In the US, the federal government assess taxes on income, rather than property. There was an estate tax, and will probably be one after this year.
If you want to advocate a new system of taxation to redistribute property, knock yourself out. But, it's still disingenuous to claim that the "rich" aren't paying their fair share of income taxes.
Nearly 40% of my paycheck goes to income tax alone. Google pays just 2.4%.
Don't interpret my post as a defense of Google. But, it's just flat wrong to claim that only poor people pay taxes. In the US, the bottom 20% pay nearly no taxes at all -- at least to the federal government.
The CBO allocates corporate taxes to households in the numbers that I cited. The explanation is in a footnote at the end:
Corporate income taxes are attributed to
households according to their share of capital income.
Well, if you can't consider the IRS' own tax numbers as a valid primary data source, then whose numbers do you propose we use? The parent provided valid links to a US government organization that, consistent with its charter, collected and analyzed data and then provided that data to the public. You provided anti-government opinion-only crapola that's one step removed from a total conspiracy theory.
The top 1% (and to a smaller extent the top 20%) are getting MUCH richer. The poor are getting much poorer.
No, it doesn't. It says that the tax burden is shifting to the higher income taxpayers.
In other words, even though the tax rate has dropped for the rich, they still pay more at the new lower tax rate than they did before. That means their total income has skyrocketed.
Or they stopped engaging in various tax avoidance schemes, because it wasn't cost-effective at the lower tax rates.
In the same citation from the CBO, you can see exactly how share of income is changing. It's on page 8. The share of pre-tax income is shifting, but not as dramatically as you claim.
Because their incomes have been stagnant (and fallen, really), the poor are paying less total income, because that income has been shifted to the top 1%.
Sorry, no. If you look at the average income table (in 2007 dollars) on the page 7, you'll notice that it's climbing for all quintiles. The rich may be getting richer at a faster rate than the poor, but the poor have getting richer, too.
Because it seems every time there are tax cuts, they somehow benefit the people (or corporations) making the largest amounts of money the most.
If you look at the absolute numbers -- that's true, because the people making the largest amount of money pay most of the taxes (the top 10% paid 55% of all federal taxes in 2007). However, if you look at it in percentage terms, the burden is disproportionately on higher incomes.
For example, if taxes go up as currently legislated in 2011, the federal government will get an additional $3,700 billion over the next 10 years. But, if they only let taxes go up for couples with incomes over $250,000/year (or singles over $200,000/year), the government will get $700 billion.
Consider what would happen if taxes were to remain as they are now (in 2010). The "rich" would get $700 billion more over the next 10 years, and everyone else would get $3,000 billion more. That means that the "rich" would get 19% of the total (700/3,700).
But, this definition of "rich" paid about 44.3% of all federal taxes in 2007 (and 61% of federal individual income taxes). So, they would be getting less than half of their "share", if that money were spread proportionally (according to all taxes paid).
FYI, I'm estimating that the 250K/200K cutoff separates the top 10% from the bottom 90%.
At no point will the IRS 'rebate' more money than was paid. A person can only take more out than they put in if they collect some form of social service.
The grandparent was apparently referring to the Earned Income Tax Credit. I don't think it's accurate to say that you get it if you are under the median income.
You can get more than you paid in individual income taxes. But, I don't believe it will be more than you paid in Social Security taxes.
The rich still pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, but that percentage has dropped quite a bit over the past few decades.
The tax rate may have dropped, but the share of all federal taxes paid by the top 1% has increased: from 15.4% in 1979 to 28.1% in 2007. The total share paid by the top 20% has also increased, but not as dramatically: from 56% to 69%
In contrast, the share of all federal taxes paid by the lowest 80% has steadily declined in the past two decades. See the first table on page 4:
That's the Congressional Budget Office's compilation of effective tax rates and percentage of taxes paid by the various income quintiles in the US from 1979 to 2007. They also provide numbers for the top 10%, top 5%, and top 1%.
The effective individual income tax rates for the lowest 40% has been negative since 2002, as the methodology includes low-income tax credits. However, once you add in the other types of federal taxes, it's no longer negative, but the lowest quintile's share of total federal taxes was less than 1% in 2007.
In contrast, the top 10% of taxpayers paid 55% of total federal taxes in 2007. The lower 90% of taxpayers paid the other 45%.
Are you saying a state is actually going to reject this? Keep in mind there's not a shred of evidence that gives a legitimate reason to reject it, only speculation.
It depends on whether the Secretary of State decides that it is adequate. If state legislation is passed to force the issue, that legislation may require additional documentation. The legislation may even try to define "Natural Born Citizen".
I would expect the Obama campaign to challenge any additional requirements. And depending on the District Court (and Court of Appeals), it could go either way.
What Palin said was: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." This is a demonstrable fact. It might be irrelevant, but it's not incorrect.
SNL mocked her on SNL by saying: "I can see Russia from my house". It's funny, but not an accurate quote. However, the SNL clip was replayed so many times, the average person on the street thinks that Palin actually said it.
Personally, I wish that Palin would get out of politics and go back to the Wasilla PTA. But, this wasn't fair to her, and anyone that repeats the mocking quote and attributes it to her should be ashamed.
A little digging finds that factcheck.org got the original and certified it, but that wasn't widely reported when it happened so without looking it up I wouldn't know that.
A clarification: FactCheck didn't actually obtain an original on their own. They were allowed to examine and photograph an original that was provided to them by the Obama campaign.
Further, FactCheck didn't "certify" anything. They don't have that authority. They simply published their opinion about the authenticity of a document that was provided to them.
You know who the first person to see it will be? The Republican nominee in 2012, immediately after he or she actually puts forth a claim against President Obama's eligibility.
No, it will be the Secretary of State in one of the red states.
This tactic was tried, but too late in the 2008 election. But, in 2012, opponents will be on point to try to force at least a subset of Secretary of States to validate that Obama is eligible to be President. Without it, Obama wouldn't be on the Presidential ballot in that state.
Will it be successful? Probably not. But, only one of the 50 Secretary of States has to demand it. Legislation has already been pending in several states to force their respective Secretary of State to do so, but none has yet passed. If the election in two weeks goes as forecasted, it's more likely to happen.
If so, I expect the outcome to be disappointing to the people that doubt Obama's eligibility. But, I also expect that they won't be satisfied.
I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4
After postng, I realized that was actually the Xtreme Labs test. So, I went and downloaded the Speedtest.net application. I got nearly 20 MBits/sec download and 15 MBits/sec upload (WiFi on a 25/15 FIOS connection).
I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4, which is nearly twice the speed they reported. I got the same download speed on my iPhone 3GS.
That's on a 25 Mbit/second FIOS connection at my home.
"I am a Jewish American who lives in Boston," Doxer reportedly wrote in an e-mail to a foreign country's consulate in Boston. "I know you are always looking for information and I am offering the little I may have."
Doxer, who had access to invoices and customer contact information, also said in a later message that his goal was "to help our homeland and our war against our enemies."
He informed the agent that his company served the U.S. Department of Defense, Airbus and several Arab companies. Doxer reportedly asked for $3,000 in compensation for his actions.
Why he thought 'Country X' would be interested in such information is beyond me, seems to me like he would have been better off offering the information to a foreign competitor directly, unless his goal was just to screw over the company he worked for as much as possible.
Read the article. He was apparently hoping that 'Country X' would do something bad to his ex-wife, or at least provide him information about their son. I'm guessing that she disappeared into "Country X".
It made him feel more like a secret agent, so they humored him.
It doesn't look like espionage was his goal. From the article:
He also seemed preoccupied with ill will toward his ex-wife, writing at one point that "not enough bad things can happen to her if you know what I mean." And he offered to drop his request for monetary compensation in return for information or pictures of his son.
It sounds like it was more about retribution. His ex-wife apparently disappeared in "Country X" with their son.
How well the turbine has been scaled down. Turbines get harder to make efficent the smaller they are - efficency is quite dependent on things like the ratio of the gap at the edge of the blades to the blade area. Small turbines need a lot more precision manufacturing to make properly efficent.
Looks like the gas turbines used by Jaguar were supplied by Bladon Jets:
How do otherwise intelligent people put themselves into a political fantasy-land?
You avoid it by looking beyond the cheerleading from the mainstream media. Everyone like to bash Fox News (and justifiably so), but refuses to admit that CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post (and most others) do the same thing for the other side.
As another poster points out above, the clues were all there. Anyone with access to the Internet could see the warning signs. Even with Obama's extremely abbreviated voting record, you could see exactly what he would do -- and he hasn't strayed from that path.
(It's amazing how short our memories are. All I hear about today is how bad the economy was under Bush, yet from 2003-2007, we were booming, but no one care remember anything more than 2 years back)
It's also convenient to forget that in 2007, the Democrats took control of Congress, and that things really went south afterward. The Executive Branch has a lot of power (and perhaps more than originally intended), but legislation originates in the House of Representatives. Nothing substantial can occur without their approval.
Is there truly a direct cause-effect relationship, with no time lag? I don't think so. But, if one is going to blame the Bush administration for everything that occurred under its watch and (so far) two years later, then one has to also acknowledge that the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for the past 4 years.
Living in a household with someone who owns a gun doesn't automatically grant me ownership that person's gun, so you're "simple Google search" didn't prove anything about his claim.
I see that you are both Google-challenged and statistically-challenged, as well.
39% of 105,480,101 households is 41,137,239 households.
So, the minimum for gun-owning individuals (one owner per household) was 41,137,239/281,424,602 or 14.6%
That's without considering households that have multiple gun owners, or households in community property states where husband and wife have joint ownership.
It's still 5 times greater than the "estimate" provided by the troll.
I've never had an email account hacked before, so I'm pretty convinced that some phone app has leaked my account details (as it's the gmail account tethered to my phone).
Did you inadvertently reuse your email password somewhere else?
My wife had her GMail account compromised by a Nigerian IP address. I'm pretty sure it's because she used her email address and password to create a userID at a site publishing historical immigration records.
Here's another recent example of a quote taken deliberately out of context.
And an example of lying by omission.
The tax cuts in 2001 and and accelerated in 2003 were not passed by the "last administration". They were passed by the respective Congresses in session at that time. The Bush administration signed them into law.
And the reason why the tax cuts expired in 2011 was to avoid triggering the "Byrd Rule", which effectively requires 60 senators to approve any legislation that increases the budget deficit "significantly" beyond a ten-year term. Due to Democrat opposition, there weren't enough votes in the Senate, so the tax changes expired ten years later.
Of course, one way to avoid the requirement for 60 votes would have been to make it revenue-neutral, by reducing spending to compensate. But, whether you agree or disagree with the methodology, the truth is that Obama's assignment of blame to the Republicans for the expiring tax cuts is nothing but partisan demagoguery.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to advocate a new system of taxation to redistribute property, knock yourself out. But, it's still disingenuous to claim that the "rich" aren't paying their fair share of income taxes.
Nearly 40% of my paycheck goes to income tax alone. Google pays just 2.4%.
Don't interpret my post as a defense of Google. But, it's just flat wrong to claim that only poor people pay taxes. In the US, the bottom 20% pay nearly no taxes at all -- at least to the federal government.
The CBO allocates corporate taxes to households in the numbers that I cited. The explanation is in a footnote at the end:
Corporate income taxes are attributed to households according to their share of capital income.
Well, if you can't consider the IRS' own tax numbers as a valid primary data source, then whose numbers do you propose we use? The parent provided valid links to a US government organization that, consistent with its charter, collected and analyzed data and then provided that data to the public. You provided anti-government opinion-only crapola that's one step removed from a total conspiracy theory.
Thank you, I couldn't have said it better.
The top 1% (and to a smaller extent the top 20%) are getting MUCH richer. The poor are getting much poorer.
No, it doesn't. It says that the tax burden is shifting to the higher income taxpayers.
In other words, even though the tax rate has dropped for the rich, they still pay more at the new lower tax rate than they did before. That means their total income has skyrocketed.
Or they stopped engaging in various tax avoidance schemes, because it wasn't cost-effective at the lower tax rates.
In the same citation from the CBO, you can see exactly how share of income is changing. It's on page 8. The share of pre-tax income is shifting, but not as dramatically as you claim.
Because their incomes have been stagnant (and fallen, really), the poor are paying less total income, because that income has been shifted to the top 1%.
Sorry, no. If you look at the average income table (in 2007 dollars) on the page 7, you'll notice that it's climbing for all quintiles. The rich may be getting richer at a faster rate than the poor, but the poor have getting richer, too.
Because it seems every time there are tax cuts, they somehow benefit the people (or corporations) making the largest amounts of money the most.
If you look at the absolute numbers -- that's true, because the people making the largest amount of money pay most of the taxes (the top 10% paid 55% of all federal taxes in 2007). However, if you look at it in percentage terms, the burden is disproportionately on higher incomes.
For example, if taxes go up as currently legislated in 2011, the federal government will get an additional $3,700 billion over the next 10 years. But, if they only let taxes go up for couples with incomes over $250,000/year (or singles over $200,000/year), the government will get $700 billion.
Consider what would happen if taxes were to remain as they are now (in 2010). The "rich" would get $700 billion more over the next 10 years, and everyone else would get $3,000 billion more. That means that the "rich" would get 19% of the total (700/3,700).
But, this definition of "rich" paid about 44.3% of all federal taxes in 2007 (and 61% of federal individual income taxes). So, they would be getting less than half of their "share", if that money were spread proportionally (according to all taxes paid).
FYI, I'm estimating that the 250K/200K cutoff separates the top 10% from the bottom 90%.
At no point will the IRS 'rebate' more money than was paid. A person can only take more out than they put in if they collect some form of social service.
The grandparent was apparently referring to the Earned Income Tax Credit. I don't think it's accurate to say that you get it if you are under the median income.
You can get more than you paid in individual income taxes. But, I don't believe it will be more than you paid in Social Security taxes.
EITC Home Page
The rich still pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, but that percentage has dropped quite a bit over the past few decades.
The tax rate may have dropped, but the share of all federal taxes paid by the top 1% has increased: from 15.4% in 1979 to 28.1% in 2007. The total share paid by the top 20% has also increased, but not as dramatically: from 56% to 69%
In contrast, the share of all federal taxes paid by the lowest 80% has steadily declined in the past two decades. See the first table on page 4:
http://cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/all_tables.pdf.
Only poor people pay taxes.
Oh, BS. This meme is stupid, and can be disproved in moments with the US Government's own publications:
http://cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/all_tables.pdf
That's the Congressional Budget Office's compilation of effective tax rates and percentage of taxes paid by the various income quintiles in the US from 1979 to 2007. They also provide numbers for the top 10%, top 5%, and top 1%.
The effective individual income tax rates for the lowest 40% has been negative since 2002, as the methodology includes low-income tax credits. However, once you add in the other types of federal taxes, it's no longer negative, but the lowest quintile's share of total federal taxes was less than 1% in 2007.
In contrast, the top 10% of taxpayers paid 55% of total federal taxes in 2007. The lower 90% of taxpayers paid the other 45%.
Are you saying a state is actually going to reject this? Keep in mind there's not a shred of evidence that gives a legitimate reason to reject it, only speculation.
It depends on whether the Secretary of State decides that it is adequate. If state legislation is passed to force the issue, that legislation may require additional documentation. The legislation may even try to define "Natural Born Citizen".
I would expect the Obama campaign to challenge any additional requirements. And depending on the District Court (and Court of Appeals), it could go either way.
No, she *did* say it, and SNL mocked it.
What Palin said was: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." This is a demonstrable fact. It might be irrelevant, but it's not incorrect.
SNL mocked her on SNL by saying: "I can see Russia from my house". It's funny, but not an accurate quote. However, the SNL clip was replayed so many times, the average person on the street thinks that Palin actually said it.
Personally, I wish that Palin would get out of politics and go back to the Wasilla PTA. But, this wasn't fair to her, and anyone that repeats the mocking quote and attributes it to her should be ashamed.
A little digging finds that factcheck.org got the original and certified it, but that wasn't widely reported when it happened so without looking it up I wouldn't know that.
A clarification: FactCheck didn't actually obtain an original on their own. They were allowed to examine and photograph an original that was provided to them by the Obama campaign.
Further, FactCheck didn't "certify" anything. They don't have that authority. They simply published their opinion about the authenticity of a document that was provided to them.
You know who the first person to see it will be? The Republican nominee in 2012, immediately after he or she actually puts forth a claim against President Obama's eligibility.
No, it will be the Secretary of State in one of the red states.
This tactic was tried, but too late in the 2008 election. But, in 2012, opponents will be on point to try to force at least a subset of Secretary of States to validate that Obama is eligible to be President. Without it, Obama wouldn't be on the Presidential ballot in that state.
Will it be successful? Probably not. But, only one of the 50 Secretary of States has to demand it. Legislation has already been pending in several states to force their respective Secretary of State to do so, but none has yet passed. If the election in two weeks goes as forecasted, it's more likely to happen.
If so, I expect the outcome to be disappointing to the people that doubt Obama's eligibility. But, I also expect that they won't be satisfied.
I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4
After postng, I realized that was actually the Xtreme Labs test. So, I went and downloaded the Speedtest.net application. I got nearly 20 MBits/sec download and 15 MBits/sec upload (WiFi on a 25/15 FIOS connection).
I get as high as 15 Mbits/second download from Speedtest.net on my iPhone 4, which is nearly twice the speed they reported. I got the same download speed on my iPhone 3GS.
That's on a 25 Mbit/second FIOS connection at my home.
"I am a Jewish American who lives in Boston," Doxer reportedly wrote in an e-mail to a foreign country's consulate in Boston. "I know you are always looking for information and I am offering the little I may have."
Doxer, who had access to invoices and customer contact information, also said in a later message that his goal was "to help our homeland and our war against our enemies."
He informed the agent that his company served the U.S. Department of Defense, Airbus and several Arab companies. Doxer reportedly asked for $3,000 in compensation for his actions.
Why he thought 'Country X' would be interested in such information is beyond me, seems to me like he would have been better off offering the information to a foreign competitor directly, unless his goal was just to screw over the company he worked for as much as possible.
Read the article. He was apparently hoping that 'Country X' would do something bad to his ex-wife, or at least provide him information about their son. I'm guessing that she disappeared into "Country X".
It made him feel more like a secret agent, so they humored him.
It doesn't look like espionage was his goal. From the article:
He also seemed preoccupied with ill will toward his ex-wife, writing at one point that "not enough bad things can happen to her if you know what I mean." And he offered to drop his request for monetary compensation in return for information or pictures of his son.
It sounds like it was more about retribution. His ex-wife apparently disappeared in "Country X" with their son.
How well the turbine has been scaled down. Turbines get harder to make efficent the smaller they are - efficency is quite dependent on things like the ratio of the gap at the edge of the blades to the blade area. Small turbines need a lot more precision manufacturing to make properly efficent.
Looks like the gas turbines used by Jaguar were supplied by Bladon Jets:
http://www.bladonjets.com/news/jaguar-c-x75_-_electric-super-car-powered-by-jet-engines/
More information is available at the website. I haven't had a chance to read through all of it.
How do otherwise intelligent people put themselves into a political fantasy-land?
You avoid it by looking beyond the cheerleading from the mainstream media. Everyone like to bash Fox News (and justifiably so), but refuses to admit that CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post (and most others) do the same thing for the other side.
As another poster points out above, the clues were all there. Anyone with access to the Internet could see the warning signs. Even with Obama's extremely abbreviated voting record, you could see exactly what he would do -- and he hasn't strayed from that path.
The clues were all there before the election. You, "like so many others", just didn't want to listen.
I really wish I had mod points this morning. I'd give all of them to you, if I could.
(It's amazing how short our memories are. All I hear about today is how bad the economy was under Bush, yet from 2003-2007, we were booming, but no one care remember anything more than 2 years back)
It's also convenient to forget that in 2007, the Democrats took control of Congress, and that things really went south afterward. The Executive Branch has a lot of power (and perhaps more than originally intended), but legislation originates in the House of Representatives. Nothing substantial can occur without their approval.
Is there truly a direct cause-effect relationship, with no time lag? I don't think so. But, if one is going to blame the Bush administration for everything that occurred under its watch and (so far) two years later, then one has to also acknowledge that the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for the past 4 years.
Living in a household with someone who owns a gun doesn't automatically grant me ownership that person's gun, so you're "simple Google search" didn't prove anything about his claim.
I see that you are both Google-challenged and statistically-challenged, as well.
USA QuickFacts from The US Census Bureau
Population, 2000: 281,424,602
Households, 2000: 105,480,101
The poll was from 2001.
39% of 105,480,101 households is 41,137,239 households.
So, the minimum for gun-owning individuals (one owner per household) was 41,137,239/281,424,602 or 14.6%
That's without considering households that have multiple gun owners, or households in community property states where husband and wife have joint ownership.
It's still 5 times greater than the "estimate" provided by the troll.
Then why do only 3% of Americans own guns?
Once again, the moderators are on crack -- giving +1 to something that can be proved wrong with a simple Google search:
Two in Five Americans Live in Gun-Owning Households
I've never had an email account hacked before, so I'm pretty convinced that some phone app has leaked my account details (as it's the gmail account tethered to my phone).
Did you inadvertently reuse your email password somewhere else?
My wife had her GMail account compromised by a Nigerian IP address. I'm pretty sure it's because she used her email address and password to create a userID at a site publishing historical immigration records.
She's not reusing passwords anymore.
Here's another recent example of a quote taken deliberately out of context.
And an example of lying by omission.
The tax cuts in 2001 and and accelerated in 2003 were not passed by the "last administration". They were passed by the respective Congresses in session at that time. The Bush administration signed them into law.
And the reason why the tax cuts expired in 2011 was to avoid triggering the "Byrd Rule", which effectively requires 60 senators to approve any legislation that increases the budget deficit "significantly" beyond a ten-year term. Due to Democrat opposition, there weren't enough votes in the Senate, so the tax changes expired ten years later.
Of course, one way to avoid the requirement for 60 votes would have been to make it revenue-neutral, by reducing spending to compensate. But, whether you agree or disagree with the methodology, the truth is that Obama's assignment of blame to the Republicans for the expiring tax cuts is nothing but partisan demagoguery.