Todays editorial in the New York Times....

[whistle]

...So now it has become obvious to the MSM, what will be done about the "steal from the poor and give to the rich" Bush tax policy?

<snip>
June 7, 2005
The Bush Economy

With all of the debate about taxes, the economy and domestic spending, it is hard to imagine anyone supporting the notion of taking money from programs like Medicaid and college-tuition assistance, increasing the tax burden of the vast majority of working Americans, sending the country into crushing debt - and giving the proceeds to people who are so fantastically rich that they don't know what to do with the money they already have. Yet that is just what is happening under the Bush administration. Forget the middle class and the upper-middle class. Even the merely wealthy are being left behind in the dust by the small slice of super-rich Americans.

In last Sunday's Times, David Cay Johnston reported that from 1980 to 2002, the latest year of available data, the share of total income earned by the top 0.1 percent of earners more than doubled, while the share earned by everyone else in the top 10 percent rose far less. The share of the bottom 90 percent declined.

President Bush did not create the income gap. But the unheralded effect of his tax policy is its unequal impact on the modestly well to do. By 2015, those making between $80,000 and $400,000 will pay as much as 13.9 percentage points more of their income in federal taxes than those making more than $400,000, assuming the tax cuts are made permanent. Below $80,000, most taxpayers will see their share of taxes rise slightly or stay the same.

Mr. Johnston's article quotes a prominent economist who argues that people care more about the chance to move from one income class to another (upward, of course) than about income distribution. But during the Bush years, the two main sources of class mobility - a good job and money for higher education - have increasingly failed to materialize for those who most need them. Last week's jobs report from the Labor Department confirmed that a strong labor market recovery has not taken hold. Wages for most working people failed even to outpace inflation in the past year.

<more>
<link> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/opinion/07tues1.html?th&emc=th

[Inland]

1. kick for a must read nt

[dubyaD40web]

2. Very good editorial!

Kick

[Skink]

3. I do think however...

If you make 80 to a hundred grand you are rich and you have to shoulder some of the burden.

[IrateCitizen]

8. But you shouldn't shoulder more than those making >$400K...

That was the point that the editorial board was making here, and it's a perfectly valid one.

[lukasahero]

9. The problem is with what we define as rich

Those making $80 - 100k probably aren't really rich. They're "making" that money - and probably spending it as fast as it comes in, in debt up to their eyeballs. "Wealth" has to do with what you have, what you can save, what you don't have to spend to survive - not with the dollar amount you earn. (If you make $80k/ bring home $60k but spend $60k on housing, transportation, local bills and property taxes, medical, kids, food, education, bills and debt etc..., are you rich?)

The problem is they think they're rich (and we keep telling them that so who can blame them). They hear about "tax cuts for the wealthy" and think it means them. They hear Dems talk about increasing the burden on the wealthy and think we're talking about them. Who are they going to vote for?

Until we learn to differeniate between wealth and salary, we will get nowhere with these people. The problem isn't that these people are voting against their own interests, the problem is they think they aren't.

[Karenina]

12. Bingo!

If you are dependent on a salary, be it 80K or 250K, YOU ARE NOT RICH.

[fasttense]

4. Why is it so difficult for the idiots we have in Washington to see

that when you give more money to people who already have a lot, they don't spend more, they don't buy more, they don't create a demand (there are just too few of them), they don't help the economy. It's like giving food to someone who has just finished a large meal. They just aren't hungry anymore, so they put the food aside for later. But if you give the same money to the poor and middle class, they spend it, they buy more, they create demand, they help the economy. There are just so many cars and houses one family needs. When these idle rich have boughten everything they need, they become satiated and don't spend. They may invest but investment does not create a demand (outside of a demand for a good investment). It seems so simple, so logical, so obvious, why can't the idiots in Washington see it?

[whistle]

6. To the neo-conservative mind, it is not about what money does

....for others that matters, it's only what money does for their own self-interest. The accumulation of capital is the only thing that matters, it represents power and security. If shit was money, the neo-con would have tons of it in vaults and still want more shit to put away in vaults as their own.

[Bob3]

5. So the NY Times discovers the sky is blue

And that a class war is already on and that most of us are losing it and the head twit in the white house is turning what Lincoln called the last best hope for humanity into a banana republic and that we are locked into a useless bloody war with no end in sight.

Maybe now the times can do something positive - like fire Judith Miller and stop printing those teenage gush articles on * every Monday written by some twit of reporter who needs to be locked in a room with the collected works of HL Mencken to get some idea of how you view the rich and powerful if you are a reporter. (hint not from your knees gazing adoringly up at the subject.)





:rant:

[indepat]

7. This issue alone should have turned W out of the WH and most Rs out of

the Congress by better than a five-to-one margin, but the sheeple don't get it.

[wallwriter]

10. Ah, the liberal media.

:sarcasm:

[JPZenger]

11. Limbaugh - Its Old vs. New Money

Limbaugh was going on yesterday about how any talk about concentrations of wealth is simply a dispute between old money and new money. He said the old money people who own the New York Times don't like the upstart new money people. That explains it all. I think he must be back on his painkillers to come up with that logic.