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60% Of Households Get More Benefits Than They Pay In Taxes
Authored by Mark Perry at AEI via Contra Corner blog,
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its annual report on “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes” analyzing data through 2011 on American household’s: a) average “market income” (a comprehensive measure that includes labor income, business income, and income from capital gains), b) average household transfer payments (payments and benefits from federal, state and local governments including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance), and c) average federal taxes paid by households (including income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes).
Some additional analysis and commentary will be provided here that reveal a yet-to-be discussed major implication of the CBO report – almost the entire burden: a) of all transfer payments made to American households and b) of all non-financed government spending, falls on just one group of Americans – the top one-fifth of US households by income.
That’s correct, the CBO study shows that the bottom three income quintiles representing 60% of US households are “net recipients” (they receive more in transfer payments than they pay in federal taxes), the second-highest income quintile pays just slightly more in federal taxes ($14,800) than it receives in government transfer payments ($14,100), while the top 20% of American “net payer” households finance 100% of the transfer payments to the bottom 60%, as well as almost 100% of the tax revenue collected to run the federal government. Here are the details of that analysis.
The figures in the graph above show the amount of federal taxes paid by the average household in each income quintile minus the average amount of government transfers received by those households in 2011. For each of the three lower income quintiles, their average government transfer payments exceeded their federal taxes paid by $8,600, $12,500, and $9,100 respectively, and therefore the entire bottom 60% of US households are “net recipients” of government transfer payments. Averaged across all three lower income quintiles, we could say that the lowest 60% of American households by income received an average transfer payment of about $10,000 in 2011. And because the government has no money of its own, where did those transfer payments come from to finance the “net recipient” households? Where else, but from the top two income quintiles, and realistically almost exclusively from Americans in the highest quintile.
Specifically, the average household in the fourth quintile paid slightly more in federal taxes ($14,800) than it received in transfer payments ($14,100) in 2011, making the average household in the second-highest income quintile a “net payer” household in the amount of $700 in 2011. Basically, households in the fourth income quintile paid enough in taxes to cover their transfer payments, and then made a minor contribution of $700 on average to help cover the transfer payments of the “net recipient” households in the bottom 60% and make a small contribution to the federal government’s other expenditures.
But the major finding of the CBO report is that the households in the top income quintile are the real “net payers” of the US economy. The average household in the top one-fifth of American households by income paid $57,500 in federal taxes in 2011, received $11,000 in government transfers, and therefore made a net positive contribution of $46,500. The second-highest income quintile basically just barely covers its transfer payments, so it’s really the top 20% of “net payer” households that are financing transfer payments to the entire bottom 60% AND financing the non-financed operations of the entire federal government.
Here’s another way to think about the burden of the “net payer” top income quintile. The average household in that income quintile made a contribution net of transfers in 2011 in the amount of $46,500. That would be equivalent to the average household in the top quintile writing four checks: 1) one check in the amount of $8,600 that would cover the average net transfer payments of a household in the bottom quintile, 2) another check for $12,500 to cover the average net transfers of a household in the second lowest quintile, 3) a third check in the amount of $9,100 to cover the average net transfer payments to a household in the middle income quintile, and 4) then finally writing a check for the balance of $16,300 that would go directly to the federal government, which for the households in the quintile as a whole would have covered almost 100% of the non-financed federal government spending in 2011.
So except for a small contribution net of transfers in the amount of $700 from the average household in the fourth quintile, the highest income quintile is basically financing the entire system of transfer payments to the bottom 60% AND the entire operation of the federal government. And yet don’t we hear all the time that “the rich” aren’t paying their fair share of taxes and that they need to shoulder a greater share of the federal tax burden?
Hey, they (the top 20%) are already shouldering almost the entire federal tax burden along with almost the entire system of entitlements and transfer payments! And that’s not “fair” enough already?
The chart above shows another way that the CBO data reveal an extremely unequal distribution of government transfer payments and federal taxes by displaying the ratio of “dollars received in government transfers per dollar paid in federal tax revenues” by income quintile in 2011 (these data are from row 8 in the table above). The average household in the lowest quintile received $9,100 in government transfer payments in 2011 and paid only $500 in federal taxes, for a ratio of $18.20 in transfer payments for every $1.00 paid in federal taxes that year.
In contrast, the average household in the top income quintile received $11,000 in government transfers in 2011, but paid $57,500 in federal taxes, for a ratio of 19 cents in government transfer payments per dollar paid in federal taxes. This analysis is a further illustration that the bottom three quintiles are “net recipient” households that received more than $1 in government transfer payments for every $1 paid in federal taxes in 2011, while households in the fourth quintile were minor “net payers” in 2011 and received slightly less than a dollar in transfer payments on average ($0.95) for every $1 paid in federal taxes. “Net payers” in the top quintile received only $0.19 in government transfer payments per $1 paid in federal taxes in 2011.
This final chart shows average tax rates by quintile in 2011, both before and after government transfer payments. The blue bars in the chart show the average tax rates by income quintile from the CBO report (Table 4) and are also displayed in the top table above in row 5, calculated by dividing federal taxes paid (row 4) into “Before Tax Income” (row 3, Market Income + Government Transfers).
Adjusting for government transfers received, the brown bars in the chart are calculated by dividing “federal taxes paid minus government transfers received” (row 6 in the table) into Before-Tax Income (row 3), and show average tax rates by income quintile after government transfers. For example, the average “net recipient” household in the lowest income quintile received a “negative tax” payment of $8,600 in 2011, had an average before-tax income of $24,600, for a negative tax rate of 35%.
Reflecting their “net recipient” status, all three lower income quintiles had negative average tax rates in 2011, and only the “net payer” households in the top two income quintiles had positive after-transfer tax rates of 0.7% for the second-highest quintile and 18.9% for the top quintile. This further demonstrates that after transfer payments, households in the bottom 60% are “net recipients” with negative income tax rates, while only the top two “net payer” income quintiles had positive tax rates after transfers in 2011…….
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I offer this thought. Frosty the Snowman can kiss my ass.
Coward-Pinhead theory.
And that's why the USA is doomed.
Democracy is 3 wolves and 2 sheep voting on what's for dinner...
...and wolves don't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep.
"Send a third stage Guild Banker to DC to demand details from the Obaminator. The EBT must flow..."
This is just how the system is set up to keep rich people from becoming wealthy.
pods
Listen.
Lol. Classic. +1000 Pods.
This is why you shouldn't be allowed to vote unless you make like $80k a year. Why should the bottom 60% get to vote themselves everyone else's property?
Socialism be damned... except for my pension /sarc
I know that the word is still teribly unfahionable in Progressive circles, but let's be honest, this is taxtbook Socialism
Fuck taxes for EVERY quintile. Fuck the us vs. them arguments while we are at it. There is no upper quintile, just rich middle class being fleeced. The real rich structure their income and form trusts.
We know that the poor pay all the taxes..... Sure.
I always love the progressive perspective that anyone who might be rich ($60k/yr) actually working for a living, are somehow stealing it and not paying their fair share.
The thing we have to understand is that those who pay no taxes don't give a shit how high taxes are and those who make their living stealing and can always steal more have no problem paying the vig. Its everyone in the middle, working their buts off, not just to drive a porsche but to try and actually create a little security, self sufficiency, that are being robbed. If I could make a few million a year flipping paper, I probably wouldn't bitch too much about taxes either, but then again I could afford the best lawyers to avoid them too.
They will keep us barefoot and pregnant, working our ass off tending all the "children" (needy state sponsored dependents) resulting from our constantly being fucked in our sleep, meanwhile they party on, laughing at our stupidity and gullibility.
this is based on income taxes not sales or social security or cigarette or liquor or lottery or . . . .
if its so great at the bottom how come the rich don't go there?
Are we to assume that the poor are also the smart people? I've been around poor dumb son of a bitches my whole life and most you couldn't make wealthy with Ben's helicopter. Think what you will but its not easy to get ahead and honestly most just don't want to try that hard.
Let's eat the rich. We will figure out who to eat next once they are all eaten.
That's the problem, it doesn't matter how badly you fleece the middle class. As long as the cable still works, all is OK...
The poor do not pay Fedral Income Tax but they pay all State taxes and all other Federal taxes, fees, licences, etc. This article (and you) makes it seem like the poor are getting tons of stuff for free. The average Social Security recipient gets about $13,000 a year. Disabled people get about $750 a month. Food stamps vary by state and are as low as $10 a month. You are probably just another ignorant, self-absorbed, compassionless right-winger who thinks everybody is out to steal your belongings; after all, didn't Jesus tell you to be rich?
This is why you shouldn't be allowed to vote unless you make like $80k a year. Why should the bottom 60% get to vote themselves everyone else's property?
That's... crazy... Something like prohibiting people who accept direct government payments for their living expenses might be a little more in tune with what you're trying to achieve.
I LIKE IT!
Politicians, military, all Haliburton, ADM etc employees, execs and their ilk, police (see military, above), homeless on welfare, Manhattenites on welfare, all prohibited.
All pigs that fill their own trough, prohibited.
naw dog, 'nyone not on d'EBT be second class citizen, dey row out d'red carpet fo' us EBT 'cipents...
STFU and your taxes for my Social Security. /s
This whole article is bullshit.
What percentage of the incomes of the top two quintiles is from the government? Were SS payments included in the transfer payments - because they are only transferred through time? And I don't necessarily mean incomes directly paid by the government.
The government picks winners: banksters. financesters, lawyers, the MIC, energy corps, MSM, Pharma, every 'person' named Corporation, etc. - and creates losers: most of those in the bottom three quintiles.
Until you sort out every cent of wealth created or destroyed by government, this information is meaningless propaganda.
.
The author is welcome to audit me and show me all these entitlements I have received in excess of the tax dollars I have remitted to the govt.
Unless of course he's talking about the social security and Medicare payments I will likely never receive because these things will be bankrupt. If by some miracle I do receive payments, I feel pretty confident that they will not eclipse what I paid into the system once inflation has been taken into account.
What the article does is show how poor most Americans are. Most Americans work for less than 50K a year. Over half of the less than 50K a year actually make less than 25K a year. Most of them work more than one job. So yes, this stat is easy to understand. Low income workers who collect small SS checks probably are in that 60% number. Big deal.
Go hammer the rich to fix the problem they created. For them they are at 1930's tax rates. That's why we are where we are now. They have not paid their share to the government for all the services they get from Uncle Sam. Military at the NYSE. and protecting the GS and JPM like banksters. Who pays for that. We Do.
You don't really think that anyone actually paid those tax rates do you? That there is a different between a marginal tax rate and an actual tax rate? You're just parroting the lazy ideas of others... read past the headlines, think past the articles.
Amen to that, Pods - Well said!
well the truth is out....60%?....what does that do for the economy? since the riff raft spend every dime they get. what will happen to the economy when the idiot tea party fools have their way and take it all back? collapse? talk, talk, talk about me vs. my fellow citizens. shhhh......no talk about who creates all the money and steals on a scale never before seen by mankind. all the invading hordes combined throughtout history cannot equal the looting currently in play. yep, all about the poor vs. rich. i am just not going to lose any sleep over the poor little billy gates of the world and whether they pay 3% or 10% more in taxes....just not meaniful in the long view.
No, it's three retired Tea Party Republicans and two working people who bothered to vote, voting on nothing really.
Probably two-thirds of the benefits to the lower quintiles are social security and medicare, which are not transfer payments at all, they would be happy to tell you, because they "paid into it" their whole lives !!! (Cough cough of course it's not true, but they would be happy to tell you anyway.) Authors like this try to make you think the brown-skin poor is fleecing America, when most of those SS and medicare benefits are going to people reading Zerohedge right now -- probably more in the range of $40K per retired household.
Look, we know its all fucked but don't tell me I didn't pay in over $200k into this ponzi scheme over my working life. Yes its gone, and no I will likely never see much or any of it. But don't tell me I didn't pay. They will means test it and that will mean it will become welfare.period. But that is not the deal they made us eighty odd years ago. It tough for people to accept they have been robbed and are continuing to be robbed, but it is just fucking ugly to make fun of the victims, and if you think we boomers are fucked, just wait for your turn. You will be lucky to not be living in a cave after this shit storm is passed. But keep praying for a reset. See what you get.
That's why we're a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy--at least we were.
Before the Civil War, a minority of Americans paid for slaves' expenses such as housing, food, and healthcare, but they received work in return.
Now, who are the slaves?
And who are the masters?
Here are two excerpts from “The Classic Slave Narratives.” Enjoy.
“Slaveholders hide themselves behind the church. A more praying, preaching, psalm-singing people cannot be found than the slaveholders at the south. The religion of the south is referred to every day, to prove that slaveholders are good, pious men. But with all their pretensions, and all the aid which they get from the northern church, they cannot succeed in deceiving the Christian portion of the world. Their child-robbing, man-stealing, woman-whipping, chain-forging, marriage-destroying, slave-manufacturing, man-slaying religion will not be received as genuine; and the people of the free states cannot expect to live in union with slaveholders, without becoming contaminated with slavery.”
“There are several circumstances which occurred on this estate while I was there, relative to other slaves, which it may be interesting to mention. Hardly a day ever passed without some one being flogged. To one of his female slaves he had given a dose of castor oil and salts together, as much as she could take; he then got a box, about six feet by two and a half, and one and a half feet deep; he put this slave under the box, and made the men fetch as many stones as they could get, and put them on the top of it; under this she was made to stay all night. I believe that if he had given this slave one, he had given her three thousand lashes. Mr. Gooch was a member of a Baptist church. His slaves, thinking him a very bad sample of what a professing Christian ought to be, would not join the connection he belonged to, thinking they must be a very bad set of people;…”
Stories like this are all true! I beat my farm equipment daily and find that the equipment works MUCH better when I am done! Just the other day, my John Deere wasn't cutting grass fast enough, so, I beat it with a (serpentine) belt and withheld it's daily ration of oil! A few hours later it was cutting grass like a tornado! Of course down here in the hot south, the slightest injury on the farm becomes infected right away but somehow, my beaten farm equipment never seems to get infected or sick after the beatings either! They just keep right on working! I think it's cause I go to church a lot!
Listen Horseman.
"Before the Civil War, a minority of Americans paid for slaves' expenses such as housing, food, and healthcare, but they received work in return."
As I stated before. I have 4 slave here in India.
And as an aside I must say that it's more than providing the basics. I provide a purpose to these people like a compass bearing to a sailor. I provide them with an education: how to speak, how to dress, how to achieve goals.
Slavery in India is very similar to your USSA TV show `The Apprentice`.
Are you so blind that you cannot see this?
Think Zero's, think!
Sure, Ghandi. Bet they would just love to gut you like a fish if given half the chance.
Where's the appreciation? God damn ingrates!
Better whip them extra hard tomorrow until they learn to properly appreciate your generosity. Or do you use electrodes on their genitals? Whatever....
Listen American.
You don't understand right now because you've been Speilberg'd to death. But one day.... You will.
Listen, fake Bangalorian...
I would rather gut MYSELF then slip that far into psychopathy to 'understand'.
When slavery was civilized, Indians were slaves. When slavery is not civilized, Indians are slave owners. Sucks to be Indian, doesn't it.
dat da good point, d'industral revlution did not free d'slaves, but it what made a hole lot mo' slaves...
This is exactly what the progressive slave owners professed before the civil war. They saw blacks as inferior, incapable of caring adequately for themselves. They saw slave's forcible enslavement as charity, as christian.They provided them structure and food and housing. They saw the industrial north as the true oppressors, working factories with people that could be fired and left homeless, no security, no social safety net. This is what we now face a hundred and fifty years later. People still aspiring to the social safety net of slavery, absolute dependence and protection of their masters.
"Who are the Masters?"
They call it the Masters Tournament for a reason.
This is appaling. The super rich should get further tax breaks.
sarc/
The top 20% are not the "super-rich."
19.99% of that 20% are getting fucked as hard as those graphs indicate.
The .01% remainder are the ones fucking them (and everyone else).
...but envy is a lot easier than reason isn't it?
Corporate taxes are far below the historical norm. Individual's continue to pay, as a whole, at 19.5% which is right on historical norm.
I assume that I will be down voted for saying something unpopular, but corporate taxes are very broken. You could make the argument that there should be no corporate taxes and make it all pass-through, but then the numbers in the article above would be even more lopsided with the top quintile, who own most stocks, paying at an even higher personal rate.
Corporate taxes are far below the historical norm.
Considering corporations themselves are more of a recent development, I'm not sure I agree... Aside from the fact that it misses the entire point, which is that corporations are merely fronts for people...
Taxing corporations or even business at all is the stupidest, most ignorant, statist, corruption reinforcing policy in history. We are bleeding jobs at an all time rate while arguing about taxing our businesses further, just the internationally competitive edge they need. Further, these taxes we are assessing on businesses that predominantly serve our own citizens pass these "progressive" taxes on to Americans. So WE are paying the taxes for business, if they are lucky enough to stay in business while competing against foreign companies that pay little or no taxes.
Just because YOU want someone else to pay the fucking taxes, YOU enable these cocksuckers in government to backdoor us to infinity. I have no sympathy for the evil super rich assholes who are sucking the big tit, but these are far and few between and NOT who we are talking about.
Go out and TRY to start a fucking business and then get back to me, or just sit in your fictionally secure job that someone else is providing you while you contemplate how if you had a set of balls you would do it so much better and pay your fair share. Sure, right, get along with it.
Since leftists seem to think corporations have no First Amendment rights, why do they always insist the corporations keep paying taxes? If you don't want a corporation to have any other rights, get rid of corporate taxes. Everything should pass-through to the owners like an LP or LLC.
I agree with your gist completely.
But envying--and I agree, it is envy--the bottom 60% makes me feels creepy as fuck. Like one very twisted fuck. It's like . . . watching frilly panties run on the elementary school playground, to quote Ian Anderson.
I mean, fucking seriously?
If you're gonna get fired up with envy, shouldn't it at least be directed toward the cunts raping you raw as they live in a manner that royalty of earlier ages only dreamed?
They had to invent fucking Gods to conceptualize power like that!
what about the printed bonds portion of spending. the fucking joke is going down- dolla priviledge is just about done. millions know that the gig is just about run its course, then what? print food? print assholes to dick fuck a dolla up?\
fucken fucked up fucking mess...
The simple reality is if you collect a paycheck you will be raped. I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago.
Miffed
So.... Bill Cosby works in Payroll?
Hard to say, the 19.99% that are getting in line are being gifted their own little corporate fifedoms. While new business startups seem to be hindered by excessive government regulation (and the new threat of a SWAT team showing up to enforce obscure regulations), small businesses started in the 70's and 80's that have survived the purging by the O'communists have grown into mid-sized businesses, some having their best years ever under the Obama administration. Same with the professional parasite classes, those fuckers have done extremely well, as have the technocrats in DC. While it sucks for the 19.99%, it makes sense that they would need to take up the tax burden that was formerly shared with the middle class. It's neofeudalism and the government is not going to get any money out of the serfs because the serfs are for the most part, already indebted to the banks.
Don't like it? Don't play in the system, buy some cryptos and bullion. Figure out how to position yourself to provide something that people will need in a inept, bankrupt, crumbling police state and invest in the tools and education you will need to provide this good or service. Figure out ahead of time what you will take in payment for your good or service outside national currencies. But whatever you choose to do, keep in mind the 1st and 2nd rules of fight club and keep your mouth shut about it.
bullshit!! it is way more than 60%
Hell yeah, it's the parasitic bottom 60% bleeding us to ruin!
Makes me wonder if these sort of stats are trumpeted for the single purpose of firing up a twisted and baseless class division . . . hiding the 1% or, especially, the .1% in there among the top quintile sure as hell obscures the blatant and widely recognized reality that it is they who have almost exclusively gained ground in this shit hole con called an economy over the last five years.
Divide and conquer, anybody?
WTF? We know perfectly well who runs and maintains this racket. And their rake is incredible, regardless of the gross percentage of taxes they pay. WTF is the point of parsing out the top 20% is beyond me.
.
That's all it is - obfuscation and chicanery. Wall Street and the MIC are the biggest welfare queens in human history. If they weren't sucking every last drop of blood from this country for the benefit of the top quintile of the top quintile of the top quintile, perhaps the US economy wouldn't be drawing its last gasp.
Oh, yeah, them folks.
We've all seen quotes of Smedley Butler a million times, but what I found shocking was finally reading his entire essay in full today on a layover:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Now there was one radical mother fucker. Too bad it took most of his life as a corrupt courtier to money and murder to finally get it, but wow, did he finally get it.
Way more than all the quotes suggest.
"Divide and conquer anybody?" +1,000
It's not like the vast majority of Americans have been bleeding out the ass from 100 years of a fiat currency massacre through inflation, taxes, and debt servitude.
But yes, keep on fueling hate of those evil guys across the street causing all our problems when we've still got a quadrillion dollars of derivatives hanging over our heads.
Only shocking thing: people are just discovering this now?
CNN badly screws up Jerusalem attack coverage
http://tinyurl.com/klfoy63
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x
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No idea why the comments are screwed up.
Too much caffeine.
au lait. +1 for the milk of human kindness. there's too little of it about these days.
the general mood is darkening as unto our encirclement by the forces of mordor.
This article is completely worthless.
"b) average household transfer payments (payments and benefits from federal, state and local governments including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance), and c) average federal taxes paid by households (including income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes)."
Compares federal taxes paid to transfer payments from federal, state and local governments. Many, if not most people pay more in state and local taxes than they pay in federal taxes. (Property tax, sales tax, tobacco, alcohol, and fuel tax, fees, fines, permits, etc.
the whole article is BS.
Lets see...one minute we believe some gov BS and the next we don't.
Truth or fiction or looking for allies?
Follow the money and you know the influence on any chart they want to sell you.
SS and Medicare count as transfer payments, but not as "federal taxes paid?" If so this is misleading.
No
SS and Medicare benefits are counted as transfers.
Payroll taxes are counted as taxes.
The bottom two quartiles don't pay either of those as the have very little wage income.
Dope dealers would have to self report.
Free Shit Army is ...... #winning
The original Hollywood "zombie movie" genre was an analogy for socialism. In the movies it is left unclear if the zombies know they are zombies, but in real life they have no idea.
Sign me up! Oh wait, you can't make any money? Seriously tho, what's the cutoff? 20k per familiy of 4? Let them have the crumbs! Corporate welfare is 100x the size of 'welfare'. It's quite simple really, pay the serfs or get your head piked. When 80 people have more than 3 billion, it's time to stop caring about how much they pay in taxes.
At what point do I just take healthy dose of f*ck-it-all and become a goat-farmer?
Every day it gets harder and harder not to "Go Galt".
Go Goat?
It's happening, in a partial way. I've talked with at least a half-dozen people that have throttled back business, shed major operational expenses like office space and the like, and are living of the 20% of their business that generated 80% of their revenue (more or less.) I've done the same myself. Anyone who's in the six-figure income range has ample incentive to earn less, and people at the median income level have a huge incentive to.
Pretty sure ZH has run this infamous benefit cliff chart many, many times: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012...
Work your ass off to make $69K or be lazy and make $29K and have the exact same quality of life. The half-assed version of going Galt has never been a more rational choice than it is right now. And that's not even bringing up the savings rape Fed printing results in.
Here's one telling you I'm expanding business, making more money, paying more in taxes, and seeing an improved standard of living as a direct result.
More power to you. I've been in business for thirty years and sales are half of five years ago, but have shown some improvement the last month or so, but of course that is always the problem now...its up, and then its down. No consistency for more than a couple of months. No way to run a business.
The top 20% rentier class extract a massive surplus from the other 80% and have to hand some of it back in taxes just to keep them alive.
Of course the taxes they hand back are nowhere near the size of the enormous surplus they initially extract.
paint some pretty colored bars throw in some numbers round and round goes the lies and fraud millions of pages of inked bullshit and in the end it's all just fuel for the incinerator !!
"and therefore the entire bottom 60% of US households are “net recipients” of government transfer payments."
THAT is why you fail.
- Yoda
Some day, everyone will figure out that taxes are the sole creator of wealth inequeality...
Apparently, it will not be in our lifetime.
I would say being close the the free money spigot would play a bigger part, and it is backed up by history.
pods
Government intervention in the economy certainly increase wealth inequality, but it is not the fundamental cause of it. The fundamental cause is that some people are more productive than others. Wealth is bound to be unequal because people are bound to be unequal.
Except that the meritocratic argument cannot adequately explain all inequality present. It may partially describe inequality in labor income, but the distribution of income from capital does not go to those who deserve it based on talent or merit or value or production. It goes to the holders of capital whomever they may be and however deserving (or not) they happen to be.
So the top tier doesn't receive anything from the government in terms of asset price juicing? Forgive me if I don't cry for them.
The ones you should be crying for are the 4th quintile; aka what's left of the 'middle class.'
When they're gone, the system collapses under its own weight.
Agree and that was kind of my point. How can the wealthiest americans be paying for everyone while their net wealth has increased some 20% or more over the last 6 years?
Tax the wealthiest americans 20% more. Problem solved. ~~Rex Obama
Dup
From the cited report:
Federal taxes include individual income taxes, payroll (or social insurance) taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes. In this analysis, those taxes for a given year are the amount a house-hold owes on the basis of income received in that year, regardless of when the taxes are paid. Taxes from those four sources accounted for approximately 92 percent of federal revenues in fiscal year 2011. Revenue sources not examined in this report include states’ deposits for unemployment insurance, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and miscellaneous receipts.
This is pretty pathetic. You can bet that those paying the taxes are not the 0.0001%
Pretty graphs to tell me the FSA really does exist, and I am paying for them?
Meh, nothing new.
simple solution stop payin for them ;)
I need your accountant apparently...
Speaking of subsidies, how much do the corporates get...
We passed the "event horizan" a long, long, time ago motherfuckers.
As a budget item, corporate welfare is trivial in comparison to welfare for the "poor": $50-$100 billion depending on what exactly you count, compared to ~$2.5 trillion for SS/Medicare/Medicaid/HUD/TANF/etc.
That said, the biggest source of corporate welfare (monetary and regulatory policy) doesn't appear in the budget.
Yes, Part of Walmarts reason for downgrading its earnings was the reduction of EBT. You don't think stores are on welfare, check out how many take EBT, WIC and the rest.
All these corporations suck up the government money in that manner. Example: I just turned 65 and found out that once on Medicare the corporations get some of that too. If they have under 100 employees Medicare becomes the Primary. Pretty easy to see why the oldsters are taking some of the jobs out there.
Basically ALL MONEY and BENEFITS handed out to the needy ALWAYS end up with the wealthy and corporations. I'm tired of hearing the bullshit.
Break this shit down by state and you'll see most of the takers in this society reside in "red" states or "red" areas.
somebody took the blue pill today, I see.
tsar...i have pointed this out many times. The red states are the poorest in the nation. WHY?
well, where is the CBO report on the Federal Reserve's huge bailout (transfer of wealth from the poors) of the top 20%?
We make about 120k a year and get zippo, zilch, nada in "transfers" from government, so I decided to just quit paying taxes. Fuck em, I am not an ATM, I am a human being!.
see someone gets it finally now if we could just cget the other 250 million on board well I can dream they haven't stold that yet
i make 25,500 and get nothing.....what's your point?
inconvenient truths? at that level, if you're employed as a single adult, you get nothing. nada. zip.
geeze, if you make that on only one full time, 2000 hr/year job, you make more than the evil minimum wage, too.
must. stop. "financial repression." right?
that's the fancy term for it all by the financiers of "liberty."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmkMEoVb6rA
+1 for The Specials...
Bobs take...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVzsuDsxW8
I wonder why there is such an imbalance? Why couldn't the rich pay more to their employees and pay less taxes and the employees could now pay more in taxes so that everybody came out about the same on a net basis and everyone paid the same tax rate effectively. Is the balance what keeps the greed of the human species in check?
The "rich" would not offer employment to employees without the incentive of those large rewards. Why should I pay an employee when I can make decent amount investing in securities? Sure the "rich" could pay more, but they have other options and will always deploy their assests to maximize returns. ... unless you're advocating full blown Mussolini corporatism, forcing at gun-point employers to pay more (and produce less). I'm in the top 20%, but hardly rich. The cost of living in my county is far above the national average, so getting my nose into the 20% tent isn't exactly flooding me with cash.
Indeed. Why would you pay an employee when you can make money investing in securities? Since capital gains are taxed less than wages, on average, every incremental dollar in the economy has a strong incentive to seek out capital assets rather than pay wages. That is a continuous unrelenting downward pressure on wages that nothing can counteract. We need to level taxation of capital gains and wages.
Let's see the top control wages and CEO pay is up 2000% since 1964 , while we the poor make over 50% less than in 1964 so who's getting a screw job?
The middle class and upper middle class, that's who.
Basically, anyone with earned income is getting fucked, royally. Those CEOs and Romneys of the world are paying at a fraction of the rates earners are. And the earned income people are the ones paying for this, not the CEOs. Take someone who's upper middle class -- doctors, lawyers, small business owners such as myself -- and we're looking at tax burdens that are north of 40% of gross income.
There's a side effect of doing this, and it's going to hit soon, and hard. We have a progressive tax system, so TPTB are taking nearly half (or more in some states) of the earner's last dollar earned. But if you earn less, like the bottom 20%, you actually get benefits. The incentive structure is so fucked that if you're an earner, especially if income is proportional to hours worked, you do the numbers ans stumble into a magic revealation to lower your tax burden: work less.
I thought I was alone initially in thinking this -- this year I've intentionally walked away from probably $50K of business -- and saw my doc, he noted I seemed less stressed and I noted his office was now closed 2 days a week, and they were both for the same reason. It wasn't worth it to work harder, the government cut was too much to make us interested.
We're at record tax revenues collected right now. I predict they're going to see a tax revenue collapse within the next 2-3 years. Anyone who realizes how they're getting screwed is going to stop being a tax donkey.
Seek - Exactly. Same boat here. Studying particle physics and other enlightment, pretty much finished up my studies on human nature and how the world really works, learned database coding the new paper so I'll never be broke. I am a lot happier now. Downsized homestead but still have a few toys to play with but now have time to use them. Have no debt and stacking, get to the gym more often.
If there is less of an opportunity to benefit being a producer a lot more people will also follow the path of Budda so to speak. It doesn't take a thesis to figure that out. The mule of labor is beginning to wander off.
The empire building and trade policies without periods of detente so the economy could more naturally balance were the culprits. Finance for vote buying and debt issuance just allowed masking these two issues and can kicking for a few more years.
What's going to happen--what's going to continue, since it's the real trend--is that folks like you are going to band together with the criminals in charge, the 1% and up, against the "bottom 60%." You'll see "relief."
Because it's the easy way to go and it doesn't make enemies among those whom people in our class fantasize are their soul brothers from another . . . sigh . . . if only better, mother of a life.
Chops will begin at the bottom of the social ladder, of course. It's the easy way, picking on the pretty much helpless. Same as it's always been.
2.5 million homeless children speak to a bang up start!
Not blaming you, simply observing how this shit works.
Divide and conquer.
No, the "real" 1% are tax donkeys, not co-conspirators.
The average effective tax rate of someone in the top 5% is 23.5%, of the top 1% is 22.8%...and that's inclusive of the top 0.1%
for the top 0.1% all by themselves? i12.5%
The cut-off for the 1% is $389K, or about 7.5 times the median income. For the 0.1% it's $1.7 million, or about 33 times median income.
In other words, the average 1%'s income is far closer to the average income in the US, by a wide and non-linear margin. Someone making less than 400K a year has about as much political power in this country as someone on SNAP does. It's pretty obvious just looking at the numbers what segment is actually priveledged here. The 1% is the top of the middle class, in spite of appearances otherwise, and are doctors, lawyers, and small business owners, and they're being thrown under the bus to pay for votes and/or keeping the lower classes from rioting.
The problem is thanks to grossly negligent mismangement or outright intent by TPTB, the economy has been destroyed and the lower classes are expanding faster than they can be paid for. Just about everyone is going to be fucked when this goes down. The helpless and homeless are already fucked and have nothing to lose, the issue is they're going to be joined by a whole slew of people that used to be able to pay to at least feed them. The 1% aren't going to have an option to sell out or get relief from cuts to the poor -- to the contrary, they're the ones that TPTB are depending on to keep the system running a little longer.
Just saying, the 1% are the most hypocritical sell-outs. Without their sycophantic toady support of those around and above them, this illusion of democracy could not be maintained. The 1% are not only the medical sharks and their AMA monopoly, the greasy lawyers and their lawless disgrace of a "justice" system, or the business owners and their various chambers of commerce, but the media talking heads, the mid-level corporate execs, and sundry other chest beating frauds (if taken group by group, though there are certainly exceptions in EVERY group, like you and me); it's the 1% who are the day in, day out cheerleaders, house negroes, if you will, and most enthusiastic prostitutes for the oligarchs.
Just my not so humble opinion. Not happy to say or see it, believe me.
But they know where their bread is buttered. They know who to hate.
Right or wrong, they hang together.
Yep, I am an earner/wage slave/tax donkey who voluntarily took a $50 to $60k annual cut and have a lot more time on my hands. Looking to scale back even more. Trying to find that sweet spot of income/less tax/more free time. But I see it all crumbling soon and tring to think about a set of marketable skills that may be needed after a reset. Professional work may get severly limited. Maybe HVAC technician in Florida or something after I downsize and buy a bunch of PMs or rentals.
Soliciting suggestions.
I am in the same boat although I work for a large corp and have a lot of rental income coming in from multiple properties. The people though in the upper middle class (doctors, lawyers, small business owners) though from my conversations are angry at the wrong people and adopt the foolish 'takers' line of BS instead of being angry at the real cause of gov't spending including the morass that is the $1T+ defense-related items in the federal budget annually for which the average Americans receives little/no benefit annually. Also not much anger at the ridiculously favorable treatment of income derived from non-labor since GW Bush's 1st term in the early 00s.
The 1% stuff is largely misguided too. It is at people in the very far end of the spectrum 0.1% but even the more wealth who have realized almost all economic gains since '08 as the Fed's efforts have almost entirely gone into their pockets/bank statements.
Warren Buffets secretary must be really pissed about this Report.
that was quite a sleight of hand by Buffet
he wanted taxes raised on LABOR income ... not wealth (interest/income/rent/capital gains)
and Buffet is the master of avoiding taxes
it has been a good 7 or 8 years ago, but read somewhere that Buffet's income that year was around $25 million ... so the income tax on high earnings he advocated might have cost him (for that year) around a $1 million ... chump change for him.
he's VERY good at deflecting talk away from any sort of tax that might actually hurt the wealthy.
Bell's - exactly. Buffet is a near master of rhetorical legerdemain.... although, he is paduan to Abe Foxman's master.
And THAT'S the secret to the system, Bell's.
If you work for your money, you pay up to 50% of it in income taxes.
If your money works for you, you pay at most 18% cap gains tax and at best 0% on tax-free bonds.
That's why the rich get richer, and anyone who works for a living is a debt slave...
And integrated over the entire economy, this policy destroys the wage sector. Is it any wonder that there is low demand in the economy? And why is anyone surprised that so many people do not pay income taxes, when incomes get pounded by money avoiding paying wages to access the tax advantage of capital gains?
less sexy headline: 10% of households have most of the money.
That's because 10% of the households EARNED it you socialist fuck!
You mean inherited it and/or "earned" it through capital gains while cruising the Caribean.
No, I mean earned and still earns it. Middle and upper middle class folks like me who get stuck supporting those too lazy to work. And if someone inherited it and can sail the Caribbean why the fuck should you care? Jealous?
What are you, some 18 year old frat boy?
Go fuck yourself with that facile rant.
And astop excluding the middle. Not everyone smarter than you is a "socialist" ya dumb tedious cunt.
Now go practice playing Beirut. Your brothers are counting on you.
Also, stop touching children.
Sort of like those car loan finance companies that can access those free Fed notes then hand out car loans at loan sharking 24-30%? That kind of hard work?
And by earned do you mean like the bail outs to save the banksters?
I'm lower middle class (using a term I dislike), work everyday, I'm 65, could score SS if I wanted, but I'd like to see our production the corpgov oligarchs shipped off returned. Then maybe there would be some decent opportunities out there other than Taco Bell and maybe,,,,,,,, just maybe,,,,,,, many of those folks wouldn't have to depend on you and I.
On what planet is anybody in the top 10% middle class? By the way, "inherit" and "earn" are different words with different meanings.
Or even better: top 0.1% households now own 20% of US wealth, same as "bottom" 90%. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631129-it-001-who-...
Start Pimp'in.
Once you get the dollars gush’in, donate to the political campaigns of local judges.
Hmm wealth re-distribution.... well I never had it so I guess I'm not getting any back ...just something to ponder ... keep eating squirells and burnin dead trees I suppose
Forward----------------->
I’m a SWM with no deductions! LOL
How fucking unusual eh? 60% of households get more from the govenrment who ask a private bank to print the fucking script from thin air, and then add interest what they dont print so as to live off of your backs are suprised 'Folks' just do what the fucking banks do then?
Remember, them banks you were 'Forced' to bail out, with your 'Money' printed from thin air with interest attatched, at your expense, for you, your kids, and their kids to live a life of nothing, so those at the very fucking top can continue to live a life of producing nothing but eternal debt, at the very fucking best at your expense? Them?
Allow the fucking cream at the top to not just live the life they believe they are accustomed to, but believe you should provide it, at no cost to them bar your collective skin? Them?
Okay then.
Burn this mother fucking criminal enterprise we call life to the ground then, and as 'Laws' says. Roll the mother fucking guillotines.
Nothing at all changes otherwise, fucking does it, eh?
Cunts
;-)
I upvoted you as you stated it much more succintly than I was able to put it.
I woulda just said Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck.
The 60%’ers & ‘bailout babies’ sit across from us at Thanksgiving Day dinner.
At what point do the printing by the Fed make a showing in number charts like these? Everybody knows taxes only cover about half of governments expenses and even at that, this authors top quintile is making a killing from their access to free Fed money.
Leaving out those Fed free dollars will definitely skew the numbers exactly like this author shows.
And who says "money" isn't the root of all evil LMFAO....give me more more more and fuck you I want my baubbles and trinkets...take it for what it's worth
I am not disputing the numbers here but does the Congressional Budget Office have any credibility or is it another black hole? Lets just face it, we have no idea what's going on with our looted earnings, all we know for sure is that we are getting screwed.
CBO has credibility in the sense they're the only ones really counting this up, however they lack credibility in that their numbers are almost always the most optimistic scenario possible with respect to finances and recessions, etc. They usually just do a flat-line projection of "if nothing changes, here's the world." And granted, given how shitty their bosses are at balancing a budget, or shit, even having a budget, I can understand the lame approach.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45229
The Bernank financed 100% of transfer payments. The rich folks just paid the interest on the debt.
Total Social Security benefits 2011: $738.4 billion. Total FICA revenue same year $807.7 billion. Estimated Federal share of Medicaid payments 2011: $272.8 billion.
Total whining of the filthy rich: priceless.
All these liberal social programs started to become law after women were given the the right to voe. Let's end Suffrage in the U.S. and get our country back!
yeah barefoot and pregnant that'll teach those .gov asshats.... keep believin in that voting bullshit .gov pushes its programs just to keep ya confused no matter the sex of the vote! the more distraction they cause the less ya pay attention right? Right! Hey look over there... while I steal yoyr shit. Why the fuck am I even pointing this shit out ? Never mind carry on .......--------------------> Forward into the void
What a bunch of closet socialists on ZH. You use your hatred of the top 0.01% as an excuse to fuck the middle and upper middle class. Meanwhile you all love to piss on the looters in Ferguson as EBT junkies. If it wasn't so entertaining watching your games of mental twister it would actually be depressing knowing there were so many of you fucktards out there.
LMAO!
Just so you know, if I had millions, I’d arm the Ferguson rebels with ‘Round the clock 3D printer airdrops.
If you remove the words "value" and "worth" from your vocabulary you reallize the truth for they are always subjective to the "individual" .... just more smoke and mirrors to keep the flock on path!!