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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (134161)	3/6/2001 1:56:23 PM
From: hmaly	Respond to of 1574685

Ted Re..The beloved Mark Twain's line about "lies, damned lies, and statistics" has been working overtime as our happy political spinners -- many of them cleverly disguised as television journalists -- unleash blizzards of numbers on our innocent heads. <<<<<<< It seems odd that she says that, and then engages in the same thing herself. Here are some examples. The progressive income tax is the single fairest form of taxation ever invented. Getting it passed took decades, humongous court fights and a constitutional amendment.<<<<<< That could be true if we had one. A fair progressive tax code would fit on one page. We have a tax code which takes up 6000 pages listing all of the exemptions. What part of our national wealth do we spend hiring tax lawyers and accountants trying to shift the burden on the other guy. She is implying that we have one when we don't. Despite the gobbling of Bush's tax team, the number is not mysterious or difficult to arrive at, nor is it widely disputed. That's people making more than $373,000 a year. The richest 10 percent get 60.3 percent of Bush's cut, leaving a whopping 37 percent for the other 90 percent of us.<<<<<<< True but here are several issue here and one is elimination of the estate tax. Many people figure up the amount of taxes the rich would pay based on the belief that the rich actually would pay that tax under our current system. Only an idiot would pay that tax because there are so many loopholes to get out of that tax; and most people don't get rich by being stupid. So why are people counting upon this tax which in actuality doesn't really apply. Eliminate the loopholes and actually make the rich pay the tax, then you can use it; otherwise it is just a meaningless figure thrown out just to confuse people. The wealth gap in this country is even more staggering than the skyrocketing income gap. According to a 1995 study by the Federal Reserve, the richest 1 percent of American households (at that time worth a measly $2.3 million) owned 35 percent of the total wealth. By 1997, the richest 10 percent owned 73.2 percent of total wealth, leaving an impressive 25 percent for the other 90 percent of us. These people do not need our assistance. We do not need to transfer more of the tax burden from them to the rest of us.<<<<<< The wealthiest got richer during the latter part of the nineties not because they didn't pay their fair share of the tax, but rather because the stock market rose so much faster than the market, and a lot of that wealth creation was paid at a capital gains rate of 28.8 %, Lowering the top rate from 39% to 33% might actually help tax collections because more investors might pay the 33% rather than wait a yr for the 28%. When Bush says, "It's an across-the-board tax cut," most people think that means everyone's going to get about the same cut, like, across-the-board. They certainly do not envision "an across-the-board tax cut" being 44.3 percent for the richest 1 percent of the people.<<<<<< That's because people don't envision that the richest 1% pay 43.6% of the income and estate taxes. According to the U.S. Treasury, the richest 1 percent pay about 20 percent of all federal taxes including income, payroll and estate, and there's no way you can make this case.<<<<<<< An interesting play on words. You will notice that she includes as taxes the SS and Medicare programs which actually aren't counted as taxes; and whatever other kind of tax there is. Bush's tax rebate doesn't cover turning SS and Medicare into a means tested benefit for the poor. Perhaps it should be in there, I don't know, but as of now it isn't. Certainly the dems can pass another entitlement program for the poor if they so wish. Here she is adding them in so she can make her argument. She should take her own advice about "figures lie and liars figure." Paul O Neil, head of the Treasury, incidentally was on "This week" on ABC last Sunday and he said the same thing when asked about these figures. You can do all of the cherry picking you wish to do, include SS and Medicare, take them out , count the top 10 %, count the top 1%, include the bottom 10 % or 60%; when it suits you etc.; the final word is that in the end, the wealthy will pay a greater percentage of the taxes collected by the treasury after the rebate, than they do now. That should be the final word and he promised that he would have charts to show that after the tax bill is passed; and he knows what the rebate will look like.