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Where does it say he paid an effective tax rate of 91%? It doesn't.
91% was the marginal tax-rate. What you are also asking is that I know someone's personal income tax records, which only the individual has access. All I can say is that Rockefeller was subject to those rates.
91% was the marginal tax-rate. What you are also asking is that I know someone's personal income tax records, which only the individual has access. All I can say is that Rockefeller was subject to those rates.
If the rich actually got the most tax breaks, they'd be making money off the government and their effective tax rate would be negative. They aren't, and it isn't.
Further proof can be found in the effective federal income tax rate data. The top 1%'s rate decreased 15.7% from 2000 to 2003, while the middle quintile's tax rate decreased 44%. The middle class got nearly 3 times the tax cut the top 1% got.
Source: CBO data published here: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfa...orical_all.pdf
And the last chart in your post is particularly deceptive as an income of $25,000 places the tax unit at the bottom of the 2nd income quintile, and that quintile only pays an effective total federal tax rate of 6.8%. NOT the mid-teen percentage depicted in the bogus chart. http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fil...tes_screen.pdf
Stick to the actual IRS data. The IRS data will give you the facts.
The subject was taxes and how much better off the rich had their taxes drop. You merely are changing the subject by introducing transfer payments into the mix.
The overall point is that the rich had benefited disproportionally (we already agreed that the bottom 99% got more dollars than the top 1%. That's natural, since there are so many more of them. This issue was proportionality. The top 1% got more than a 3rd of the tax cuts and the bottom 99% shared the other 2/3) from the Bush tax-cuts and those tax-cuts were sold to Americans as improving the economy and jobs, neither of which came to fruition, leaving no rational reason to maintain them.
The subject was taxes and how much better off the rich had their taxes drop. You merely are changing the subject by introducing transfer payments into the mix.
The overall point is that the rich had benefited disproportionally from the Bush tax-cuts and those tax-cuts were sold to Americans as improving the economy and jobs, neither of which came to fruition, leaving no rational reason to maintain them.
The Bush cuts were NOT sold as improving jobs. Those cuts were put in place to recover from a recession and put money in people's pockets to spend.
We didn't have a jobs problem back then..it was to get people spending.
Both of you keep telling yourself that while the plutocrats continue their 30 year assault on the middle-class, that has so far increased their wealth four-fold while keeping the middle-class largely stagnant.
Class warfare isn't about Obama. It's been going on in the U.S. for decades. Warren Buffett, on May 25 2005, long before Mr. Obama was on the national scene said, "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be."
I agree with everything you say and all the while during this 30 year assault, they've kept the middle clas credit drunk and dependent, further diminishing their purchasing power. How many times have we heard the proverbial "No credit, is worse than bad credit". It's like the middle class has to prove they are worthy of being extorted.
The subject was taxes and how much better off the rich had their taxes drop.
They didn't. The rich's tax rate dropped only nearly 1/3 that of the reduction the middle class got. Hence, the CBO's recent finding that the middle class no longer contributes to the government's expenses and actually gets more FROM the government than they pay.
Lawrence University is a well respected liberal arts college in Appleton, WI and their LU Students of Objectivism was (or maybe still is) a student debating group. The author of this particular piece is unknown.
In any case, it begins with two problems:
1. It's definitions.
2. The common fallacy of confusing both socialism and fascism with the dictatorial regimes which often govern places with those economic systems. One doesn't necessarily follow or depend upon the other. For instance, the State of Queensland in Australia elected an openly Socialist government in the late 19th century and dictatorial repression did not follow. Some modern-day European states have done the same, with the same results. Many states today have defacto fascist economies and governments, with varying degrees of oppressive state power.
Definitions: To my way of thinking, the very best definition of Fascism is provided by it's founder, Benito Mussolini. It has nothing do with state control of the economy and, in fact, implies just the opposite: corporate control of the government.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini
By that definition, we in the United States are already Fascist.
Socialism, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to define since it is the result of a long series of ideas and debates reaching back to Plato. Thrown into the mix are the separate and distinct ideas of utopian socialism and scientific socialism. It is commonly presumed that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles are the fathers of modern socialism, but that would be incorrect. They are the fathers of communism, which is a more "pure" form of traditional, scientific socialism taken to it's extremes. Any definitions offered up by them would be definitions of communism, not socialism.
Websters defines socialism thusly: "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
That's a pretty good one, though it may be a bit too flexible for general use because there are varying degrees of that kind of socialism being practiced all over the globe, none of which are pure socialism by that definition. In fact, "pure" socialism in which the government owns ALL the means of production and distribution would be pure communism. Only a few truly, authentically communist states have reached that level of socialism. China today, for instance, is not one of them. Neither is the United States. In fact, we aren't even close to that as the only industries government owns outright is AMTRACK and the
Postal Service.
The bottom line is that, by the definitions above, fascism and socialism cannot possibly be the same thing because fascism presumes the private ownership of business, while socialism does not.
Statism, however, is a far different matter. "The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy."
As you can readily determine by that definition, statism can be practiced by both socialist's and fascist's because the idea is independent from the economic model. The critical questions are just who controls that centralized planning and for what ends.
In the America of the Republican's dreams, that control would be exercised by unelected, unaccountable corporate bureaucrats beholden to their corporate sponsors, not The People. That's exactly what we see happening in state governments controlled by the GOP and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the federal government as a result of holdover appointees from the last time the GOP had unrestricted power.
Socialism and fascism isn't our greatest worry. It's who holds the levers of power and what will they do with them.
Lawrence University is a well respected liberal arts college in Appleton, WI and their LU Students of Objectivism was (or maybe still is) a student debating group. The author of this particular piece is unknown.
In any case, it begins with two problems:
1. It's definitions.
The definitions are fine. They're supported by the historical quotes.
Quote:
2. The common fallacy of confusing both socialism and fascism with the dictatorial regimes which often govern places with those economic systems.
Again, supported by the quotes and taken in full historical context with full consideration of philosophic principle, socialism and fascism are essentially the same.
The referenced post shows that Congress passed a $5 million tax bracket that only Rockefeller was subject to. We can assume that he paid it.)
Do you assume everyone pays their marginal tax rate?
You know they don't, right? That's why the IRS publishes charts stating the actual EFFECTIVE federal income tax rates each income group pays.
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