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Rath on 20 September 2011
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mrstickball said:
Rath said:
Kantor said:
This will never pass a Republican congress.

It's populism at its very worst. Obama understands that he's done a pretty worthless job as President so far, and he needs to drum up support from the left so they don't go vote Nader or something.

Not everyone is as wealthy as Warren Buffett. The top 0.5% of America is significantly richer than the second 0.5%. Most of the money paid in by these people will never be seen by them again in any form.

You can't force the very wealthiest people to pay exorbitant tax rates, because they will just refuse. They'll move elsewhere, or hire yet more people to find loopholes. The only "solution" is to lump the entire middle class together and say they have become rich on the backs of the poor, to say that the majority of Americans are entitled to more than they currently get. It's a fantastic method of control.

Should he let the Bush tax cuts expire? Absolutely. Should he increase tax further? No. Should he go into this massive song and dance about it? No.


They won't be paying exorbitant tax rates. Most of them currently pay lower tax rates than people who earn less than them.

I really do agree with Obama on this one, while cutting expenses is necessary (and lets face it, some areas of your government are bloated enough that there could be significant savings) but if you're going to be serious about cutting the deficit then you need to raise revenues too.

Except they don't.

According to actual tax returns analyzed by the American Tax Foundation (TaxFoundation.Org), the following income brackets paid the following effective tax rates:

  • Top 0.1% - 22.7%
  • Top 1% - 23.7%
  • Top 10% - 20.8%
  • Between 5% and 10% - 12.4%
  • Between 10% and 25% - 9.3%
  • Between 25% and 50% - 6.8%
  • Bottom 50% - 2.6%

That is the hard data from 140 million returns. Warren himself may not pay as much as some of his employees because he has more accountants finding each and every loophole for him, whilst his employees are going to get a big fat check back from the government in April each year which greatly diminishes the taxes they pay.

I do not disagree that revenues need raised - but we can do that without simply raising taxes. Our entire tax code structure is ripe for loopholes and to be taken advantage of. We need a simple flat tax system and/or an NST. That way, people like Mr. Buffet do pay their 'fair share' without dodging taxes. Additionally, Mr. Buffet's company uses loopholes to pay no corporate taxes - they dodged over $1 billion last year. Rather stupid of him to say taxes need raised when he knows good and well they can be avoided easily.


I'm not entirely sure if I trust the data (the site it comes from has a fairly obvious fiscally conservative bias) but as I don't have any data to rebutt it with I'll accept that my statement might have been wrong.

Also I strongly disagree with replacing income tax with VAT/GST/NST - those (unless you get into exceptions in which case you end up with complicated systems again) are regressive taxes in essence and can completely screw over the poor while having little effect on the rich who do not spend nearly as large a portion of their income.