Taxing the wealthy is popular
You may not agree with their opinion, but nearly two-thirds of Americans polled would like to raise taxes on higher-income Americans and on businesses. And a strong majority would also like to cut domestic spending—just not Medicare or Social Security.
The poll failed to ask respondents to define what they meant by “higher-income,” and the pollsters offered no suggestions on where the cut-off should be. So people were free to define the term as they wished—which may often mean some category of people with an income slightly higher than the respondent. “Do it to Julia, not to me!”
The whole thing makes me think of this image, a guy who would definitely qualify as the sort of higher-income person most people would have in mind, the sort that President Obama likes to stir up resentment towards:
Doing a little research for this post, I discovered that the Monopoly guy above (since 1999 officially known as Mr. Monopoly, but previously bearing the moniker Rich Uncle Pennybags) was based on the real-life J.P. Morgan, the legendary financier. The following seems awfully interesting to me; it’s about the Panic of 1907 (remember that, folks?) and the creation of the Fed. Finance—and financial rescue—was apparently a lot more personal back then:
The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis that almost crippled the American economy. Major New York banks were on the verge of bankruptcy and there was no mechanism to rescue them until Morgan stepped in personally and took charge, resolving the crisis.Treasury Secretary George B. Cortelyou earmarked $35 million of federal money to quell the storm but had no easy way to use it. Morgan now took personal charge, meeting with the nation’s leading financiers in his New York mansion; he forced them to devise a plan to meet the crisis. James Stillman, president of the National City Bank, also played a central role. Morgan organized a team of bank and trust executives which redirected money between banks, secured further international lines of credit, and bought plummeting stocks of healthy corporations. A delicate political issue arose regarding the brokerage firm of Moore and Schley, which was deeply involved in a speculative pool in the stock of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. Moore and Schley had pledged over $6 million of the Tennessee Coal and Iron (TCI) stock for loans among the Wall Street banks. The banks had called the loans, and the firm could not pay. If Moore and Schley should fail, a hundred more failures would follow and then all Wall Street might go to pieces. Morgan decided they had to save Moore and Schley. TCI was one of the chief competitors of U.S. Steel and it owned valuable iron and coal deposits. Morgan controlled U.S. Steel and he decided it had to buy the TCI stock from Moore and Schley. Judge Gary, head of US Steel, agreed, but would there be antitrust implications that could cause grave trouble for US Steel, which was already dominant in the steel industry. Morgan sent Gary to see President Theodore Roosevelt, who promised legal immunity for the deal. U.S. Steel thereupon paid $30 million for the TCI stock and Moore and Schley was saved. The announcement had an immediate effect; by November 7, 1907, the panic was over. Vowing to never let it happen again, and realizing that in a future crisis there was not likely to be another Morgan, banking and political leaders, led by Senator Nelson Aldrich devised a plan that became the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The crisis underscored the need for a powerful mechanism, and Morgan supported the move to create the Federal Reserve System.
Here’s another vignette from J.P.’s life:
Morgan was the founder of the Metropolitan Club of New York and its president from 1891 to 1900. When his friend, Frank King, whom he had proposed, was black-balled by the Union Club because he had done manual labor in his youth, Morgan resigned from the Union Club, and then organized the Metropolitan Club. He donated the land on 5th Avenue and 60th Street at a cost of $125,000, and commanded Stanford White, “Build me a club fit for gentlemen. Forget the expense.” Of course he invited King as a charter member.
From Wikipedia:
What envy doth accomplish.
Taxing the rich decreases the amount of capital invested per employee. An income rich worker with poor tools and resources will soon be an unemployed worker.
Class envy, as preached by Obama, should be viewed as dangerous as a plague or other catastrophic event.
Yet another Morgan vignette: he left each of his employees a year’s salary.
So, 2/3 of Americans are ill-informed and can’t grasp basic match. (If you confiscated everything from the rich, and don’t touch entitlements, the effect on the deficit is nil) No surprise there. Many are products of the public school system dominated by the Left.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
How many Americans can read a balance sheet, prospectus, or a financial statement? Damn few…less than the above one-third.
If you don’t have the required knowledge, all conclusions are suspect.
Not just in economics, but ANY field of knowledge.
And I point pointedly at the EPA. My dealings with this “organization” for clients was a nightmare of ignorance and stupidity.
Couldn’t even get a good business lunch with these jerks…wotta fate.
I’ve linked this chart before, but it bears repeating. I found it in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago. Take a good look at it every time you hear someone talking about raising taxes on the rich:
The Middle Class Tax Target
On a lighter note, I just found this in a comment at Ace of Spades:
World of Class Warcraft
Monopoly the game was born in the 1930s. Mr. Monopoly has been seared into the brains of all children of Progressives ever since.
The sheeple are lost, shorn and forlorn, and pollsters expect them to know the way home ? Baaah.
These people are so ignorant that they don’t realize businesses don’t pay taxes, they collect them for the government. The business just passes the tax on to their customers as higher prices. These people must believe businessmen have a fairy godmother that gives them money to pay their taxes.
This poll shows the economic ignorance of the bulk of citizens. Either that or the poll was done with a majority of people who lean democrat or actually believe the government has wealth that doesn’t come from the private sector.
At one time in my youth (age 25), I had no idea about wealth and its connection to jobs. It was like magic as far as I was concerned. Somehow jobs just appeared and the wealthy probably got rich by nefarious means. I had read Upton Sinclair’s, “THE JUNGLE” and Frank Norris’s “THE OCTOPUS” as a student. Both books vilified unchecked corporate greed. Both had made an impression on me, but I was not so anti-capatalist to refuse to work for an offshoot of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. I was very glad to have the job.
Two months of sitting on a well with a fellow geologist who understood economics and was willing to patiently educate me, changed my attitude. I then realized that it was capital that created new industries that created new jobs. I also was shown by my friend, how a lowly worker bee could become wealthy by saving and investing. I’ve not become wealthy – at least not the way wealth is counted today, but I am so much better off than I ever dreamed I would have been. Mostly because I saved and invested and realized it was a marathon, not a sprint. I came from a very poor family who always worked hard, but did not understand saving and investing. Thus, I have watched their struggles but, thankfully, have been able to offer help to carry them out of financial rough patches.
There are occasional stories of people who worked at modest jobs all their working lives who, it turned out had amassed small fortunes. We seldom hear as much about the people who have started businesses and ended up making fortunes through creativity, hard work, and being responsible. I know a man who is now 40 who was laid off by Boeing back in the early 90s. He had good wood- working skills and knew that Boeing and other manufacturers of heavy parts contracted with pallet makers to build shipping boxes for them. He decided to go into that business because he understood it and had some ideas to cut costs and improve quality. Over a period of ten years he built the business into a going concern. Since early 2000 he has expanded to other states where there was a need for his business. He’s now a millionaire. He has quit growing his busness because of uncertainty about the effects of Obamacare and future tax increases. He’s hunkered down and protecting what he has. Who could blame him? An unlikely success story. But there it is. And who would say he is a greedy capitalist who ravages the common man? No, instead he created a business and has created many good paying jobs. Stories like that are legion in the small business arena. Yet, Obama and the democrats want to regulate and tax them even more. There is a saying, “If you want less of something, tax it and regulate it.” We are seeing that in action right now.
Another quick story. My old company, UAL, went bankrupt in 2002. (A result of 9/11, bad management, and intransigence by the unions.) The bankruptcy judge allowed them to drop their defined benefit pension plan because there was too little money and not enough money coming in to make it whole. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) took control and evaluated the money available. They parceled it out as any insurance company would with an annuity. Everybody had to take less. The company also had contracted to pay for our health care in coordination with Medicare, which meant full coverage, drugs and all. That was cancelled and we were offered a plan that gave us similar benefits for $583/month. The contractual benefits were promises that were broken because the company over promised.
I look on the government entitlement programs much the same as a bankruptcy. The have over promised and now the benefits must be cut to come in line with the actual money available. The fact is that the sooner they do this, the less they will have to cut.
I wish all those citizens who are watching these events had a better understanding of where wealth and jobs come from. I wish they understood that their representatives have over promised entiltlements to buy votes. If they did, they would understand that, economically, we are heading 180 degrees from where we should be.
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt….If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and
our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…
[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers…”
Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/thomas_jefferson_quote_0564
This is why in a comment yesterday I referred to hiking taxes as “a populist sop – period.”
The schizophrenia of the American people is a hobby horse of mine, and it’s partly a consequence of the morally degrading effects of rent-seeking.
For those of you can bear abstruse economic arguments, there’s a paper about to be published arguing that rent-seeking societies deteriorate in per capita income not simply because rent-seeking is inefficient and wasteful, but because it literally alters the moral outlook of people:
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2011/06/30/000158349_20110630123337/Rendered/PDF/WPS5720.pdf
The brilliance of this paper is not its lesson, which anyone who pays attention knows already, but that the authors managed to find a way to quantify aggregate levels and correlations between ability and morality. The basic gist: Rent-seeking societies reduce the correlation between ability and morality, thereby lowering productivity and increasing acquisitiveness, and, finally, as a result, reducing per capita income.
The effect is not small either. They find that a .1 increase in the correlation between morality and ability leads to a 36% increase in per capita income. In dollars terms, an increase of a standard deviation in the correlation between morality and ability increases median income by $3,600.
Only the rule of law has a larger effect on income, and obviously rent-seeking and the rule of law work at cross-purposes. Meaning: It’s likely that every further separation between ability and morality not only reduces income by the equated amount, but also by an extra factor related to indirect adverse effects on the rule of law.
Thus begins the downward spiral into schizophrenia, when high ability, immoral people propagandize on behalf of rent-seeking and low ability, moral people naively trust what the experts tell them. The average American’s morality tells him that productivity is good, while his expert-influenced mind adds that taxes on wealth for servicing rent-seeking activities (bureaucracy, social programs, etc.) is also good.
In this view, the Tea Party represents a revolt against the immorality of the elites, sparked by events which rendered the standard expert rationalizations of rent-seeking ridiculous. Purged of the confounding influence of experts, the Tea Party was free to perceive just how degenerate our debt-ridden, promissory, rent-seeking, elitist political class really is.
I don’t know what we would do without the Tea Party.
Yesterday I was sitting in McDonalds at lunch watching Fox News. The Anchor was talking to some high up female in the Democratic Party who was talking about Romneys comment about corporation being people or some such thing. The Democrat started saying something along the lines of no one thinking Exxon Mobil, or BP, or (insert oil company) is a person.
The democrats dont seem to realize that oil companies are one of the those sectors that pays blue collar workers good money for hard work. I guess they want to kill that too.
I took a course in grad school titled, “Financial History of the United States”, taught by Richard Sylla, one of the nation’s leading financial historians. I remembered being fascinated when we read about and discussed in class how the Federal Reserve “really” came into being.
The short version is that the most important piece of legislation to affect how our financial system functions was written by a handful of New York City financiers. They met in secret on Jekyll Island over a period of several days. They essentially bypassed the middleman (today’s lobbyists) and wrote the law themselves.
They allowed one senator, Aldridge from Rhode Island, to attend the secret meeting. Aldridge then presented the bill as his own in the Senate Committee. While a few minor changes were made, the bill the bankers wrote was ultimately voted on and passed into law to become the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 — establishing the Federal Reserve System which is the cornerstone of our financial system to this day.
http://www.jekyllislandhistory.com/federalreserve.shtml
Somewhere on the intertubes is a video from the 2008 primaries where Michelle Obama whines about how hard it is to raise two children in Chicago on “only” $340,000 a year. Can anybody find that, or has it been scrubbed?
As I have said here before, I believe, from my observations, that a large proportion of the “graduates” of today’s educational establishment are basically functionally illiterate, innumerate, and have been deliberately not taught the basics of economics, American History, logic, or rhetoric–with all the space these subjects used to take up in the curriculum filled with leftist, Postmodernist agitprop, Anti-Americanism, and twaddle–exactly the kind of curriculum that Bill Ayers–bomb throwing radical turned much more effective political and cultural subversive–has been very successfully advocating and churning out for several decades now; most schools of education routinely use his textbooks and model curriculums in their teaching of prospective teachers.
Earlier, supposedly less well educated and less “sophisticated” generations of Americans were too well-grounded and were sufficiently well educated not to fall for Great Depression–WWII–Korean War era efforts by the far Left to subvert America and steer it towards some Marxist Utopia in great numbers. Thus, the re branding of Marxism/far Left ideology as “progress,” “human rights,” “fairness,” and “ecological consciousness,” and the concerted effort via education to change, to disarm the audience; a goal that the Academic establishment, long captive of the Left, has pretty much succeeded in.
Do citizens look at and understand the government statistics ( see http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html) that show that the top 1% of income earners ($383,300 and above) pay 38% of all income taxes, the top 5% of income earners ($159,600 and above) pay 58.2% of all income taxes, the top 10% of all earners ($113,800 and above) pay 69.94% of all income taxes, the top 25 % of earners ($67,200 and above) pay 86.34 % of all income taxes, and the top 50% of income earners ($33,048 and above) pay 97.3% of all income taxes, meaning that the bottom half of income earners–all those making $33,047 and below–pay the last 2.7% of all income taxes i.e. virtually nothing ? Do they even know such information exists, and do they care?
Do citizens understand just how unimaginably vast our national debt and indebtedness is, understand that even if all the assets of the “rich” were confiscated, their total wealth would barely pay a year of two of merely the interest on our Federal debt?
My guess is that, these days, in most instances, the answer is pretty reliably no.
Wolla.
Probably you’re right. But Obama was on the money when he said he’d raise taxes even if it didn’t increase prosperity [?] because spreading the wealth around would be more fair.
That’s culture-war material. If there are more than two stages between cause and effect, some folks couldn’t see it for the world. They’d never accept that resentment-fueled punitive taxes might have led to their unemployment.
The most imortant thing now is not to make the “rich” pay more taxes but to ensure that all wage-earners pay something. Too many people vote for spendocrats while paying no direct taxes.
“Do citizens understand just how unimaginably vast our national debt and indebtedness is, understand that even if all the assets of the “rich” were confiscated, their total wealth would barely pay a year of two of merely the interest on our Federal debt?
My guess is that, these days, in most instances, the answer is pretty reliably no.”
And, they fail to realize unfunded liabilities dwarf the debt burden by at least a factor of 5.
Perhaps there should be a variation of the property requirement for voting in the days of yore.
“Only those who pay a net income tax greater that $50.00 (or insert your sum here) may vote in federal elections.”
Interesting, eh what?
What’s fascinating is the number of people making 6 figure incomes want to “soak the rich” It’s amazing how many morons fail to understand how much they are preaching suicide for themselves. When it does hit, they’re shocked
I’m sure it is popular but they probably have never been exposed to other points of view.
If I listened only to the msm I’d have no idea how much of the taxes they already pay… or been exposed to non leftist thoughts on the money supply (explained well in Shale’s the forgotten man)… or that if we taxed the wealthy 100% we’d still have a huge Obama deficit (just adds to the point that the democrats are demagogues)… That said; there is a tax or two on the wealthy I support… but it still won’t do much to close the deficit and in my POV it helps fund screwing us (like via obamacare).
Aside from the 20% of Americans who are progressives; I think most people would be open to the arguments if they were exposed to them.
anyway, the above is why we all want another Reagan. Not because we need leadership… but we need a great communicator who can explain our ideas to the country despite the MSM filters.
Contrast with Obama who is a great obfuscator. Deceitfully hiding what he is really doing while mouthing platitudes.
everyone is talking about government employees right?
i mean, we are speaking of taxing the rich and currently many public sector employees are making more than their private sector counterparts therefore…
let’s not even go through the motions of taxing public sector workers for their fair share (not all of them mind you but the ones and the rates with which apply will be arbitrarily hashed out by glenn beck and a couple of his toadies) let’s just fire the redundancy- permanently- and see where we stand when the smoke clears
Complete O/T but this link relates to the discussion about S & P a few days ago. Found on Instapundit:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576502121667479138.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Hope the link works.
How about another poll with the question, “The top 1% of taxpayers currently pay 40% of income taxes. Should they pay more?”
And as neo pointed out, there is no definition of “higher-income.” As someone once said, “the rich is anyone making $1 a year more than you.”
Oops. Very sorry.
One has to register and pay to see the whole article. Anyway, the point is that the S & P is written by human beings, and the federal government requires that this source be used.
Just one other form of the MSM, and just one more example of how the federal government creates problems.
“… one more example of how the federal government creates problems.”
EVERY problem in contemporary America has been created by the federal government.
Here’s a good Bill Whittle video that is very relevant to this topic:
EAT THE RICH!
The video starts out talking about the riots in England, but it’s actually several months old.
what are all the statistics? we ought to be able to rattle them off. People do not know them ALL – they just declare the ones on “their side”
What is true:
1. 47% of households pay no income tax TRUE
a. note this includes those on SS
b. what % of those are registered to vote?
c. what % of those actually get a govt check?
2. the wealthiest 10% pay 70% of taxes collected TRUE?
3. the top 2% wealthiest pay …. pay what? someone tried to tell me tonight they pay nothing. What % of “top” pays “nothing?”
4. if they raised the taxes on those who net 250K and above, it would take in $_____ how much revenue?
5. if they raised the taxes on those who net 500K and above, it would take in $_____ how much revenue?
it seems we all just throw around just the statistic that benefits “our side”. Does anyone have a definitive list of all sides of the picture?
Ok, MT, let’s take a crack at it.
1b. 71% of voting-age adults are registered. Below $33, 047 (which pays 2% of federal income taxes), there’s roughly 146 M / 27 M = 18.5% of all registered voters.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p20-562.pdf
c. I don’t have updated numbers for this, and the census sucks (I can’t find anywhere in it where they report transfers, although they do report proxies such as poverty and unemployment, etc.). From Aug. 2010, about 40 M people get food stamps, 10 M get unemployment, 60 M receive some form of Social Security,
Now we need to apply some sauce to this, since not everyone on unemployment is below the poverty line, and not everyone on Social Security is poor. But before we do that we need to note that the question of how many poor registered voters are on the dole is not very interesting. The interesting question is how many people are dependent on the government for their livelihoods – and that number, according to a reliable analysis done by Gary Shilling, is about 20% of all Americans. The number of people who “receive significant income from government programs” is much higher, so brace yourself: 52.6%. And that was in 2007.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0416/p01s04-usec.html
As to the poverty question, they’re now reporting that 1 in 6 (16.66%) of citizens are “receiving help from the government.” It’s a safe bet that the people below $33,000 swallow up the bulk of “help recipients,” and their percentage of voting age population is 225 M / 48 M = 21%. As you can see, the difference between 21% and 17% is not large, and roughly 58% of that “bracket” is registered to vote. A lowball estimate would thus be (1/2)17 = 8.5%.
That’s a VERY rough calculation done with official census figures, and frankly we don’t have the data to do a much more fine-grained analysis. So a lowball, conservative estimate of 50% of non-income tax paying registered voters receive help from the government, or 8.5% of all registered voters. (Yes, I pulled the 50% number out of my butt, but I stress again that I deliberately lowballed it and knocked off 8 percentage points of this bracket, assuming they receive NO government help).
2. This is true. You can confirm it easily and even progressives don’t dispute it. What they do is say, “Hey, but look at the share of TOTAL taxes the rich pay – doesn’t look so progressive now does it?” This is the key point (though if someone can be impressed by the 71%, have at it).
The rub is that progressives fudge the numbers by looking at raw census data. As I noted above, that does NOT include transfers, which we have just seen poorer people get a LOT of, and in truth most people get some of. Thankfully, the Tax Foundation exists, and they take great pains do calculate what might be called “real tax burden,” including all taxes and all transfers. First, here’s the report:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf
Second, some facts to organize your thoughts (this is all in the report, but I’m going to pluck out the gems). At the federal level, the “biggest” taxes are income and payroll. At the state and local levels, the “biggest” are property and retail taxes (and in some states income taxes as well). So when we talk “total taxes” with the progs, we’re talking income, payroll, property, and retail.
The average household paid $17 k in federal and $9 k in state taxes in 2004 (whatever the numbers are now it is impossible that they differ much from those).
Coarse-graining this, the system is heavily progressive for income taxes and heavily regressive for retail taxes (e.g., cigarettes).
On a per capita basis, the top 20% pay “real taxes” of, on average, $82 k. The numbers for the next four quintiles in descending order are: $35 k; $21 k; $12 k; and $4 k (note well that 61% of the taxes the poor pay are state and local, while 70% of the top quintile’s taxes paid are federal).
Now, the maddening part: spending. In 2004, total (state + federal) government spending on households was $3.5 T (mean = $31 k per household). $2.2 T is federal spending, or 63% of total government spending.
Skipping to “ta-da!” moment, here’s what “Net Tax Burdens” look like – that is, how much each household by quintile pays net of targeted government spending and transfers:
The top quintile pays net $48,000 per household, and the next four in descending order pay: $8,000; -$6,000; -$18,000; and -$31,000 (the negatives being a net gain from transfers and government spending). Thus, all brackets except the top two get more than they pay in taxes. And the top pays significantly more, while the bottom receives almost as much.
This can be put much more powerfully in aggregate terms: the top two quintiles paid $1 T more in taxes than they got in benefits, while the bottom three received $1.5 T more than they paid. (The difference, about $500 B, represents deficit spending).
This means, finally, that government redistribution amounts to about $1.5 T per year. The bottom line is that however you slice the numbers, if you do NOT include transfers and spending, you are full of sh*t. It is a classic progressive move to do that. Which is why they are full of sh*t.
3. The top 2% pay just what Wolla Dalbo said: around 48% (splitting the difference and subtracting a unit between the percentages for the top 5% and top 1%). But remember these are income taxes – always be sure to specify what we’re talking about. Progressives always retreat to “total taxes” and then leave out spending. This is the game.
4 and 5. No one knows. All they have are CBO estimates, if they even have that. I’m sure there are tons of plausible estimates on the web, and that not a single one of them would show any revenue gain large enough to impact our debt situation. And if we’re talking debt, then we’re talking LONG-TERM, which means we have to factor in disincentive effects (and possibly another recession), which is essentially impossible. This is an intrinsically philosophical question: If you’re a conservative, you believe (correctly) that taxes adversely affect behavior; if you’re a liberal, you (opportunistically) believe that they don’t. No estimate you can cite will be a “fact” until it’s a fact, and no one except those who already agree with you will believe it anyway.
Hope this was helpful (and please anyone correct my math if I screwed up somewhere, I wrote this in haste).
I should note one more thing. The Tax Foundation analysis was done according to quintiles because that’s how the census does it. Which makes it frustrating when someone wants to have a discussion about “the top 1/2/3%.” The key thing to note is that if the Tax Foundation had provided net tax numbers for the “top 1/2/3%” the number would have been even MORE skewed than the quintile number. This follows from simple logic: they pay much, much more than, say, the fifteenth percentile, and they get less. I.e., their net payment is higher.
I don’t have the data the Tax Foundation used, so I can run the numbers myself and give you a precise dollar amount. But if anyone did care to check it, they’d find just what I said. If they don’t, they’re lying – period.
Dangit. “can run…” should be “can’t run…”
So two thirds of Americans need a less prosperous country to cope with their juvenile feelings of envy. That’s fundamentally where we’re at.
Well put, SteveH, and sadly accurate.
Ha SteveH summed it up nicely – that’s the final final but Kolnai, my goodness thank you very much. After I have a pot of coffee and do a zillion other things, I am going to read through what you said again, read your links, and do my best to bullet point it. THANK YOU. NOBLE EFFORT. See you in a few hours.
In the past I have mentioned several times on this blog the tactical aspect of “tax the rich.” As neoneocon points out “rich” is undefined for a reason. The attack on the evil rich is intended to get you all worked up as you look up the economic ladder to the rungs above you, and at the same time it intends to make you ignore the fact that those on rungs below you are looking up at you and demanding that YOU pay your fair share. Obama’s insistance on couples making $250,000 or more as “rich” is the proof of that pudding.
This thread, apropos of J.P. Morgan, seems like an appropriate time to repeat the Robert Heinlein quote often seen on Instapundit. As Prof. Reynolds notes, “It can’t be repeated often enough.”
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded – here and there, now and then – are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck.'”
Amen!
As with the others above I appreciate and agree with your succinct summation. Keep in mind, though, I submit that this may not be natural behavior. I think back to my parents and grandparents (I’m 2nd generation American) and I don’t ever remember any of them reviling people who had more than they did. They had what they had and were confortable witrh what they achieved.
Keep in mind, even in Liberaland, the Kennedys, George Soros, Bill Gates, Sean Penn etc. are not reviled because they are “rich” which they most assuredly are. The target of this envy always seems to be those people on the NEAREST rungs above one on the economic ladder.
My question, then, is just how much of this class envy is instilled by liberal provocateurs as opposed to being instinctive?
As someone once said, “I’ve never been hired by a poor man,” i.e. it is the so called “rich”–as caricatured by Obama & Co. those pin-striped, porcine, double-chinned, diamond pinky ring-wearing, cigar-smoking, 100 year old Cognac swilling, huge estate-dwelling, heartless, evil, sneering, mustachioed, top-hat wearing leeches, sailing around on yachts–that have and provide the capital i.e. in Obama & Co. terms the surely “ill-gotten gains,” that are used to form companies that invent or make products, hire workers, and produce goods and services–in other words, to run the engine of our economy, and it is the “rich”–the rich who are much more realistically defined as perhaps those productive people who have worked hard to provide for their basic needs and have a little or a lot of capital left over that can be productively invested–who are also the investors who drive the stock and bond markets, and play a not inconsiderable role in buying U.S. government debt instruments.
When government takes more money from the “rich” i.e. taxes them, is takes money that could be fueling our capitalist system and driving it forward and, hopefully, upward out of the economy–i.e. from the productive sector, and transfers it to the government–which produces nothing of value in our capitalist system, and which increasingly “redistributes” this basically confiscated wealth to the non-productive sector, in the form of various “transfer payments” to individuals i.e. social programs–right now 63% of our entire federal budget is spent on such mandatory transfer payments i.e. Social Security, SSI, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps (coming up on 50 million people on food stamps), AFDC, WIC, unemployment benefits (14 and, more likely over 20 million currently unemployed or underemployed), veterans benefits and pensions, federal retirement benefits and finally, interest on the public debt, the remainder of our federal budget, the “discretionary” part, goes to fund the operation of our entire federal government and all its programs–most of which are unnecessary, massively duplicative, ineffective, and/or actively harmful,
So, basically, the government–which has grown massively and become, in effect, a parasitic, cancerous tumor–and virtually all of its policies and actions are a constantly increasing drag–a bag full of lead tied around our necks, whose weight keeps increasing –burdening, slowing down, and impeding our economy, and massively distorting our society and culture.
How much do idiots spend on lottery tickets? That’s a tax. If that money went into capital investment rather than the government coffers, the money would be useful.
This observation was spawned by a picture showing very recently laid off Canadian workers rejoicing they had just won the lottery. How apropos of the lowered thought process to report this as a “feel good” story. For one, the laid off workers would have been much better off with a job than the unexpected bonanza which will ruin not reward their lives. Second, the general run of nincompoops think a lottery will solve everyone’s problem and redouble their lottery budget.
Wolla Dalbo,
I agree, but I suggest it goes even further (w/ regard to “the rich”) than you note above.
IMO one of the reasons that the wealthy become wealthy is that they understand that money is a tool to foster wealth generation. Most people do not understand wealth generation and think of money as a spendable commodity (e.g., inherit $$, go buy a more expensive car than one could otherwise afford–after 10 years you no longer have either the car or the money). Most lottery winners are bereft of their winnings within 5 years for the same reason.
Thus, the producing “rich” bring an outlook which fosters the growth of the economy and society as a whole. This is why Marx was so fundamentally wrong. He saw class wars rising form the increasing disparity of the wealthy v the common man, but he failed to account for the fact that as the wewalthy became wealthier, they brought the common man along with them. Thus we see commenters noting the re-definition of”poverty” in the U.S. where the “poor” have TVs, cell phones, air conditioning and oftentimes even automobiles. Yet, the left still tries to instill a sense of class envy; for them, it’s not that the American poor live better than the middle class citizens of many other countries, it’s that they should envy those who have whatever they do not, regardless of whatever that deficiency is. Hey, I should resent Lamborghini owners because I don’t have one! You, too, probably!
On another note, the subtext (or maybe it was the main text) of Neo’s blog was the misperception of Morgan as a robber baron, another liberal narrative. I noticed on the Wiki site that when he died, his personal fortune was small. In other words, the money of the rich is being used. Morgan was, after all, a financier. And Morgan did a better job handling the financial crisis than our government ever has. Their answer is more regulation, more knots around the necks of the rich, and by cause and effect, the not so rich, and the poor.
Curtis,
Yes. Class-wars, tax the rich, climate change, how much water your toilet can use, which lightbulb you may buy, the setting of your thermostat, etc., it’s all about the usurpation of power.
In that regard the left is truly anti-American because it attempts to seize power and govern through a top-down system while our Constitution, itself, provides for government from the bottom up.
I might also note that these transfer payments–especially those to the most unproductive segment of our population i.e people who do not really want to work–the kind of bums who just sit on their butts and wait for their check, and then hit the liquor stores for a few bottles cheap booze and a few “scratchoffs,” piss away their welfare check and then wait for the next one, families who have been on welfare for generations, and who usually have no intention of getting off of it, or the kind of “higher class” scam artists and grifters you pretty regularly see on programs like Judge Judy–apparently able–bodied, apparently healthy and well-fed, and usually relatively young people who have been on Social Security Disability for many years, supposedly unable to do any work because of “back problems” or other similarly vague and hard to diagnose ailments–are, in essence, bribes–the modern day equivalent–along with our “entertainment industry” –of the “read and circuses” that kept the threatening mob in ancient Rome quite and also kept them as an instrument for ambitious politicians, who used their threatening power to further their ends and who, in our modern day, now use their votes and support as a weapon too.
For instance, how many people have heard it threatened that “if Obama were to be Impeached,” or “if Obama does not win a second term,” or “if payments for social welfare programs are slashed,” that “there will be riots in the inner cities.”
The greatest commandment, when asked of Jesus, who, quoting the Schma and following verses, said it was not to love yourself, but others. I noticed that upon Jennifer Lopez’es divorce, she stated her life’s lesson she learned was how important it is to love “me.”
Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmmm.
The greatest lie of the liberals is the most simple: To love yourself is to place yourself in the middle of your universe, to make yourself the measure of all things. This, to me, is the fundamental cause of envy and socialism.
JLo made a mistake.
And she’s doing it in full view of everybody who loves her.
Marc Anthony is releasing a tell all book.
Should shed some light… I hope…
The me attitude is distructive.
To put my last comment another way.
The Left has tried–through massive expansion of entitlement programs and transfer payments–to subvert and irreversibly transform our traditional society, our value systems and behavior, and to alter our political structure to keep them permanently in power and in charge.
But, most especially, the Left has tried to bring into being a massive constituency (remember, almost 50% of our citizenry now pay no state or federal taxes), used to receiving all the necessities of life and, often, a while lot more from the government with basically no effort on their part, a massive constituency composed not only of those who receive benefits but also of those whose income, livelihood, prestige, and power comes from justifying, advocating for, doling out, and administering those benefits–i.e. academics, social workers, politicians, and government bureaucrats, various “religious and “community leaders”–many of whom will fight to make sure that that these programs cannot be massively pruned back or eliminated without the kind of major social upheaval–riots, cities burning, and blood in the streets–that we are witnessing in Europe and the UK and now, with “flash mobs, ” are starting to see the first signs of here in the U.S.
kolnai, Your comment about rent-seeking in an economy is very applicable to our situation today.
There are two examples of less moral behaviour among the producers in our society.
One is the company or economic interest group that seeks to gain the upper hand over competitors through government intervention or seeks to get direct benefits from the governmment at tax payer expemse. Most companies and groups have lobbyists. Lobbying is necessary because activist government pokes its nose in so many areas that it knows little about. However, lobbyists have become too powerful in the scheme of things and the most successful have managed to wrest large benefits from the government. Right now the “green energy” groups have been very successful. GE, which is a rent seeker both in green energy and defense contracts, is a classic example.
The other group that have created problems in the economy due to less moral behaviour are the executives of large corporations. Theoretically, managements are controlled by Boards of Directors (BODs). Unfortunately, over the last forty years the managers have learned that they can pack their boards with insiders and non-independent board members who will rubber stamp their compensation packages. This has allowed them to give themselves raises in compensation way beyond any reasonable standard and with no real connection to performance. Not only that but it has become standard for them to receive golden parachutes when or if they are fired for any reason. (Pretty absurd, if you think about it!) This situation has gotten out of hand and is costing corporations too much in compensation paid and loss of morale among the average employees who see this kind of amoral activity occurring.
During Clinton’s admininstration there was an effort to slow this down by limiting direct salaries and trying to make compensation reflect performance. Performance bonuses were supposed to be limited to stock options and supposed to reflect real performance. That system was easily gamed by the managers who manipulated earnings reports, to boost stock performance and the practice of having the BODs award stock or options at prices that meant automatic gains. So, much of the compensation is unearned and not really tied to performance. Of course, Sarbanes – Oxley was passsed to stop such practices after Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom and other corporate looting scandals had occurrred. It has helped, but did not stop the Mortgage Backed Securities (MBSs) problems nor the over leveraging of financial institutions that created the crisis we have now.
The best suggestion I have seen for paying people with bonuses in the form of stock is to make it restricted stock, which cannot be sold for five years. That would help align the interests of the managers with the long term well being of the company and not to manipulate earnings on a short term basis. The other idea is to require that a majority of members of BODs be made up of outsiders who cannot be manipulated by managements. That, unfortunately, requires that there be enough qualified, independent people available – a fairly high hurdle – but not impossible.
Bringing lobbying for rent seeking from the government under control is dependent on electing representatives who are not swayed by “donations” and under the table benefits (golf outings, foreign travel, etc. etc.). In other words we need people who cannot be corrupted. That is a problem in our highly materialistic society.
Reducing the unwarranted over compensation of corporate managers (corporate looting/rent seeking from corporate owners) would go a long way improving corpoprate governance and efficiency, but it means big stock holders like pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, etc. must get more involved in the issues and demand change.
here’s the boil down so U can copy paste to rational ppl. TY Wolla Dalbo and Kolnai and everyone else.
great links from various:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/rickl_2006/Web/middleclasstaxtarget.jpg
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2011/06/30/000158349_20110630123337/Rendered/PDF/WPS5720.pdf
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
the basic statistics from Wolla:
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
top 1% of income earners ($383,300 and above) pay 38% of all income taxes
top 5% of income earners ($159,600 and above) pay 58.2% of all income taxes, top 10% of all earners ($113,800 and above) pay 69.94% of all income taxes
top 25 % of earners ($67,200 and above) pay 86.34 % of all income taxes
top 50% of income earners ($33,048 and above) pay 97.3% of all income taxes
the bottom half of income earners–all those making $33,047 & below—pay the last 2.7% of all income taxes i.e. virtually nothing
Kolnai analysis:
71% adults are registered
Below $33K (paying 2% of fed tax revenue) are 18.5% of reg’d voters
http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p20-562.pdf
Aug 2010:
40M get food stamps
10M get unemployment — not all “poor”
60M receive some SS — not all “poor”
52% of Americans “receive signif income from gov programs. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0416/p01s04-usec.html
Tax Foundation report on “real tax burden” (all taxes and transfers)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf
Big Fed Taxes: income and payroll
Big State Taxes: property, retail, and some states’ income tax
Averages
households pd 17K in Fed and 9K in state in 2004
System is
heavily progressive for income tax
Heavily regressive for retail tax
Fed spending per household: 31K in 2004
Net Tax Burden by quintile (fifths)
Top Q: pays +48K per household
Next Q: pays +8K per household
Next Q: pays -6K per household (i.e., gets)
Next Q: pays -18K per household (i.e., gets)
Next Q: pays -31K per household (i.e., gets)
3 bottom brackets receive more than they pay in taxes
top 2 Q paid $1 T more in tax than got in benefits
Bottom 2 Q rec’d $1.5 T more than they paid
Difference is $500 billion — this represents deficit spending.
Always: specify which taxes talked about
Let ppl know the WHOLE picture. They won’t get it fr TV.
That all looks much better if you copy and paste it into Word or an email to mail to the rational people you know.
Mr. Monopoly may be an icon, but he didn’t actually do anything.
Anybody remember Scrooge McDuck? He was a person, so to speak. I wonder what his impact on the popular view of the wealthy is. More than Mr. Monopoly’s, I’m sure.
MT – that’s fantastic, and thanks for pushing the discussion along and forcing me to dig into the data for myself.
It should be stressed however – as I do not wish to mislead like the demagogues – that my numbers are approximate (I rounded, for example, not wanting to clog up my post with decimals; and I gave a lowball estimate – an estimate as unfavorable to our side as I could imagine – for one number, but still… it wasn’t based on anything except my sense that chopping 8 percentage points off of low-income recipients of aid was more than fair).
A few other caveats are in order: First, measuring transfers and spending with perfect exactitude is impossible, so everyone who works with those numbers is subject to some amount of error. It MUST be done, but it has to be noted that it’s controversial.
Why must it be done? Because if it’s not, you simply get absurdity – how can you count taxes paid as if they go into a black hole? The government is spending it on something, and obviously much of that is transfers and spending. Anyone who gets Social Security or Medicare knows that to report one’s income, net of taxes, without including such benefits, is not a little inaccurate.
Progressives argue that it’s crap to include public goods like Defense and Postal Services in benefits received by taxpayers, but as the TF study showed, even when you factor out public goods, the basic proportions are unaffected.
Second, the Tax Foundation is considered a partisan institution by progressives. Krugman and DeLong rail against it all the time. It cuts no ice with the left. It doesn’t mean the TF is wrong, but the hope of getting a non-partisan source to provide data acceptable to all is a pipe-dream. It’s all about how you interpret the data, and no progressive will agree to the way the TF includes transfers and spending in their calculations. The only way for someone to truly be persuaded beyond ideology is to do the calculations for himself, which isn’t going to happen, to say the least.
The way tax arguments usually go is like this: Conservative says, “The wealthy already pay more than their fair share; half of the people effectively pay no income taxes.” Liberal replies, “Yeah but everyone pays payroll taxes, retail taxes, and the like, and once you factor that in, the tax code is hardly progressive.” At THAT point it needs to recollected quickly that they are not including transfers and spending in that equation, which, when they are put back in, re-stratify the tax code into a heavily progressive system. And then you have stalemate.
This leads to my third note. We do have a high-powered, Nobel prize-winning economist on our side who is not Milton Friedman or James Buchanan (not that they’re bad, but no one listens when you bring them up). That economist is Edward Prescott, THE bete noir of Krugman and DeLong. They hate Prescott with a passion and consider him a lunatic, which is all a rational person needs to know to be fairly confident Prescott is a sane and sound thinker.
My point in invoking Prescott is that none of us should be tongue-tied when the “Nobel”-sheen of Krugman is invoked. Prescott has rigorously – extremely rigorously – tested the effect tax rates have on incentives to work, and he found that the effects are not only large, but dispositive. Simplified summary: Prescott concludes that if Europeans were taxed less, they would work as much as us, and if we were taxed less, we would work more than us. And per capita income would increase dramatically.
All anyone can say to that is “Krugman says Prescott is a psycho!”, to which the response is, “Prescott says Krugman is a psycho.” Then they say, “But Krugman has a Nobel,” and we respond, “Well, so does Prescott. And Buchanan. And Friedman. (etc.)” Just google Prescott + Krugman and read some of the stuff that emerges.
It is obvious that leftist economists are terrified of him, since they act like cornered animals whenever his name comes up.
Ah. So is what you are saying that the “progressives” seem to think that taxes just “go” somewhere – like up into the ether – and fail to admit that they are actually returned to the poor in the form of welfare checks which are called “tax rebate” checks?
and that we also must consider we get something for our $$ spent on defense and the Post Office services?
Defining rich is the issue. I agree that more revenue (probably tax revenue) has to be part of the deficit solution. However, making $200K to $500K is upper middle class in the US today. At this level, you still have a mortgage & maybe school loans; you are putting your 2 to 4 children through school/college without financial aid; & you are just starting to enjoy your decades of climbing the job ladder of success. The current tax break has been great, but if
Just to finish: but giving up the tax break to pay down the debt may be warranted. However, do not call the upper middle class rich. we are not wealthy!!!
“”but giving up the tax break to pay down the debt may be warranted. “”
Len Tiste
The problem of course is revenues don’t increase because some bureaucrat decrees taxes to now be higher or this or that tax break null and void. In fact Len, the higher likelyhood of your quintile paying more in would be the result of the bureacrat decreeing taxes be lowered.
Liberals know this fact. But they block it out because they hate its implications. That being the revelation that they can’t punish the “rich” without punishing everyone else. No more than you can chop away at the trunk of a tree without harming the lesser branches.
“. . . but giving up the tax break to pay down the debt may be warranted. . . .”
The problem has been that as you increase revenues, congress increases spending. So tax rates go up but the debt never goes down.
Furthermore, history shows that tax revenues pretty much plateau at 18.8% of the GDP. As tax rates rise, taxable money flees to tax favored investments or out of the country. You wind up with 18.8% of a smaller pie. The only real way to increase govt revenue is to expand GDP (i.e., the economy). Net 18% of a larger GDP (strong economy) or 18% of a smaller economy (higher tax rates). Especially now, there is no way the anti-economic policies of the Obama administration are ever going to spur this economy yet even Christina Romer is calling for low taxes.
T. Or some people work less.
Figure a doctor whose last, say, $75,000 of income is taxed at a marginal rate of 50%. That would be in line with tax rates in my lifetime.
Consider: He has to do $75,000 worth of work, excluding the expenses involved in working–office and so forth–to net $37,500. That may be big money to you, but it could be 10% to 15% of what some specialists I know make.
Suppose he says, screw it. Takes longer vacations. Friday afternoons off. He’s still got lots of money. And spare time, now. One result; no increased revenue because you can’t tax income the guy doesn’t have. Oh, yeah. It’s marginally harder to get a specialist in a timely manner.
Sounds like a win-win for liberals. But they can, as several of my acquaintance have said, call him “greedy”. I asked them how, once they called this hypothetical doc a name, they were going to get him to show up at the office. You can imagine the reply.
Richard Aubrey,
“. . .or people work less.” Yes, going “John Galt” can be one of the causes of the smaller economic pie, but from the govt’s perspective, the only real choice it has is to enlarge the economy (GDP) which it can’t do when circumstances like that work against it.
T. Has anybody told the government? I’d think they’d like to know that.
To expand on R Aubrey’s theme:
I hate to suggest it, but if docs across the USA throttle back on seeing Mcare and Mcaid patients, the esteemed Federales have lots of weapons. Anti-trust, for one (there is case law on this, with severe judgements rendered); auditing all, repeat, all the refuseniks by HHS and IRS and slamming them with penalties for improper coding, disallowed expenses, blah blah; declaring a ‘national health emergency’ and placing all docs under Federal control; HHS telling all hospitals their Federal payments will be cut off unless 95% of their medical staffs will certify to take Mcare and Mcaid patients. Most docs financial habits are pretty middle class-they live up to their earnings, are leveraged, save little. Hell, they are middle-class, always have been.
Hospitals employ an increasing # of MDs-my guess is it’s now about 15% nationally, way more in towns like Boston, and growing fast. As employees, docs don’t get to cut back when they wish. They trade freedom for security, and shall have neither.
“My point in invoking Prescott is that none of us should be tongue-tied when the “Nobel”-sheen of Krugman is invoked.”
Out in flyover country we ain’t tongue-tied when it comes to Krugman. 😉
ONE: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.’
Humanity has many gods and will always have many gods. Big deal.
TWO: ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
Sounds like Mohammed BS to me.
THREE: ‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.’
How petty!
FOUR: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’
Well, we can all use a day of rest.
FIVE: ‘Honor your father and your mother.’
Some fathers and mothers do not deserve honor.
SIX: ‘You shall not murder.’
Some deserve to be killed.
SEVEN: ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
I am monogamous and I’ve never strayed. I need no guidance here.
EIGHT: ‘You shall not steal.’
Go tell Goldman-Sachs.
NINE: ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.’
Big yes on that one.
TEN: ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.’
Ah, here at last is the big one. This in indeed the one true in all circumstance sin. Thou shall not covent. Here is where we find the root of all evil.
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It hasn’t seemed to occur to a lot of people that the whole “raise the debt ceiling panic”–orchestrated political theater that it was–was premised on the unvoiced assumption that we were going to be spending money, 40% of it borrowed money at that, at the current clip or even spending greater amounts of money, which was why it was deemed imperative that the debt ceiling be raised.
No one that I am aware of really cleared away the rhetorical fog to point this out in any clear way, and I heard only one or two people–as reported by the media–intimating that, well, if we throttled back spending, there would be no need for a debt limit increase.
Wolla Dalbo, the strategy is liberals want desperately to hold off the real effects of this economic depression with borrowed monies until a republican is in charge of the presidency and possibly the senate in 2013. Then they’ll point out how much worse things have gotten since Obama and democrats left.
The short Democrat definition of the rich is “Anyone making one dollar more than you”.
That’s class warfare.
HA!
Of course – that isn’t exactly true Tom!!!
Because somebody can actually make MORE money yet be irresponsible with it and still engage in class warfare.
Take for instance the people who were responsible and saved for their kids college. That disqualifies them for some assistance.
And… if you were responsible and got a 30 year fixed rate loan on your home putting 20% down and then never took out a home equity loan to pay for your kids college – because you saved.
Now the family down the street bought boats, better cars and earned a little more because both parents worked. When it came time for college they got assistance and they took out an loan against their home. Now they are screaming that it was Bush’s fault and that the rich need to be taxed more and that we just all need to understand that it was Bush’s policies of tax cuts for all taxpayers that got us into this problem.
Schmucks.
Baklava . . .
I wish more people had your common sense outlook. Buy only things you can afford, don’t buy too much house Save money for your kids’ education. Don’t waste money on cutsy garbage. That’s the solid middle class way.
Regarding the general economics problem, it’s so clear to me that the Obama admin. is waging war on the middle class. Note the new EPA restrictions on owner-operated trucking. The EPA goes after people who are trying to run a normal business while the EPA supporters get subsidies for their special needs. There’s an article on this in American Thinker or Pajamas Media today–the war of the ATA against the owner-truckers.
Re: truckers.. A democrats dream would be to have Americans only working for large companies that are much easier to control and regulate.
A fatal philosophy for a society is expressed in an old Russian saying: “I would rather my cow die than my neighbor gets two cows.”
Prom,
I preach it so that it is infectious 🙂
It’s a tough sell though. It requires personal responsibility.
I’ll wager that most of the wealthy, however defined, voted for Obama in 2008.
Butterfly effect.
From the NYT:
“Obama’s aides say he understood liberal anger over the Republicans’ irresponsibility in using the default threat to strengthen their own bargaining position. But while progressives wanted the White House to call the right wing’s bluff, Obama insisted that this was not a risk a president could take. He preferred to escape this box with the best flawed deal he could get, provided he could take the lethal debt-ceiling weapon out of Republican hands.”
We gave in and it’s spun as seen above. Munich all over again. Michelle Bachman is winning because she did not compromise. Libertarians and moderates, this is not your time. You only have a time when the conservatives give it to you.
Not NYT’s, the Washed Post:
http://tinyurl.com/3uty97u
raising an army of self paid morons willing to saw the branch they sit upon, is made easier since the people i have listed before controlled education…
ie… social engineering…
Richard Aubrey,
I think we are speaking past each other. Of course life insurance is out of your estate if you don’t own it. I never questioned that.
Specifically Chantrill wrote that,” . . . when you die, your life insurance payout doesn’t count as part of your estate.” My point was that he implied that life insurance is exempt from estate tax because it is life insurance. As you know, this implication is incorrect. He should have written that “your life insurance doesn’t count as part of your estate if you don’t own it.”
You can speak all you want about what is “taken for granted,” or what is “expected,” but life insurance isn’t immune from federal estate tax because it is life insurance.
This is an inaccurate statement; life insurance is exempt from INCOME tax and many states’ INHERITANCE tax but NOT from federal estate tax.
Sorry, ABove comment posted on incorrect thread.
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