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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index
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To: GraceZ who wrote (12853)8/21/2003 4:45:28 PM
From: Wyätt GwyönRead Replies (1) of 306849
 
the fact that you think there is a difference between federal income tax and payroll/FICA taxes makes me wonder if you are a Rush Limbaugh fan. this is a very confused notion which is implanted in the heads of middle class fans of Limbaugh and WSJ op-ed pieces by the lackeys of the elite rentier class. they laugh all the way to the bank while the middle class argues their talking points for them.

surely the most dangerous thing in America is a middle class taxpayer with a library card.

Are you suggesting that these same poor people be excluded from the program which frequently is the only income they have in old age and the only health coverage they might have or are you suggesting that after paying for my own healthcare I then pay for theirs as well?

no, i am suggesting that the approximate 15% payroll (or self-employment tax for the self-employed)/FICA/Medicaid tax be applicable to all dollars of earned income, as well as unearned income. as it stands, there is a cutoff point around 80K for payroll/FICA, and higher (or maybe they eliminated it, i forget) for the lower-percentage Medicaid. this is a huge gift to high income earners, who avoid paying this 15% tax on the vast majority of their income (and on all of it for the rentier class with unearned income), while unfairly burdening the middle class and poor.

it is of course also an enormous gift to the rentier class which relies on unearned income. the ability of the WSJ lackeys to convince the semi-educated middle class that the rich should not pay the same 15% tax that the middle class does is perhaps the greatest stroke of political genius in modern times.

and not to forget, Social Security is itself a great theft by the older generations from the younger generations. all the money i ever put into Social Security will be gone in a decade or two, and Social Security will be bankrupt by the time anybody my age or younger needs it. so since it is a pure theft by the old from the young, it is ridiculous to argue that the theft should be limited to the middle and lower class income brackets. but that is the argument which obtains among fans of Rush and CNBC.

there is furthermore the political benefit that payroll/FICA is characterized as a "transfer tax" and thus those with limited knowledge are easily confused into thinking the headline tax brackets (federal income tax rates) are a true representation of a progressive tax system in this country.

whereas the reality is that the poor and middle class pay effective tax rates equal to or greater than those of the rich scumbags who are unwittingly supported by the fans of sound-bite news programs.
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