On 4/17/05, Frank Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Think Tank's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew > > Business Interests Overlapped Policy > > And about what in this article do you want to discuss here? > > I already think that the current US government is making bad policy and > using questionable methods to get what they want. But alas, you cannot > impeach the president for his actions because he was faithful to his wife. > So we all have to wait until 2008, when GWB's second term runs out. > > So, what do you want to discuss? > > (PS: I'm ambi. *duck*) > > -- > Frank Schmidt Onward, radical moderates! > > Startling new underground group spreads lack of panic! Citizens declare > themselves "relatively unafraid" of threats of undeclared rationality. > > Taxes.
>>> Happy tax day, fellow citizens! My favorite authority on taxes is David Cay Johnston of *The New York Times*, who won a Pulitzer for reporting on the terminally unsexy topic of taxes. His book *Perfectly Legal -- The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich -- and Cheat Everyone Else* is the single best work on public policy of recent years, I think. Johnston reports: "Through explicit policies, as well as tax laws never reported in the news, Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super-rich -- the top one-one hundredth of one percent of Americans. "People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more." The rest of us are subsidizing not only the super-rich, but also corporations. Fifty years ago, corporations paid 60 percent of all federal taxes. But by 2003, that was down to 16 percent. So individual taxpayers have to make up the difference, as corporate profits soar and wages fall. http://www.alternet.org/story/21760/ >>> Another study found when all taxes were taken into account the US tax system in 2000 was flat by income quintiles. Since then Warren Buffet has commented that with the 15% dividend tax and other breaks he now pays a lower share of taxes then his secretary. Gary Denton _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
