Scylla, I’d take you more seriously if your posts weren’t so flawed.
For instance, according to Fedstats, the entry point for the top 1% is 250,000. Moreover, the Mean for the top 1% according to 470,000 for 2001. Make me proud, find out what the median is.
Who wants to take over/under at a cool 2 million?
http://ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032002/perinc/new11_001.htm
So Ace, you gonna answer my questions?
Ace:
You’re looking at the income of male individuals only.
I haven’t seen anyone address this, and it seems an important component of the “Republicans are Evil” philosophy, so I’ll take a stab.
The attitude of the average Republican - certainly mine, anyway - is not “screw the environment, let’s go club some baby seals,” contrary to popular belief. We - and any Pubbie here who disagrees with me can pipe up - believe the environment is important, but that there are other important issues too, which sometimes take precedent.
One common belief amongst proponents of environmentalism and public health (which seem to go hand in hand) seems to be that you can never go to far with any idea. A good example is the arsenic debate of a couple years ago. If only allowing 60 ppm of arsenic in our water is a good idea, then allowing 30 ppm must be better, 10 ppm better yet, 1 ppm wonderful, 0.1 ppm orgasmic, and so on. Republicans, generally speaking, were content with the current standard because we thought that it was perfectly safe, and that to go further would cause more problems than it would cure. Democrats felt that the lower the tolerance level the better, and any negative side effects of lowering the tolerance level would be worth it. This schism between Republican and Democratic philosophy can be seen in almost every environmentalist issue out there.
Other issues are more complicated. In some places, if an endangered species is discovered in an area, the government has the right to confiscate that land. This creates a tendency for land owners to kill any endangered animals they find on their territory, before the government finds out and swoops in to steal their land. But if anybody brings up the fact that some of these laws actually encourage the destruction of endangered species, they must not care for the animals. Heck, they probably stomp kittens in their spare time.
Other times, Republicans simply look at environmental programs, and determine that they’re ineffective. Money is being spent, no results are being seen, so why keep spending the money? Of course, the second you propose cutting the program, you’re Evil (or Stupid, let’s not forget that one). This isn’t unique to environmentalism, either - it’s an act of God to get any program ended, anywhere, no matter how useless it is.
The question, generally speaking, is, “To what extent can we care for the environment before the negative side effects outweigh the benefits?” Reasonable people can have differing opinions. Of course, in some people’s minds, it’s easier to just think of the Republicans as environment hating, tree cutting, spotted owl-shooting, oil pumping banes of nature, than to have an actual discussion involving real-live facts.
Jeff
Of course I am. White males too; who’d you think the Republicans were? Black women?
No, I’m not going to get into your very silly questions on what consitutes a loophole; whatever the qualified folks think a loophole is. When did I become an Estate Tax Lawyer, sloopy? You can craft the legislation, I just want co-authoring credit…
Other than basking in authorship’s glow, my province is the noticing of obvious problems, and suggesting obvious solutions, and to shake people until they agree to do something instead of picking their collective noses and lining their collective pockets. Judging by your subdued response, I garner that you’ve seen the merit of the propsal, and we’re moving on to haggling about the details! Wonderful news!
Anyone more fluent in statistics please correct me if I’m wrong, but assuming some sort of decreasing function of frequency vs income, wouldn’t the median have to be lower than the mean?
Meaning I’ll give you 10:1 odds on “under”. 
Jeff
Ace:
I’m sorry, black women can’t earn money?
You pulled the wrong cite. Big deal. Don’t be an ass about it and try to pretend your correct.
Well Ace, unless you actually define your terms, you don’t have a policy or a solution, do you?
If your point is that you don’t have the slightest clue and are talking out of your ass, then I agree completely, and it goes to my continuing thesis regarding your arguments.
I’ll call it Ace’s Law:
If you have your head completely up your ass, keep your mouth shut
[Moderator Hat ON]
Do not directly tell other posters that their head is up their ass whilst in GD. Thank you.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Well, color me a bit skeptical about whether the computerization of records is going to make it more likely that records can be successfully preserved across generations. Hell, if those records were saved in an earlier version of MS WORD, they are probably unreadable already!
But, hey, when the conservatives trot out this workability excuse as the reason for deciding not to get rid of the step-up after all, I hope to see you out there fighting it touth-and-nail.
[Note that the other problem is, as noted, that even getting rid of the step-up will only get back a small fraction of the revenues from the estate tax.]
december, it does seem that Krugman’s original column misled people which is why he quickly wrote a correction. Whether the correction was also misleading is much more debatable. The point that Krugman is making is that people who heard about the rate cuts and expected it back on their taxes and then got the rebate and thought it was an additional cut would be surprised to find that it was just a payment on that rate cut. Krugman could have done a better job of all this but compared to the out-and-out lies that the WSJ publishes on their editorial page with surprising regularity, this is rather mild.
As for the AMT, I would need further evidence to show me whether or not it really only undoes a small portion of the tax cut for the middle class. As for the expectation that it will be adjusted, well one might expect this but then this will be an additional cost that, even if some opponent of the tax cut may have already noted, is presumably not in the calculation on the budget that were actually used in the debate. [And, why didn’t the Reps put this into their original cuts instead of, say, the repeal of the estate tax or the other cuts for the wealthy?]
Well, just for the fun of posting my first-ever response to agree with anything that El Jeffe has said, yes the median will be lower than that mean value.
jshore:
Why? It’s only going to be that way for a year. The workability isn’t an issue, because like everything else involving taxes, it’s up to the owner of the issue to prove cost basis. The government doesn’t research cost basis nowadays, the individual has to establish it, and be able to stand behind his proof or risk fines as well as having his cost basis set to zero.
It works right now, and I don’t see why anything changes if the owner dies.
Finally, you can get historic cost basis and records from any number of commercial sites across the web, and if you own an individual security you can usually go to the transfer agent’s web site, log in, and receive the entire transaction history and ownership record of any certificated stock you own.
If it’s held in street name, the firm can supply you with records for a modest fee.
I know you’re suspicious, but it’s really not a problem for securities anymore.
There are of course a few exceptions where it will be difficult or impossible to obtain basis, but those same problems exist now with those securities.
Probably my #1 pet peeve:
(from the link provided by Ace0Spades)
El Jeffe: Yeah, I muffed the math on that one. The median should indeed be below the mean.
OK, what’s the cutoff for the top .1%? .01%? I’ll take the national statistic and the white male statistic, though I do think the latter statistic is way more accurate. Why should we muddy the 1 percenters true cut off with the depressed income of minorities and women that is held down by those same 1 percenters? It’s an artificial depression of the cutoff, IMHO.
Sqweels: I think you’re on to something there. The Republican attitude towards pregnant, the environment, and to some extent the poor is a transparently evil one. That may be why they haven’t rushed to post their defense, eh?
Two points here:
First of all, my examples weren’t spin. There are plenty of people with high incomes who piss away every dime in their paychecks (and thus don’t leave estates), and there are plenty of thrifty people with moderate incomes who end up with large estates. Why do you want to penalize the latter group?
Your characterization of me as some kind of latter-day Richie Rich is inappropriate. My grandfather was a bus driver with a 6th grade education; my father a middle-management type who went to college on the G.I. Bill. My wife’s and my income allow us to live comfortably, but not lavishly. We are still renting. We do not own a yacht or even a canoe. We do not belong to a country club. We do not have a maid. When we fly, we fly coach. Simply put, we are not rich. I am not complaining, nor am I trying to poor-mouth you. We are doing well. But we are a long way from having an estate in the Hamptons.**
News Flash! You aren’t. You might be living comfortably – you will be able to afford a decent (but not extravagant) home and a good car, you’ll be able to buy a round for your buddies without breaking a sweat, you can take your wife to a nice restaurant from time to time – but Robin Leach isn’t knocking at your door, either.
This is particularly true when you take cost-of-living issues into account. I live in the New York City suburbs, and work in the city. Prices here are, quite frankly, amazingly high. If I had the same household income in East Bumfuck, Iowa, I really would be rich – I could easily afford a gigantic house and could probably afford to hire domestic help. But in New York, it just ain’t happening.**
Those dollars would do the economy more good if invested. Your solution discourages investment over the exemption amount.
Ace:
You’re kidding, right?
If you just go ahead and arbitrarily chop out 60-70% of the population out of your sample, you’re not going to have accurate figures. You’re figures will be meaningless in terms of average income for the population. It will only be useful in terms of the sample. GIGO.
By what methodology do you excude the incomes of women and minorities? I think it is an egregiously prejudicial assumption to make that neither women nor minorities achieve 1st percentile status in terms of income.
So, 3 million is your cap of where the evil rich people begin, eh? There are people in this country that are rich. You seem so put out by this. What should we do, just keep taxing them right back into the middle class? That’ll teach the bastards.
**
You just hate rich people don’t you. This thread could be titled “Are rich people evil”. As has been pointed out many times, being in the top 1% of household income doesn’t mean rich. $200K of household income is easily obtainable in many fields. Also, in a lot of areas, you need this much money to be able to afford a house and a nice standard of living. These people are not all buying multiple yachts.
**
You must be just delighting in the bear market we are in now, aren’t you. All those “rich” people losing money. It must make you very happy. :rolleyes:
Are you even bothering to read this thread? Scylla and I have been picking up the estate tax question, and with it issues of rich/poor (at least, that’s the closing thing to a rich/poor question I’ve seen in this thread). ELJeffe provided a post about the environment. And the UNFPA thing was just raised.
Incidentally, the left-wing site that wrote what sqweels posted got a few facts wrong. If you read the Washington Post story, you’ll find that the investigative team is not indicated to be part of the State Department, and that Colin Powell thinks funding the UNFPA was inappropriate. You’ll find that the investigative team found the UNFPA did not knowingly promote forced abortions and sterilizations; this does not rule out the possibility (which Powell appears to endorse) that the UNFPA’s activities indirectly help China implement its policy. You’ll also find that the funds were given to other family-planning groups instead of the UNFPA.
Is this a bad policy call? Maybe. But I think it’s something that reasonable people can disagree over. I certainly don’t think it’s eeeeeevilll.
A brief recap of this thread:
Page 1
December starts thread.
Lots of generic discussion about evilness and Republicans.
General consensus that Republicans in general are not evil, though Ann Coulter certainly is.
Ace disagrees with consensus.
Discussion of “Republicans are evil” vs. “Democrats are stupid.”
Examples of evil Republicans and evil Democrats given.
I hijack the thread with the Gore/Internet thing.
Page 2
The Gore/Internet discussion goes into overdrive.
Sporadic discussion of slurs used by both Democrats and Republicans on their opponents.
First mention of the estate tax.
First mention of Bush tax cut.
Page 3
Ace tries to defend his notion that the richest 1% want to “subjugate the political, economic, and judicial spheres.”
Discussion of “why are you a Republican.”
Discussion of the estate tax. Ace claims not to understand the terminology. I provide an explanation.
Brief forays into CFR, think-tanks, media mergers and farm policy.
Discussion of Republican campaign styles. Styles compared to prominent Democratic strategists.
Page 4
Brief foray into the meaning of the term “conservative.”
More on campaign styles. Somehow, Karl Rove = all Republicans, but James Carville = just one man.
Still more on the estate tax.
First mention of the environment.
Discussion of what “rich” means.
Page 5
Discussion of income statistics
Brief foray into the environment.
More on what “rich” means.
First mention of the UNFPA.
All this, and no Godwin yet. Wow.
Whoa, there DCU: Are you reading the thread? You’ve adressed a marginal issue of poverty; glossed over the damage done by Republicans done to the environment – no doubt you thought the ANWAR proposal was honest and sensible – and completely failed to address the evil of forcing abortions on women!
Talk about obfuscatory debate tactics!
That is evil – and when this evil gets in power, they give away the environment and our money to their CEO buddies. That’s why Republican administrations are correlated with cratering the economy. I’m not surprised Bush’s team has wiped out my 401K – just pissed!
Let’s be clear what our profile is of the plutocrats: The leading class; those who run the country from boardroom and the Oval Office; those CEO/politicans/justices/media barons ane not the eight token black men; not the two token black women; not the one token white woman; the class in power, white men, with the money of power, the top 1 percenters; the top .1 percenters and the hundredth hundreth. The class to which some of us, stunningly, aspire to.
That’s the class where when they reach the top 1 percent of the main quintile feel “they aren’t well off,” because they’re white men – it’s true for them, I now understand, as they haven’t accomplished much on that particular scale.
Let’s talk for a moment about the effect of locking money in to the rich; they used to talk about how a “rising tide raises all boats,” which, unfortunately is untrue. In fact, the massive gains by the top 1 percent is siphoned partially from all the other percentiles; in particular the bottom 20% has seen negative gains in the last 25 years.
Percentile % increase, 1977-89
0-20 -9%
20-40 -2
60-80 8
80-90 13
90-95 18
95-99 24
100 103
In real dollars, they are poorer than they were before. In effect, the Republicans are trying to punish, or to be hyperbolic, starve to death a certain segment of the population that hasn’t made it; this is immoral, in contravention of international norms, and further, simply not neccessary: We, as a nation have the lowest standard of living of all the first world countries. Why? We neglect the poor, and the rich are busy taking chunks out of the safety net to line their own pockets; when you point out the people falling through the cracks, they callously answer “anyone can make it,” ignoring that it helps to be a white male like themselves.
The conservative commentators have bullshitted, obfuscated, and misdirected the debate from the facts. Income inequality is killing both the poor and our Democracy.
And that’s evil.
By the by, this was more wrong than your usual:
Cite? Retraction? Admission of excessive drug use?
Your choice.
I guess probably because it’s the first time we’ve heard this particular thesis from you. Apparently you beleive environmental damage is a Republican phenomenom only?
Yeah, but you know how we Republicans love our abortions
It’s just not fair, is it? I mean all those evil Republicans like Martha Stewart, that Imclone guy, Steve Case, the Amazon. bomb guy, and all those other internet startups. All Republicans.
Do you get injured when you collide with reality?
[quote]
Let’s be clear what our profile is of the plutocrats: The leading class; those who run the country from boardroom and the Oval Office; those CEO/politicans/justices/media barons ane not the eight token black men; not the two token black women; not the one token white woman; the class in power, white men, with the money of power, the top 1 percenters; the top .1 percenters and the hundredth hundreth. The class to which some of us, stunningly, aspire to.
[quote]
You do realize that your attitudes match the definition of bigotry you cited in an earlier thread, don’t you? If you hate “Whitey,” just say so.
1% of the main quintile? Incoherent. The bigotry is coming through loud and clear, though.
[quote]
Let’s talk for a moment about the effect of locking money in to the rich; they used to talk about how a “rising tide raises all boats,” which, unfortunately is untrue. In fact, the massive gains by the top 1 percent is siphoned partially from all the other percentiles; in particular the bottom 20% has seen negative gains in the last 25 years.
Percentile % increase, 1977-89
0-20 -9%
20-40 -2
60-80 8
80-90 13
90-95 18
95-99 24
100 103
[quote]
You’re citing Krugman again. I can posit the accuracy of those statistics, and indeed the seem accurate. However, what that shows is that the bottom quintile has been earning less. It doesn’t say why.
You’ve gone to far, and your arguments are vile. You have the audacity to attribute this phenomenom without evidence to Republicans and further accuse them of deliberate genocide.
I am disgusted by your irrational hatred.
What does it mean to be a white male, Ace. Why don’t you tell us?
Income disparity is indeed a problem, but I don’t beleive I’ve seen such a simpleminded approach to it before. Your ability to assign blame is pretty remarkable.
George Will makes people poor. I’ll remember that.
If it were true, yes.