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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (12862)	8/21/2003 6:23:32 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

>>the idle rich do not have to pay one penny of these taxes on their unearned income, and the working rich only pay it on a small portion. << idle rich, huh? the rich pay by far the largest (disproporationately so) tax burden in t)he US and it's just like grace told you wrt SS limitations...the legislators know full well that the wealthy entrepreneur (those idle rich people you like to refer to generating all the jobs) would simply take ratchet down their income, take de minimus salary and the rest in dividends....in other words there is a SS taxation "threshold" that most people with means find acceptable. a quick cost benefit analysis based on dollars extracted during their working years (yes, darfot, rich people really do work) to the amount that they will extract during retirement is really all you need to know to understand why there is a salary cap on SS taxation.

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (12862)	8/21/2003 7:07:07 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

You've obviously spent more time listening to Rush than I have, I have little idea what his views are. I developed my views by looking at the facts and making up my own mind. I'm somewhat dubious of your claim that my views match those of Mr. Limbaugh's, but then it is not unusual for two people to come to similar view points if they are presented with the same series of facts. I actually spent years making your argument. It took me a long time and a lot of data before I came around to the view that I hold today. The fact that the income from our rental units isn't subject to SS is about the only benefit because if you sell one that has appreciated you'll find the government has a pretty big hand out at the settlement table. It's a rough way to make money. My husband got involved with it long before he was sophisticated enough to know this. You shouldn't use the term rentier class, because I think if you look at the "class" you'll see it includes a lot of middle class working people. My husband bought his first rental property when he was 26 years old and working at the zoo for 12k a year salary. It was a two apartment house he lived in as a renter. When he bought it, he paid the mortgage by renting out the second apartment while he continued to live in the first. This is how a low paid worker got to buy his first house and it's how a lot of low income people go from being renters to owners. He bought the second rental house with the cash flow from the first and the third with the cash flow from the second. He did all this while working like a dog in construction. If that made us a "rich" rentier class, all I can say, we worked pretty hard for that money and that is what people work for, to build wealth. We were both born to extremely poor families. I know exactly what someone needs to do to move from the bottom half to the top half and I've seen numerous people do it, I've been involved with that move up. I don't pity the poor any more than I envy the rich. I live a fairly modest existence and I don't share the liberal envy of the rich, primarily because I've seen both the poor and the rich up close and personal and I know that neither group has the lock on happiness, that they can both be equally unhappy or happy. In fact I'd venture to guess the rich are more unhappy....look at you, you have enough of a pile to retire early and you are one of the most negative pessimistic people on these boards. Why you think helping along the continuing war on wealth will some how make things better in this country is beyond me. Horrible things have been done in the name of making things more "fair" for the poor by making confiscatory tax laws designed to go after the wealthy. These laws almost always wind up hurting the very people they are designed to benefit. Hey, but you don't care as long as everyone is a little poorer. I'm very thankful that there is a ceiling on SS. The government along with well meaning people like yourself would expand the program to the point of ruin if it wasn't limited in some respect. In 2002 SS took in 627 billion. Now that's $4889.76 per tax form filed. Now show me the math that shows that the majority of those dollars were paid by the lower half? Consider that the top 20% of filers pays the maximum of 12.9k and then 2.9 on the rest of their income. Go ahead, do the math. Show me how the poor pay a higher percentage than someone with a 35% marginal rate with the 2.9% added. Don't forget to minus the 40 million whose SS tax owed is completely wiped out by the earned income credit which can be $4000 in some cases.