It's Not the Wealthy, Stupid! It's a Full Blown Depression

[kokonut]

Txgolfer, I'm sure Obama would try and stop that.

 

[Jiro]

Transfer them to I.C.E. and Border Patrol.

IMO - I.C.E. is a bunch of thugs. It should be abolished. It used to be private defense contractors.

 

[Foxrac]

That I don't know...... probably between 24 and 30%

I like the Fair Tax as well

The proposal flat tax that G.W. Bush support is 15% and not sure about how much is exemption. I think so and will going find out later.

 

[Reba]

Who is paying for the military-industrial complex? The giant engine that makes the States a force to be reckon with?

Taxpayers' dollars.

Yes, but it doesn't need to depend on the IRS system for its power.

 

[Reba]

The proposal flat tax that G.W. Bush support is 15% and not sure about how much is exemption. I think so and will going find out later.

That would be better than the 33%+ that I'm paying now.

 

[Reba]

Fair Tax..sure but it wouldn't be "fair" to the IRS when things suddenly get streamlined.

That's OK; the IRS hasn't been exactly "fair" to taxpaying citizens, either.

 

[Jiro]

Yes, but it doesn't need to depend on the IRS system for its power.

how else can we fund our outrageously expensive national security?

 

[Reba]

how else can we fund our outrageously expensive national security?

The Fair Tax.

I never said do away with all taxes.

 

[saywhatkid]

The Charitable-Giving Divide
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22FOB-wwln-t.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

From your article...

For decades, surveys have shown that upper-income Americans don’t give away as much of their money as they might and are particularly undistinguished as givers when compared with the poor, who are strikingly generous. A number of other studies have shown that lower-income Americans give proportionally more of their incomes to charity than do upper-income Americans. In 2001, Independent Sector, a nonprofit organization focused on charitable giving, found that households earning less than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent of their incomes; those with earnings of more than $75,000 gave away 2.7 percent.

But in the larger context of “the psychological culture of wealth versus poverty,” says Paul K. Piff, a Ph.D..... His study, written with Michael W. Kraus and published online last month by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.
“Upper class” people, on the other hand, clung to values that “prioritized their own need.” And, he told me this week, “wealth seems to buffer people from attending to the needs of others.” Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients in the greater generosity of those with lower incomes.

This compassion deficit — the inability to empathetically relate to others’ needs — is perhaps not so surprising in a society that for decades has seen the experiential gap between the well-off and the poor (and even the middle class) significantly widen. The economist Frank Levy diagnosed such a split in his book “The New Dollars and Dreams: American Incomes and Economic Change,” published in the midst of the late-1990s tech boom. “The welfare state,” Levy wrote, “rests on enlightened self-interest in which people can look at beneficiaries and reasonably say, ‘There but for the grace of God. . . .’ As income differences widen, this statement rings less true.” A lack of identification with those in need may explain in part why a 2007 report from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University found that only a small percentage of charitable giving by the wealthy was actually going to the needs of the poor; instead it was mostly directed to other causes — cultural institutions, for example, or their alma maters — which often came with the not-inconsequential payoff of enhancing the donor’s status among his or her peers.

“These patterns can be changed,” Piff says. What this means is that whatever morality tale can be spun by the giving patterns for rich people and poor people, it shouldn’t turn on the presumed nobility of the needy or essential cupidity of the fortunate. Instead, we should look at what has pushed rich and poor (or, more accurately, the rich and everyone else) to such opposite extremes of existence. A generation of political decisions — regarding big business and labor, the deregulation of the financial industry and, yes, tax cuts for the wealthy — have brought our society to this sharply divided, socially and economically polarized place we now find ourselves, says the political scientist Jacob Hacker, co-author, with Paul Pierson, of the coming book “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.”

 

[Jiro]

The Fair Tax.

I never said do away with all taxes.

I don't know if we'll have enough to fund it under Fair Tax but then... it's probably about time they start spending wisely, eh?

 

[Foxrac]

That would be better than the 33%+ that I'm paying now.

Hell yeah!!! I would pay more taxes in future after get high paying job.

I don't think that tax system would change in anytime because divided politicians and need bipartisanship to agree with new tax system, however I think that transition to flat tax may be easier than fair tax act.

Federal spending is very huge than I thought so spending cut is necessary to fix this issue.

 

[Jiro]

Hell yeah!!! I would pay more taxes in future after get high paying job.

I don't think that tax system would change in anytime because divided politicians and need bipartisanship to agree with new tax system, however I think that transition to flat tax may be easier than fair tax act.

Federal spending is very huge than I thought so spending cut is necessary to fix this issue.

actually no. if you're good with money - you will pay less tax than middle class.

 

[jillio]

Scare tactics. Nothing more.

Yep. Can't believe people are still buying into such weak tactics.

 

[Foxrac]

actually no. if you're good with money - you will pay less tax than middle class.

Oh really, it means if I do taxes so properly so that means I pay less taxes than middle class?

 

[Jiro]

Oh really, it means if I do taxes so properly so that means I pay less taxes than middle class?

and more. tax exemption. charity. tax loophole. campaign donation. etc.

if you're rich - you will most likely have a financial advisor and/or an agency to handle your tax/accounts.

 

[saywhatkid]

and more. tax exemption. charity. tax loophole. campaign donation. etc.

if you're rich - you will most likely have a financial advisor and/or an agency to handle your tax/accounts.

That was my point above. Wealthy complain about the higher tax bracket, but they find ways around it. Not all, but many. They are generally more interested in gaining wealth, so it behooves them to have knowledge for ways to increase that wealth.

 

[jillio]

That was my point above. Wealthy complain about the higher tax bracket, but they find ways around it. Not all, but many. They are generally more interested in gaining wealth, so it behooves them to have knowledge for ways to increase that wealth.

**nodding**. When they complain about a higher tax bracket, what they are truly complaining about is the fee they have to pay their tax attorney to find all the loopholes that prevent them from paying their fair share of tax.:P

 

[Jiro]

That was my point above. Wealthy complain about the higher tax bracket, but they find ways around it. Not all, but many. They are generally more interested in gaining wealth, so it behooves them to have knowledge for ways to increase that wealth.

and they have every rights to complain. I mean.... government pissing away your hundreds of thousand dollars tax money to nonsense bureaucracy or... would you rather spend that same amount for charity program or hiring more employees?

 

[saywhatkid]

and they have every rights to complain. I mean.... government pissing away your hundreds of thousand dollars tax money to nonsense bureaucracy or... would you rather spend that same amount for charity program or hiring more employees?

I would prefer everyone pay same percentages, as I stated previously. We can dicker about where it all goes, but the fact remains; we need taxes to drive the big bus.

 

[Banjo]

and they have every rights to complain. I mean.... government pissing away your hundreds of thousand dollars tax money to nonsense bureaucracy or... would you rather spend that same amount for charity program or hiring more employees?

Hmm, maybe they should spend it on herding cats.