The facts support raising revenues from the highest-income households

[웃 910]

You got that backwards. It's their money to begin with, not the government's. It's the "filthy rich" who cut checks to the Federal government to support their adventures overseas and social engineering experiments at home, not vice versa.

I agree with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Taxes on the wealthy should go up.

Probably somewhere in between the black vertical lines when the debt was microscopic.

Now someone tell me how ignorant it is on a scale from 1 to 10 to think the chart would look like this:

[scandal 951]

Now someone tell me how ignorant it is on a scale from 1 to 10 to think the chart would look like this:

I'd be happy if they just went back to the rates we had in the 90s under Clinton/Gingrich. We had surpluses back then.

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

LI is a bit confused here in recent weeks. He hit his head on rational thought and feels that All money is Government money if you're rich. It's not theirs at all unless Government says it's theirs. It's why he blames tax cuts for things like out of control spending. It's the ignorance of not understanding accounting 101.

LI has it right, not right-wing. Why someone who isn't in the top tax bracket seems obsessed with the idea that the government is a tyranny simply because it wishes to collect a bit more in the form of taxes escapes me. Out of control spending? So when did you become a CPA?

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

I'd be happy if they just went back to the rates we had in the 90s under Clinton/Gingrich. We had surpluses back then.

But the wealthy were struggling under the burden of a draconian tax code, in fact no one made any money during that time. Once the tax rate was lowered millionaires showed up. Everywhere. In bus terminals. In train stations. Under bridges. Millionaires everywhere. I won't even tell you about the soup kitchens.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

But the wealthy were struggling under the burden of a draconian tax code, in fact no one made any money during that time.

And nobody created any jobs either. We've seen job creation only after the tax cuts done in 2001 and 2003 and even more when taxes were cut further in 2009 and 2010. Wait, it was the other way around. No, that can't be. We all know that only tax cuts create jobs. Or do we?

[bigdog 376]

Effective and fair strategies for reducing the deficit necessarily include revenue increases on the highest-income households, particularly now, when income distribution is extraordinarily skewed to the top and federal revenue is at the lowest level relative to the economy since 1950. The facts support raising revenues from highest-income households discusses the key facts that indicate why taxes should be raised on the highest-income households:

• Meager revenues and Bush-era tax cuts contribute greatly to the deficit.
• The top one percent of households benefited disproportionately from the Bush-era tax cuts.
• Recent income gains for the highest-income one percent have far exceeded gains for everyone else, leading to dramatic income concentration at the top of the scale. Now, more than ever, the highest-income households are in a better position to pay taxes.
• Wealth is even more concentrated at the top than income, and the main wealth tax—the estate tax—has been sharply reduced in recent years.
• Reasonable proposals for taxing the highest-income households can raise significant amounts of revenue.
• By not taxing the highest-income households, deficit reduction relies too heavily on spending cuts that harm low- and middle-income Americans.
• Raising taxes on the highest-income households reduces the deficit without having much impact on the economic recovery or job growth.
• Few small business owners have exceptionally high incomes, and thus few would be affected by these tax increases on the highest-income households.
• Even if taxes on those with the highest incomes are substantially increased, income gains at the top over time would still dramatically outpace gains among the rest of the population.

The progressivity of the federal income-tax system offsets the regressive nature of federal payroll taxes and state and local tax systems.

Read issue brief

Too much spending is bad, the only ones who cannot figure it out are the leaders..

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I'd be happy if they just went back to the rates we had in the 90s under Clinton/Gingrich. We had surpluses back then.

We also weren't spending BS that we didn't have.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way Clinton was able to do anything was because #1 he was more fiscally conservative than anyone today, and #2 he had his line-item veto pen for more of his presidency. Unfortunately thanks to a POS NYC Mayor he lost he veto pen thanks to a lawsuit.

[웃 910]

We also weren't spending BS that we didn't have.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way Clinton was able to do anything was because #1 he was more fiscally conservative than anyone today, and #2 he had his line-item veto pen for more of his presidency. Unfortunately thanks to a POS NYC Mayor he lost he veto pen thanks to a lawsuit.

He also had a once in a lifetime century 250-year period economy to watch over.

1992 Pagers still hadn't come out. Cell phones were the size of walkie talkies...Nobody had a computer.

If you had a computer you had dial up internet. You had to wait 30 minutes of trying to "dial up" to connect to the internet. You only went to AOL chat rooms.

The big TVs were the size of elephants.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

We also weren't spending BS that we didn't have.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way Clinton was able to do anything was because #1 he was more fiscally conservative than anyone today, and #2 he had his line-item veto pen for more of his presidency. Unfortunately thanks to a POS NYC Mayor he lost he veto pen thanks to a lawsuit.

I won't disagree with you there. The line item veto was very important and supported across party lines. In theory they could resurrect it if they change how bills are put together...though it would be tedious.

Another important factor was that Defense spending wasn't so sacred in the 90s

[Golden Gate 530]

The Rich are Different...

The rich are different — and not in a good way, studies suggest

The 'Haves' show less empathy than 'Have-nots'

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,” published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that “upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self….”

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

“I will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: “‘It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,’” he said.

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Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a “let them cake” vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, “If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?”

According to Gallup, Americans earning more than $90,000 per year continued to increase their consumer spending in July while middle- and lower-income Americans remained stalled, even as the upper classes argue that they can’t pay any more taxes. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us continues to grow wider, with over 80 percent of the nation’s financial wealth controlled by about 20 percent of the people.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

That’s the moral of Capra movies like “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which a plutocrat comes to learn the value of community and family. But Keltner, author of the book “Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life,” doesn’t rely on sentiment to make his case.

He points to his own research and that of others. For example, lower class subjects are better at deciphering the emotions of people in photographs than are rich people.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

In one test, for example, Keltner and other colleagues had 115 people play the “dictator game,” a standard trial of economic behavior. “Dictators” were paired with an unseen partner, given ten “points” that represented money, and told they could share as many or as few of the points with the partner as they desired. Lower-class participants gave more even after controlling for gender, age or ethnicity.

Keltner has also studied vagus nerve activation. The vagus nerve helps the brain record and respond to emotional inputs. When subjects are exposed to pictures of starving children, for example, their vagus nerve typically becomes more active as measured by electrodes on their chests and a sensor band around their waists. In recent tests, yet to be published, Keltner has found that those from lower-class backgrounds have more intense activation.

Other studies from other researchers have not produced the clear-cut results Keltner uses to advance his argument. In surveys of charitable giving, some show that low-income people give more, but other studies show the opposite.

“The research regarding income and helping behaviors has always been little bit mixed,” explained Meredith McGinley, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University.

Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.

As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

Edited August 10, 2011 by Golden Gate

[mawilson 2,133]

Everyone hates the rich, but the rich hate you too.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Everyone hates the rich, but the rich hate you too.

Its true (from my experience).