If 1% paid 50% tax... (loan, pay, investment, wage)
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Lower taxes are not the reason we are in this predicament.
The American middle class is paying more in taxes today than at any time in the past. If you want to see something obscene, compare the total taxes taken out of a middle class American's paycheck in 1950 vs. a paycheck from today.
Everyone and everything should live within their means.
Meaning living on a budget and not spending money you do not have.
The current administration has a major spending problem with a lot of waste and wants the successful people to pay more when they are already paying 85% of all taxes collected into the system.
You simply cannot balance a budget by asking for more money and then turn around and spending it on wasteful items. It does nothing to take down the debt at all.
We need to stop the crazy spending first, then ask those who are not paying any taxes to pay their fair share or at least something.
Almost 50% of us are not paying a dime into federal and that is wrong, not fair and needs to be fixed.
Robbing peter to pay paul wont work.
We are on target to hit 20 million in debt with the current spending spree.
You can steal all you want from successful people and it wont touch the debt one bit.
We need more people paying in and less money being spent.
Don't know if this just belongs in politics, so I'll post this same post in three places:
I did some research, and saw and have heard that in Eisenhower's time the top one percent earners paid 50 percent tax. Since then, it has steadily dropped. So, I did some math. I looked at how much top one percent pay in taxes, which is about 20 percent, and this winds up (from figures in millions) to be $400 billion altogether for a year. But let's say for a couple years they paid 50 percent tax, especially if the Republicans are so gall-dang worried about this thing called debt that pretty much everyone who pays bills knows what it means, then the revenue going into the Treasury would be $1 trillion x 2 years = $2 trillion. That would pay off the debt, deficit, and a super max McDonald's hamburger dinner for four poor people for the rest of their lives. Anyone want to correct me? Should I send it to some group who specializes in teaching truth to money mongers? Keep in mind, after the two trillion goes out the window, the top one percent KEEP two trill.
You should read this, it will alter your thinking:
Warren Buffett: Tax Dodger? by Alexander Green, Investment U Chief Investment Strategist Friday, November 30, 2012
I'm a longtime admirer of Warren Buffett.
He taught me a lot about stock investing, including the most important thing about it I know: Forget about outguessing the market and focus instead on identifying businesses that are selling for less than they are worth.
While Buffett is a genius at equity analysis, he is no expert on government policy issues. And so it was with regret that I read his New York Times Op-Ed piece this week calling for higher taxes on the nation's top income earners.
I won't bore you with arguments about fairness or job creation or economic growth. The truth is confiscatory tax rates won't change the slightest thing about the national debt crisis we face. And every American should understand why.
Imagine that your 18-year-old son goes off to college for the first term of his freshman year. You are happy to pay for his education costs - room, board, tuition, books, etc. - but you also give him a credit card "in case of emergencies."
When he comes home for Christmas, you discover that he has run up $70,000 on his MasterCard. You hit the roof and demand an explanation.
"Now hold on, Dad," he says. "Before we start talking about how much less I might spend, let's talk about how much more money you're going to give me."
Consider your response - and whether it would be printable in a family paper. Yet Congress makes our hypothetical spendthrift look like a piker.
Most reasonably well-informed Americans know that our $16.1-trillion federal budget deficit is now larger than the nation's GDP. But what most don't realize is this figure doesn't include the unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Prescription Drug Benefit. That's another $121.6 trillion. Combine the federal budget deficit with the unfunded liabilities for current entitlement programs (excluding ObamaCare) and it comes to a mindboggling $1.2 million per taxpayer.
Some will argue that this is exactly why we need to stick it to the ultra-rich, an approach that has clear populist appeal. But here's a bit of perspective. Less than a hundred years ago, the nation's richest man, John D. Rockefeller, could have written a personal check and paid off the entire national debt, every penny accumulated since 1776. Today the government could confiscate the entire net worth of the nation's wealthiest man, Bill Gates, and it wouldn't pay six weeks' interest on the national debt.
Our elected misrepresentatives have spent so recklessly, promised so promiscuously and behaved so immodestly, that raising the revenue required to meet future outlays isn't just difficult, it's impossible.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, former Congressional Committee Chairmen Chris Cox and Bill Archer note that even if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of every individual and corporation in America, it still wouldn't cover U.S. entitlement obligations. Yet the first order of business according to President Obama, Senator Reid and Mr. Buffett is not to reform entitlements or rein in spending but to raise tax rates? You might as well try bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.
Congress has a world-class spending addiction, but then so do most other Western democracies, including Canada, Britain, Western Europe and Japan. In every case, politicians on both sides of the aisle have learned that promising lush government benefits paid for by "someone else" is a big winner at the polls.
As for the current fiscal cliff negotiations, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the top marginal tax rate to 39.6% - as Obama proposes - would generate approximately $70 billion a year. That's not an inconsequential sum. But it won't come close to fixing this year's $1.1-trillion federal budget deficit. Where would we get the other $1.03 trillion?
Finally, it's also interesting to note that while Warren Buffett feels strongly about raising taxes on "the rich," he has done a masterful job of avoiding them himself. As he notes in his New York Times piece, past taxes on dividends ranged as high as 91%. But Berkshire Hathaway has never paid a dividend, so Buffett has never paid a dime in dividend taxes on his own multi-billion-dollar holdings. And he has sold few shares, so he has avoided paying capital gains, as well.
He won't be selling those shares and paying taxes on them down the road, either. He has pledged most of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That's certainly a worthy thing to do. However, his contribution came with a single string attached. The donation is contingent on charitable contributions remaining tax deductible.
In short, when it comes to taxes, you'd be well advised to do what Buffett does. And pay no attention to what he says.
I think its different from the other point of view. I am a regular middle class citizen yet my father in law is a 1%. To hear him talk about how much tax he has to pay and the points he makes is eye opening. I always felt the rich should be paying more taxes, but hearing him talk about how much he is paying a year in taxes already is pretty insane and makes me rethink my position. He said last year he had to pay 270k in taxes. Just crazy
I think its different from the other point of view. I am a regular middle class citizen yet my father in law is a 1%. To hear him talk about how much tax he has to pay and the points he makes is eye opening. I always felt the rich should be paying more taxes, but hearing him talk about how much he is paying a year in taxes already is pretty insane and makes me rethink my position. He said last year he had to pay 270k in taxes. Just crazy
What strokes me out is a guy like that pays 270K, yet how many people pay ZERO and collect benefits! By benefits I mean low income benefits like food stamps, section 8, welfare etc.
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