The Top 10% of income earners paid 71% of federal income tax

Originally posted by poet1b
military to protect International Corporations abroad, which almost exclusively benefits the rich.

Have you benefited from the Internet, which is a creation of the military and large corporations?

well I see the numbers and well it is a nice warm fuzzy feeling for sure knowing that people with a higher income are paying their INCOME taxes....but how about all the other taxes out there....so just say out of a population of a 100,000 smokers pay 10cents on a pack of cigs which cost 1dollar...now 10% of them are from the higher 10% income earners....so those higher earners paid $1000 dollars...where those lower earners now paid $9000 dollars....so really who contributed more in the over all picture......

Now i know it is a simple analogy....but if you look into the income tax issue....the numbers being presented do not present the whole picture now does it....the percentage of tax paid to income earned is not in there....it is a percentage of overall wealth and what was contributed...I don't be grudge anyone being rich....but come on....don't try to make like they are the saviors of the tax based society that exists......OMG.

the world is in a sad state and it is in many ways thanks to the greed of the rich that is leaving us in such a bad state....and it is not only the rich who create Jobs....it in many many instances the low end small business creating the work for people...the small time entrapaneur...the small shop...the muffin makers....it is actually big corporation poutting people out on the street by putting these small businesses out of work ....by driving down the price from the supply chain.

perspective is everything here.....if people are not working then they are not contributing income tax.....Income tax is a joke.....why should i be taxed at all for being a productive individual...when the very items i purchase are taxed....Well you all can be owned....but i choose not to...and the only way to get points across to these people who lead the societies we live in is through a complete and utter tax revolt.....STOP PAYING TAXES.

learn to barter for you goods.....the goverment hates bartering...you know why....because there are no taxes involved....use the barter system...you have somethng to offer and someone will have something you need in return....the more this system gets used the better off you will be....stop supporting the war machine as it makes us all guilty of murdering our fellow man.

reply to post by Skyfloating


come on sky what kind of cop out is that....yes it was used by Darpa....but if the money had not been going to the military are you saying that the internet would not have been developed......come on.

I used to use the bbs service before the internet...and me and my friends our selves were coming up with all kind of ingenius ways to go modem to modem on our old ibm 8088s So in you honest opinion supporting war machines is the only way that we as humans will see new developments in this world of ours....I would venture to say that it is because of the secrecy hidden deep within the military and corporate greed that we have not even advanced even further than we are today......because we have closed systems where information is not shared it keeps us further locked into the past...you should know this from when you see the difference in development when thing go to an open source method and how the software changes.....just take a look at Blender and for free you can have access to a great 3d rendering software.

i would say that if it wasn't for the miltary the internet probably would have been introduced well before the time when it did hit the world.....because when it was unleashed into the public domain that is when the internet soared.

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


Its lazy when you refuse to do your own research and verify if what someone is saying is right. You can check the figures yourself, and f I am wrong prove me wrong, instead of demanding that I provide you information easy to find.

reply to post by poet1b


Like when you cry "bogus" and lie about facts presented? And yes you lie.

ETA: You can't answer my question that I've asked you countless times now because you know it #'s your lame argument. Keep pulling numbers out of your #

Originally posted by plube

come on sky what kind of cop out is that....yes it was used by Darpa....but if the money had not been going to the military are you saying that the internet would not have been developed......come on.

Not only the internet but most of modern civilization is the result of the competitiveness of military and corporate endeavor. Without competition, no progress.

reply to post by Skyfloating

Not only the internet but most of modern civilization is the result of the competitiveness of military and corporate endeavor. Without competition, no progress.

While this statement is not untrue, it alarmingly ignores the vast contributions that individuals have made to modern civilization. Military's and corporations are not the only ones who compete and push forth progress. Indeed, long before Apple Computer became a corporation there were the two Steve's and another partner working out of a garage. We fly in airplanes today because individuals - not corporate or military - invented airplanes. The automobile, of which many of us benefit from today, was not a result of a corporation or the military and it is demonstrably so that both corporations and the military benefited from the non-corporate or military individual who made their most worthy of acknowledgment contributions to the world.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Actually the internet was created primarily by the government. The military is part of the government.

More importantly, it was created by individuals, some who worked for corporations, some at universities, and some at publicly funded research centers.

If anything, corporations have been more of a hindrance.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by DenyObfuscation

 

Its lazy when you refuse to do your own research and verify if what someone is saying is right. You can check the figures yourself, and f I am wrong prove me wrong, instead of demanding that I provide you information easy to find.

All evidence in this debate has been presented from the Heritage Foundation in the OP and multiple sources since. All of which has been declared by royal decree "bogus". Your only attempt to supply evidence for your contention of "bogus" numbers has been factual but irrelevant. I don't deny that kids have savings accounts and interest is subject to income tax. It doesn't figure into the mix. There are all sorts of income types subject to tax however you need to understand how all the data are compiled.

The Tax Foundation

The IRS data below include all of the 137.98 million tax returns filed in 2009 that had a positive AGI, not just the returns from people who earned enough to owe taxes. These figures exclude those tax returns filing a return merely to receive a stimulus check.

Notice the AGI? Adjusted Gross Income is a tax return figure.

Including all tax returns that had a positive AGI, taxpayers with an AGI of $159,643 or more in 2009 constituted the nation's top 5 percent of income earners. To break into the top 1 percent, a tax return had to have an AGI of $343,947 or more, which was 10 percent lower than the 2008 threshold of $380,354. The income threshold to break into the top 0.1 percent also fell dramatically from 2008 to 2009, from about $1.8 million in 2008 to $1.4 million in 2009.

Visit the site and you'll find plenty of evidence for opposition to the current system, the real lines between "haves and have nots". It's not pretty. I just believe in being truthful in these discussions.

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by poet1b
military to protect International Corporations abroad, which almost exclusively benefits the rich.

Have you benefited from the Internet, which is a creation of the military and large corporations?

You mean the internet was created by government? Yes ...specifically DARPA.

Interesting in the context of this debate that much of the technology that has served as the foundation for modern capitalists and thier wealth was funded by taxpayer dollars.

Does Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg pay royalties to the US government seeing as the foundation of Facebook technology is prequisited on the Internet?

I have often read about how much of NASA originated technology changed the world we live in.

The list is very, very long. From the internet to transportation to medical research...Government is not all bad.

Is it possible that some tiny portion of the resultant wealth from taxpayer funded, government innovation, might be returned to government in order to fund future innovations? Where another generation of capitalists might further innovate and strive for an equal chance of joining the wealthy atop the backs of government?

Or do the benefits of that taxpayer money only flow in one direction today? Upwards?

Seems an unhealthy recipe for income inequality? As well as a recipe for halting the advancements and growth the USA has enjoyed in the past half-century. Just some thoughts.

mabey they are, but they still pay lower percentage of their entire income. this has no argument. the middle class and poor people still pay they most taxes for what they make.

reply to post by TheGovernmentlovesyou

mabey they are, but they still pay lower percentage of their entire income. this has no argument. the middle class and poor people still pay they most taxes for what they make.

Actually, that's a popular misconception. The argument is not from me but the facts of the matter.
Click here for the Tax Policy Center Data

ETA: This has income, payroll and all federal tax categories
I've never seen any stats indicating that poor people are "just lazy" but I do see a lot more poor than we tend to recognize.

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


And the evidence presented by the Heritage Foundation is a cherry picked distortion of who pays what in taxes, and doesn't consider at all who benefits the most from tax expenditure.

A large portion of people in the bottom half of the wage earners are students or retirees who will, or already have paid much higher tax rates during the periods of their lives when they are earning the most.

It is very likely that most of the people in the top ten percent of tax payers will only earn that much money for a few decades in their lives, and with economic volatility, they will probably spend even less time in that tax bracket.

The top ten percent of wage earners are not wealthy, or rich, they are upper middle class who wind up paying too much in taxes while the super rich the top .001%, succeed in paying much lower rates on taxes in propensity to their wealth.

This Heritage report is nothing but propaganda presenting a distorted picture of tax distribution.

reply to post by poet1b


It's not just Heritage. All the different sources say the same thing. How is top 10% determined? Man up ? Isn't that how you put it?

ETA: Your entire post and almost everything you have said in this entire thread is proven false by all of the evidence given to you, you simply refuse to accept the truth. Gratuitous assertions proven time and again false.

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


Everything I have said is true, and you have yet to prove anything I have pointed out to be wrong. This is a lie you continuously repeat.

Th heritage foundation numbers are cherry picked nonsense that distorts the picture, and fails to consider who these income earners are, and what portion of their lives are they in these tax brackets.

And it fails to look at the tax rates of the truly rich.

That people defend this propaganda proves what fools they are.

reply to post by poet1b

I have shown you multiple times that "kids have savings accounts" is irrelevant. All you have proven is that interest is taxable.You need to substantiate your false claims or continue to look as you do. How is top 10% determined? It's way beyond Heritage, I've cited multiple sources.

reply to post by poet1b


It is not irrelevant that kids are counted as income earners, especially students with jobs, and this throws all the numbers off.

You continue to ignore the facts.

Some information I believe is relevent....


Lawmakers make laws.
No, these laws are not required learing in schools.
Lawmakers make laws.
No, no child born today will live long enough to learn the number of existing laws or what they all are.
Lawmakers make laws.
No. If we locked up all existing lawmakers and did not let them out until they wrote down all the existing laws word for word collectively from memory they would not live long enough to accomplish the task.
Lawmakers make laws.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world.

....

Number of inmates. 1920 to 2006.[1][2] (absolute numbers) General US population grew only 2.8 times in the same period, but the number of inmates increased more than 20 times


en.wikipedia.org...

Lawmakers make laws.

source

Lawmakers make laws.

reply to post by ILikeStars


All the more reason to emphasize the fact that legislation is not law, at best it is evidence of law, at worst it is a travesty of justice. If legislation were law the power of judicial review would be worthless. Legislation is not law.