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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (2192)	10/20/2003 3:05:41 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

Individual tax receipts most likely are down because revenues for small business owners and self employed individuals are down. I know......I'm one of them. Most would never be put in the category I call rich. Many of them are considered rich when the charge is made that tax cuts mainly benefit the rich. The wealthiest 10% pay most of the taxes, so 1 - They get most of the benefit from tax cuts and 2 - If there income declines then tax receipts decline more then if other groups income declines. Many of those small business owners and self employed individuals are in the top 10% in terms of income. They may not feel wealthy because they may not have a large net worth and because they may live in expensive areas. " You said - " No, and its not a matter of GDP. That's just one metric. Besides, there's the matter of Bush and the GOP spending like there's no tomorrow. And Iraq is a prime recipient." I replied - "True but its the biggest one." " Is that what you meant.......the biggest one or not the biggest one? If its the former, it doesn't make sense. The "Its the biggest one" refers to the drop in income among wealthy people being the biggest reason for the budget shortfall. Or as I already said (and you quote slightly later in your post) "In other words that the reduction in taxes paid by wealthy people due to their reduction in income was the biggest reason for the deficit." Is it due to the reduction in income or is it due to the tax cuts? And is it really the wealthy or is it a combo of the wealthy, small businessowners, self employed, etc? The income reduction was a bigger factor then either Iraq or the tax cuts. And it is the wealthy as defined by income level against the national average (not as defined by net worth or income compared to local average), by that definition many of the small business owners and self employed that you mentioned are wealthy. Rather then getting hung up over the semantics of "wealthy" you can just substitute something like those with incomes in the top quintile or perhaps the top 10%. most of the wealthy in this country inherit their wealth. Not true. They tend to act as if its nobless oblige....that they are entitled; to whit, the Hilton daughters, the Bush daughters, some of the Kennedy spawn, etc. That's a more complex statement and harder to refute but even those three groups don't really think entirely alike as far as I can tell, and many wealthy people act and think very different from the people you mention. The sad part is your need to defend these people! They hardly need to be defended. Many, perhaps the majority, of wealthy people are not jerks, but even those who are jerks should have their money forcibly taken away from them. Tim