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Another fine myth by the neocons

Corwyn

Unregistered
C
I just started reading "Perfectly Legal" by D. Johnston -

"The IRS just today came out this morning with new statistical tables on income for the year 2001. And on the way over here, I was calculating, and the 6,800 American who make more than $10 million a year pay a smaller percentage of their income, 25 percent, in federal income taxes, than people who make $400,000 to $500,000 a year. And when you add in Social Security taxes, people making $70,000 to $80,000 a year are paying a larger share of their income to the federal government than people who make $10 million a year or more."


I never understood how anyone with any common sense could actually believe the Limbough/neocon myth that the rich pay more taxes, but this book does a fantastic job on detailing just exactly how it works. What's amazing is that the book has been praised by both left and right leaning economists as accurate in detailing how taxes and laws passed by congress actually affect how we all pay taxes..


Corwyn
 
Neo-conservatives (historically) tend to be former liberals whose main complaints deal with foreign policy rather than the tax code. Grover Norquist, Limbuagh, Dick Armey and Libertarians are far more likely to rant against taxation.

I read that book a couple months ago. Good stuff. The last chapters seemed to lag on, however.

Another interesting factoid is how the IRS is more likely to pursue the poorest quintile than the richest quintile. Or, consulting my notes I see: "BLS looked at local, state and Federal levies: Taxes consumed 19% of the top fifth's income, these individuals and families who average $116,666. The poorest fifth with $7,946 paid 18%. (p. 94)


Frank Luntz's (brilliant) anti-tax rhetoric is quoted (p. 154):

"You wake up in the morning and have your first cup of coffee, you pay a sales tax. You go to your garage; you start your car; you pay an automobile tax. You drive to work; you pay a gas tax. You go to work; you pay an income tax. You turn on the lights; you pay an electricity tax. You flush the toilet; you pay a water tax. You fly somewhere; you pay an airport tax. You stay overnight; you pay a hotel occupancy tax. You call home; you pay a telephone tax. You finally get home; you pay a property tax. You turn on the TV; you pay a cable tax. Even when you die, you pay a death tax. You are taxed from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you got to bed at night. You're taxed from the cradle to the grave, and hard-working American taxpayers deserve a break."

Or this Ronald Reagan quote on the evils of socialistic redistribution schemes like the EITC: "The best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation to come out of Congress." (p. 131)
 
I'll second Aerocontrol's objections. Vanilla conservatives and vanilla liberals have been fighting this battle for a long time, the neocons haven't really adopted any radically different position on that issue. Are you using the term because you hear lots of people using it? Are you using it because you mistakenly believe Bush is a neocon? Or do you actually believe the neocons are somehow at the center of this whole tax mess?
 
NO, I think I am fairly aware of the definition of a neocon.
Yes, they're primary goal and interest is military and foreign policy related, where their ideal world would make the US an unparalleled power who brings "democracy and economic developement to the freedom loving people of (fill in the blank)"

And while, again , at present the primary goal is one of foreign policy and military might, how does one bring economic liberation to all these foreign "children"?

Once the army has pacified the people and opened their eyes to american consumarism they have to have places to shop.

This can only happen if we support the rich by allowing them to
keep and invest all their money instead re distributing it though taxes for nonsense like social services, infrastructure, education and the like.

So while neocons are most certainly more militant than your
"vanila conservatives" I think that the distriction is simply one of
priorities. While I don't have any supporting facts for this, my feeling is that the hard core neocons simply feel that they do not have spend time adressing taxation issues as they are already being handled by their base, leaving them to focus on priorities.

You don't think that limbough is a noecon???

c
 
Corwyn said:

While I don't have any supporting facts for this, my feeling is...
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I don't think this debate is going to get much further than this.
 
Corwyn said:

This can only happen if we support the rich by allowing them to
keep and invest all their money instead re distributing it though taxes for nonsense like social services, infrastructure, education and the like.

Click to expand...

"Allowing them"?? Tell me, did "we" earn the money that is in their pockets? If not then what say would "we" have in "allowing" these people to keep their property? Reaching into someone else's pocket is usually called theft.

-z
 
rikzilla

"Allowing them"?? Tell me, did "we" earn the money that is in their pockets?
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Why yes, yes 'we' did.

Society is the framework which makes wealth creation possible. Without laws, policy, military, workers who create goods, people who keep trains running, people who pave the streets on which the limousines drive, contract law, etc., they wouldn't be 'earning' their money.

Property is a social construct. ownership is a social construct. Rights -- including the right to your property -- are social constructs. So no, nobody can rightfully say 'I made this money all by myself, it's mine alone', except perhaps (arguably) a lone hunter-gatherer.
 
I have changed my mind on the whole 'progressive taxation' thing and have supported a flat tax for about 10 years now.

I don't feel that wealthy people should have to pay more taxes than anyone else. However i feel that the current structure gives so many break to people who can afford them that it is ridiculous. As for who pays the most in taxes? That is a great subject to study, because you can look at income and the actualk amount of taxes paid.

And I know that there are mnay wealthy and upper income people who don't pay thier federal taxes and then settle for 10%. Which is really wierd. I don;t think that the system is unfair to the poor, I think it is biased to the wealthy.

Even as a reformed communist, I don't feel that the wealthy should pay a higher percentage of taxes, I just want them to pay period. No more bussiness expenses, no more homestead exemptions on second home.

Flat tax, all income. Including churches and not for profits. NO more depreciation , no more bussiness expenses. All taxed. No more EITC. If everyone, including bussinesses paid the rate would be very low.
 
Victor Danilchenko said:
rikzilla

Why yes, yes 'we' did.

Society is the framework which makes wealth creation possible. Without laws, policy, military, workers who create goods, people who keep trains running, people who pave the streets on which the limousines drive, contract law, etc., they wouldn't be 'earning' their money.

Property is a social construct. ownership is a social construct. Rights -- including the right to your property -- are social constructs. So no, nobody can rightfully say 'I made this money all by myself, it's mine alone', except perhaps (arguably) a lone hunter-gatherer.
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Sounds like a real "People's Republic" you're living in there Vic.

-z
 
Why yes, yes 'we' did.

Without laws, policy, military, workers who create goods, people who keep trains running, people who pave the streets on which the limousines drive, contract law, etc., they wouldn't be 'earning' their money.

True. And without 'them' creating corporations, opening factories, buying a lot of raw materials for them, and developing areas for new houses, the people who pave the streets, build the houses, and work in the factories wouldn't be 'earning' their money, either.

When it comes to silly cliches, both "the parasites exploiting the workers" and "the great good rich people do it all for us" are, to say the least, silly.
 
Skeptic

True. And without 'them' creating corporations, opening factories, buying a lot of raw materials for them, and developing areas for new houses, the people who pave the streets, build the houses, and work in the factories wouldn't be 'earning' their money, either.
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Absolutely true! the point is, though, that you cannot simply say 'I earned this money all by myself, it's all mine'. The society is interdependent, and nobody can claim their sole investment in the fruits of their labor -- neither a carpenter nor a banker. This brute fact is what justifies redistribution of wealth through democratically controlled taxation.

When it comes to silly cliches, both "the parasites exploiting the workers" and "the great good rich people do it all for us" are, to say the least, silly.
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Indeed. Good thing I never tried to put forth the former -- I was merely stridently rejecting the implicit idea that the society has no moral right to tax the rich, or anyone, for social purpose (I doubt even Rik would object to excise-style taxes) -- that such taxation amounts to theft; which was Rikzilla's point.
 
Corwyn said:

So while neocons are most certainly more militant than your
"vanila conservatives" I think that the distriction is simply one of
priorities. While I don't have any supporting facts for this, my feeling is that the hard core neocons simply feel that they do not have spend time adressing taxation issues as they are already being handled by their base, leaving them to focus on priorities.

You don't think that limbough is a noecon???
Click to expand...

Even so. Even if neocons fervently supports tax cuts, then it still doesn't really make sense to address this post to them.

Limbaugh, made an honorary member of Congress after the "Republican Revolution" goes along with whatever the GOP says. Currently the neocons have risen to power and paleoconservatives (Buckley) and populist conservatives (Buchanan) have taken a back-seat. _National Review_ and Buckley --- though now with some regret -- supported Iraq, of course, but they're far more domestic policy oriented.

Anyway, who cares.

Victor:

Not much time to comment.

I enjoyed the way Herbert Simon (Nobel Prize winner in economics?) put it in _Boston Review's_ New Democracy Forum (quoted in Singer's _President of Good and Evil_):

When we compare average incomes in rich nations with those in Third World countries, we find enormous differences that are surely not due simply to differences in motivations to earn. Laziness is not a principal cause of poverty. A more plausible explanation for the differences, in fact the explanation that is universally put forward, is that much greater resources per capita are available to some countries than to others. These differences are not simply a matter of acres of land or tons of coal or iron ore, but, more important, differences in social capital that takes primarily the form of stored knowledge (e.g., technology, and especially organizational and governmental skills).

Exactly the same claim can be made about the differences in incomes within any given society. In large part, these differences must be attributed to differences in capital ownership, of which the largest part is social capital: knowledge, and participation in kinship and other privileged social relations. In addressing the question of justice, therefore, we are assessing the justice of inheritance of such resources along bloodlines. This is a question of value, not of fact. I personally do not see any moral basis for an inalienable right to inherit resources, or to retain all the resources that one has acquired by means of economic or other activities.

The usual argument for such a right is based on the assumption of perfectly competitive markets where factors of production are paid their marginal values and where there are no externalities. But this assumption does not hold to any reasonable degree of approximation in real societies. Access to the social capital–a major source of differences in income, between and within societies–is in large part the product of externalities: membership in a particular society, and interaction with other members of that society under practices that commonly give preferred access to particular members.

How large are these externalities, which must be regarded as owned jointly by members of the whole society? When we compare the poorest with the richest nations, it is hard to conclude that social capital can produce less than about 90 percent of income in wealthy societies like those of the United States or Northwestern Europe. On moral grounds, then, we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners.
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http://www.bostonreview.net/ndf.html#Income
 
OK, so maybe I am wrong. Part of the reason I come to this board is to learn.

I know that the neocon idea has been around since the 60's,
but isn't its current growth and comming to power start with Reagan?
And he most certainly put strong military, foreign policy and
taxes - trickle down all in one big pot as a solution and agenda?

So I am still trying to undersand the difference -other than the
priority of list of items, between the neocon and "vanila conservative?
 
Cain,

Nice quote, dude -- a good way to think about it, framing the discussion in terms of social externalities being a contributing factor to financial earning. Thanks.

Too bad most people who scream bloody murder at the slighest deviation from purely economic considerations of socioeconomic policies, forget to apply the same economic thinking to non-financial factors.
 
I'd be interested in seeing a break down of that article, Cain. How did the author arrive at the '90%' figure? What is his evidence that 'social capital' is a significant factor in income distribution?
 
crackmonkey said:
I'd be interested in seeing a break down of that article, Cain. How did the author arrive at the '90%' figure? What is his evidence that 'social capital' is a significant factor in income distribution?
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crackmonkey- As for the "how" or "where" that figure comes from, Simon doesn't say. No source is provided. The quote appears under the heading of [/i]Justice[/i]; it's a moral argument.

A common argument against any type of taxation (from conservatives and libertarians especially), as you full well know, is that the government is "taking MY money." Simon's relatively obvious observation, couched in similar moral language, deflates those claims. I doubt it makes any difference if we can agree on either 90% or 5%.
 
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