Not Enough Tea in China...

 

 

"We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe."

Rudyard Kipling

 

 

Damn it! I am soooo sick of the rich not paying their "fair share"! They have been screwing us for years by sucking up all the tax benefits and allowing the middle class to sink further into the abyss. If they could just not be so stingy and pay a wee bit (or a lot) more, our financial troubles would be over! New bridges, new highways, new everything and a chicken in every pot. Okay, tongue is now out of cheek. Lets do some fact checking to see if the rich are getting away with murder or if they are indeed pulling the cart for the rest of us.

I really hate to mess this up with some facts from 2002, but I feel I must. The following facts I pulled out of a "right wing hate blog" - the United States Treasury:

 

• The top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.
• The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share.
• The top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.

Oh-oh. These facts don't back up my assertion the rich are getting a free ride. Never mind - I found some much more current data (2007) on the same site (Treasury) that should back up my claim of rich people free loading:

• The top 1 percent: They paid 40.4 percent of total reported income taxes, an increase from 39.9 percent in 2006, according to the IRS.
• The top 5 percent: They paid 60.6 percent of the country's total reported income taxes, up from 60.1 percent a year earlier.
• The top 10 percent: They paid 71.2 percent of the nation's income taxes, up from 70.8 percent a year earlier.
• The top 50 percent: They paid 97.1 percent of the nation's income taxes, up from 97 percent a year earlier.

Okay enough already about those grey poupon eating, coupon cutting plutocrats. Lets check out the working class to see how they are doing:

• The bottom 50 percent: They paid 2.9 percent of the nation's income taxes, down from 3 percent a year earlier.

Enough already! These facts don't mean anything! I will go to a former ABC guy who I think is very smart for the answer. In April of this year, John Stossel addressed this issue and came up with a surprising statistic:

"But it’s a fantasy to imagine that raising taxes on the rich will solve our deficit problem. If the IRS grabbed 100 percent of income over $1 million, the take would be just $616 billion. That’s only a third of this year’s deficit. "

These facts cannot be true. We have heard for years now from the Progressives our problem is nothing more than a redistribution issue. Even our Commander in Chief has said that (once again) this weekend. If our President says this is true, it must be true!

I give up! I really thought I could fix this by getting the rich to pay their "fair share". What I have found is this - if the rich paid their "fair share", they would be paying a whole lot less than they are paying now. I guess there is really not enough tea in China to fix our problem. Could it really just be the spending?