You miss the point. It's the distance between the rich and the middle class that is widening, because of unfair tax rates.
and again, the gap is not the concern, the actual welfare of the people is the concern. there is a huge gap between how much a major league minimum baseball guy makes, and how much A-rod makes. both are doing fine. the gap is not the issue.
It's widening simply because the rich have higher salaries, capital gains, dividends, and interest income. If the rich guy has $100 million in assets and increases those assets by just 1% in a simple savings account his worth before taxes increases by $1 million. If the middle class guy has assets of $300k and brings home $50k annually there's no way he can come close to the $1 million. There's two scenarios that would stop the widening. One would be to tax the wealthy at over 95% on all income. Is that what you propose? The other would be if the economy collapsed and the rich lost most of their assets. Do you know of another scenario that would stop it?
It is consumer spending that will end the recession; not government spending. The economy is driven by consurmer spending. Only Keynesian economists put a lot of faith in government spending. Market economists do not. So all those economists you refer too represent liberal economic policies.
You're almost right. They have FAR MORE capital gains, dividends, and interest income. The reason that they have pulled away since the Bush tax cuts is because taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest income were slashed. It's inherently unfair to people who work for a living and whose salary is mostly from salary or small business profits that are taxed at maximum rates. Sure we get a small break on our modest investments capital gains, dividends, and interest income, but it is a small part of the middle class income. Most of middle class income is salary and is taxed at high rates. But the immensely wealthy idle rich, whose money almost entirely comes from capital gains, dividends, and interest income, get a hugely discounted tax rate on the overwhelming bulk of their income. They are making out like the bandits they are during what is hard times for most of America. Most of their income is taxed at the lowest rate. The tax structure is slanted to benefit the mega-rich.
have you ever owned a business ?? Go start one and be sure to pay all the same as you make . Then try to buy supplies to run your company .
That's right. That's why the shrinking middle class and income gap is so bad. You want to increase consumer spending? Cut payroll taxes instead of concentrating so much of the tax cuts on so few. The folks making 60-70 thou a year are going to pump that money back into the economy quicker.
You missed my point entirely. Even if we went back to the Clinton tax rate the distance between the rich and the middle class will continue to rise enormously and the only way to stop that is a top tax rate of 95% plus on all sources of income. Again, I ask you, is this what you propose? Otherwise, as long as we are not in a depression, the gap between the middle class and rich will always increase. Will it not? More importantly, going back to the Clinton tax rate is not going to help the middle class one iota. We can argue appropriate tax rate fairness all day long but it's a subjective issue and would be futile. Do you think it's wise to raise taxes in the current economic environment?
No, it would continue to rise slowly. The gap has widened significantly since the Bush tax cuts and it is snowballing with the highest gap ever recorded this year. Because of tax inequality. How do you know this? What source establishes this? Try to pay attention. What I proposed is taxing all income at the same rate and stop giving tax breaks to those who make the vast bulk of their income on dividends, capital gains, and interest. Income is income. Why should the salaries and business profits of working middle class people people be taxed at far higher rates than the investment incomes of the very rich? Why do you decline to address this? It's not subjective at all. It's what we do here. I think its proper to allow the temporary tax cuts to expire as was always a part of the legislation. Cutting income while raising expenses is irresponsible for governments just as it is for individuals. The republican answer of just borrowing money and letting future generations pay for it is folly. Some taxes must be paid or we will never pay down the debt. Do you advocate borrowing money from China to cover spending instead of simply paying for things as we go.
