Jul 312009
From the Tax Foundation
According to IRS data, the top 1% of income tax payers now pay *more* than the entire bottom 95% of taxpayers.
What this means is, if those 1.5% – 1.4 million people – decided “enough” and quit… the tax revenues would drop by 40.4%. About 0.47% of the entire US population pays nearly *half* of the bill for the rest.
<> Galt’s “Strike” is getting closer every day. I must admit I’d find it amusing if that top 1% decided to rest on their accomplishments for a year… take no income, cash out their interest-earnings accounts and such, live off their savings.
5 Responses to “Those greedy rich bastards”
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If you factored in things like the socialist government program called “cash for clunkers” it would be even more lopsided.
What this means is that government, at all levels, is stealing too much money.
Oh I think the top 1% may be going “Galt” already. See the post below from tigerhawk – note the personal income tax drop. Now it is August it will be interesting to see the year over year July figures and see if the 2Q trend continues.
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-red.html
And the progressive in government ant to tax the “rich” even more? That makes absolutely no sense.
That chart is very misleading… Isn’t nearly all of this change just because the top 1% are making an ever-larger share of the nation’s total income, while the bottom 95% are getting an ever-smaller share? The top 1% are benefiting more and more all the time from our nation’s lax regulatory structure and minimal social services… Meanwhile, incomes for the rest of us are staying flat, or decreasing… This situation is not sustainable… Ever-more-lopsided income disparities are far more likely to lead to a revolution by the masses, than a “strike” by the ultra-rich. Why would they strike when they are accumulating so much wealth? Besides, since nearly all of their wealth doesn’t even come from their own labor, but other people’s, through companies they own, they CAN’T strike, except by, say, giving all the profits from their money-making assets to charity, for example – but if they did this, they would be giving away far more money to the poor than the government is presently taking from them in taxes.
>Isn’t nearly all of this change just because the top 1% are making an ever-larger share of the nation’s total income,
Assuming that’s true… if you want to change that, then you want to make it easier for *more* peopel to mak it rich. The super-rich will always find ways of gaming the system. But the system is currently set up so that the regular-rich, the well-to-do and even the middle-class can’t easily make a go of it. Leave businesses alone. Chop out the strangling bureauocracy of regulation. Abolish business taxes.
>The top 1% are benefiting more and more all the time from our nation’s lax regulatory structure and minimal social services
“Minimal social services?” What’re you smoking? See here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/budget07/categoryPie07.gif
> Why would they strike when they are accumulating so much wealth?
So they can accumulate more. Put things on hol,d for a year or two, let the social order go into upheaval, and either the US will reform the tax system in a way that actually makes sense – such as drastically cutting federal spending married with abolishing corporate and income taxes – or it will simply collapse. Either way’s good in the long run.
> they CAN’T strike
Sure they can. The stockholders run the companies. If 51% of the stockholders – often enough, this percentage can be found on the board of directors – decide to put the company on hiatus, it goes on hiatus.