Bush Tax Cuts & The Repub Cult Of Affirmative Action (No, The Rich Are Not Paying Their Fair Share)

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-bush-tax-cuts-and-the_b_783285.html

David Fiderer
Financial Writer
Posted: November 14, 2010 03:41 PM

The Bush Tax Cuts and the Republican Cult of Affirmative Action

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Of course, the levels of taxable income seriously understate the disparity in wealth between these two groups. Many wealth transfers escape current taxation, because assets are passed through inheritance with a stepped up tax basis.

The rich pay all the taxes and other lies.

In terms of dollars and cents, Group A paid six times the total income taxes paid by Group B. "Aha!" say the right wing crackpots. "The rich pay all the taxes and everybody else gets a free ride." Ariel Fleischer likened the situation to a pyramid scheme, something cooked up by Bernie Madoff. It's a standard ploy of Fleischer and his ilk: Project your own dishonesty onto others.

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The "Off-Budget" results, aka Social Security, show surpluses. The "On-Budget" results, aka government operations, show deficits. The two are netted, so the On-Budget deficits don't look so bad. The reason it was done this way was because, as noted before, here and here, the Bush Administration thought that Social Security benefits were a revocable promise. And of course Bush eagerly sought to formalize that revocation. Whether you agree or disagree with Bush, here are the facts:

In 2007, the On Budget Deficit was $642 billion.
In 2007, the Social Security Surplus was $183 billion.
In 2007, the Federal deficit was $459 billion.
Source: OMB Historical Tables, p. 23

The numbers are irrefutable and all cash is fungible.

So if you look at how all the cash is paid into the same budgetary pot, which is the only honest way to do it, then the truth emerges. Group A's cash contribution of $227 billion is is not six times higher, but only 1.37 times higher than Group B's cash contribution of $166 billion. And Group A's tax rate was only 1.4% higher than the national average. (See note on calculations below.)



Sources: IRS and OMB

Again, we are not talking about fairness here, only financial transparency.

Real capitalists don't coddle millionaire crybabies.

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The real numbers illustrate one reason why, comparatively speaking, the rich are getting richer. Even for millionaires, $500,000 a year is a lot of money that they get to keep while the country's finances fall into a sinkhole of debt. So when we consider how to deal with the federal deficit, which group offers more bang for the buck? The 141,000 taxpayers in Group A, for whom the Bush tax cuts increased the deficit by about $70 billion? Or the 70.5 million taxpayers Group B, for whom the Bush tax cuts increased the deficit by about $12 billion? To real capitalists, like Warren Buffet, the answer is obvious. And it's time to stop coddling these affirmative action crybabies who say we need special protections for the rich because they pay more than their fair share.

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