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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (358481)	2/12/2003 10:45:46 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Figure 5 .... fig. 5 says the rich (top 1%) have gained about 140% in income since 79 while the poor have actually dropped about 10%.. The figure says nothing about the paying more of the load and in fact suggests they aren't....

To: SecularBull who wrote (358481)	2/13/2003 12:22:12 AM
From: Steve Dietrich	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Well let's see: You exclaimed that the top quintile's share of the federal tax burden had gone up from '79 to '97. I just pointed out that it really hadn't, at least not much. The highest quintile's tax burden went from 57% to 65%. But their share of national income had also risen: from 46% to 53%. So their tax burden is virtually unchanged: Percent of income went up 7% and percent of federal tax burden went up 8%. That's pretty much a wash. It's stupid to say: the top 20% pay 65% of the taxes. They don't earn 20% of the income. They earn 57% of the income. So the top 57% of income dollars account for 65% of the taxes. That's your outrage: 57% are paying 65%. It's a fairly flat tax already, and a pretty mild outrage. The thing i've been complaining about, which you keep building strawmen to rebut is that SS taxes have run up over a trillion dollars in surpluses since Reagan raised the rates in '83, but we keep cutting income taxes, and estate taxes. So we're using the surpluses from the regressive payroll taxes to finance cuts in the progressive income and estate taxes. Where's the trillion dollars? They're gone. Why not cut payroll taxes? Let's give some working Americans their money back for a change. As the CBO study says: the bottom 80% of earners pay on average twice as much in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. Give the bottom 80% a tax cut that will mean something to them. Payroll taxes are the only taxes in surplus. Everything else is in deficit. Steve