 |
 | |
 |  |
| We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level. |
In his July 15th radio address, President Clinton bashed the Republican Congress' tax-cut proposal. "Their plan would take all of our projected surplus and spend it all for tax cuts and for the cost of privatizing partially the Social Security system, and other spending." Spend it all for tax cuts? Privatizing Social Security and other spending? We all know that Bill Clinton has redefined the words "is," "sex," and "alone." But the redefinition hasn't stopped there, over the last eight years, according to ClintonianAlgorean lingo, tax cuts have become "spending." Allowing you to keep your own money has become "spending." Letting people control where their Social Security taxes are invested, in their own individual accounts, has also become "spending." Don't buy this con. Or the liberal con about taxing the rich so they pay their "fair share." In fact, let me tell you about the rich and taxes. Last month we all read in The Wall Street Journal the Statistics of Income Bulletin had published the latest numbers on income and income taxes. How much of total individual income taxes do you think the richest one percent of Americans paid? The top 1 percent (making an adjusted gross income of at least $250,736) paid 33.2 percent of all the income taxes for 1997, the latest year for which these data are available. One-third! Not only do they make up a mere one percent of the working population; the top one percent accounts for only 17.4 percent of total adjusted gross income. And yet they're paying a third of the taxes! The so-called super-rich in this country are being fleeced. And as time goes by, they're made to pay an even larger share of the taxes, (Back in 1981, the richest one percent paid only 17.5 percent of all income taxes.) But get this. The top 5 percent of eeevil, filthy rich (making at least $108,048) paid a full 51.9 percent of total income taxes. You read it right. More than half. They make up only 1/20th of the working population, and they earn only 31.8 percent of total income of this country, yet they are asked to pay 52 percent of the income taxes. They're abused because they are successful, because, in Little Dick Gephardt's words, they are "the winners of life's lottery" - and, according to liberals, they don't really need all that money anyway. They don't need that money..LOL! There's more. The top 50 percent of income earners, those who make above the median income, paid a staggering 96 percent of all personal income taxes. Meanwhile, the average federal income-tax rate on all taxable returns rose to 15.3 percent - the highest level since the mid1980s. So much for the notion that soaking the rich somehow helps the non-rich. It's not as if they got any tax relief. Oh, and by the way. For those of you who aren't recent graduates of the public school system and are still capable of performing arithmetic, this means of course that the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers pay only about 4 percent of total taxes. Let me restate: the bottom half of taxpayers cover a measly 4 percent of the tax tab. Have you heard this anywhere except here? No? How strange. Because these statistics have been available from the IRS since last October. As Bruce Bartlett with the National Center for Policy Analysis pointed out in a column at the time, "The vast increase in taxes paid by those at the top of the income distribution is a key reason why taxes as a share of the gross domestic product have been able to rise from 19.2 percent in 1992 to a current level of 21.9 percent without triggering a tax revolt." We haven't seen such a high level of taxes, as a percentage of output in this country since World War II. So that is the liberals' dirty little secret. Whenever they claim that voters "don't want" a tax cut, we now know why: It is only a tiny percentage of Americans who are shouldering the vast majority of the American tax burden. The rich not paying their fair share? They're clearly paying many times what anyone not driven by blind envy would consider fair. Indeed, they are footing most of the bill. They're paying a big part of others' share as well as their own. If the millions of people who are not in the top 5 percent were forced to pay their so-called "fair share," we'd experience a national tax revolt of apocalyptic proportions that would instantly send liberalism to the ash heap of history. Where it belongs. So far, the libs have always been able to use "the rich" as scapegoats to pay most of the taxes that fund their big government programs. Up until now, they have always been able to depend on people buying into the notion that the rich don't pay enough. Do you still buy into that notion? I hope not. | ||||||||||||
|
| Home | Hot | SubjectMarks | PeopleMarks | Keepers | Settings |
| Terms Of Use | Contact Us | Copyright/IP Policy | Privacy Policy | About Us | FAQ | Advertise on SI |
| © 2025 Knight Sac Media. Data provided by Twelve Data, Alpha Vantage, and CityFALCON News |