How high should taxes be on the rich?

[Fixated]

Should we assail the rich with more taxes? Before WWII taxes for the upper 1% were about 90%. Under Kennedy they sank to 70% and have dropped with subsequent presidents. Should we start pushing it up? I think that we need to create a millionaire tax bracket in order to avoid severe taxing on those pulling in about $300,000 a year for a family (while they wouldn't be in agony, they don't deserve the same rates). Not only that, but a millionaire tax bracket would allow people to feel aloof from those being taxed, making it easier to pass by the public. Any thoughts?

[dpbrown]

1. The key is in defining the bracket, not in the percentage alone

That's what most people miss.

Say the bracket on the upper income is 90%, but it only applies to that part of income above, say, $9 million. That's going to mean something different than saying that someone who makes $9 million is going to pay more than $8 million in taxes.

I think the bracket should be high, and I think the tax on that bracket should be high as well. But I'm perfectly happy to see taxes on the lower income people phased out completely, and I'm happy to see a very long ramping up to the highest bracket.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[camero]

16. I agree

Most Americans may not be smart enough to know what the term "graduated" means as far as taxes goes.

[AP]

59. Exactly. Now let's read on and see how many people understand this.

[ixion]

2. my personal opinion is a flat percentage...

with a cut off at the base and a ceiling. I don't think people should be penalized for being wealthy, but I don't think poor people should be penalized, either.

[stickdog]

53. Suppose we had three brackets.

0% for the first $25,000 earned per adult + 5,000 for each dependent.
25% for all income in $25,000-$150,000 range earned per adult.
50% for all earnings greater than $150,000 earned per adult.

I'm not sure how anyone could mount a valid complaint.

[AP]

60. How 'bout a constant sliding scale, moving up in tiny increments

The brackets have to match the economic reality of the experience of wealth within each bracket.

150K is where Bush wants the bottom bracket to start. That's way too low. And 50 pc is way to high of a rate for an income bracket starting that low.

[rfranklin]

3. Taxes were never 90% or 70% on all income...

They were 90% on income above a certain amount.

The 90% rate in 1950 applied to income over $400,000 which would be $3 million today. Sounds fair enough doesn't it?


http://special.kiplinger.com/kbftables/wash/taxrates.htm

[Loyal]

24. No, it doesn't.

I know the tax rate was marginal, but even 70% under Kennedy was way too high. 39.6% under Clinton was just fine with me, thanks.

[AP]

61. 70pc under Kennedy was too high because incomes increased and economomy...

slowed down. But, at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration 70% starting at a very high income level was right on target, more or less. It was really easy to make money if you had a lot of money then. Taxing that income helped the government build a lot of stuff which helped a lot of people also get rich. America grew more in the late 40s and 50s than at any other time. It was a golden age of economic growth, and it was relatively fair because of the very progressive rates of taxation which did a great deal to prevent a hegemony from forming.

In fact, the relative flatness of the tax code for corporate income tax (top bracket starting at 300K, corps paying effective tax of 3pc regardless of income level) is a big reason why LARGE corps now dominat the American political landscape.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

48. 90% Fair?

You can't be serious. I don't care how rich you are, paying ninety cents out of every dollar to the government is too much. The current rate seems fine though. Clinton's tax plan helped create eight years of economic growth.

[Romberry]

52. No one ever paid 90 percent

Deductions, exclusions, exemptions, trusts, tax free investment income in safe vehicles like insured municipla bonds....there has never been a period in the era of the income tax when anyone actually paid 90% in income taxes. It just didn't happen. And under Clinton, they didn't pay 39.6% either. That was the top marginal rate but the actual effective rate for the top brackets was actually in the range of 26 percent. Citizens fof Tax Justice has the numbers. http://ctj.org

[KG]

4. squeeze 'em till they squeal.

:)

[SammyWinstonJack]

30. LOL

Weren't they squealing under the 39.6% rate? Did they even pay that rate? Wasn't it Leona Helmsley that said "Taxes are for the little people," on her way to prison for tax evasion? Or do I have that wrong?

[JohnKleeb]

43. lol

[Avalon Sparks]

5. A thought~

Maybe if the rich - and I'm talking about the mega millionaires and mega CEO's of monopolies and mega industry owners had to pay higher taxes, they wouldn't have all this money lying around to payoff politicians and create a plutocracy.

What about THAT?

[gristy]

9. That's right - I'd vote for 80% tax on anything over $1M

Nic pic of Molly Ringwald's FINGER!

[AP]

62. You can't treat such a broad range of inc with a single flat tax rate.

That's basically a flat corporate income tax rate, and it's too high.

[jmowreader]

6. Bill Clinton had the right numbers

Under Clinton, we paid off the Reagan/Bush the Elder deficit while the rich got richer than they'd ever been.

If we go back to the Clinton rates, the same thing may happen again. It's worth a shot.

[AP]

63. They weren't progressive enough. Republican in congress wouldn't give US

what it needed in terms of tax.

[leftofthedial]

7. max tax bracket should be 100%

That is, income over a maximum ceiling should be taxed at 100%.

What is the ceiling?

the real problem is that the super rich have no income.

[wrkclskid]

11. A maximum ceiling

Would completely discourage people from earning more wealth, which would mean that many money hungry people who are also good businessmen mgiht sit on their laurels rather than earn money that will jut be taken from them. This would cut down certain things such as innovation and thus slow our countries economic growth. We should not take all their wealth away, innovation and hard work should be rewarded.

[camero]

15. What alot of you don't realize

is that 90% above a certain threshold was essentialy a cap on wages.
Most CEOs at the time kept thier wages below the 90% threshold, which freed up money to hire workers, do research, and expand the economy.

The real reason that the 50's were called the Golden Age was because most everyone shared in the prosperity, not just the chosen few.

Or is it just my grandfather's generation had better morals than the current Baby boomers that are runnning things now?

[wrkclskid]

18. Neither really

Capitlaism relies in part on the idea that people will always want to earn more money. When people invested that money, it no doubt had the effects it did, but it was not done to furthur those effects, it was done to earn more money. In today's "global economy" it is possible to hire cheaper labor and cut costs in other way as well, thus companies can do this and increase CEO salaries. Their is also a buisness culture problem, the idea of "whiz kid" CEO's has greatly increased their percieved importance and thus they find they can demand better salaries and options out of baord's who think they need a great CEO to make any money. The 50's was never a "golden age" but it is often reffered to it because it isviewed as a morally simple time, blah blah blah. This was not the reality just a perception. I agree that CEO's need to be paid less, but a lot of this is a change needed in buiness culture.I would also like to see such agreemtns as NAFTA to be modified. But putting a cap on salaries is a bsic impediment to the free market.

[camero]

20. Nice theory

But it is turning out that "capitalism" (the crony kind) and "globalization" isn't doing any better for people than the "communism" we abhor.

And putting a cap on salaries is not keeping people from attaining wealth, we always have and always will, but will curtail greed.

Ever wonder why the NFL and NBA have so much more competition than MLB? Because they have a salary cap and players will defer thier money for the good of the team. Which means they don't take all that money in one year, which would hurt the team.

About the global economy, if a person makes thier fortune on the backs of the people here, then they are obligated to the people here, not just to go find sweatshop labor and engage in exploitation.

I don't need you to explain reality to me. I can see it's ugliness for myself.

[wrkclskid]

21. Never did I say either was agreat system

Now did I? Sorry u had to patronize, but I do not agree that any sort of maximum salary helps. The business world is not the NBA, in the NBA and NFL their is a limited amount of options for the players, and most of them, no matter how smart they are, are not gonna make the same amount of money in another profession, so they deal with it, yet they are constantly fighting it during every negotiation with the owners. Everyonce in a while players will defer their salaries, but that is often so that they recieve a larger sum in a lter season. I agree that competition is a good thing, I too am against companies seeking to exploit sweatshop labor. I was using them as other explinations for the icnrease in CEO pay, and these are some of the possible explinations such notable crazies such as my economics professor and business manger aunt have given me. Does this make them neccesartily the right explination? No, but they are just as legitimate as yours. Now if you don't mind my "explaining reality" to you, please comment more politely next time.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. The 1950s and 1960s

I was alive for most of the 1950s and all of the 1960s, and although we didn't have computers and VCRs and miraculous medicine and stuff like that, some aspects of life WERE better. For one thing, the standard of living rose at all income levels, including the poor.

I spent my elementary school years in a Wisconsin town dominated by two mid-size industrial plants, so most of my classmates were the children of factory workers. The typical family had a house and a car, bought with the wages of one person, because most married women didn't have outside jobs.

Remember how during the Reagan-Bush Sr. years we were told that it was impossible to bring the unemployment rate below 5% without triggering inflation and how all-fired proud the Clinton administration was of getting it down to 4%? At times in the 1950s and 1960s, umemployment was down to 2%.

Back during the days when Japan was considered a threat, one expert I heard on the radio attributed the innovative (sometimes bizarrely so) nature of Japanese products to the Japanese tax system. Evidently, Japan taxed corporate profits at such a high rate that there was no incentive to show a profit, so instead, the companies plowed money into R&D and to a lesser extent into employee benefits. Now things did collapse in the early '90s, but because of hanky-panky in the financial sector and international currency markets pushing the yen to an artificially high level that made Japanese exports expensive, which encouraged companies to move production overseas.

Anyway, with the high personal income taxes, rich people still did not have to sleep under bridges, and this country did great things: fight World War II, institute the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration to spread higher education and home ownership, build the interstate highway system, send people into space, start the Peace Corps, fight the War on Poverty (for a few good years before the rich realized that the anti-poverty workers were making poor people uppity), and all sorts of other stuff that I can't remember offhand.

If we were to raise the marginal rates on high incomes and raise the corporate tax to pre-Reagan levels, we would encourage companies not to show a profit and invest in products and workers, and have enough money to pay for things without robbing the Social Security Trust Fund.

[camero]

54. Thank you

I could not have said it any better myself.

[recidivist]

66. The REAL reason the 50's were a "Golden Age" ...

... was that the USA did not yet face significant international economic competition. Most of the rest of the industrialized world was still rebuilding from the war, the third world was just beginning to industrialize, OPEC was a generation away from jacking up the global oil price, and we were basically self-sufficient in oil anyhow. 'Twas a great time to be an American.

The problem was that we got fat and happy, came to take American economic predominance for granted, and developed some entrenched bad habits. Part of the economic angst we went through in the late 60's and 70s was a matter of getting smacked in the face by reality. The deregulatory movement starting in the late 70's (trucking, airlines, financial services) marked a turning of the tide, as we got used to the idea that we were going to have to compete.

We have a quite similar phenomenon going on now with all the anxiety in the IT sector about outsourcing to India, China, and other third world countries. Given the internet, IT by its very nature is the most mobile industry around. Any smart person with a computer, a phone line, and a modem can compete with anybody in the world. A lot of people in IT have been living in a fools paradise, and they're now howling that somehow its unfair that the rest of the world can play the game.

[leftofthedial]

41. Rich people don't innovate

I've never met a successful business person who was solely motivated by personal monetary gain.

A maximum wage would be a great way to prevent the kind of America we have now, in which the wealthy wage war on the rest of us.

[AP]

64. The problem is that, if tax law helps you stay rich becuase you are rich,

you stop working to make money.

You always want to have a tax code which rewards work with wealth, not wealth with wealth.

I don't think a maximum income makes sense. I can certainly think of a few social activities I'd like to reward with a lot of wealth if people pursued them. A cure for cancer. A solar powered flying car. Great movies and books with liberal ideologies. I want wealth to be the carrot at the end of the stick for people to pursue those things. (Of course, I want it progressively taxed too.)

[amazona]

69. this is completely incorrect

"Good" businessmen do not become billionaires. To get to that level, you have to cut corners. Look at Bill Gates. He may be a perfectly fine human being, but his product flooded the market and made him a billionaire because it was an inferior product, cheaply made, bug-ridden.

At some point, getting more money becomes a game of keeping score. The point is no longer improving the world (realistically, for most businessmen, it never was) but about racking up more dollars. Sometimes the only way to win is to cheat. There can be the legal cheating of selling an inferior product more cheaply a la Gates or the Waltons. Or there can be the blatant theft of the ring of conspirators at Enron or Worldcom/MCI. In any case, after a certain level of income, more money does NOT encourage innovation -- it encourages theft, stagnation, and instability. Which is precisely why our economy is going downhill so fast with massive tax cuts and lack of criminal enforcement against the wealthy.


to think a driven man will sit on his laurels is to totally mis-understand human nature -- men will compete for prestige, for glory, for their legacy, for women -- money is not the only score card

[dolstein]

12. Need I point out the obvious?

If you impose a 100% tax on income above a certain level, pretty soon all the income above that level is going to vanish. Salary payments will be restructured to avoid that magic threshhold. Tax shelteres will proliferate. Executives will leave the U.S. Or income simply won't be reported.

[Muddleoftheroad]

55. Ridiculous

That would just make wealthy people flee.

I love the hate the rich threads.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

8. Tax wealth, not wages

Corporate salaries and interest income should probably be taxed at a very high progressive rate, which was the whole point of progressive taxes. Only a multi-millionaire making 50 million a year should have to pay 90%. Regular people making 35k a year should pay 5% federal income taxes at the most. Taxes are for rich people, we don't want regular Americans burdened with high taxes that they could be spending in the economy.

Social Security and Medicare and Medicade pay for themselves, keep taxes as low as possible and still stay solvent.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

10. I Think Income Taxes Should Top Out at 50%

IMO, seeing more than one out of every two dollars go elsewhere has a chilling effect on incentive to earn.

I also want to see a lot fewer BS loophole deductions, however.

DTH

[gristy]

13. But how can you characterize Joe Blow CEO as having "earned"

that $20M income/stock that he extorts from his board of directors/compensation committee? I want to disincentivise those types from raping their stockholders, and what better way than to tax the hell out of them and "give" the proceeds to the poor and middle-class (i.e., reduce their tax burden). The economy will benefit, the ever increasing disparity in income and wealth in the U.S. (which leads to the oft-mentioned "class warfare") will decrease, and the influence of big $$ on our political process will also decrease.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

38. I Think That's a Different Issue

I would rather have more accountability for and independence of corporate boards, and more controls over things like option grants, which would in turn limit the insane executive comp structure.

DTH

[AP]

65. Without doing an economic analysis, it's hard to say what top rate should

be and where it should start. But I think that a top rate on earned income of 50pc probably shouldn't kick in until very high levels of income -- like 50 million or so. But I could definitely imagine a top rate of 50pc kicking in on unearned income of 15 mil or 20 mil.

But, really, you couldn't just guess. You'd have to look at the economic statistics and figure out what marginal valuations of an additional dollar actually are, and how easy it is to make money, and how fast the economy is growing, and where income is coming from, and costs of living.

[jody]

14. Working masses pay for defense in blood, let the rich pay in gold? eom

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

17. good point. Give rich people a tax break if they join the Marines

:)

[david_vincent]

23. In the so-called Civil War, well-off people could buy their way out

of conscription, either by paying a fee or by sending someone else in their place. The result was a military oddly devoid of upper-class troops (except for the officers). Guess what? We have the same situation in our military today, except the wealthy don't even have to pay anything to get out of serving. So, yeah, why not???

[dolstein]

19. Top marginal rate: 40%; top effective tax rate: 35%

The top marginal rate of 40% is pretty much what you had under Clinton. However, because of deductions and the lower rate for capital gains, the federal income tax bill for the wealthiest Americans tends to be somewhere between 25% and 30% of their income.

[Loyal]

22. Assail the rich with more taxes?

That is the solution mentioned all too often. But, what is rich, I ask you? Is it someone making 50k? 100k? 200k? If someone makes 100k with 6 kids, are they rich? If someone making 50k is single, with no dependents, are they rich? Be a little bit more specific, please. And I don't want to go back to a 90% rate or even a 70%. the 93% top marginal rate or whatever it was at during the 1950s(before Kennedy) totally discouraged working. Why work and make above a certain income if you could only keep 7 cents on every dollar? It's easy to make these suggestions when you aren't in these brackets, but if you ever get into them, I don't think you'd want a 70% or 90% top marginal rate. :shrug:

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

25. someone who has millions of dollars is rich

no one wants to tax people making 50k or even 200k a year. calm down.

[gristy]

27. that's a lot of questions

But, what is rich, I ask you? Is it someone making 50k? 100k? 200k?

Rich is >$1M/year in income from all sources, IMO.

If someone makes 100k with 6 kids, are they rich?

No.

If someone making 50k is single, with no dependents, are they rich?

No.

Be a little bit more specific, please. And I don't want to go back to a 90% rate or even a 70%. the 93% top marginal rate or whatever it was at during the 1950s(before Kennedy) totally discouraged working.

Need backup please. What was growth in GDP during that period? I think you will find that GDP was expanding QUITE NICELY in spite of (or maybe because of?) a progressive tax structure.

Why work and make above a certain income if you could only keep 7 cents on every dollar?

I agree you wouldn't work very hard to earn much more than that. Tell me why that would be a bad thing for our economy. Because some CEO is going to do a 1/4-ass job because he doesn't care to get a raise above his measly $1M salary? I suggest that if he does take that approach, he'll be out of a job and also out of that oh-so-painful tax bracket.

It's easy to make these suggestions when you aren't in these brackets, but if you ever get into them, I don't think you'd want a 70% or 90% top marginal rate.

On the contrary, my ethics, principles, and belief in individual actions for the common good of society certainly WOULD cause me to gladly accept an 80% marginal rate for income over $1M. Sorry to disappoint you.

[Loyal]

29. It is so ethical of you,

in fact it's so kind of you, to support an 80% marginal rate for a bracket which you most likely are not even in currently, or would even be in.

[gristy]

36. What do you know of my income or earning potential?

hmmm?

[Loyal]

37. I know about common sense,

which says that most people would not want an 80% tax rate on their income over 1 million. And even if you do make over 1 million, and want to pay 80% of your money to the feds, the Treasury does accept donations! So, you donate your money, gristy, but it's not considered compassionate for you to be so generous with other people's money. a 50% top marginal tax rate would be the highest I would ever go for, and only if we were in a gigantic war(bigger than Iraq). During peacetime(which is most of the time), the top rate should be no higher than 40%.

[gristy]

39. The foundation of your argument

seems to be that individuals should not presume to have the moral or ethical authority to suggest what the tax rate should be for tax brackets other than one's own. Your specific challenge that I "donate" my money if I am so keen on giving so much of it up is particularly specious. I am neither keen on giving my money up nor am I keen on making others give up more of theirs so that I can give up less of mine. That whole line of discussion just misses the entire point. Tax policy, and in particular a progressive tax policy, is a truly effective means of promoting a just and egalitarian society. A regressive tax policy as now exists in the U.S. is clearly pushing us in the direction of a plutocracy, where not only is the majority of society's wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but also its political power. And such a society, IMO, is neither one where the majority of its members will wish to reside, nor is it one which will even survive in the long run.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

45. How would it ruin your lifestyle to

have ONLY $1 million to live on each year? Even with six children?

You'd do what the rest of us do. Economize. :-)

[amazona]

70. yes, these rich people are crybabies

They should have to live, for just one year, on my income in the high four figures. It does not "ruin my lifestyle," whatever that means. I do not lay around the house going, "Oh woe, I am so miserable for I am poor." These crybabies should just grow up. Everyone should learn how to balance a budget at some point in their lives. Otherwise, they have been cheated of one of the realities of human existence and do not share in the experience of humanity as a whole but instead become more and more isolated from the real world. Look at Rush Limbo drugging himself into deafness for just one example of what being fabulously rich does for a person. Or look at Elvis and so many others drugging themselves straight to death.


who cares if some rich person can't buy the entire prada line every year?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. Huh?

"the 93% top marginal rate or whatever it was at during the 1950s(before Kennedy) totally discouraged working."

Your error is in thinking that anyone making that much money actually "works" in any true sense of the word. Either they're in the stratum that goes to board meetings and lavish business lunches or they're in sports or entertainment and doing what they love anyway.

Don't worry. There was no dire shortage of rich people in the 1950s.

[lancemurdoch]

49. rich is...

Rich means you are making money as a rentier instead of a worker. Rentier meaning in the Keynesian sense - you are making money on rent, or interest, or dividends. Money you do not earn by working. I consider all of this money illegitimately expropriated by whichever worker it comes from, and ultimately I'd like to see it reduced to 0.

100 years ago, who earned this type of money? Only the top few percent, and only the top of them lived off of it. Now, anyone with $100 in a checking account is a rentier.

It's a matter of relations, not money. If a super-skilled person makes a lot of money, their wealth is more legitimate (because they made and created all of it), then someone who lives off of rent or interest or dividends. It's a matter of relations, not a figure.

Personally, I think taxes is a wussy way of doing this. Yes, if we have say Verizon and it's workers, and it's shareholders get billions in profit every year because the union is weak and the shareholders are strong, the shareholders would have had their dividend taxed before that was repealed. But that's a roundabout, indirect way of doing it. I'd prefer the money be taken back by the workers at the point of theft, on the job. I'd prefer the workers who create the wealth demand it right there, instead of having it go from them (the worker wealth creators), to the shareholders, then to the government, and then redistributed back to the workers somehow. In a tactical sense, I go along with big government schemes like this sometimes, but I'd prefer it be stopped at the first redisribution, the one they never talk about, the redistribution from the worker who created the wealth to the owner who expropriates it.

[papau]

26. The Brits stopped at 105% of Dividend recieved - Sounds about right

Of course they have had changes since then - but that was a lovely rate.

:-)

Most of the EU is at twice our net take on income (we run about 18% of reported income for the top 20% for FIT)

[Terwilliger]

28. how about enforcing taxes?

make sure that those people are paying their fair share...that would include policing corporations who tend to create government that serves their tax loopholes

[DrWeird]

31. Do you know what they did in ancient greece?

They didn't have an income tax. If the people wanted to build a temple or raise an army, the rich people paid for it. If you get rich off of society you have to be prepared to give back. 87 billion dollars... how much is Gates worth?

[Loyal]

32. You can't tax money that has already

been taxed before. Would you want to tax the same principal yearly? That would be ridiculous, imho. You can tax money once the capital gain is realized.

[Deja Q]

34. But the slaves still built it

And the slaves WERE the army.

Amazing, how history repeats itself.

[Deja Q]

33. You will not find a more reasonable post than this:

For a new invention (not a product that has simply "found its market"), the inventor should keep a lot of money. He earned it. (or She, symantecs later folks.)

If a company is established (ala the likes of Frito Lay), they should be taxed very highly. The product, which still costs very high today (1), has rewarded its creator and CEOs a millionfold already. It is now time to put money back into society rather than to continue leaching off the people. Putting money back into society only helps everybody and might make more people able to buy their junk food (what an insightful yet appalling thought...)

I am not qualified to say what actual percentage is valid, though the working class and poor should pay less in taxes because they need that much just to survive to begin with and even have a little "fun". The republicans want it so that the wealthy (who already use every loophole in the book to avoid paying taxes or even to get money from the governemnt on taxes they effectively never paid in the first place) don't have to pay as much because all the wealthy, by default, have legitimately EARNed every penny (another not-always-true statement.) The republican way only introduces an imbalance. Add up everything the republicans do and they are clearly anti-working class, anti-poor. They are anti-people for allowing businesses to give out pre-interview 'personality' tests which may or may not accurately reflect the person taking the tests. If your credit isn't perfect, you can't even get an apartment or a job, let alone car insurance anymore. Republicans did this. Given the chance, republicans would make it so corporations pay no minimum wage, no benefits, no school vouchers, no public schools, no public ANYTHING. Except weapons to protect their imbalanced, petty empire...)

If corporations want to take advantage of people by paying them less, fine. Then it is up to a rational and fair government to introduce the balance of power so that the working poor don't need 3 fucking jobs per day just to survive and that the corporation doing the unethical exploitation pays more back into the system because of his abuses.

Reagan's wonderous "revolution" (as the puke called it) simply opened the door for corporations to have total control and greed. This makes Reagan and all those who believe in his philosophies whores of Satan for they are that evil and unscrupulous.

(1) How much does a 5 pound bag of raw potatoes cost ($2)? Compare that to a 1 pound bag of Lays brand potato chips ($4). You get far, far, far more product with the raw potatoes. The potato chips are an utter rip-off. I do not buy potato chips, I can make my own if I'm so inclined. There is no patent on the process, thank God (though I'm sure somebody will try to bag the patent for their own soon, just as somebody wanted to put their patent on the .JPG image file format now that it's used all over the world on the internet, fucking greedy degenerate scum-sucking bastards who don't deserve much of anything good in life...)

[GOPBasher]

35. I totally agree with your tax bracket idea.

I absolutely agree that we should have a millionaire tax bracket. I think income over $1 million/yr. should be taxed at 50%, but I don't think that same rate should apply to people making, say, $500,000/yr. I think the rates on that income should be about 40% or so.

[union_maid]

40. Eat the rich!

I'm sorry. I know that won't fly, but it does make me nostalgic. As high as the traffic will bear, I say.

[Dr Fate]

46. I dunno- it depends on how bad "the rich" want to keep fighting wars

...you cant get blood from a stone, ya know.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

47. The Goal Is Not to Overtax the Rich,

but to make sure everyone pays their fair share.The more you make, the more you pay.

[Yupster]

51. Yeah but fair share

to a lot of people means people like me pay almost nothing and people not like me should pay almost all.

Everyone seems to want something for nothing.

We want universal health care.
We want medicare and social security bailed out.
We want better schools.

and oh yeah,

We don't want to pay for any of it.

We want the rich to pay for it.

[scarface2004]

50. anything over a million gets 99% tax..

fuck 'em!

[Mairead]

56. We need a wealth tax

Anyone with net worth over $10M pays it, and it's progressive

[Yupster]

57. That would sure get the economy moving

because the 10 year treasury is just under 4 % currently.

Put a 5 % tax on wealth and a rich guy will have three choices.

1. Have his wealth slowly fritter away to the government since he won't be able to make as much as the tax rate would reduce him each year.

2. Spend his money now which would sure get the economy humming.

3. Leave the country and take his wealth with him. That would get the economy moving too, mostly to the Caribbean.

[Mairead]

77. We could always do what S. Korea did

'You can go, but your wealth stays because it's really our wealth of which you've been the beneficiary'

[kentuck]

58. It depends on how much they want to invest....?

If they wish to invest to create more jobs, their rates should be lower than if they keep all the profits as personal gain...So growing businesses should get lower rates than businesses that have maxed out on their growth and are looking just to buy up the competition.

[amazona]

67. absolutely, it should be progressive

There needs to be a point where it makes no difference whether you earn $10 million a year or $100 million a year -- it should at some point be "confiscatory." Reason: It takes away the motive to manipulate stock prices and engage in all sorts of cheating. We definitely need to find some way to limit both un-earned and earned income. I see no reason why an individual needs more than $1,000,000 a year in income. By allowing a few individuals to be able to earn these huge billionaire incomes, we have created a climate where CEOs and others have an incentive to loot, cheat, and steal. Since there is virtually no enforcement of the laws -- Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers seem in no danger of being jailed -- our only alternative if we want a stable economy and a stable investment climate is to remove the incentive.

Also, faux-American people and corporations who move their money offshore should lose the right to do business in the U.S. They should be restricted in their ability to visit the U.S. -- maybe visits should be restricted to as little as 7 days a year. In theory, all U.S. citizens must pay U.S. taxes wherever they live; in reality, this only seems to apply to the middle class. Rich people who claim the privileges of American citizenship but who do not bother to pay taxes here should not be allowed to visit New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Aspen, or any of their other party spots. That might cramp their social life a bit!

A fair compromise might be to immediately institute a tax rate of 75 percent on all earnings above $10 million a year. If anyone feels he needs more money than that, frankly, they are just damn greedy.


with my income in the high four figures, i start out paying self-employment tax of over 15 percent on my income -- the same percentage after all their deductions and fancy footwork that many millionaires pay -- and i'm damn sick of it

[outinforce]

72. What About People in Sports? Or Entertainment?

People in some occupations (sports and entertainment) have very short careers, compared to the rest of us.

By 35 or 40, a person in professional sports is pretty much past his or her prime, and cannot work in that occupation any longer.

With the exception of Madonna and Mick Jagger, most folks in the entertainment business are in the same predicament.

The way many of them handle it is to "front-load" their careers with large incomes.

Are you suggesting that a young professional sports player, or a young actor is being "greedy" because s/he is able to negotiate more than $10 million in one year in exchange for her/his talents??

[AP]

74. They can come up with ways to spread their income out, or they can

take it in other forms -- Mario Lemieux took equity ownership of his former employer. They can tak 15 year contracts that pay them each year, regardless of whether they play or not.

The advantages of progressive income tax are way too important to forego just for athletes.

However, it's also important to remember that athletes get earned income, largely. And that's why it's important to tax earned income at lower rates than unearned income. Right now, we tax people who work for a living at higher rates than people who make income passively.

[recidivist]

68. What about maximizing revenue?

I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but our governments -- federal, state, and local -- face considerable financial pressures, now and as far as the eye can see. Maximizing revenue should be a primary goal of tax policy. And the dirty little secret is, taxation has a point of diminishing returns.

People who are consumed by resentment often want "the rich" cut down to size. But very high tax rates on the rich drive income into shelters, or abroad, or underground. Or people simply choose to work less, and consume rather than invest. You get slower growth and a poorer society. That's a high price to pay for appeasing the resentment lobby.

[amazona]

73. there is no resentment lobby

A study was recently released. It showed that all classes pay approximately the same level of taxes -- around 17 percent.

With my income in the high four figures, I am paying over 15 percent just for the self-employment tax. It is not a question of resentment. It is a question of theft. My 15 percent might mean that I could actually buy medicine, instead of garlic, when I am ill. The millionaire's 17 percent means not a damn thing that she would notice in her day-to-day life.

As far as choosing to work less, I don't know how you could choose to work less than, say, the Hilton sisters. Working is already optional for the rich. If they have an ego problem and need the boost of having a job, they work -- or pretend to by playing golf and calling it serving on some board. Some people are driven to create art or to explore science or the like, and these people seem to indulge in these activities regardless of whether they are rich or poor. To assume that money is the only scorecard -- the only thing that gives one life a measure of meaning -- is a disease. And we should no longer continue to destroy our entire society to cater to people who suffer from that disease.

As far as people moving overseas, fine. But the money stays here. There should be a confiscatory exit tax on funds over $10 million. If you need more than $10 million to live in the Caribbean, then you have a disease that no amount of money will treat.

People choose to invest for many reasons, not just greed. It is hard for a pure capitalist to understand this basic fact of human nature, because it doesn't fit the disproven theory that people invest to maximize income. But rich people will invest in the "cool" new club or the "cool" new restaurant or the buzzed-about new building, not because they are guaranteed to make money -- many lose money in these efforts -- but because they want to be a part of creating something. When you assume it's just about money, you assume that all rich people are without a soul and without an ability to dream, which seems silly to me.


what on earth is the resentment lobby? is that a mean way to pick on people who believe in a fair distribution of the earth's wealth?

[outinforce]

71. How About a Plan Like This??

Suppose that we group everyone into one of two categories -- the rich and the not-rich.

An appropriate salary or income level could be established, above which a person is rich and below which a person is not rich.

Every year, the Congress and the President could pass a budget, and everyone would be required to submit, much as we all do now, an itemization of all income, including income from investments, dividends, and the like.

The IRS would then apply the cut-off to determine who was rich and who was not rich, and only the rich would be required to pay taxes to support the budget. Each rich person's taxes would be in proportion to the total number of rich people in the country that year.

For instance, if there were one million rich people, then each rich person would pay one one-millionth of the federal budget that year. If there were one thousand rich people, then each rich person would pay one one-thousandth of the federal budget.

People who would be classified as non-rich would pay nothing.

[amazona]

75. possible problem w. paying taxes as a mark of status

It's good to think out of the box like this and brainstorm but I will offer one possible problem to your suggestion -- I don't think the middle class would wish to be completely cut out of paying taxes. When you don't put in anything, you would tend to lose the ability to control the conversation about how the money is spent. The rich do not use public schools nor do they use many rural or interstate highways, just to give two examples of important projects that might be de-funded under a plan that only allowed the rich to pay taxes.

Nonetheless, there is something about your idea that I like. Under your plan, being asked to pay taxes would be a privilege and a mark of status which damn few could boast of. It would become a status symbol. Rich people would compete to get on the list. You are onto something here...the idea just needs more pondering.

many people already enjoy boasting about how much tax they pay

[AP]

78. When Americans earn incomes ranging from 0 to 500 million (or more) per...

...year, there obviously aren't two tiers of wealth.

Consider, say, a carpenter, a UPS delivery guy, and doctors and lawyers who work their asses off for a living, and make all their incomes (ranging from 20K to 5 million) as a product of their labor. Compare that to Richard Grasso who made almost 200 mill for what? And how about Bill Gates who makes millions in dividends. Or the Bush family who makes millions through sure-fire, government subsidized investments.

There are lots of different levels of wealth, and wealth is accumulated in all sorts of ways -- some of which are economically and socially productive, and some of which are simply shifts of wealth from the middle class to the already wealthy, or which are actually economically detrimental (like derivatives and, yes, insurance).

So, you need a more nuanced tax system to account for all the variations in wealth and all the different ways wealth is passed.

[ProfessorGAC]

76. Substantial Modeling Shows. . .

. . .that long term rates of over 45% tend to be a drag on economic growth. Since the model is a 90% confidence interval model, i've always used 40%.

Now remember, that this is 40% as FEDERAL TAXES PAID! So, if deductions, loopholes, and shelters bring a marginal tax rate down from, say 45%, to only 30%, then there's no drag.

The issue is not the marginal tax rate, but rather the amount actually paid. Total taxes in excess of 50% shows itself to have negative leverage on 6 or the 8 econometric outcome parameters i measure.

My take is that the system can bear marginal tax rates that require payment of 40 - 45% of all values more than 20x the national median household income. There would be zero economic drag due to taxation, and the increased revenues would reduce the deficit which has leverage on all indicators with more drastic slope and more curvature than the taxation rates.

So, we could raise these taxes, increase revenue and improve economic health by reducing fed. gov't borrowing rates.
The Professor