Why can't you at least start talking about them an intellectually honest way? If your opposed to cutting taxes by an equal percentage across ALL tax rate brackets, then what you are really in favor of ia increasing the upper marginal rates in proportion to the lower ones. i.e. making the richer" pay an even bigger proportion of the tax share than they already pay. The top 1% of wage earners already pay 34% of all taxes.
The top 5% of wage earners pay 53% of all taxes.
The top 10% of wage earners pay 65% of all taxes.
The top 25% of wage earners pay 83% of all taxes.
The top 50% of wage earners pay 96% of all taxes.

The TOP 1% pay more than TEN TIMES as much tax as the bottom 50%.

These are the present rates for maried filing jointly:
Income          Rate
Up to $14,300   10%
Up to $58,100   15%
Up to $117,250  25%
Up to $178,650  28%
Up to $319,100  33%
Over $319,100   35%
OK 28%, 33% and 35% aren't high enough for you? How high should we set them 40% 50%? How about going back to 72% ?

The bottom 50% only pay 4% of the taxes, SO HOW DO YOU GIVE THEM MUCH OF A TAX CUT ANYWAY?

Societies that have become civilized, and gone through revolutionary changes, all thrive to have a modicum of equality among its citizens.  Progressive tax is a way to achieve this.

Furthermore, you have done yourself a big favor to study and conclude on your own that in totality, our overall taxes are the same as those "socialist" countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, on a per citizen bases.

Lots of our funds get wasted on useless activities.


-- Modified on 10/17/2004 9:37:45 PM

The ultimate test for equality among the citizens was the USSR.
Boy what a success that was!!

The mark of a truly civilized society is one that allows it's citizens the opportunity to achieve as much as possible within the legal constraints of the law. We have a long way to go towards being "civilized" when all we do is punish achievement.

Please explain how a progressive income tax promotes equality.  If what you want to say is redistribute wealth, then say so.  Also, there's a huge difference between equality and equal opportunity.

You're spot on about the waste of funds.  That's why we need smaller government.

It's the state and local taxes that are where the pressure is. Cutting federal income taxes will add little to the economy, as the bulk of any tax cut will be to people with high marginal propensity to save. Moreover, the deficit is already difficult to eliminate from the spending side as discretionary spending net of homeland security is less than 20% of total outlays.

The arithmetic is too difficult right now and the pols have concluded that Social Security and Medicare are still not worthy of meaningful discussion. The solutions are quite simple (what's wrong with extending the retirement age a couple of years? Americans are far healhtier than 50 yrs ago. Or a simple means test? Yet the politics are extremely difficult.

Meanwhile my local taxes are increasing at a near double digit clip....

WHERE do you live? MOVE!!!!

My state income taxes are only 3% and there is no local income tax. Most state and local revenues comes from sales and property taxes. Sales tax here = 6.75% while property taxes are about 2.5%

Several states have NO Income tax, albeit higher rates of other revenue.

I don't disagree with most of what you said except your first two sentences. Do you think that people in the highest tax brakets "save" their money in their mattress? Replace your "marginal propensity to save" with Marginal propensity to INVEST. This is FAR more productive for the economy in the long run than buying beer and cigarettes (sorry about the sterotype).

Better stated is the idea that private investment (and spending) of a $1.00 yields a far more productive use than the government expenditure of that same $1.00.

I'm still searching for the material to quaote/reference but there are two points:

My recollections are:

1)Some founding father made a statement to the effect that Democracy would be in trouble once the "masses" discovered that they could "vote themselves a raise".

and

2) Democracy becomes more and more endangered as an increasing number of citizens become disenguaged or disconnected financially from observing the costs vs. benefits of their "ownership" of the government.

Would you mind selling your five bedroom home? Mine`s only a small three bedroom place. If we pool the money we can both have a nice four bedroom house. Come to think of it...I didn`t do as well as some in school. Can one of you really smart liberal socialists give up part of your hard eared GPA and add it to my transcripts? I know I screwed off and didn`t earn anything for myself but why should I have to? I should just be able to take from someone who did. You know...a modicum of equality and all.

Well, I disagre, I think the Fed taxes are MUCH too high.  But I see your point about local & state taxes.

Here in LA County there is a ballot measure to increase the sales tax by 1/2 of a percent.  That will make it just under 9%.... WTF?  That's a good way to kill sales & push (major) purchases into nearby counties.  If the tax passes, I'll just buy stuff in Orange County.  They don't need the extra taxes, but hey, if I can save 1% on a new car, a new refrigerator, new TV or whatever, I'll do it.

I bet the increased tax will pass since they are saying it's going to be for increased funding for the LAPD.  Never mind that the money probbably will find it's way elsewhere, and never mind the fact that the LA City Council spends too much on other crap that it's not supposed to, leaving not enough for other things case in point.

I for one am not voting for it.

If you want your numbers to meaningful then there are at least two other  factors you need to adress:  what is the corresponding percentage of income that the top tier people represent, ie, if the top 1% pay 34% of taxes, do they also account for 34% of the income or is it more or less.  Also, you only talk about wage earners.  The richest Americans make most of their money from non-wage income.

You guys are deluding yourselves. A post below linked the CBO to get some info on our national dept.You would get more honest accounting from Arthur Anderson or Enron's CFO.To get a better idea of the real problems go to the GAO website. It takes some work but it's worth it. Here is a link to some people that are paying attention.    Bob

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-03-debt-cover_x.htm