Sharing is Caring
July 21, 2008
The Wall Street Journal wrote a love letter to the rich and the people who wish they were also rich today. For a taste of the message, see the tax stats below:
I've got a boner for the Wall-Mart family!
A few notes for the record:
1% of America earns 21% of the income and pays 39% of the taxes, thus barely getting by on what little is left for their meager estates and barely functioning private jet fleets.
the next 4% only earn a piddly 14% of the income! and they pay 21% of the taxes!!! At that rate there will be helicopter dealerships going out of business all across the country…
Wait a second… what does that mean about the next 5%? Does that mean that they (gasp!) pay slightly less than their “fair share” of taxes?!!? Dear, sweet Wall Street Journal, why do you deny us the rest of the relevant data?
Also note that 1% of Americans are over 3 million millionaires. Yet the top 400 of those paid quite a bit less than their “fair share”… curious. I guess that’s why the bush campaign didn’t run out of cash when the next 2,999,600 richest saw their taxes climb?
Needless to say, I am a bit skeptical of WSJ’s analysis both regarding its depth, its consideration of ramifications, and its, shall we say, thesis-driven aspect.
1) KCF’s right, these percentages don’t make sense
2) we’re talking about personal income tax, not corporate tax, so is the author mad that he won’t be able to buy a third yatch?
3) Bush recreated the uber-rich and legacy rich (its what he knows, right?) and restoring some sense to the tax code could maybe bring some of the lower class into the middle class, and stop the hemmoraging from the latter. But I’m of the governing philosophy that we should tax with relative fairness – the worker and the capitalist – and if we lowered middle class taxes, repealed the AMT, cut the corporate tax, and raised personal rich income tax, we would accomplish that.