Monday, February 20, 2012
Occupy This, Folks
I just came upon some interesting data. According to the Tax Foundation, a summary of federal income tax data shows that the percentage of the adjusted gross income of the top 1% actually went DOWN in 2009 (the most recent available year). And it went down precipitously; from 20% in 2008 to 16.9% in 2009 (a 15.5% reduction). Yes, people, their percentage of the federal income tax burden went down, too. But that went down at a significantly lesser rate; 3.4% (from 38% to 36.7%), than did their income..................................................................................................Look, I'm not saying that we should start feeling sorry for the top 1%. Not at all. In fact, folks, I think that they probably SHOULD pay more. But don't you think that maybe we should first get the facts before we start going off all half-cocked, obliterate property, etc.? I mean, I'm just asking.
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With the top tax bracket at 35%, why is their federal income tax burden higher than 35%? Something does not add up.
The 36.7% represents the amount of the total income tax that that segment of the population is paying. Flushing it out a little bit more here, the top 5% pays 58.7% of the federal income tax, the top 10% pays 70.5%, the top 25% pays 87.3%, and the top 50% pays 97.8%. It's a percentage of the pie statistic, in other words.
OK, sorry. I misunderstood the meaning? I guess that means since their percentage went down, all the rest of us, who could afford it less, paid more.
One could interpret it that way, I suppose.
I don't find this data interesting. Perhaps you were not aware, but we're in a recession... so it stands to reason that most people's income would have taken a hit.
And who the hell is obliterating property? The financial institutions acted recklessly because they were sure they'd be bailed out if anything went wrong (I *thought* that's what even you believed). Now you're saying what? It was perfectly reasonable for them to do that? The fraud, was that OK too?
I don't see how anyone protesting the abuses of Wall Street could possibly be described as "going off all half-cocked".
I'm all for getting the facts, but it was only recently that the President announced he'd begin investigating. It took the protests of Occupy to START the fact gathering. I applaud the movement.
The "obliterating of property" has to do with the rioting that's taking place in Oakland.............Yes, I still hold Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulsen, and Geithner (their work on the national and New York FED, respectively) most responsible for the financial collapse via their creating of the bailout culture.............Yes, we had a recession. But it apparently hit the top 1% harder in that their share of the income pie shrank significantly more that the rest of ours'.
Their income may have been "hit", but it was not reduced to zero because they lost their job and they did not end up on the street because they lost their home.
That's a fair point, Jerry. I just wouldn't en masse blame the top 1% (which includes not just hedge-fund managers but doctors, accountants, small business owners, etc.) for the problems of the rest of us; the % of the income pie for the 99% went up from 80% to 83.1% (it's just that the pie got smaller).
"The financial institutions acted recklessly because they were sure they'd be bailed out if anything went wrong"
Too bad more legislators didn't follow the lead of the congressional Republicans and turn down the bailout.
Nobody went off "half cocked". This has been a long time coming. I think the violence may get worse. It's time for the war on working people to end. We need to at least back off it.
dmarks: Too bad more legislators didn't follow the lead of the congressional Republicans and turn down the bailout.
What a disaster that would have been! I opposed the bailout, but I sure as hell didn't support what some Republicans (not all Republicans voted against the bailouts, dmarks) thought we should do, which was nothing(?)
We should have nationalized the banks.
Most Republicans opposed the bailout.
And be far the worst solution would have been to Stalinize the banking system as you demanded. The banks MUST remain independent from the state. We need decentralization, not concentration.
" We need decentralization, not concentration"
So, you are in favor of breaking up the large banking corporations?
Yeah, I'm not too hip on nationalizing the banks, either. I think that if we could somehow eliminate this incestuous relationship between big business and big government, the graft and abuses would subside considerably on their own. I mean, I hate to say it here but public financing of elections just might be the only way forward.
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