tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post114617134465124964..comments2024-01-03T05:23:36.046-08:00Comments on The Citizens: Secrets and Tax LiesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-87526782698093686602013-03-13T23:21:10.766-07:002013-03-13T23:21:10.766-07:00buy valium drug classification of valium - buy val...<a href="http://cardiffmiller.com/pubs/buyvalium/#91784" rel="nofollow">buy valium</a> drug classification of valium - buy valium online no prescription ukAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-1147709558146242482006-05-15T09:12:00.000-07:002006-05-15T09:12:00.000-07:00I have been following a site now for almost 2 year...I have been following a site now for almost 2 years and I have found it to be both reliable and profitable. They post daily and their stock trades have been beating<BR/>the indexes easily.<BR/><BR/>Take a look at Wallstreetwinnersonline.com<BR/><BR/>RickJAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-1146240515803847722006-04-28T09:08:00.000-07:002006-04-28T09:08:00.000-07:00You are correct Bob, that rising fuel costs contri...You are correct Bob, that rising fuel costs contribute to the rising cost of living and will push up costs (reducing purchasing power) right away rather than slowly. But in addtion to that is the normal rate of inflation (that is higher than the standard metrics indicate) that also eats away at incomes over time. So a family of 4 earning $50K 10 years ago in the state of California was good money. Now it is barely above poverty line. So, you are correct that I was too free wheeling with my terms. <BR/><BR/>RBR makes an very good point that people misunderstand that it is dollars, not individuals that are taxed. A conservative once told me, surprisingly enough, that if I got stuck paying taxes, that was a good thing because it meant I was making money. I supposed that is one way to look at it. <BR/><BR/>The other nasty implication in most conservative arguments is that the poor should subsidize the rich. Why? Because the poor are poor because they are lazy. The idea is to use the tax code to punish the poor and reward the rich. Bush makes no bones about that.USWesthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06058471452288827920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-1146228976812326202006-04-28T05:56:00.000-07:002006-04-28T05:56:00.000-07:00>Mr. Moore doesn't say that rising fuel prices >an...>Mr. Moore doesn't say that rising fuel prices <BR/>>and inflation are pushing up costs of living <BR/>>while slowly eating away at the purchasing power <BR/>>of a dollar. <BR/><BR/>This sounds like there's two separate things you're describing, but I only understand one. That is, it seems to me that rising costs of living reduce the purchasing power of a dollar right away -- the dollar buys less of the stuff I need. Is there another effect that's "slowly eating away" at the purchasing power of a dollar, in addition? If so, can one of you economically-minded types explain it to me?<BR/><BR/>Yes, the "top 5% pay more than 50%" is a statistical manipulation no matter how you cut it. If I understand the statistics correctly, a _flat_ tax rate would have the top 10% pay 30% of the taxes. (To winnow out what the percentages meant, I looked at the definition of a related statistic <A HREF="http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_dict_xrxx.asp?def_code=445" REL="nofollow">here</A> .)<BR/><BR/>The sort of obvious counter-argument to the undertone of "top x% should pay x%" is "what percentage should the x% of people who make the _least_ money pay?" How can they be expected to pay the same _amount_of_money_, if they've got less income?<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, the CIA Factbook's <A HREF="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2047.html" REL="nofollow">household income or consumption by percentage share</A> (which I think is what RbR is referring to) shows that those values don't vary as much from country to country as I'd have thought. However, there are some weird outliers: Colombia's percentages are 34.3% and 7.9%, both high (the bottom extremely so). Japan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Slovakia apparently have very uniform populations (21.7/4.8, 24.2/4.2, 21/4, 18.2/5.1), certainly more than I'd expected.<BR/><BR/>In Swaziland, the top 10% should be paying _at least_ half the taxes: they make 50.2% of the money. (The bottom 10% make 1%.) <BR/><BR/><A></A><A></A>// posted by<A><B> </B></A><A HREF="http://thecitizens.blogspot.com/2006/04/secrets-and-tax-lies.html#comments" REL="nofollow" TITLE="bob dot wieman at bris dot ac dot uk">Bob</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6762928.post-1146173061431492212006-04-27T14:24:00.000-07:002006-04-27T14:24:00.000-07:00Great points, US West. Something I've always thou...Great points, US West. Something I've always thought was a particularly sinister comparison was when conservatives argue that it is unfair that the top 5% of the income distribution pays more than half of the taxes. The extreme implication is that to be fair, each percentile group of tax payers should pay an equal share of the taxes. So the top 1% would pay 1% of the total taxes. No one has come out and suggested that but their logic of complaint stongly implies that is their goal. <BR/><BR/>The problem with that is that the top end of the income distribution controls much more of the total national income than the bottome end. For example, according to the CIA World Fact Book (see link to the right), the top 10% of the US income distribution accounts for about 30% of the total consumption in the country. The bottom 10% of the distribution accounts for less than 2%. And those numbers were from 1997...I'm sure the skew is much worse now. In a sense, conservatives are saying, "Why should I pay more taxes (note: in absolute terms) than poor people just because I'm rich?"<BR/><BR/>Essentially what the conservatives are calling for is a tax system in which that third of the total economy that is controled by the richest 10% of the population will get taxed at a lower rate per dollar than the rest of the economy. <BR/><BR/>The conservatives' spin is based on the fallacy that people are taxed. People are not taxed. Dollars are taxed. If there are a lot of dollars collected into one person's account, that person is going to pay a lot of taxes.  <BR/><BR/><A></A><A></A>// posted by<A><B> </B></A><A HREF="http://thecitizens.blogspot.com/" REL="nofollow" TITLE="">Raised By Republicans</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com