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I am highlighting the simplisticness of your question. Your argument is even more arbitrary than my numbers. You suppose that the purchasing power of the poor must rise but this is not the case.

No, you are spposing purchasing power must rise for the poor if the iPod is made in the US and not in China. They are made in China because it is cheaper to make them there. By making them here, they will neither cost less nor raise the wages of US workers.

The wealthiest of the US, to whom these profits are returning need not, and in fact do not, translate that wealth into dollars to help shore up the US economy.

The wealthy got that way by investing and if they have more money they will invest more which does help the economy. Are you really that dense so you don't understand that? Or are you trolling?

They don't pay much tax, either.

Are you really saying the wealthy don't pay taxes either? The Top 1% Pay More Income Tax Than Bottom 90%. Through 1999 the top 5% pay 50% of all taxes. And that comes from the Congressional Budget Office. For an argument of who pays more How much tax do the Jones' pay? has the arguments for both why the rich pay more and why they don't.

All this is relevant because the notion that returned profits from offshoring increases the wealth of the country, is heavily undermined if that wealth gets put into the hands of a functionally transnational section of society (i.e. people who invest and purchase internationally, rather than strictly domestically).

Do you see what I did there? I understood your reply and made a logical explanation of the problems with it, rather than just make comments about you pulling things from your arse. :)

And what you left out is that international investments go both ways, foreigners invest in the US and US citizens invest internationally. American Depositary Receipts or ADRs allow me, you, and any other American to buy stocks in foreign corporations. That is if the corporation is not listed on US exchanges, but many are. Those Japanese car manufacturers opening factories in the US, they are listed on US exchanges. For those who don't have enough to buy individual stocks, foreign or domestic, there are mutual funds. They allow money from many different people to be pooled and invested. Another way individuals can pool money is with investment clubs. Using them a person can put just say $10, less than the cost of 2 packs of cigarettes, a week into a pool. Add in the money saved by not buying a 6-pack of beer a day and growing some food in a garden and it adds up. There are a number of others ways people can save and invest money as well. Even a McDonald's employee can save and invest money, though they'd be better enrolling in college taking classes part tyme.

The low income can be investors, but it is logically flawed to say that this is a universal case. More frequently, people are living from month to month (sometimes week to week) trying to feed themselves and their families, pay for health care, keep a roof over their heads, etc.

They are also poor because they spent money to buy an iPod and had a family. I myself am one of the poor. Just an hour or two ago I got back from a food pantry where I picked up free food. My medical expenses are paid for with Medicare and Medical Assistance. I get them because I am disabled. So I don't go around spending money on lots of things I don't need. Nor did I get married or have children when I could not afford them

Yeah, it's great to harp on the rich because their lives are so much easier. I guess you don't realize how much they actually do pay in taxes. Here's a page near the top of the Google results for "united states percentage of taxes paid relative to income".
http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/

That page is 9 years old but it's pretty illuminating. In particular, the introduction points out these three facts:
* The top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
* The top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.
* The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay nothing or almost nothing.

The intro then goes on to say that tax breaks are often put in a negative light because they'll benefit the rich the most. And why would that be? Because the rich are paying almost all of the taxes.

Page last updated: July 4, 1996

Not to sure on the tax thingy...the top 1% of income earners pay 29% or ALL income tax. Top 5% pay 50% and top 10% pay 63% or ALL income tax. See percentage in graph here: http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/ How is it they dont pay a fair share. My sis pays 39% of her income plus extra. How much did you have in mind? Perhaps like it was before Reagan came in.... 70-90%? Or as in the wonderful French economy...70%. Or did you just want to take it all.

As for your gratuitous statement about who will and won't pay the taxes, you do know that 79% of the tax burden is carried by the top 20% of income earners, right?

You do know that 54% of all income is earned by the top 20% of income earners, right? And that at these incomes, it is trivially easy for these people to live? And that while you complain for them, the tax rate they pay has no possible reasonable effect on how they live whatsoever? And that the tax rate that the lowest two - or even three - brackets pay not only has an effect, but in many cases means the difference between medical treatment or not, college for the kids or not, and a host of other basic choices? So that your statement, even if 100% accurate, is basically a sop to people who have no need of your empathy whatsoever?

There's nothing annoys me as much as the presumption that a 1/3-million dollar or higher income is 10% different (that's the difference in tax rates) from a 50,000 or 20,000 dollar income and that those in the 35% bracket deserve sympathy, empathy, tax breaks, or thanks. Under any general circumstances, but certainly in our current economic mess, where both the fed and the states have expanded to take on many unconstitutional roles. Since those people can live the same life as a middle income earner without any stress, perhaps they should be paying all of the tax burden. Seriously.

I'm a lot more inclined to account for how stress-free you can rationally maintain your family than I am for the total dollars earned as a metric for how much tax one should pay. Once I've got enough funds to reach a certain standard of living, my tax rate should climb quite steeply as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps there should be no incentive at all to earn more than a million dollars or so a year - anything anyone would earn over that goes into taxes by a flat rate until the national debt is paid and all tax resources required are met. I'd be perfectly fine with that. You'd see the government get out of a lot of places it shouldn't be, too, because rich people have a lot of clout. If you can't live comfortably on a million bucks a year in the current US economic environment, you should probably be taken out and shot.

I know a lot of families here in Montana who still wouldn't be able to live what most of the readers here would consider a reasonable lifestyle (small house, health insurance, one car) if you removed the entire state and federal and use taxes tax burden from them. Comparing them on any kind of equal field with some wag who makes 349,000 (the 35% bracket for singles) or more per year is the act of a lunatic, no matter how reasonable it sounds to declare that they pay 79% of the tax burden.

I had a look at your source material
here
I think that your source has not fully interpreted the material that they got from the Congressional Budget Office
here

There are 2 observations that can be made from the CBO data that were left out on allegromedia that I think are relevant to this discussion.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer (not poorer relative to the rich but absolutely poorer.)
see CBO stats in the table named 'Average Pretax Family Income (In 1995 dollars)' (compare highest quintile to lowest quintile, 1977 to 1999[projected] )

While the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the tax burden on the wealthiest is decreasing over time.
see CBO stats in the table named 'Effective Total Federal Tax Rate (In percent)' (examine the tax burden for the top 1% from 1977 to 1999 [projected] )

Not Quite. Here for more
The top 1% pay about 30% of all taxes
The top 5% pay about 50% of all taxes
and the top 50% pay about 98% of all taxes
Tax breaks for the rich?! DUH only the rich can get 'em cause the botom 50% is getting the money.

Penguin recipes can be found here!
The Penguin Kabob sounds delicious!
Is there noone in the Antarctic to post some good recipe reviews?
Bah! Preview is your friend, preview is your friend, preview is you friend...

Combine that graph with this one (the one under "Who Pays Income Taxes?") and you'll see why I'm still not convinced.

This is off-topic from blue led's BUT... If it were true that less taxes are paid in the US as you make more, then how come the top %10 of wage earners pay the overwhelming majority (approaching 65%) of income taxes in America? http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/#Head-1.htm

The top 1% of the US earners pay about 21% of the total US income tax.

Do you have some support for this assertion?

• The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
• The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.

Is it fair to force them to pay more?

Yes. First of all, the top one percent of income earners in the US have a MINIMUM gross income of $300,000/year, which is 7.5 times the median income of approximately $40,000/year.

No. Your envy is taking the better of you. Your "Yes" is evil... Making everybody equally rich is not possible. But by trying, you have a good chance of making everyone equially poor.

That page I found also addresses the wealth redistribution, so I'm not going to.

Ummm... but the tax rates are weighted heavily towards the wealthy paying more (CBO Numbers for 2000 sorry... latest I could find [CBO = Congressional Budget Office])...

This is where the argument about what is fair for rich people to pay... and what is fair for poor people to pay... and what is fair for middle class people to pay...

And our CongressCritters here in the US aren't dumb... they know that there are less wealthy people then average/poor people... So the tax breaks and redistribution (not tax credits... not tax rebates...) so raising taxes on the rich is usually a popular idea...

Wow... wondered off topic far enough here...

But to try to put some tie into the main Topic... what about other Think Tanks... havn't any Think Tanks come out in favor of OSS???

Nephilium
"I'd like to know why sociologists can't decide whether movie sex and violence has any effect on children, but there's a universal consensus that even a glimpse of a camel will force children to become lifelong smokers." -- Jonah Goldberg

So you know, the original income tax was first instituted to help fund the civil war, at 1/2% tax. It was later repealed, as it was found unconstitutional in the courts for the government to tax income.

But congress tried again in 1913, and was a 1% tax on the top 1% wage earners (in 1913, those that earned $3k to $20k per year).

Fast forward to today, and take a look at how far we've let the government tax our earnings... today, the top 1% wage earners pay 38.6% of their salary in taxes, accounting for ~ 29% of the total (top 5% wage earners paid 50% of all taxes in 1999)

Now we have people saying, "I don't mind paying $0.01 for my emails"... What restraint has the government ever shown that next year it'll be $0.02, then $0.05 (who'll miss a nickle?), a dime... And where the hell will all this money go? into improving the internet infrastructure? Nooo, that's a private business. The money and accountability will disappear, probably into Medicare, Social Security, and all the other social programs that government isn't supposed to be in.

Government control is not a road we want to walk down folks. Yes, control of communications through taxation. I can't understand why the crowd complains when little things are being taken away, and the same people just turn around and hand the big ones over willingly.