How tax-friendly Obama cuts his own
How tax-friendly Obama cuts his own
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would raise taxes on the rich, but as an investor, he seems eager to cut his own.
By Tim Middleton
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to raises taxes on the wealthy, but as a member of that social class, he isn't eager to fall victim himself. He has invested at least $1 million in a fund that yields tax-free income.
The Illinois senator's latest campaign-finance disclosure shows that his investments have nearly tripled in the past two years to as much as $7.4 million, and his income in 2007 surged past $4 million, not counting his government salary.
Obama reported accounts with Morgan Chase Private Client Asset Management, an elite firm that deals only with the rich, as well as a host of retirement accounts, some in the name of his wife, Michelle.
Talk back: Do Obama's campaign-finance disclosures matter to you?
Because the required disclosure forms allow candidates to report their assets in ranges, such as $250,001 to $500,000, Obama's net worth at the end of 2007 -- not including his home and other nonfinancial assets -- was pegged between $2,022,016 and $7,356,000.
Tax-free income
By far the largest account, valued between $1 million and $5 million, was in the Northern Municipal Money Market Fund. It generated tax-free interest in 2007 of between $15,001 and $50,000.
Northern Trust "has built a well-deserved reputation around being the banker for the überrich," says Andrew Richards, a Morningstar equity analyst. In a report on the Chicago company's stock, he writes, "The firm estimates it serves roughly 20% of the richest families profiled annually in the Forbes 400."
Obama certainly doesn't fall into that category, but he does fit into the top 1% of federal income-tax payers. According to the Tax Foundation, this group accounts for 21% of total adjusted gross income nationwide but pays 39% of all individual federal income taxes.
As of 2005, the latest data available, the cutoff for the top 1% was adjusted gross income of $364,657. The cutoff for the top 5% was $145,283.
Raising taxes
Obama has proposed a host of increases that would raise the federal income-tax rate on top earners -- and not just that 1% -- to 52% from 35%, according to an analysis by Investor's Business Daily. That calculation includes applying the 12.4% payroll tax that funds Social Security to some income above the current $102,000 cap, and letting some of President Bush's tax cuts expire.
His former rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, has called his plan to raise Social Security taxes "a trillion-dollar tax hike on the middle class."
Interest on municipal bonds, however, is exempt from tax, which is why Obama's Northern Trust fund generates tax-free income.
Despite repeated requests over several days, the Obama campaign declined to comment.
Ballooning wealth
As recently as 2006, when Obama filed financial disclosures in advance of his presidential campaign, he reported a liquid net worth of between $1 million and $2.5 million. He and his wife already were private clients of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) at the time, and their investments were very conservative. (Read my earlier column "A look at Barack Obama the investor.")
Continued: Royalties
READ MORE: OBAMA – McCAIN – CLINTON - TAXES
Since then his wealth has ballooned, notably due to sales of two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." In 2007, he collected royalties of $815,971 on the former and $3,278,719 on the latter.
According to an attachment to his report, Obama received an advance in 2005 of $1.9 million for those books plus an untitled children's book, which has not yet been published. The attachment says that $200,000 of that was pledged to charity.
The royalty payments received in 2007 are in excess of the advance, reflecting robust sales.
Obama's Senate salary in 2007 was $165,200, rising this year to $169,300, in line with core inflation of 2.5%.
The Obamas also reported owning U.S. Treasury notes valued between $500,001 and $1 million.
Socially responsible losses
Both the candidate and his wife reported owning shares in Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund (VFTSX) in retirement accounts. His account was valued up to $250,000 and hers up to $100,000. Despite a miserable performance record, having trailed the S&P 500 Index ($INX) by an average of 3.1 percentage points a year over the past five years, Morningstar calls the fund "one of the most attractive socially responsible options around."
Obama reports that his wife owned shares in another, much better fund, Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund (VWINX), that were worth between $100,001 and $250,000, also in a retirement account. However, the fund owns positions in three foreign oil companies -- Total (TTFNF, news, msgs), BP (BP, news, msgs) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, news, msgs) -- that do business with Iran, a position Obama opposes. His campaign told reporters the Wellesley fund would be sold.
Video: Which candidate does Wall Street want?
The Obamas also reported having invested between $100,001 and $250,000 in each of two 529 college savings plans, one intended for children from birth through age 8, the other for kids 9 to 12 years old. The Obamas have two daughters.
They had a joint checking account with Morgan Chase Private Client valued between $15,001 and $50,000. Michelle Obama had a similar account valued between $1,001 and $15,000.
The Obamas reported no liabilities, such as credit card debt. Mortgages and auto loans are exempt from reporting.
Separately, Obama released his 2007 income taxes, showing that he and his wife had adjusted gross income of $4,139,965, including $260,735 from salaries. They made charitable contributions of $240,370, or 5.8% of their AGI, and paid federal taxes of $1,396,772.
Michelle Obama resigned as a director of TreeHouse Foods (THS, news, msgs), a specialty food manufacturer, in May 2007. According to the disclosure, options she had to purchase company shares were canceled when she resigned, and none was exercised during her tenure.
The Obamas' wallets are practically empty compared with the $100 million-plus fortune of Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. That of John McCain's wife, brewing heiress Cindy McCain, is larger still.
McCain's disclosure, which I'll report on in my column tomorrow, also reveals investments in tax-free accounts in his wife's name, though none in his own -- but McCain has pledged to cut taxes, not raise them. Hillary Clinton has received an extension on her 2007 disclosure filing to June 30, when it won't matter.
For now, the raise-taxes-and-avoid-them platform is occupied solely by Barack Obama.
I know, only a pauper can want to help the poor, only those suffering from cancer can want cancer research money, only somebody who has been shot can oppose gun rights, and only a saint is qualified to oppose your political opinions.
It's this kind of reasoning that has brought the GOP Elephant to the endangered species list.
But to the subject: the guy and his wife paid $1,396,772 in taxes? For millionaires? About 30 percent of their income? I've never heard of a millionaire paying that big a chunk of Federal taxes (never mind State). Yet you say they avoid taxes. You should make the argument that they're incompetent at avoiding taxes. Since the are paying a third of their income, more or less, I'd say they're practicing a "flat tax," paying by percentage as much as the middle-class does.
BTW, they paid federal taxes that's more than 40 times my income. Don't tell me they're evading their tax burdens.
No shit, I've never heard of a millionaire paying that huge a chunk of taxes, and even if the Obamas have a tax free entity in their portfolio, the big picture supports the opposite of your point.
Meanwhile they donated $240k to charities on combined salaries of $260k. So, he and his wife received maybe $50k in tax free income, and still had $240k charitable contributions. Let's see. That's enough money equivalently to keep eight people alive and comfortable for a year. Yet Obama doesn't pull his weight as far as you're concerned.
Congratulations! You made a solid case for electing Obama. With more exposes like this, you might end up getting him canonized.
-- Modified on 6/9/2008 8:08:01 PM
"It's this kind of reasoning that has brought the GOP Elephant to the endangered species list."
Do you just make this shit up?
The "blue states" trust the government to be their philanthropists.
The "red states" would rather hold a little more control over the spending of their own money.
-- Modified on 6/9/2008 8:30:48 PM
But you can recover from an endangered species list.
but you still aren't satified with the amount of taxes I pay. Obviously you don't know many millionaires. Haven't you heard? the top one percent of earners pay way, way more than their share of taxes, and you libs still want us to pay more. Unless you find out your hero pays a couple of dollars in taxes too, then you try to make a hero out of him for doing what many have been doing for decades. You try writing a six or seven digit check to the fucking government and maybe you'll have a different attitude.
Like anybody gives a shit.
First note, I was defending the candidate against charges that he somehow didn't pay a fair share of taxes. A hero? Hardly. Just not guilty. The rest was sarcasm.
Second, you lack something in empathy if it doesn't occur to you that for someone who has a low 5-digit income, having to write a 4 digit check is more onerous.
But now, I will tell you why I think the wealthy aren't so overtaxed, now that's not to say that some don't get screwed.
I will admit in un-derived money-count, the rich do contribute more. This isn't news, but it does raise the issue of how over-taxation is judged. Deep down, we know the rich have more money, and in any progressive income tax system, they will pay more.
But that's where fractions and proportions come in, and here's where conservatives, and other people, fuck up totally. I get tired of hearing the same nonsense statistics quoted.
Let's take the example of Obama given above. With an income of about $4.14 million dollars. That's something around a hundred times what I make. I'm not being precise, not wishing to glean too many offers of charitable assistance, but you get the idea.
Say that Obama and I were the only ones in the world. I am fifty percent of the population, he is the other fifty percent. He has $4.1 million dollars at year's end, I have $41 thousand. I pay $14 thousand in total taxes, he pays $1.4 million.
Is Obama overtaxed??
Judging by the amounts alone, you'd say yes. Looking at the respective proportion of taxes to income, T/I you'd have to say no, since we both pay about 1/3 of what we make. By percentage, it's fair.
But nothing is that simple in politics, so we get into using funny fractions. Simply comparing his proportion of the population to the proportion of what he pays, you'd say that poor man! Stop taxing him! Here is how most people have been judging whether the wealthy are overtaxed.
p=percent of population,
t=percent of taxes contributed to the total tax pool.
The ratio t/p= over- or under-taxation. t/p = 1 for both of us, means taxation is fair-- you'd assume. The higher the number is, the worse the over-taxation, the lower it is the more the undertaxation. Here's one of many sites that use percentages like this:
http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/#Head-1.htm
Notice the bullet list saying:
"*The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
* The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes."
Now, getting back to our 2-man world, Obama is 50 percent of the population. He pays 99 percent of the tax revenue. 99/50. By the Republican standards, Obama is way overtaxed. He needs relief. Meanwhile, I'm 50 percent of the population, and I only pay one percent. So, my proportion is 1/50. I'm practically a freeloader.
You should sense something wrong here, because the fact is t/p is an INVALID statistic. It's a fallacy. Why? Because respective INCOME ISN'T IN THE FORMULA!! No judgment can be made about taxation from a state that doesn't include it.
What this practically means is, you can't raise my tax enough to equal his, and you can't lower his tax to meet mine unless you subtract greatly from the total budget.He'll STILL be defined as overtaxed by the formula. You cannot raise my taxes proportionally enough until his is $41k. When he reaches his fair proportion of t/p = 50/50, by that time, I'm starving.
Meanwhile to make his taxes "fair" you've had cut the government budget from $1,414,000 to $28,000.
You think we could even have a military once we made t/p=1 for everybody?
Also, "Wealthy Liberation Front" (WLF-- those conservative rebels) usually fudge the figures saying that the top 1 percent has a percentage of the wealth. . . nothing is given on how the assets are figured and how they figure the taxes on assets. Another thing that makes it hard is: there's more disparity of wealth within the top 20 percent than the other quintiles-- combined. Also there's more disparity within the top one percent than the the entire rest of the map.
The top 20 percent at its bottom starts at $231k-- that's almost 300 percent more that the floor of the 4th quintile, $85k, which is only about 30 percent higher than the 3rd quintile.
It's even worse when you get into the top one percent, who make 5 times more than the floor of their quintile. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent starts at about $1.5 million, and goes to $40-50 billion. That's a 3000 percent rise within that percentage point. That's hardly a uniform demographic, and shouldn't be taxed that way.
This begs the question of how high is up. When "the rich" fear taxes, maybe they should wonder if they're really the rich, and maybe
I ran my own calculations about over-taxation, basing it on the figures given in the link below. The top income quintile of families produce 54.5 percent of the total annual family income. They pay 68 percent of total tax revenue. That's a disparity, but that's not huge. Meanwhile, one percenters have 18.5 percent of the total conglomerated income, and have 28 percent of the tax burden.
So, what proportion do the one percenters contribute to their own quintile? Crunching more numbers, I come up with 33 percent of their quintile, and their tax burden is 41 percent. So the rest of the quintile actually makes 18 percent of the total income for the population, (by which they would be undertaxed by the rule of thumb I previously debunked) and 27.8 percent of the total tax burden. Again, it's somewhat high, but not far out of line. I would propose that this group be given a tax break-- but not the one percenters.
Economically speaking, the income taxes per quintile are even more fair when you consider the Law of Marginal Utility. You could look it up, but a simple way to explain it is an average Joe and/or Jill in the top quintile has the cash to spare, unlike the people in the bottom quintile. You tax Obama $14k more and he might notice it, you tax me $14k and it might kill me.
But the the real problem in debating taxation now is that disparity has reached a point where we do have two different economies, one existing where a $100k is chump change, and the other where $100k is an incredible amount.
-- Modified on 6/10/2008 3:35:01 AM
You still won't think it's enough.
That was my point exactly. thank you for making it for me. Your response sounds much like "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" Sound familiar Comrade?
One other thing, if you only have $26K a year in after tax income, WTF are you doing seeing escorts?
The government only fucks up your fuck-you money. It could never be useful to you unless your the one getting the taxes. Of course you realize that there are people who DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY? That's a 20,000 percent tax. And you admire them. Why are you rejecting the taxes needed for running it?
It SOUNDS LIKE "From each according to his abilities . . ." Yes like a car horn sounds like Beethoven. If I were a Bolshevik, Id have said you should just keep five or even four figures, rather than 7, 8, 9 or 10.
It's unbelievable that you're whining at keeping merely seven figures of net income.
BTW, why do you assume that I see escorts?
Whose idea of political correctness is that you never say the rich might be a little over-rewarded. That there's something a little anti-social in the term "fuck-you" money.
-- Modified on 6/10/2008 9:58:11 PM
The difference is I earn my money. I've worked my ass off since my early teens. I pay way more than my share of taxes. I make a payroll every week, keeping others employed and contributing. I've nearly gone bust at least a dozen times, with no-one offering to bail ME out. You bitch about $4.00 gas, I am actually doing something about it. Every barrel I produce is one less barrel we have to get from overseas. I contribute, What the fuck do you do?
Fact is, my petrol bill is negligible by today's standards.
You get a reward from the money you make. You do it in your self-interest. You help people doing it in your self-interest. Good.
But if capitalism is supposed to reward you with the money that you earn, don't demand respect from me above and beyond the money you already make-- that's double-dipping on social status there. Money is your reward, and money is already status.
Expect me also to compete with you in my self-interest, including by using government if I can. That's also self-interest. Why does my self-interest have to be limited by the restrictions of your ideology?
Almost gone bust, huh? I'll give you the challenge of Job. It's because you haven't gone bust that you're proud of having nobody to bail you out. Try going bust a few times. Try selling your plasma a few times a week and still not asking for help. Try living on a four digit income for a year or two. Then recover from the very bottom up.
Don't complain about merely having several million dollars after taxes. You're embarrassing yourself.
And there's always somebody who will save the world for less.
for a man with 28 reviews you sure come off as a poor man, Just like your libby heros. Rich people pretending to speak for the common man.
I doubt that you have ever lived on a four digit income ever suffered in your life, and I thought Zin was the biggest liar who ever posted here.
Why don't you use your real fake name over here? You made references to cowards hiding behind aliases on your home board. Here's a quote, just in case you have forgotten.
"Lilly is quite shy and had a previous nasty experience when she first posted here on this very board. I had hoped that a post about her would alert others to her as well without the high-school drama and negativity that comes from those using an alias to hide behind."
Those hiding in glass houses should not being throwing stones.
typical lib.
How full of insight you really are. How mature. I'm encouraged to know our energy future is in your certain hands.
I don't believe I'm posting to you again. All is vanity.
There is no way in hell that you pay Fourteen thousand dollars on $41,000 worth of earnings.
I'd rather argue with JackO, he's an asshole, but to the best of my knowledge at least he isn't a fucking liar.
Care to stay on topic?
If you didn't notice, I put it on a scale so that it would square to equal 1/100 of "Obama's", since the lower quintile that I'm in isn't under discussion.
-- Modified on 6/10/2008 1:41:00 PM
Yeah and you also distorted the numbers to make it look like a person making 40k a year would pay 14k in taxes. As I said, you are not only wrong, but you like the rest of your kind, are a fucking liar to boot.
"Let's take the example of Obama given above. With an income of about $4.14 million dollars. That's something around a hundred times what I make. I'm not being precise, not wishing to glean too many offers of charitable assistance, but you get the idea.
Say that Obama and I were the only ones in the world. I am fifty percent of the population, he is the other fifty percent. He has $4.1 million dollars at year's end, I have $41 thousand. I pay $14 thousand in total taxes, he pays $1.4 million."
Where would I ever get the idea that you paid $14,000 on $41,000 worth of income?
Proof again that figures don't lie, but liars figure. You're a worse fucking liar than even Zinaval, at least he was honest about his fabrications.
Your argument is specious, especially considering the fact that you admit the very foundation of your argument is based on a lie.
Typical fucking libbie, if you don't like the facts just make some shit up.
-- Modified on 6/10/2008 3:20:18 PM
-- Modified on 6/10/2008 9:48:31 PM
Or are they fact? A person might read your review and get an idea that you're agreeing to lie.
Whether your reviews are the truth and you're writing them in a forum that declares they are a lie, or that you're claiming to write fantasy while everyone is in on the fact that it's truth. Either way, you're lying.
Now, the exact amount of taxation had nothing to do with the argument I wrote. It didn't even matter if I gave myself as an example instead of Joe Schmo. You're free to fill in whatever proportions offend you and distract you the least if it blocks your understanding of what I was saying.
In other words, cut the fucking superiority, the gotcha points and bullshit and try for reading comprehension.
I don't write reviews, and I don't use an alias.
Don't try and hide the fact that you blatently misrepresented the amount of tax owed by someone, you or some other asshole making 41 grand a year. At most, a single person with no dependents and no deductions would owe would be $4,593.75. barely a third of $14,000.00 you claimed that "you" paid. I repeat my earlier statement "You are a Fucking Liar" and from what I see from you so far, yes I am fucking superior.
That's what I don't understand. That's what's insane to to me, and paranoid.
BTW, care to include 6.5 percent SSI, 7 percent state, and how many percent in medicare? You didn't include any of them, you dirty liar. You went too low to make your point and I went too high to make a completely unrelated point.
You don't write reviews, you just read them? I noticed they're down now. So you're here to read . . . fiction.
You don't use an alias, well, that's a lie; unless your real name is GaGambler. Oh, I forgot that's handle, an alias you use all the time. Kind of like my alias, really.
More than two can play this stupid game of "gotcha you liar," but I've really had enough of this.
-- Modified on 6/11/2008 7:11:05 AM
My reviews are down??? How the fuck do you take your reivews down. I have never written one, dumb ass. You're not only a liar, but you're a stupid one to boot.
You pulled some number out of your ass to try and justify your own fantasy based numbers, I on the other hand quoted not the lowest number, but the absoulute highest possible amount that a person making $41,000 could owe in Federal income tax.
That you are both fucking illiterate idiots. Try to be civil in the future, you might just learn something from each other. Now there's a novel idea!
I don't think so.
I think that 9man, whoever he/she is, has definitely gotten the upper hand here, and definitely gotten under GaGambler's skin. GaGambler appears to be reeling from 9man's arguments, and he's reducing to insults and personal abuse.
posting under an alias makes your opinion worthless, for all we know you are another one of Sparker's or JackO's alter egos.
no, i like seeing how confused you are when it comed to making an ID on an alias poster. you definitely have jacko on the brain, and i've got to find some way to work in the fun names.
maybe you've inhaled too may oil fumes? escorted with too many Costa Rican minors?
Actually you were so far down on my radar I had forgotten about you.
for what it's worth every single one of the several hundred women I've been with in Costa Rica and every other country has been at least 18. rofl
Are you happy, now that I've recognized you. I'd hate to hurt your felling by leaving you out. I even had a pleasant exchange with your comrade in arms(jew bashing) a couple of days ago. It seems like almost everyone here is rather pleasant once you get them off the P&R board, well except for JackO, he's an asshole no matter where you take him, but what would we do without him? lol
See if you agree with the reasons. I'll save you some time and give you the url where this started below. Have a look.
Now, was that in line, was that rational or conducive to understanding? And I'm shocked about it. I didn't expect it.
-- Modified on 6/11/2008 12:37:51 PM
The top quintile makes 54.5 percent of the total annual income of the country.
They pay 68 percent of the total federal tax revenue.
But the top one percent of the population produce 33 percent of the total income of their quintile.
Meaning the other 19 percent of the quintile produces 67 percent of the quintile's annual income.
The top one percent pays 41 percent of the taxes for the for it's quintile.
Meaning that the other 19 percent the US population in that quintile pays the other 59 percent of the top quintile's tax burden.
Number crunching:
Meaning the other 19 percent of the quintile makes 54.5 x 68 = 36.7 percent of the income for the US.
And it pays 59 x 68 = 40 percent of the taxes.
Conclusion: To my surprise looking at this, 19 percenters pay a slightly higher share that their income alone warrants. They make 36.7 of the income, and they pay 40 percent of the taxes. If they were taxed using only on that basis, they are slightly overtaxed.
On the other hand, the one percenters make 33 x 54.5 = 17.9 percent of the total income in the US.
They pay 68 x 41 = 27.8 percent of the total federal income tax.
Conclusion 2: To my surprise, by percentage alone, I would call them moderately overtaxed.
But, they could also afford to pay more than the mere percentage indicates.
And neither group is overtaxed as much as we are led to believe.
Besides, there is no way we could even run part of our military without that revenue, because they make so much more than anybody else.
Bush 2007
Income - $719,274 (described as Taxable Income)
Taxes - $221,635 - 30.8% (of income)
Charitable giving - $165,660 - 23% (of income)
McCain 2007
Income - $386,527 (I previously pulled line 22 Total income ($405,409) instead of line 37 AGI as I had done for the other examples)
Taxes - $118,660 - 30.7%
Charitable giving - $105,467 - 27.3%
Obama 2006
Income - $983,826
Taxes - $277,431 - 28.2% (overpayment of taxes of $40,856 was fwd'd to 2007 return, great financial decision to give the government a free loan)
Charitable giving - $60,307 - 6%
Clinton 2006
Income - $15,858,422
Taxes - $4,682,585- 29.5% (overpayment of $1,335,198 was fwd'd to 2007 return, again the government thanks you for the extra free money)
Charitable giving - $1,580,503 - 9.9%
I suppose those figures of republican charitable giving include the millions they channel toward right-wing tax-exempt pseudo-charities, typically characterized by:
* Being labeled as non-profit, tax-exempt charity but making millinos in profit anyway
* Channeling their revenue toward Republican and right-wing organizations, rather than helping the poor and needy as in traditional charities
Some examples being: American Enterprise Institute, Young Americas Foundation, Christian Coalition
Haha, just kidding.
9man has really raised the bar. I'm going to have to take the day off from work to read all this.
at least JackO doesn't try to hide his MPD. We all know who he is when he posts.JackO might be an asshole, but at least he's not a cowardly asshole.
Sparker's just a coward who is afraid to let people know his real fake name. I assume he must also be the avenging idiot as well. Just another California libby nut job who thinks he's being clever.
do the same with their elitist universities that put out nothing but leftist dogma.
Do you really think the likes of George Soros and co. don't funnel millions if not billions of dollars into politically motivated "charities" I too detest using religion as a weapon, but the right hardly has a monopoly on using "charitable" contributions for political purposes
From the faq:
"Using published data of individual tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service, we compare the rank of each state's average adjusted gross income (AAGI) to the rank of each state's average itemized charitable deductions (AICD). The arithmetical differences between these two rankings are then themselves ranked, resulting in the Generosity Index rank."
What, no percentages? How lazy, if not totally deceptive! If you take the percentage of the average itemized charitable donations to the Average Adjusted Gross Income, the results would be very different. New Hampshire, for instance, is last on the Generosity index, and 48 on the Giving Rank. The average AGI is $49,720, its average charitable contributions are $2,312. That's 4.65 percent of Average AGI donated to charity.
Compare that to Maine, which is ranked number 50 on the giving rank and number 37 on the generosity index. Maine actually has an Average AGI of $39,018. Their average charitable contributions are $2,228. The percentage of AAGI donated? It's 5.71 percent. Yet, for the Giving Rank, Maine is number 50, beneath New Hampshire though Maines' folks donate one percent more!
The Giving Rank is then used to determine the Generosity Index. Altering the Giving Rank by using percentages will alter the entire chart.
That's bad enough, but even if it were done right, at most it would be a crude indication.
The use of self-reported charity giving on the tax return is somewhat questionable, since different states will have different levels of tax resistance, you might have less honest numbers with some than with others.
Much as what's classified as charity might be going to churches, who in turn might have widely varying degrees of charity service. I'd expect Mississippi to have very high donations to churches. It might reflect less generosity but more religious obligation.
I've noticed that Utah ranks number 2 in giving. Mormon's have a strict religious obligation to tithe 10 percent of their gross income to their church. The Average AGI is $41,042 and their average charitable giving is $5,596. The average they give is 13.2 percent of their AAGI, so they meet their obligation, certainly. It might be an indication of something, though. Since the tithe is based on their gross income, one might logically conclude that 13.2 percent of their AAGI is approximately equal to 10 percent of their average gross income.
With their religious obligations and their fear of divine punishment put aside, how much are they really giving that goes social charity, noting that the LDS church looks to have a lot of overhead.
You might take that as an indication of actual charity reported on Red State tax returns. In my opinion: churches always have about as much or more overhead than government.
-- Modified on 6/11/2008 1:16:28 AM
I said nothing of the sort.
I was merely pointing to a couple of many sources of evidence that refutes your absolutely bigoted and biased assertion that conservatives are less charitable with their money than liberals.
Don't like my examples? Go find your own. There must be dozens supporting me. Try finding one that supports you.
-- Modified on 6/12/2008 5:14:42 PM
Who makes for example $4 million/year by only 5 percentage points, what do you get?
An extra $200,000 in the coffers? Not anywhere close that.
But you ALSO get TWO employees that WERE making $50K to $75k / year, now collecting unemployment. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Which has nothing to do with the fact that I think what you've given there is bullshit.
You've never run a company or made a payroll and neither has your hero Flim Flamma
Actually the numbers are more likely to be four ex $40,000 a year employees now drawing unemployment. I suppose you would rather have everyone work for "your jesus" the government or big business instead of small business which is the backbone of our society.
You can't increase taxes on the "rich" without raising the taxes on small business.
bullshit? Without even an explanation of reasoning?
That's what I call bullshit.
between paying the bill and over-tipping?
republiscum are the idiots who kvetch endlessly about a $5 bill, so some civil servant has to stand around listening to their shit, which just runs the bill up higher.
Nobody wants to hear you crybabies. Cry to yourselves. Nobody else gives a shit.
Damn'd stinking gold brick, lazy bastard bureaucrats are anything but civil. Most of them think they are truly "Lil'Hitlers" put on the Earth to cattle prod the peasants. If these bastards weren't sucking on the public tit they would be in the welfare line because they are too incompetent and lazy to get a real job. UNcivil UNservants.
You, my sweet Dearest, are always welcomed in my airport bathroom stall anythime with us other Republicons. Do you want it lubed or non-lubed??
with some unlucky schlub trying to help you.
It works like this: if you're willing to pay $300/hour, you can probably find somebody willing to put up with your shit for an hour, and toss the sheets after you leave.
But guess who you get to help you clean up your mess if you don't want to pay more than $10/hour? Your goofy maiden aunt Rose, who takes 20 minutes to find a file, and misplaces it in the next 10.
I suppose you can always send those folks off to the camps, instead of finding them a job washing bottles for Willie.
is the worst candidate the libby-pinks have promoted in a long time. He is a lying, thieving, ungrateful piece of shit and he will NOT be elected. The change he needs is a new diaper since he is so completely full of shit.
You cannot go through life spending all of your monthly Socialistic Insecurtiy checks on booze at Willie's Bar. Pretty soon you will be left homeless when Obama cuts off your stipend!
BK, my airport bathroom stall is always open for your sweet big ass!
avenger101 wants you
How soon you seem to forget our lovely time together in our airport bathroom stall, just you and I and a tube of KY!! What a sweet big ass you have, so soft & fine.