The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt

Friday, September 24, 2010

The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us. According to Forbes magazine’s annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

For example, Charles and David Koch, the energy magnates who are pouring vast sums of money into Republican coffers and sponsoring tea partiers all over America, each gained $5.5 billion of wealth over the past year. Each is now worth $21.5 billion.

Wall Street continued to dominate the list; 109 of the richest 400 are in finance or investments.

From another survey we learn that the 25 top hedge-fund managers got an average of $1 billion each, but paid an average of 17 percent in taxes (because so much of their income is considered capital gains, taxed at 15 percent thanks to the Bush tax cuts).

The rest of America got poorer, of course. The number in poverty rose to a post-war high. The median wage continues to deteriorate. And some 20 million Americans don’t have work.

Only twice before in American history has so much been held by so few, and the gap between them and the great majority been a chasm — the late 1920s, and the era of the robber barons in the 1880s.

And yet the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which conferred almost all their benefits on the rich, continue.

Democrats have decided to delay voting on whether to extend them for the top 2 percent of Americans or for the bottom 98 percent until after the mid-term elections.

Democrats have thereby given up a defining issue that could have enabled them to show the big story of the last three decades — the accumulation of almost all the gain from economic growth at the top — and to make a start at reversing it.

When will they ever learn?

http://robertreich.org/post/1178374104

Minnie the moocher. Freebies, freebies. I want free stuff. Call Obama you big cry baby. Get a job and work. Liberals. When are you going to understand? There is nothing in the world free. Somebody has to pay for it. Want a job , go to a poor person and see if they got one for you. Oh , wait, I think it's the wealthy that create jobs and MONEY , You dummy ! Spend your way to prosperity. You idiot ! What happens in your house when you keep spending money you don't have. Oh, go borrow it from the big ugly guy down the street, when you can't pay it back what is going to happen. That's what we're doing. Borrowing money from that big ugly country, China ! You dummies. Wake up. 30 trillion dollars into the Great Society and what has it got you. Drive by shootings, gang bangers, welfare mama's and children with no Daddy's. Yeah freebies. Libs. Idiots !

So people got poorer when Bush lowered taxes?Now people are going to get richer because Obama is going to raise them?Bush lowered taxes for everyone including the poor.Anyone with a brain can see when Bush's tax cuts expires EVERYONES taxes are going up?

Can you do simple math??? Lower taxes for everyone=more money in pocket.Higher taxes=Less money in pocket.

Even the rich say they have been getting the good end of the stick for a long time.

Time for them to pay the same percentage as the middle class pay.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100921/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tax_cuts_glance


Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are to expire in January unless Congress renews them.

The highlights:

• Income tax rates were reduced, to a bottom rate of 10 percent and a top rate of 35 percent. If the cuts expire, the bottom rate would increase to 15 percent, the top rate would rise to 39.6 percent, and several rates in between would increase as well.

• The child tax credit was increased from $500 per child to $1,000 per child.

• Marriage penalty relief. The standard deduction for married couples was increased, easing the tax hit on many married couples.

• Capital gains taxes were cut, with the top rate dropping from 20 percent to 15 percent.

• Taxes on dividends were cut. Instead of taxing dividends at the same rate as earned income, with a top marginal rate of 39.6 percent, the top rate was set at 15 percent.

• The federal estate tax, which had a top rate of 55 percent, was gradually reduced, then repealed for 2010. It is scheduled to return to 55 percent next year, with a $1 million exemption.

• The Alternative Minimum Tax is adjusted each year to spare more than 30 million middle-income families from a tax increases averaging $3,700. The tax was enacted in 1969 to make sure wealthy people couldn't avoid taxes altogether, but it wasn't indexed for inflation.

The tax cuts for those who earn less than 200,000 will probably be extended but the rest need to expire.

The top earners aren't hiring anyway.

Uh, yeah the uh, uh...tax breaks were set to expire...uh, that was the original GOP plan, and to boot the fact is that president Barack Hussein Obama wants to extend the tax breaks for everyone BUT the top 2% of earners.

Can you do simple known facts?

I entered the workforce in 1972. As a teller in a bank I earned $1.65 an hour and I was on top of the world because that hourly wage was .04 cents more than the minimum wage.

I have experienced both tax increases and decreases as tax laws were added or amended.

I remember, without much detail, being as upset about increases as anyone else. That meant, we complained for little while and then sucked it up and adjusted our lifestyles accordingly.

Even at the height of any of my careers, I never earned more than $48,000 a year. And I never felt deprived.

Although it was not the car of my dreams, when I could finally afford my first NEW car ($4,000.00 total price) I felt pride and privileged.

All the while I paid whatever tax was required.

So what is it about the middle class mentality that allows our massive majority mindset to accept and make accommodations for the uncontrollable tax forces?

If we, the majority middle class, can live fully, be happy, and not feel deprived, regardless of our tax burden, then how exceedingly awful could it be to relinquish a ‘similar’ portion of my income to taxes if that income were a million or a billion a year?????

How much pain suffering, misery and deprivation, could possibly exist EVEN IF, upon earning an income of say 5 million a year, my tax burden ended up being 2% more than the average middle class tax rate?

Obviously, as income increases there are greater opportunities for investment and as investments pay out greater tax burdens are the result. So YES, those people will forfeit a huge amount to taxation and even though their numbers (as individuals) are a tiny percent of the population, they WILL be the major contributors to taxes.

THAT IS NOT UNFAIR….

We have to remember, just as the middle class has certain tax advantages (even some loopholes), the upper echelon gains tax advantages that most middle class people do not even know exist, because our lower income is spent on survival and possibly a few luxuries (rarely on the same level though). So what good would knowing all the tax advantages (or loopholes) do us?

The point is, I don’t think anyone is being asked to pay unfairly. For example, if I purchase an apartment building, I would expect my taxes to increase – BUT, I would also expect to become more knowledgeable about the tax adjustments or offsets I could take advantage of that I didn’t previously know even existed.

That’s what it’s like to be ‘wealthy’, it’s a different analysis process but it’s not really a different tax structure. The middle class simply hasn’t attained the kind of wealth that would make it necessary to invoke more than half of all the tax laws.

So if ‘consumerism’ drives the economy, and the majority of consumerism stems from the middle class, then why are the rich – who invest for more income, often outside the country, and whose consumerism is distributed far more globally than the U.S., then what is the major concern about ENDING the Bush era tax cuts????

And Obama has been so honest and keep so many promises he has made to the American people?Anyone remember "Your taxes won't go up one penny"?We are supposed to believe a liberal,Democrat is not going to raise taxes but cut them?That will be a first.Obama is going to side with the GOP and President Bush on this issue?BS!

Obama will flip flop as he always does after Nov.2nd.I can't believe anything Obama says and have no faith in what he is telling us.I believe 100% Obama is going to raise taxes for everyone next year.