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

To: KLP who wrote (397116)	4/23/2003 5:20:54 AM
From: WhatsUpWithThat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Those are the stats you're going to have in a progressive (ie. increasing rate as income goes up) tax system. The article makes it seem like someone's trying to sneak one by, but it's simple math. What's the argument for a progressive tax? That the absolute amount of money left to each of a bottom and a top income earner/tax bracket-er still leaves one with a much higher disposable income than the other (and nothing wrong with that). Take a night-cleaner making $8 an hour x 2080 hours in a year = approx $16.6K, and a union exec <gg> making $180K a year. Take 20% tax off each. Leaves approx. $13K, or a bit over $1K a month, for the cleaner to pay for rent, food, transportation to work and back, and so on. And leaves approx $145K for the exec. So if instead the cleaner pays 8% and the exec pays 21%, the country gets the same overall tax revenue, the cleaner's disposable income gets a considerable boost (considerable for the cleaner) and the exec's disposable income is not much affected (again, relative to the overall income level). The exec makes 92% of the income and pays 96% of the tax. Pre-emptive full disclosure: I believe we should all enjoy the fruits of our skills/experience/talents/intelligence/luck. I would not advocate equal distribution of wealth - what a disincentive! And I'm in the top rate bracket, so I'm not advocating a system that benefits me.

To: KLP who wrote (397116)	4/23/2003 11:50:56 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The rich also get the lion's share of the write-offs. Bottomline, they don't ned any help. And this is a time of massive debts. So we need those who can afford it to pay those debt. Bush's war just sticks another 100-150 billion on top of that, and now chickenhawks are talking about more wars they'd like to see. What do we do when we have a ten trillion dollar debt, let the rich get out of paying their taxes? That's really smart household economics. Hardly fiscally conservative at all. Especially since we know trickle-down doesn't work and Bush's plan wont stimulate the economy except maybe in Palm Beach.