StrangeSox

I don't think that was said or implied?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 08:06 PM) Americans are racist! Some of them really are!

Less legally purchased guns and bullets means less guns and bullets available to steal. I think that's the concept, not that I think it's a realistic idea.

She heard Chris Rock's bullet routine and thought it was a good idea. Based on the 15 seconds this morning on either NBC or WBEZ that I heard about this, the idea is simply that higher taxes=less gun/bullet purchases=less supply on the street.

I forgot to highlight this gem from the letter earlier: "Jefferson family, with slaves" The Smithsonian has an excellent piece entitled "The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson"

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 03:06 PM) It would be nice if you could quote accurately. The statement was on the differences in rate rates between the different brackets. You know the actual definition of a progressive tax code? Now, ~8% on the low end to 32% on the high end Then ~16% on the low end to ~ 70% on the high end So the ratio of tax rates has gone from about 4.5 times higher on the top brackets to 4 times higher, and this is the big tragedy? The progression of the tax code hasn't moved nearly as much as the extremists want to make it out to be, and you just proved it with a left wing paper. Congrats. Even though the reality is that a 100% tax rate on the richest American's wouldn't cover the deficit, this apparently is what is wrong with this country.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 03:06 PM) left wing paper. also left-wing? Richard Posner and his ruling on the 2003 Iraq war protestors Kroll, Inc. and it's report on the UC-Davis pepper spray incident

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 03:09 PM) More opportunity for the rest of us? We don't have the money to just pick up where they left off (they have it all apparently), especially when the growing tax burden gets shifted further down the ladder. Yes, exactly, an increasingly smaller number of people control access the access to capital necessary to make the global economy work and for billions to subsist. This is not a good thing, but David Siedel is crying that he can't control even more.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 03:00 PM) Even with the selectiveness of the taxes selected in your article, there is still about a 400% tax rate difference between the lower and upper tax brackets. But apparently that qualifies as "barely progressive". Talk about ignoring everything else. It is hilarious that you would say this after linking the article you linked and then saying that really, really silly "47% pay not taxes!" thing that you know is an intentional distortion, especially as it relates to the article I posted. Yes, our federal tax system is barely progressive. It's barely progressive compared to many other countries, and it's barely progressive compared to historical rates in this country. When you take into account state and local taxes, it's damn near flat across the board. All of your flailing on about tax shares says nothing about that. Sure, the P99.9-P100 rate is 800% higher than the P20-40 rate (P0-20 is negative thanks to EITC), but their income is 113900% higher. See what fun you can have when you're using comparative percentages like that? That 800% difference in rate compared to the 113,900% difference in income doesn't seem so large, now does it?

Seriously, how on earth can you see this chart: and say it supports this: QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:41 PM) Individual percentage rates are also extremely higher for upper income brackets, which is the very definition of progressive. If the chart on the left is "extremely high" for upper income brackets, what the hell were the 1960's?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:48 PM) The charts you keep posting agree with what I am saying. They go higher as you go up the income brackets. Nobody in this thread has said that our total tax system isn't at least somewhat progressive. I said that it's not very progressive, because it isn't. Once you get past some logarithmic growth at the very low end, it's relatively flat. Especially compared to the 1960 rates directly next to it! None of your nonsense flailing about total tax share has anything to do with that. You've been attempting to portray the US system as highly or even "extremely" progressive by using proxy measurements that aren't solely a function of tax rate and ignoring everything else. Those charts show that our tax system is marginally progressive at the federal level (and that doesn't yet account for state and local taxes, which are typically regressive!) but also that median income has been damn near flat for decades while the top 5% income has skyrocketed. That chart, coupled with the knowledge that income gaps aren't as severe in the other countries referenced in your original response, completely explain why the top brackets account for a large share of the tax burden even with a barely progressive tax system.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:43 PM) Or what will happen is exactly what's happening in Spain, where the rich are leaving the country as fast as possible, negating pretty much every effort of Spain to rebound since they depend so heavily on those same rich people to operate. The problem you have highlighted is the easy mobility of capital and wealth in the modern age and the willingness of the select few who control an overwhelming majority of it to hold entire countries or even continents hostage to their demands that they be able to accumulate ever larger shares of wealth. The rich are so heavily relied upon to pay for everything because they have hoarded most of the wealth. Unrest is bad for business and bad for the wealthy. "Let them eat cake" does, eventually, come back to bite you.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:41 PM) Individual percentage rates are also extremely higher for upper income brackets, which is the very definition of progressive. Higher brackets pay higher individual rates, even when excluding things like EITC which would turn most of the lower brackets into negative tax rates. If by "extremely high" you mean "unusually and historically low," sure. Have you read or even skimmed the P-S paper, or is that more lib propaganda?

This is from the P-S paper: from a different P-S paper:

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:08 PM) Right. That now shows 63k added. What did it say BEFORE the revisions? If it said zero, then you'd be right that of the 86k REVISED ADDITIONS, 63k were government jobs. If it showed, say, 60k before, then only 3k of the 86k bump was government. You are confusing your numbers here. The only way you are right, is if that number was zero before the revisions. I think I get it now. From his original post: I don't have the raw, unadjusted data to compare to, but it does specifically say that initial estimates for government jobs were negative for those two months.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:31 PM) Not accepting your class warfare isn't intentionally dishonest. It is ignoring your intentional distortion of every other fact and statistic out there for reality. So, blinders it is. What is my "class warfare" "intentional distortion" of citing an academic paper by two of the biggest names in income and taxation policy? Why can't you even address the findings of that study or the actual concept of progressiveness of the tax system instead of throwing out a bunch of indirectly related "facts and statistics?" What have I distorted? I've completely accepted that, in the US, the top decile (or whatever top-cutoff you want) pays a large percentage of total taxes. This is because they also collect a large percentage of total income. This is indisputable, yet you have failed to even acknowledge a central component of the data you are presenting. PERCENTAGE SHARE OF TAXES IS A FUNCTION OF BOTH RATE AND INCOME SHARE. It's that simple, and yet you can't seem to see it.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) No, his point was this country is going in the crapper if we have to continue to rely on rich people to pay for everything. Well, since real income has stagnated for the middle class and dropped for the lower class since the 70's while it has exploded for the top, it's hard to ask anyone else but those who have been taking almost all of the wealth gains to pay for things. If we want to go with more equitable wages across the board, I'd much prefer that to redistributionist efforts.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:26 PM) This is precisely the problem with your take on this whole thing. This guy is not the equivalent of Paris Hilton. He was not just given his earnings. He worked for it - twice. I can see that and appreciate that. You apparently cannot. Yes, his "struggle" of having to lead that company is not the same as the struggle of a waitress working a second shift. But i'm not completely discounting the work involved in either case. You are. You seem to think he's just sitting on his yacht playing golf while making business decisions and raking in the money. That might be what he's done the last 5 years, but not the first 40. So i'm ok with him b****ing about having to pay for someone else given the work he put in for some many years. I can see and appreciate that he worked for his money. I'm not asking him to live in the slums.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:24 PM) The rich pay higher total shares, higher individual shares, higher percentages of income, and pretty much any other statistic you want to throw out there. As of 2009, the poorest 50% pay 1.85% effective income tax rate. The top 10% pay over 10 times that percentage of their income in taxes. In what world is having over a 1000% higher rate of income taxes paid not progressive? The world where you are actually talking about tax rates, which is what "progressiveness" of the system refers to, because everything you're flinging out to avoid actually addressing the progressiveness of the tax system is a function of multiple inputs, progressiveness being one of them. You know why the poorest 50% pay 1.85% effective income tax rate? Because that's pretty damn close to what their share of the income is and they can't afford to live if they paid any more. That's why I posted the GINI index, which you ignored. That's why multiple people have pointed out, repeatedly, that you're conflating two separate things. Tax share-by-decile is a function of both rates (progressiveness) and income distribution. TSBD=%R*%I. If %I is really, really high, then %R can be relatively low and TSBD will still be high. Either there's some mental block that is preventing you from seeing this (Morton's Demon), or you're being intentionally dishonest.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:14 PM) And taxes that the US taxpayer pays too. Those aren't the only two taxes that rich people pay. but, if you'd bother to read the P-S paper (more lib propaganda?!) or any of the other studies on the total tax system in the US, you'd see that, outside of FIT, the system is damn near flat if not actually regressive depending on the state your reside in.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:18 PM) I just had someone explain to me that apparently people don't pay taxes because they have zero income. Well I'm glad you admit how dishonest and silly your first post was. Arbitrarily excluding certain tax categories (in your case, every single tax in the country but one) isn't the way to make a good argument.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:11 PM) So 47% of filers have no income? When compared to the income of the top .1%, it's more or less a rounding error.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 02:17 PM) Of course this thread would have about five posts in it if that weren't the case. Zing! But do you get why paying a higher share of total taxes says nothing directly about how progressive the system is?