Not so fast, jocko. Gas prices are down about 50 cents a gallon just in the last six weeks. At least they are here in Northwest Ohio I filled up yesterday for $1.289 per gallon and I saw the same station selling this morning for $1.249.
Gas, at $1.25 a gallon today, according to the Inflation Calculator, is the equivalent of paying $0.28/gal in 1970. Sounds pretty damned cheap to me. And if you are this free and loose with an easily disprovable fact, the rest of your claims are also suspect.
The top marginal income tax rate when Carter left office was 70%, not fifty.
I’m not even sure I know what this means. First, I am indignant about the amount of federal tax I pay. Second, where do you get the idea that “wealthy people pay virtually none?” Even Cecil say otherwise. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_139.html
Ask yourself why we don’t give EVERYONE a $46,000 dollar tax cut. Simple answer: most people don’t pay anywhere near $46,000 in taxes to begin with.
(Again, I’m not opposed to progressive income taxation. I just object to the way the argument is sometimes framed.)
Maybe a hypothetical will help clarify:
Suppose the nation has a simple two-tier tax system. The richest 1% pay $100,000 (each) a year in taxes; everyone else pays nothing.
Then, for whatever reason, the governent cuts the “head tax” from $100,000 to $80,000.
If you run around saying, “The rich people are getting $20,000 each from the government, and everyone else is getting NOTHING,” you’re being lame IMHO.
It’s just a mathematical fact that, all things being equal, tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor.
And why didn’t you post the figures on how much tax a family making $915,000 a year would pay, and how much a family making $39,000 a year would pay? Go ahead and assume 2 kids.
So an economist supports a harebrained idea. I can show you a PhD who thinks coal deposits are proof of Noah’s Ark too.
This disobeys (in spirit) my personal First Law of Moneydynamics. This is not a “painless” creation of $100 Billion a year. It will come primarily out of the mutual fund retirement accounts of the middle class and poor. You know the brokerage houses will not pay for it, it will be a pass-through cost directly out of your retirement. So, I imagine, some can then say “See? Your much-hailed 401k isn’t doing so good! Time to ban them and increase Social Security to 22.5% of your payroll!”
Ah…I love the sound of Class Warfare in the morning…
Everyone who paid income taxes for the year 2000 that WON’T be getting the rebate promised to “Every taxpaying American,” raise their hand.
Hmm…well, my hand is in the air. I certainly paid taxes last year. Income taxes. And I didn’t get it all back. But, I’ll be getting fucked over (well, actually, I’m quite happy to see the government keep it, seeing as how the next 4 years look to be VERY long, but still…he promised) because I’m a dependent of another taxpayer. Yep, that’s right. College students who are dependents will NOT be getting a refund. Nothing. Not one cent. In fact, I’ll be paying in the 15% tax bracket this year, too, not the 10% one that was promised as the lowest bracket (and believe me, I don’t get out of the lowest bracket). Why, you ask? Same reason.
I’m just glad that when 2004 comes around, Bush is going to be dealing with a LOT of 20somethings who thought they were going to have an extra $300 this summer than never had a check show up in their mailbox, even thought the news seemed to tell them it would.
Are you claiming you get no financial benefit from being a dependent that outweighs any tax issues?
And if so, why are you a dependent?
You are aware that you are also being made ineligible for many grants and loans being a dependent, due to more income than just yours being reported. Or else being given a smaller amount, most likely. This is something that happened long before Bush. So you would argue, based on the same premise as your post, that you should also be fully eligible for student financial aid, at the same level as an independent taxpaying college student?
Would you like some cheese with that whine?
I see a simple solution. File an amended tax return for last year and file as a non-dependent. Then tell your parents that need to re-file as well.
I’m sure that $300 you get will moooore than make up for the couple of extra thousand dollars your parents will have to send in.
They may be so pissed at you, that you actually won’t be a dependent any more.
Your general point is fair enough, but in the case of the financial transactions tax mentioned by Mandelstam, it’s not right. Although the link doesn’t mention the name, this tax – proposed by Nobel laureate James Tobin – is a pretty mainstream idea. Financial markets suffer from excessive volatility due to information problems and the lack of contingent markets. A small tax on turnover would improve the efficiency of financial and all other markets. The difficulty in implementation (like the other dormant efficiency-improving tax, the carbon tax ;)) is mainly in securing universal international implementation and agreement on revenue-sharing.
I don’t have a clear view on who would end up paying this tax (unlike the carbon tax which would almost certainly be rather regressive), but it’s not a nutjob idea.
Here in central New Jersey, the cheapest gas I can find is $1.579/gal. Back in 1998, a mere three years ago, I could get gas at $0.899/gal. Adjusting for inflation, today’s gas would have cost $1.51/gal in 1998, an increase of 61 cents per gallon, and a 67.9% increase from three years ago. Gas has gone down a little recently (about 10-20 cents/gallon), but is still expensive when compared to gas of three (rather than thirty-one) years ago.
WL - Does this mean you will be telling us how much of that pile of tax money was contributed by the richest 1 percent? Or 5 percent or 10 percent?
**
No, I think the fact that you believe a tax cut proposed in the trillions of dollars by the Democrats is something they don’t really mean or believe in is “simpleminded.”
And you seem to be missing something. This isn’t about “participating in a discussion of a proposal.” The Democrats proposed their own tax cut. By the time they were done raising and raising their proposal, it wasn’t significantly less than that proposed by Bush.
Why would taking a hardline stance against a tax cut they “didn’t believe in” be “self-destructive?”
I know the answer. So do you. But it will be amusing to watch you tell it.
You’ve missed my point entirely, as has Anthracite.
I don’t WANT a tax refund. I don’t need one, I don’t deserve one, and I don’t think a tax refund is a good idea. If I were getting a tax refund, I’d probably be donating it to the DNC.
That said, however, I, along with probably a million others just like me, were PROMISED a refund. And not just in the campaign, either. Afterwards, even after the cut was passed. Bush claimed, in his speech on 5/26, that “late this summer and into the fall, every single American who pays income taxes will receive a check.”
I’m just saying that this is complete and total utter bullshit, and this shouldn’t be allowed to slip past unnoticed. I AM NOT GETTING A CHECK. I paid taxes. Income taxes. But I AM NOT GETTING A CHECK. Why this is allowed to go under the media’s radar, I have no idea.
But let me be clear. I’m not mad that I’m not getting a check. I don’t want one and I don’t deserve one. That doesn’t change the fact, however, the the President of the United States flat out LIED to the citizens of this country about the effects of his tax cut.
Fair enough, Flymaster, your earlier post certainly implied something different. But thank you for clarifying.
Do you have a link to a news article or something where Bush said that? I’m not challenging you on it, I just would like to see a complete quote of exactly what he said.
Aw, shucks, lucwarm. If the missus was going to spend that much money on clothes, I’d have hoped they’d be more revealing. I mean, geez, give a guy something, right?
** Millions ** *. Last I read, Dick Cheney is going to be saving about $2 million a year. Thank god for that, eh?
I was considering what I would do with my rebate… the first thing that came to mind was to ** wipe my ass with it and send it to Bush. **but then I realized it wouldn’t actually be in his hands, so I think I’m probably going to donate it to the Democrats.
stoid
PS: We are back to the same thing it always is: Those on the right are singing “me me me me me…it’s my money, I paid it, I deserve it, give it back to me” and those on the left are saying “I don’t need it, let’s share it, let’s spend it on things we ALL NEED, (except for the rich, of course, who will be able to pay for any little thing they need or desire throughout their lives: health care, child care, top notch education, etc. )”
Can you possibly be any more narrow-minded and simple? This is a complete mischaracterization of the objectives of both the right and the left.
First, the left does not wish to spend this money on things we ALL NEED. They wish to spend it on entitlements, subsidies and more government to benefit a select minority of the populace. I most assuredly NEED none of these, nor do the vast majority of the United States Citizens. Quit bluffing yourself; the Democrats are no more altruistic than any other political party.
Second, the right wishes to return some of your hard-earned tax dollars with the sure and certain belief that you’ll either spend it, or save it. Those are the only two likely things anyone can do with this money; not very many people are going to bury it in the back yard. Now, that money you’ve either spent, or saved, stimulates the economy. This is a simple and well known fact. And then, a stimulated economy will autonomously generate additional wealth which will naturally be distributed among all econmic sectors. Yes, this is the old trickle-down Reaganomics. But ya know what? It fucking worked last time. It’ll likely work again.
Finally, donating your refund to a political party is just about the dumbest damn thing you can do with it. Logically, it makes no fucking sense. If you believe you are donating to the Democrats to help elect more of them and they’ll in turn vote to spend tax dollars, through those subsidies and entitlements mentioned above, to causes you support, why don’t you just donate your tax refund directly to those causes? Cut out the damned middleman and the inherent inefficiencies.
Milossarian“Mandlestam - Anyone who brings up “the richest 1 percent” without bringing up what percentage
of the tax the richest 1 percent PAY gets instantly discredited. Ask Al.”
Say what? Last I heard Al Gore got 200,000 more votes than did his rich-butt-kissing opponent, and lost the election due to various technicalities too widely known to rehearse. Moreover, throughout the whole of the election, Gore’s “targeted” tax-cutting plan consistently polled higher with the American people than did Bush’s plan.
For the record, I’m not a Gore lover, but I prefer targeted tax cuts for two simple reasons: 1) tax cuts that put more dollars into the hands of the working and middle classes are better for the economy and 2) I object to tax cuts that have regressive effects on purely moral grounds. It’s interesting that from all the cites that I posted, not one of you Bush supporters has addressed the morality of cutting taxes for the rich while children and elderly people are deprived of basic human needs. Were it necessary to the economy, that might provide a utilitarian justification for a fatcat tax-cut; but it’s been demonstrated over and over again that tax-cuts for fatcats don’t efficiently boost the economy–certainly not at the rate that tax-cuts for the working poor would.
Milo and others can argue till they’re blue in the face that if the rich pay the most they should get the most back. Well, that’s one kind of logic but, for the reasons I name above, it’s not a persuasive logic for me. To argue that relative tax burdens should be measured as a proportion of one’s income, rather than on a net basis, is simply to recognize the world that we live in: there are people living in our country whose wealth is equivalent to the GDP of small nations. Do these people require tax “relief” of any kind. One can easily argue that since the richest 1% have benefited the most from society they should be expected to contribute the most. Consider how much more of an investment they have in the status quo than a person struggling to get by on a minimum wage.
Anthracite, that taste of crow might be a little less bitter if you had the guts to apologize. You and I may disagree, and perhaps I’ve not been round here long enough for you to have read any of my posts. On the whole, however, I don’t think you’ll find that I’m one to pass off bitumen for diamonds; and the only “crackpots” I bother reading are on the SDMB ;).
As it happens, I’ll probably give my rebate to an AIDS charity with an international focus. I have to review some financial reports first, since I don’t like it if too much money goes to administrative or fundraising activities. This is kind of a new area of charitable giving for me, so I don’t know who’s good at it, if anyone. But if you want to give yours to a bunch of party hacks instead, well, it’s your money.
It really takes a remarkable kind of intellect to hate George Bush and the Republicans as much as you do and still conclude that he and they would do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
You really are that simpleminded, aren’t you? Wow. No wonder you think the government should keep the money. You think everyone is as stupid as you are.
Or would you prefer that my $300 went to a missile defense shield instead? Cripes.