tax code.

Every American should have an historical understanding of the importance of a fair tax policy, but most do not.

We won't be replacing the graduated tax with a flat tax (Libertarians and other crazies to the contrary notwithstanding), or a national sales tax.

The idea that the rich pay too heavy a tax burden is absurd. The wealthy receive a disproportionate amount of the tax breaks of all kinds. Take a look at the tax return of most wealthy Americans and you will have 20+ page document with at least 6 or 7 schedules. Everything from favorable depreciation schedules to oil depletion allowances which your average ATOT member never uses. When I was younger and earning beaucoup bucks I had more write-offs, exemptions, and deductions than most of you will see in a lifetime. Back when tax straddles were legal I had tax &quot;losses&quot; from &quot;Silver Butterflies&quot; that sheltered 3/4's of my income one year.

Please, I will shed no crocodile tears for the rich.

As usual, JJM makes the most sense.

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

So you are saying unless government steals money from the well to do to redistribute to the poor, the poor will riot. Well yeah they might, thats why homeowners should be armed. So we can kill looters.

 

[Jmman]

Yeah, everyone who supports a flat tax is a Libertarian wacko....sure.......here is some interesting reading, since we are talking about historical tax rates, etc......link..


A few interesting quotes.....
&quot;Federal tax revenues this year are projected to consume 20.5 percent of U.S. economic output. This is the highest level of peacetime taxation the United States ever has experienced, exceeded only in 1944 at the height of World War II (see Chart 1).&quot;

&quot;The federal government is expected to collect $1.722 trillion from taxes this year, more than $13,500 for every worker in the country. This is nearly 50 percent more than it took in as recently as 1993 and more than twice the level collected in 1987 (see Chart 2). &quot;

&quot;According to the Tax Foundation, taxes at all levels now consume nearly 38 percent of the average dual-income family's income. Medieval serfs, by contrast, had to give the lord of the manor only one-third of their output.

Yeah, taxation at the current level is just fine.

See the link above for an historical analysis of the effect of tax cuts and how the reduction of the higher income tax rates actually increases the amount of tax paid. Hmmm.....


Hmmm, 57% of the people polled support the flat tax. I guess 57% of the population are Libertarian wackos, huh?link

 

[Moonbeam]

This has been an incredibly facinating read. jjm, your calm and, I think, correct reasoning seemed increasingly, over time, to expose a pathological rather than philosophical root as the prime mover in your oppositions thinking. I am becomming more and more convinced that the rabid anti tax position is a syndrome of some kind revealing a personality structure built up over and reactive to loss. You get the feeling that they are struggling with demons who robbed them of something important.

 

[chess9]

Liberty:

Anyone who would kill someone who is stealing their t.v. has completely lost contact with what is important in life.

Anyway, revolution isn't about the &quot;fun&quot; of you getting to blow away some rioter. It's about your daughter and wife being taken prisoner, raped and murdered, buildings being blown up, commerce stopped or seriously interdicted. The price you would pay for a flat tax or no income tax may be very high. Been to Colombia lately?

Europeans pay much higher tax rates than Americans.

Quit yer' bitchen.

 

[Zucchini]

libertyofdeath has to be some punk kid, or pitifully ignorant adult So you are saying unless government steals money from the well to do to redistribute to the poor, the poor will riot. Well yeah they might, thats why homeowners should be armed. So we can kill looters.
Look to history my ignorant friend... when the gap between the rich and poor gets too big, there is bloody revolution.

 

[Jmman]

I love some of the skewed thinking that I hear in this thread. Rioting in the streets because of the enactment of serious tax reform? I don't know what rock some of you have been hiding under, but there is serious, mainstream support for something like a flat tax. Polls have shown that a majority of the population favor it and the abolishment of the current tax code. How can anyone say that everyone being treated the same and paying the exact same percentage of tax on their &quot;discretionary income&quot; is unfair? There has even been support from guys like Richard Gephardt. The only thing unfair about the flat tax is that someone will still make more money than you, and an excessive, punitive tax code makes you feel better about your own shortcomings. Class envy rears its ugly head.....why don't you just get over it and let the successful(or even rich) enjoys the fruits of their labor.
Here is an interesting article about some of these myths: link

 

[Moonbeam]

I just posted this in another thread. It has relevance here:

Another aspect of this is that we do not live in a vacuum. All the go-getters who are motivated only by money are, in one respect, parasites that feed off the general cheese, and one not of their making. They can prosper because of the economic opportunity they were born into. Doubtless, one could find millions of Chinese, with equal or greater aptitude and drive, growing rice. It would be so fun to be able to put all the people driven by money and money only on a big island somewhere and watch them die trying to parasitize each other. What this is all about is self image. This society worships money, because it knows nothing of real value. Those that worship money and have it get to feel as though they are the best. They need to feel the best to cover the fact that they really feel worthless, empty of real life. &quot;There are a million paths in life and they all lead nowhere. Choose a path that has a heart.&quot;

 

[jjm]

Jmman - I think I am aware of every reasonable survey on the flat tax issue. (Part of a need for my job.) I have never seen one where the flat tax was preferred to the current system. Do you have a source available?

Separately, define what you mean. If you are still pushing the graduated build proposal you linked to before, I submit that is not a flat tax. It's just a flattening and tightening of the current system.

 

[Jmman]

None of the major flat tax proposals from Forbes, Buchanan, Gramm, or Armey are what you are considering a straight flat tax plan. They all have a certain amount of progressivity based upon the inclusion of a standard deduction to alleviate the taxation of basic living expenses. That being said, to call these plans a &quot;rehashing&quot; of the current system is incorrect. I don't call the elimination of 6439 pages of tax regulations a &quot;rehashing&quot;. Or the elimination of 5.4 billion hours of labor attempting to comply with the current system. This poll shows that 57% favor abolishing the IRS completetely and starting over....link

And this poll shows that 57% favor a flat tax....link

 

[jjm]

Jmman - You are linking to junk poll results. Show me a scientifically built poll using a representative sample survey by a credible firm. This site doesn't even have the guts to show any details behind the poll; always a dead giveaway of a biased poll. This is junk.

As long as there is some progessivity built in, it's not a flat tax. If you favor simplification, that's a different issue.

 

[Jmman]

When we are using the term Flat Tax, virtually everyone is taking into account a personal exemption based on family size. The flat tax term being bandied about is usually referring to this type of system. I know that Fox really is a bastion of misinformation, so how about the Associated Press:


Associated Press Poll conducted by ICR. March 26-30, 1999. N=1,012 adults nationwide.
.

&quot;Which tax system do you think is fairer: the system we have now, with higher tax rates for people with higher incomes, or a flat tax with the same rate for everyone?&quot;
%
Present system 39
Flat tax 51
Don't know 9
Refused 1


Do you want me to find more? I am sure that I can oblige......I know you need more to convince you, so how about some others.
The Harris Poll. March 19-23, 1999. N=1,008 adults nationwide.
&quot;Would you favor or oppose a flat tax whereby everybody, whatever they earned, would pay income taxes on the same percentage of their income over some minimum level?&quot;
Favor Oppose Don't Know
ALL 60 35 5
Republicans 68 29 3
Democrats 46 49 5
Independents 66 29 5
Income:
$15,000 or less 58 37 5
$15,001 - $25,000 60 36 4
$25,001 - $35,000 58 38 3
$35,001 - $50,000 58 37 5
$50,001 - $75,000 57 40 3
$75,001 &amp; over 70 30

Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. March 10-11, 1999. N=900 registered voters nationwide.

&quot;If you could choose one plan to collect all federal taxes, which federal tax plan would you prefer: a national sales tax, a flat-rate income tax with no deductions, or the current graduated income tax with deductions?&quot;
3/99 10/97
National sales tax 20 16
Flat-rate income tax 43 46
Graduated income tax 27 25
Not sure 10 13

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

Sorry, I don't go in for hippy BS moonbeam. I do not live for the good of others and I don't ask others to live for the good of me. You are all, in various ways, for the most part(on the opposition) saying that because some people are inferior, they must be taken care of by the superior people. What a load of bullshit. Yes, europe pays more taxes than the US, not much more, but more. The best way to put this is...so the f*ck what! If i lived in europe, I would bitch twice as loud. None of your arguments will ever replace this universal truth...My income is more important to me than anything anybody else has planned for that money. If I want to go buy a New Buell for each day of the week, while you languish in poverty, its no business of yours. GO FORTH AND EARN! My right to my income and property is supreme. It is more important to me than the lives of others. Income tax is wealth redistribution and it is a crime against Liberty. The sheep of america make me sick. You are for the most part not even worthy of saving. I look forward to the day the United states is just a memory, like the Roman and Athenian republics..with a new, libertine republic in it's stead.

 

[Moonbeam]

No problem L&amp;D, Not everyone is given to see that delusions of grandure are the external manifestation of hidden inferiority. If, however, your bubble one day bursts, know that you always were OK anyway.

 

[LIBERTYorDEATH]

I was never ok. I have always been a pure son of a bitch, however my grandure is hardly delusional

 

[Jmman]

I have had about enough of the psycho-analytical babble....jeez...next thing you know someone will start posting Rorshack Tests in order help analyze us....

 

[Moonbeam]

Jmman, much of economics is a Rorshack test. We speculate what is over the edge of the earth at the horizon and fill it with the creatures of our imagination. A little self revelation is required, sometimes though, before we start to see the real message, as in the case of LorD, all about his personal greatness. I mean, who wants to be the world's greatest proponent of a flat tax if it's because your brother stole your teddybear.