Which “Change” Do You Want? – Your Taxes In 2009
Thursday, Sep 18, 2008, 10:22 pm | In PoliticsI made the following chart to show the exact, and unbiased taxation changes proposed by both political candidates and parties. I won’t skew your opinions by saying anymore, but please give the chart a look and let me know what you think.
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It might be a neat added visualization to scale the bars’ widths according to the number of people in that group, as opposed to just putting in the text “Bottom three groups amount to 60% of taxpayers”
Comment by J Lane — September 18th, 2008 at 10:39 pm #
McCain.
Strictly from a tax standpoint, I can’t support Obama. I’m all for helping others in need, but I believe I’m a far better judge of who is truly deserving and not just abusing the system. I grew up around far too many welfare recipients who were baby factories and drove Cadillacs. Obama will just produce more people like this with his Robin Hood plan.
Comment by chris — September 18th, 2008 at 10:40 pm #
Chirs, Don’t try to perpetuate that lie. Ronald Reagan cited a Chicago “Welfare Queen” who had ripped off $150,000 from the government, using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen social security cards, and four fictional dead husbands. The country was outraged; Reagan dutifully promised to roll back welfare; and ever since, the “Welfare Queen” driving her “Welfare Cadillac” has become permanently lodged in American political folklore. Unfortunately, like most great conservative anecdotes, it wasn’t really true. The media searched for this welfare cheat in the hopes of interviewing her, and discovered that she didn’t even exist. As a bit of class warfare, however, it was brilliant. It diverted public attention from insider traders in their limousines to Welfare Queens in their Cadillacs, even though the former were stealing thousands of times more from the American people than the latter. Just one example of the cost of white collar crime would become apparent a few years later, when President Bush bailed out the Savings & Loans industry with $500 billion of the taxpayer’s money — enough to fund 20 years of federal AFDC.
Questions of class warfare aside, there is no evidence that there is a significant problem with welfare cheating. In 1991 less than 5 percent of all welfare benefits went to persons who were not entitled to them, and this figure includes errors committed by the welfare agency. (1)
Nor are people getting rich off welfare. The two largest welfare programs are Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and food stamps. In 1992, the average yearly AFDC family payment was $4,572, and food stamps for a family of three averaged $2,469, for a total of $7,041. (2) In that year, the poverty level for a mother with two children was $11,186. (3) Thus, these two programs paid only 63 percent of the poverty level, and 74 percent of a minimum wage job. There are other welfare programs, of course, but they either pay a minuscule fraction of these two programs, or, if larger, are collected by only a small percentage of welfare recipients. The typical welfare recipient remains among the poorest members of society.
So I seriously doubt you ever saw ONE “Welfare Queen” or “Welfare Cadillac” in your time on this earth.
So does retelling the same lie enough times make it true? By the way, how is a tax cut welfare. Go ahead an vote against your own financial self interests, unless you are one of wealthy elite, and if you are it makes your lie all the more reprehensible.
Comment by asdf — September 18th, 2008 at 10:55 pm #
What’s the source for this information? I’ve never heard Obama ever talk about anything in such specific terms.
Comment by Sam — September 18th, 2008 at 11:06 pm #
If you’re going to include a note that the bottom tier includes 60% of taxpayers, you might as well also include a note that the richest 5% carry over 60% of the national federal income tax burden. (One reference, from a quick Google search: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html. Data is from the IRS.)
Comment by Avdi — September 18th, 2008 at 11:09 pm #
If you have more property for the government to protect, you should pay more of the burden to finance said government.
Basic Economics
Comment by asdf — September 18th, 2008 at 11:19 pm #
Chris – The money has to come from somewhere. It’s a lie that we don’t have to raise taxes for the wealthy. Your buddy Mr. Bush insured that we have a HUGE record National Debt. John McCain is just another guy telling you what you WANT to hear. After hes in office everything is just as bad off, the rich get richer and the middle class and poor get worse. Good luck.
Comment by Steve — September 18th, 2008 at 11:28 pm #
Hm, seems about what I thought, and what I want to see from Obama. The people who can afford it pay more to help dig us out (as Steve said, the money has to come from somewhere), and the people who have been worse and worse off get the biggest relief. How do you oppose that?
Even if I was a millionaire I would agree with Obama. One doesn’t need that much money to live off of, so to them I say quit whining; not like you notice money going in and out of your bank anyway, while the rest of us are checking our balances several times a day wondering if we can afford to put gas in our car to make it across town to work.
Comment by Nathaniel — September 19th, 2008 at 2:53 am #
You should include the current percentage rates for each band.
Comment by James M — September 19th, 2008 at 3:01 am #
Avdi – The top 5% are certainly entitled to their money (assuming they aren’t cheating on taxes already or acquiring it by some other means), but 95% of us are not in that bracket. According to the data you pointed to, the same top 5% are paying an average of 20% of their income in taxes, whereas I personally pay over 30%. Take 30% of $30,000 a year and 20% of $1 million and see who misses it more.
Comment by Cailean — September 19th, 2008 at 5:53 am #
…but my previous comment re: your tax bracket was a tangent. What I started out to say was that if the rich are already paying substantially lower than their bracket by dodges like drawing a $1 salary (and don’t forget they get hit by more than just income taxes), then raising income tax rates on the rich is more of a symbolic stick-it-to-the-rich gesture than a real change in the tax balance. Which is one of the things that disturbs me about Obama – he seems more than willing to capitalize on populist us-vs-them class tensions. (Just for the record, I think McCain is a creepy dishonest warmongering sleaze, who disturbs me even more for a myriad reasons).
Comment by Avdi — September 19th, 2008 at 10:09 am #
Here’s the problem with this whole argument. Sure it sounds good on the surface: less taxes for lower income groups paid for by raising taxes astronomically for the highest income groups.
However, if it really was that simple, do you honestly think that McCain would be stupid enough to support a plan that “looks” so unfair? No.
Guess who pays the salaries of the lower income groups? The higher income groups. Just forcing them to give more money to the government is flawed on multiple levels. First, it assumes that non-elected government bureaucrats (who are not directly responsible to voters) are going to spend the money wisely, and not engage in corrupt activities. Secondly, if you cut into the salaries of these high income groups, they end up passing the burden onto the lower income groups in the form of lower salaries, or by outsourcing to countries with less tax burden and cheaper labor.
It’s sad (and scary) that so many people only look at the surface of things, neglecting to consider the true economics of a situation before making their judgment.
Comment by Dan — September 21st, 2008 at 5:29 pm #
I love that the majority of the comments here are rational arguments *against* the poster’s point.
Let’s also notice that the “Average Cut” percentage in Obama’s column is misleading: that may be the average of his tax cuts but, overall, he’s raising taxes almost 3% overall. The chart doesn’t seem to want to show that, does it?
Comment by misterd — September 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm #
tax the top is OK depending on your POV. if these folks don’t spend it on tax they spend it elsewhere. so if you think gov’t will make the best use of the their capital, by all means… if you think they will spend their money better, then let them spend.
at least 50% of the GDP is small businesses, owned by the very people “at the top”. tax them and they will not employ. i know plenty of people in exactly this situation, i know exactly how they react to greater taxation. i suggest we let them spend their own money, it will be spent more wisely than you might think.
Comment by pbx — April 19th, 2009 at 10:04 am #