tagged w/ Income Taxes
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From the extreme off-Broadway musical IF HOMELESS PEOPLE COULD FLY, comes the opening number performed by Homeless Harry & The Hash Pipes back from their tour of Amsterdam. They played every hash house in Holland. Once again, the poignant play about the plight of homeless America only amplifies the message that their problems are now ignored by arguments of debt and percentages of income taxes. Hey, the homeless are driven by debt, and it never needs an oil change.From the extreme off-Broadway musical IF HOMELESS PEOPLE COULD FLY, comes the opening... more
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It’s an economic environment of exclusivity, a recent episode of Fault Lines depicts. (See video in left column.)
Only one percent of the population takes in more than 20 percent of all earnings in the United States, for example. Since the 1970’s, the income levels of the top 10 percent in wealth increased four-fold; the remaining 90 percent of the country has had no income growth, when accounting for inflation and other cost-of-living increases.
And the U.S. government – not any branch and neither side – is fully helping to stop this anti-Democratic, non-capitalist movement from ransacking our Democratic capitalist country. The movers and the makers are led by the money shakers. And that’s probably never been more apparent than it is today.
This is a 25-minute episode, which might be too long for some to watch. But if you only have a few minutes to spare, just slide the bar over to the 20:00 mark. You could even mute the volume. The next three-and-a-half minutes of the clip provides a rather vivid video grasp of the current economic situation in the U.S.
You’ll see the excitement and enthusiasm swarming the campus of Harvard University as it hosts an outdoor graduation ceremony, a rite of passage for the children of wealth to go on and score their own.
And then you’ll see the team of common Americans scouring the area after the ceremony, cleaning up all the trash those wealthy folks left lying on the campus grounds.
http://www.examiner.com/charleston-democrat-in-charleston-sc/disconnect-the-top-1-percentIt’s an economic environment of exclusivity, a recent episode of Fault Lines... more
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- Average rate for richies plummets to 17% from 26%
Wonder how some of those tax dollars are slipping away? Here's a hint. The super rich are paying a far lower tax rate than they did 20 years ago, and nearly half of all US households—both rich and poor—pay no taxes at all. People with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes paid nearly $345 million in taxes in 2007, the most recent year figures are available. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992, reports AP. During that same period, the average tax rate for all taxpayers dipped to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.
Though the top income tax rate is 35 percent, myriad tax breaks shave that bite. "It's the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes,"said an expert with the think tank Tax Policy Center in DC. More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007, and more than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent.
http://www.newser.com/story/116588/super-rich-tax-rate-plummets.html- Average rate for richies plummets to 17% from 26%
Wonder how some of those tax... more
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It's not very patriotic to not pay your income taxes.
Some Americans even hide their money in foreign banks to their shame.
Patriotic, tax paying Americans have been let down by this shameful act of income tax evasion.
It's time all Americans pay their fair share.It's not very patriotic to not pay your income taxes.
Some Americans even hide... more
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The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States in inequitably distributed by policy and by design. The US population is represented 'stretched across a football field in order of income, from poorest, on the left, to richest. Imagine a stack of $100 bills 'representing each person's income.' For example: a stack one inch high represents a stack of one hundred dollars bills, i.e, $25,000. The red line on the graph represents the height of that stack compared to an American football field.
"The red line in the first picture is the beginning of the U. S. income distribution. On the scale of the football field the line slopes gradually from zero on the left to less than 2-inches high at the 50-yard line ($39,000), to about 4-inches high at the 95-yard line ($132,000). On this scale the entire graph is less than one pixel high, up to this point. It is not until you are well past the 99-yard line that you hit the $1 million mark: a stack of $100 bills 40-inches high. There were over 144,000 people who turned in IRS returns in 1997 with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more." [See: Houston Independent Media Center, Wealth Distribution in the US http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php ]
Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following WWII. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased and is, in fact, measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.
Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies that can be identified.
The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following URL: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf]. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.
As wealth is transferred to the very top with tax cuts for only the very, very wealthy and practitioners of 'corporate socialism', the masses are left to fight over the crumbs. There is no poverty in America that could not be addressed by simply addressing GOP tax policies --give aways -- which deliberately make the rich richer, the working class significantly poorer.
If you are in the middle class now, don't kid yourself. Unless you stand to inherit a fortune of several billions from a rich and long lost Uncle, the chances are almost exponentially high against you. Chances are --you will NOT progress upward in this society. Moreover, this aspect of American society is the work of one party primarily: the GOP! The GOP is the party of a rich elites who have learned how to 'sell' a fairy tale: supply side economics, or, derisively --"trickle down theory". To sum it all up: wealth has never, does not, will not 'trickle down'. The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United... more
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Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and heiress of a multimillion dollar company, released her belated personal tax filings for 2007, showing she an income of more than $US4 million ($5.9 million).Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and heiress of a... more
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That will buy quite a few six packs. The Palins own their lakefront house plus two vacation homes - yeah, she's a regular joe.That will buy quite a few six packs. The Palins own their lakefront house plus two... more
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The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee said the U.S. government is headed toward bankruptcy if it stays on its current fiscal course.
“We know that for a fact,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told CNSNews.com in a video interview. “All the actuaries, all the objective scorekeepers of the federal government, are predicting this.”
To back up this claim, Ryan cited an estimate by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office that says the government faces a $53-trillion shortfall to cover the costs of promised benefits in its entitlement programs.
“They say we are $53 trillion short of fulfilling the promises the government is making to the American people, in today’s dollars,” said Ryan.
“Meaning that if we want to keep the promises of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which are basically the three major entitlement programs, today we would have to set aside $53 trillion dollars and invest them at Treasury rates in order to do it,” he said.
Ryan said that to deal with this situation the government must either reform the entitlement programs or eventually impose massive tax increases on American workers.
“For the last 40 years, the federal government has had to tax every dollar made in America at 18.3 cents on that dollar to pay the bills of the federal government,” said Ryan.
“By the time my three children – who are three, five and six years old—are my age, the federal government will have to tax 40 cents out of every dollar made in America just to pay the bills for the federal government at that time,” he said.
Ryan asked the Congressional Budget Office to determine what the tax rates would need to be to cover federal spending at that level.
“What they told me was really startling,” said Ryan. “They said that the current low rate, the 10-percent bracket for low-income Americans, would have to go up to 25 percent. The middle-income tax rate for middle-income Americans would have to go up to 66 percent, and the top rate, which is what small businesses pay, would have to go to 88 percent.
“Those would be the tax rates you would have to have if you wanted to tax your way out of this problem,” he said. “And if you did that, all experts conclude, you would literally crash the American economy.”
Ryan portrayed the long-term budget crisis he believes the country is now facing as a generational challenge.
“The legacy of this country has always been that each generation confronts the challenges before it so that the next generation is better off,” said Ryan. “In the past, we brought down the Iron Curtain and won the Cold War. We got through World War I. We got through World War II. We won the war on the Great Depression.
“The problem that we have right now—putting foreign policy aside and our fight with Islamic radicalism—is that we have an economic crisis, we have a fiscal crisis, and, that is, we will bankrupt this country, and the best century in America will be the last century,” he added.
“Unless we turn our fiscal situation around and pay off this debt, and change the way these programs work to a more sustainable path, the next generation will have inferior living standards,” said Ryan.
Ryan and his Budget Committee staff have developed a comprehensive plan for reforming federal taxing-and-spending policies that they believe will restore long-term solvency to the federal government.
Entitled “A Roadmap for America’s Future: A Plan to Solve America’s Long-Term Fiscal and Economic Crisis,” the plan has been introduced as legislation (H.R. 6110) in the current Congress.The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee said the U.S. government is... more
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Rich people pay the lion's share of the taxes in the US. They don't just pay the most money, they pay the largest percentage of their income.
Rich people pay the lion's share of the taxes in the US. They don't just pay... more
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Don't try running from the IRS, because you'll just die tired. VC2 producer Bookworm Brown and his crack team of multimedia misfits bust open a common question about calculating the fatter tax refund. If your idea of getting more tax deductions on your income is birthing 6 or 7 kids, then Ed McMahon says you may already be a winner. Don't want to change diapers? In this latest project, you'll find out which is the better way to keep more of your income incoming.
Let us know what works for you? Please share.Don't try running from the IRS, because you'll just die tired. VC2 producer... more
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I have heard a lot about this over the years but, only recently foud the movie.
I always knew the money they steal from us was not to pay for anything good.I have heard a lot about this over the years but, only recently foud the movie.
I... more
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What is the difference between Homeland Security and the former Staatssicherheit of the GDR Stasi or the Sicherheitsdienst of the Third Reich?. Eavesdropping was very common by both the Communist and Nazi regimes, and now we have it too?!! I recently viewed a German film which showed how the former East German Stasi invaded the privacy of many Germans living in the East. This film, "The Lives of Others" is in German with English subtitles. It is a must for everyone to see. Maybe some people will think twice about our Homeland Security practices after they have seen it.What is the difference between Homeland Security and the former Staatssicherheit of... more
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This woman, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, filed for early retirement Monday, becoming the first baby boomer to start collecting Social Security. Born one second after midnight in January 1946, the retired teacher leads the way for as many as 80 million individuals who will qualify for the retirement payout. And thus begins the end of social security
This woman, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, filed for early retirement Monday, becoming the... more
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medic
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4 years ago
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There are two questions here: is income tax moral and constitutional? and is what the Feds are trying to do with this web site constitutional? It is kind of a slippery slope because what these companies were attempting to do is teach people how to break the law, but is it just civil disobedience?There are two questions here: is income tax moral and constitutional? and is what the... more
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NoShow
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4 years ago
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This story from Slate discusses the notion of whether the upward bound of wealth into the rich's hands actually benefits all of us and the economy as a whole. This story from Slate discusses the notion of whether the upward bound of wealth into... more
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khsing
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4 years ago
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