Dear W,
Thanks for your email.
Thanks for your email.
With 47% of the American people not earning enough money to pay federal income tax and still "make ends meet," I am not surprised that 16% of the people pay 79.4% of the taxes. https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/31/heres-what-the-average-american-pays-in-taxes.aspx
In any event, I trust the pronouncement of Leona Helmsley, "The Queen of Mean," who was not just a 10%-er, but a card-carrying, tax-shielded 5%-er.
Most guys in her "bracket" don't pay squat.
And since the wealth of The Very Rich is mostly "tied up" in non-income assets, what little "income" tax they pay doesn't touch the bulk of their fortunes.
Leona Helmsley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley
"Concise Video Explores Gap Between Super Rich And Everyone Else"
It's Not About Income.
"Concise Video Explores Gap Between Super Rich And Everyone Else"
"It's About Net Worth, Stupid!"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/06/its-not-about-income-its-net-worth.html
As I embark this "follow-up" discussion, I should be clear that "premises, attitudes and conclusions" ultimately depend on a person's "beliefs" about the "nature of property" and the "allocation of resource."
The Original 1910 Income Tax Promised To Never Shift Burden From America's Richest 1 - 4%
In the above post, I encourage you to pay particular attention to the 15 minute video of Prof. Richard Wolff analyzing "barstool economics."
U Mass Professor Emeritus Richard Wolff Provides Out-Of-The-Box Views
I think it is accurate to call our parents' generation "The Greatest Generation."
Notably, it was "The Greatest Generation" that elected FDR 4 times - largely to put an end to the monopolistic, wealth-sequestering abuses of the 1920s and to remedy the economic catastrophe those abuses caused.
Instead of monopoly, FDR established the wealth-distributing "New Deal," part of a "mind-set" that took for granted "Labor" and "Capital's" co-equal collaboration in the creation of an economic system whose increasing "automation" would create universal prosperity, simultaneously minimizing (and in many cases eliminating) the need for grunt work.
"Our parents" assumed that when labor and capital -- joined in common enterprise -- succeeded in devising "automated productivity," the fruits of that "automated labor" would be equitably shared by "labor" and "capital."
This core belief in the shared fruits of labor was, in large part, due to widespread belief in "The Common Good," "The General Welfare" and a meaningful "Social Contract" - three core qualities that The Conservative Noise Machine has managed to eclipse, degrade and "drop from radar."
We hear a lot about "the dumbing down of America."
I believe the stupefaction of The Working Class started when The 5% persuaded The 95% that it was no longer necessary to "follow the money" or to believe in "The Common Good," "The General Welfare" and a meaningful "Social Contract" that guaranteed distribution of "automated wealth."
We hear a lot about "the dumbing down of America."
I believe the stupefaction of The Working Class started when The 5% persuaded The 95% that it was no longer necessary to "follow the money" or to believe in "The Common Good," "The General Welfare" and a meaningful "Social Contract" that guaranteed distribution of "automated wealth."
Meanwhile, the capitalist class -- The 5% -- jettisoned workers as soon as The Machine no longer needed them.
In this ongoing process of dispossession, The 5% have made pigs of themselves by sequestering "all" the wealth that is now generated "automatically."
In this ongoing process of dispossession, The 5% have made pigs of themselves by sequestering "all" the wealth that is now generated "automatically."
This Depressing Chart Shows That The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Income Pie - They're Taking It All
Washington Post, September 25, 2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/this-depressing-chart-shows-that-the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-a-bigger-slice-of-the-income-pie-theyre-taking-all-of-it/?utm_term=.4045386c3061
This Depressing Chart Shows That The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Income Pie - They're Taking It All
Washington Post, September 25, 2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/this-depressing-chart-shows-that-the-rich-arent-just-grabbing-a-bigger-slice-of-the-income-pie-theyre-taking-all-of-it/?utm_term=.4045386c3061
This betrayal -- this de facto (if not de jure) theft -- is, in my view, the essential tragedy of modern (post-modern) America.
As Prof. Wolff points out, the capitalist Noise Machine has persuaded the very workers whom Capitalism has ripped off that "the fat cats" deserve every last penny of their wealth.
In the early 1900s, when "the federal income tax" began -- and later, when our parents assumed they were participating in "profit-sharing collaboration" between "labor" and "capital" -- the noblesse oblige which "the wealthy" once embodied imparted the belief that they shouldered responsibility to insure the wellbeing of their workers.
Although industrial history is checkered (and the role of labor unions must not be overlooked in the development of working class purchasing power), we witness widespread noblesse oblige in the lives of many magnates, among them Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and George Eastman who founded Eastman Kodak (my Dad's employer) a company that once employed 300,000 people worldwide.
Nowadays, CEOs (and other "adinerados") live in their gated communities, deliberately cut off from the people whom Cowboy Capitalism (in opposition to Europe and Canada's Socialized Capitalism) has ripped off, simultaneously doing their damndest to eliminate jobs through "automatons" (both machines and software) while moving capital overseas to take advantage of cheap labor before the dwindling pool of "brawny-not-brainy jobs" is finally eliminated through automation. (To focus just one job-eliminating catastrophe, note that within a decade "self-driving vehicles" will eliminate taxi drivers and truck drivers.)
"Automation, Robotization, Software-Enhanced Productivity And Permanent Job Loss"
It is, of course, "a judgment call" whether we believe "hard-working" capitalists deserve "the whole pie" and that The 5% should have exclusive access to private fortunes generated by automation, or, whether we consider a nation's automated wealth to be a "national patrimony" which -- through taxation -- is largely redistributed.
Elizabeth Warren On Fair Taxation
Scott Pruitt: How Conservatives Use Decontextualized Shards Of Truth To Tell HUGE Lies
As Prof. Wolff points out, the capitalist Noise Machine has persuaded the very workers whom Capitalism has ripped off that "the fat cats" deserve every last penny of their wealth.
"Automation, Robotization, Software-Enhanced Productivity And Permanent Job Loss"
It is, of course, "a judgment call" whether we believe "hard-working" capitalists deserve "the whole pie" and that The 5% should have exclusive access to private fortunes generated by automation, or, whether we consider a nation's automated wealth to be a "national patrimony" which -- through taxation -- is largely redistributed.
Elizabeth Warren On Fair Taxation
Scott Pruitt: How Conservatives Use Decontextualized Shards Of Truth To Tell HUGE Lies
Whatever guiding principles we hold about property and its distribution (or non-distribution), I believe billionaires Soros, Hanauer and Buffet accurately describe the incendiary future we will confront if wealth (largely automated through the efforts and ethos of The Greatest Generation) is not distributed, at least by following Europe's lead in providing free (or universally affordable) high-quality healthcare, and by making education free (or universally affordable) from kindergarten through graduate school.
George Soros: On The Coming U.S. Class War
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Pitchforks Are Coming... For Us Billionaires"
Amazon Financier, Nick Hanauer
G.K. Chesterton and Warren Buffett's Class War
http://paxonbothhouses.
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Pitchforks Are Coming... For Us Billionaires"
Amazon Financier, Nick Hanauer
Amazon Financier, Nick Hanauer
http://paxonbothhouses.
Abraham Lincoln: "In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Read more at Infoplease.com: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html#ixzz17XlRsbev
Abraham Lincoln: "In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Read more at Infoplease.com: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html#ixzz17XlRsbev
And finally, here is a related article debunking the widely-held belief that The GOP is "The Party Of Prosperity And Job Growth."
It is, in fact, the antagonist of prosperity and job growth.
"Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship"
And finally, here is a related article debunking the widely-held belief that The GOP is "The Party Of Prosperity And Job Growth."
It is, in fact, the antagonist of prosperity and job growth.
It is, in fact, the antagonist of prosperity and job growth.
"Republican Rule And Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship"
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich Schools Right-Wing Economist On GOP Tax Cuts
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/former-labor-sec-robert-reich-schools.html
Paz contigo
Alan
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich Schools Right-Wing Economist On GOP Tax Cuts
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/former-labor-sec-robert-reich-schools.html
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/09/former-labor-sec-robert-reich-schools.html
Paz contigo
Alan
On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 9:19 AM, WB wrote:
Alan,Re our conversation last night about who pays taxes. Thought you might be interested in this article. My facts/statements weren’tentirely accurate but I was close! The top 2.7% of taxpayers (the rich) pay 51.6% of income taxes. Those earningfrom $100K upward –16% of all taxpayers pay 79.4% of all individual income taxes.Que tengas un buen dia y buen fin de semana.
W
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