Re: The notion that the Bush tax cuts went to the "1% of wealthiest Americans" is
Pretty much what happened. And, in retrospect, it badly hurt the economy. The middle class, in this country, finds almost its entire income taxed, while the wealthiest are able to shelter most of their income.
Cutting your tax rate by 1% is huge if you're currently paying 5% of your income as taxes. Cutting your tax rate by 5% isn't a big deal if you're paying 40% of your income as taxes.
Check out what happened to household income (which, by the way, counts social security, medicare, unemployment, and welfare payments as income).
From 1999 to 2001, here's what happened:
The poorest 20% of the population saw their share of national income drop from 3.6% to 3.5%.
The next poorest 20% saw their share drop from 8.9% to 8.7%.
The next 20% saw their share drop from 14.9% to 14.6%.
The next to top 20% saw their share drop from 23.2% to 23%.
The top 20% minus the top 5% (15% of the population) saw their share of national income rise from 27.5% to 27.7%
And the top 5% of the population, saw their share of the nation's income rise from 21.9 to 22.4%.
In particular, look at the big change in incomes from 2000 to 2001.
Now consider that when all your favorite statistic forgers talk about taxes (Rush Limbaugh, etc.), they generally limit the discussion to income taxes, and exclude payroll taxes. But the general revenue of the US government includes money "borrowed" from payroll tax receipts. Regardless, the notion that the wealthy have much less of an obligation to maintain the stability of the county by supporting the old, very young, and infirm is a rather greedy and callous notion, wouldn't you say? (probably not - you'd likely prefer to see our nation's very young and very old starve to death in the streets, rather than see the rich of this nation pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as do the middle classes).
census.gov - page 25
You really should move to Brazil, where they have a Lorenz curve and Gini ratio more to your liking. By the way, you might want to consider what happened to Brazil as its policies drove its Gini ratio to what you'd consider to be a great place.
Oh, by the way, I'm not the one who said "the Bush tax cuts went to the "1% of wealthiest Americans", you are, but your comment led me to do a web search on the issue, and look what turned up:
From 2001 to 2010 the wealthiest one percent of Americans with average incomes over a million dollars would pocket almost a half trillion dollars from the Bush tax cuts. Each member of this elite group will average $342,000 in tax cuts over the decade.
· The tax cut keeps skyrocketing for those at the very top. By 2010 it grows to give the wealthiest taxpayers average tax cuts 180 times bigger than the tax cuts for the bottom 60 percent of Americans earning less than $59,000 a year.
· By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the wealthiest one percent whose individual windfall in that year alone will average $85,000.
cdfactioncouncil.org
And your notion that payroll taxes will take years to cut is patent nonsense - Bush was able to cut income taxes for the rich almost as soon as he took office. |
