Can someone tell me what ‘non-faith’ even means?

Learning to Math: Tax Edition

libcon:

“On the overall tax burden, Obama is arguing that the rich should start paying their ‘fair share.’ He doesn’t mention that the latest IRS data, for 2008, show the top 1 percent of US income earners paying 38 percent of all federal income taxes, the top 10 percent paying 70 percent, and the top half of income earners paying 97 percent of total federal income taxes. Also unacknowledged by this White House is how President Kennedy’s cut in the top marginal income tax rate produced an immediate increase in federal revenues, or how President Reagan’s cut in the top marginal income tax rate was followed by a drop in the unemployment rate in the 1980s from 9.7 percent to 5.3 percent.”

—

Ralph Reiland (via laliberty)

I hate how stupid this fucking shit is. If you don’t like taxes, then fine, but don’t make it look like the poor aren’t paying their “fair share”. Sure, maybe it’s true that the top 1% pays 38% of the taxes. Herp but don’t they hold like, 70% of the nation’s wealth?

Fuck this stupid shit.

(via christiankeyes)

Fortunately, unlike the left, mathematics does not yield to emotional hysterics. 

Here are your apples to apples:

The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $159,619), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 59.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.

How about oranges to oranges:

In 2008, for the typical household in the top one-percent of income-earning households in America, the percent of its adjusted gross income that it paid in federal income taxes was 23.27.  Middle-income households paid less.  For households whose earnings put them in the top 50 percent, but below the top 25 percent, of income earners, the percent of their adjusted gross income paid in income taxes was, on average, 6.75.  For households in the bottom 50 percent of income-earners, the percent of their adjusted gross income paid in income taxes was, on average, 2.59.

Or:

Over the past two decades, Washington lawmakers have increasingly turned to the tax code to deliver social benefits, incentivize behaviors, and funnel money to targeted groups, which they always refer to as “helping the middle class.” These measures have not only added complexity to an already Byzantine tax system, they have also eliminated the income tax obligation for millions of tax filers and their families. As a result, a record 51.6 million tax filers—36 percent of all filers—had little or no connection with the basic costs of government in 2008.

Because the quote above is about income taxes, it’s important to keep things in context. Still, you claim that the top 1% pays too little in taxes relative to, not just their income, but their overall wealth. You say they control “like, 70%” of the nation’s wealth. In reality, the top 1% holds, at most, 38% of the nation’s wealth, which is exactly what they pay in income (including capital gains) taxes alone. Some sources list the top 1% as controlling less of the nation’s wealth at 34.6% as recently as 2007 (at the height of the housing bubble). Even if you were to accept the highest figure I could find at some questionable site, 43% (which, considering the highest in the last 30 years was 38.1% at the height of the dot-com boom, seems wildly unlikely), the rich can easily make up the 5% difference in property taxes alone. 

(via laliberty)

I’m just hung up on the fact that this guy started his argument with “herp.” OOH and let’s play the word-cloud game, since that apparently holds so much weight in modern politics. I believe the winning words are “taxes,” “fucking,” “stupid,” and “shit.” Hey, if you combine those words right, I think that makes this guy an honorary libertarian or something, or at least a neocon.