The new version of poverty

#76
#76
volinbham said:
What's the old story about the USSR showing a propaganda movie about the US that feature the poor? IIRC the goal was to show the evils of capitalism but it backfired because Soviet citizens saw that the poor had homes, TVs, cars, phones --- things they didn't have.

Not sure if this is true or Urban Myth
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If anything but a myth, the folks showing it were Stoooo-pid. Hard to believe.
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#77
#77
volinbham said:
The old measure fits this scenario much better. The new measure ensures someone will always be defined as living in poverty.
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Right - and that is silly. If someone is always guaranteed to live in poverty, then why social program to 'help' them get out of poverty.....you've already made sure that they CAN'T.

Bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with this plan if our perception, as a nation, of poverty consistently changes along with standard of living. But, there is no reason why this MUST (or does) happen....so why legislate it?

It makes sense to increase the poverty line to maintain constant purchasing power. It also seems reasonable that as we, as a society, become rather dependent on certain goods, that the purchasing power that defines poverty might increase (for example, I'm thinking about the cost of maintaining a car so that you can get to work, vs. times when that might not have been necessary). But, it doesn't make sense to make this happen automatically at the rate of the increase of our standard of living.
 
#78
#78
BigPapaVol said:
The idea that poverty is about relative wealth is simply bastardizing the term for future political use. It changes nothing.
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I agree with that. Is poor relative? Of course. If living in poverty relative? No, just subjective.
 
#79
#79
bam15 said:
I will say this again, Tax cuts are essential, especially during a recession. Across the board tax cuts are fine with me during recessions. However, concentrating tax relief at the top percentile during placid times is unnecessary and does nothing but spiral the economy into another gilded age, let alone enlarged deficits.
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Btw, I wanted to add that in the same CBO report that I pulled those figures on marginal tax rates from a few posts back, I also noticed that the top quintile of earners pays 69.3% of all taxes. The top 2 quintiles pay 85.8%. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
 
#80
#80
TennTradition said:
Right - and that is silly. If someone is always guaranteed to live in poverty, then why social program to 'help' them get out of poverty.....you've already made sure that they CAN'T.

Bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with this plan if our perception, as a nation, of poverty consistently changes along with standard of living. But, there is no reason why this MUST (or does) happen....so why legislate it?

It makes sense to increase the poverty line to maintain constant purchasing power. It also seems reasonable that as we, as a society, become rather dependent on certain goods, that the purchasing power that defines poverty might increase (for example, I'm thinking about the cost of maintaining a car so that you can get to work, vs. times when that might not have been necessary). But, it doesn't make sense to make this happen automatically at the rate of the increase of our standard of living.
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We legislate a term like that for political purposes only. The word only exists for the purposes of wealth redistro.
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#81
#81
paul1454 said:
Btw, I wanted to add that in the same CBO report that I pulled those figures on marginal tax rates from a few posts back, I also noticed that the top quintile of earners pays 69.3% of all taxes. The top 2 quintiles pay 85.8%. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
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That sounds low. The top tenth pays an almost unfathomable % of our total tax bill.
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#82
#82
BigPapaVol said:
Again, how does this fantasyland scenario of yours work? Our progressive tax code makes your gibberish little more than rehashed class warfare.
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Sorry, I'm attempting to reply to seven or eight responses. I'll attempt to not get side-tracked.

I don't understand what you are implicating. I never said that Republicans only gave tax cuts to the wealthiest percentile, however, they have concentrated tax cuts at a much larger percentage than other Administrations. Thus making the rich much wealthier, while the lower percentile has been stagnant in recent years.

This concentration has enlarged the divide between the middle class and the wealthiest percentile.
 
#83
#83
BeecherVol said:
So basically what you are saying is there is no reason to strive to be wealthy because the goverment should be able to take your already high taxes and make them higher?
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How am I insinuating that? It's hard to strive to be wealthy when Social Darwinism economic thought and reverse engineering is going on.
 
#84
#84
paul1454 said:
But you can't make tax cuts across the board. The lowest two quintiles paid less than 0% as of 2006 (i.e., they received more in tax credits than they paid in). The middle quintile had an average tax rate of 3%. I assume your beef is the bush tax cuts (mainly dividends and capital gains). Sure it didn't cut taxes for the lowest three quintiles, but they have no taxes to be cut. I just don't get how you can bash them for it. If they want to cut taxes, it would be impossible for them to make an across the board tax cut that is anything more than in name only.
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The bush tax cuts saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. If you factor in all of Bush's tax cuts, those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year, the richest five percent of the population, pocked almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year, which happens to be eighty percent of America, they received barely a quarter of the cuts.
 
#86
#86
volinbham said:
How have they taken tax relief from lower income groups?

Redistribution implies taking wealth from one group and delivering it to another.

If top marginal rates go down and no other rates do (not what happened but I'm playing along), the government still has not taken wealth from the low end and given it to the high end. They've simply allowed the high end to keep more of the wealth they earned.

Now, look at the Bush tax cuts. Rates were cut across the board. The low end gave less to the government than prior to the tax cuts. In fact, many were in a negative tax situation where they received money back even though none had been paid. The high end kept more of the wealth they generated (as a percentage) than before but it was not taken from tax dollars of others.
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I'm not following, if you give money to A, and refuse to give B money. B will stay stagnant and will not grow, A will get richer, thus leaving B where it was before. You see, I don't have a problem with tax cuts going to A, but increasing tax cuts for A, and refusing to help B doesn't make since.

Any differences following what I said, is going to be interpretations of what actually happened, in which I already know your answer.
 
#88
#88
bam15 said:
I'm not following, if you give money to A, and refuse to give B money. B will stay stagnant and will not grow, A will get richer, thus leaving B where it was before. You see, I don't have a problem with tax cuts going to A, but increasing tax cuts for A, and refusing to help B doesn't make since.

Any differences following what I said, is going to be interpretations of what actually happened, in which I already know your answer.
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You can't say things like this right after telling me that you weren't previously talking about concentrated tax help.
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#90
#90
bam15 said:
Actually, that is interesting on Milton Friedman. I don't want the Wealthiest percentile and lowest percentile to equalize, I want the difference between the two to be lower. Expanding the middle class would be a step in the right direction.
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I would be glad to see the difference between wealthiest and lowest percentiles, and/or an increase of the middle class as well, as long as it isn't done through redistribution... as this only addresses symptoms and none of the causes. Also, since you previously mentioned that Republicans redirect wealth to the top you may be interested in the data shown in the link below. From 1999 - 2007 the bottom 50% of AGI'ers paid a DECREASING percentage rate of the federal income tax, while the top 10% of AGI'ers paid an increasing percentage.

National Taxpayers Union - Who Pays Income Taxes?
 
#91
#91
bam15 said:
The bush tax cuts saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. If you factor in all of Bush's tax cuts, those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year, the richest five percent of the population, pocked almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year, which happens to be eighty percent of America, they received barely a quarter of the cuts.
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How can they more when they pay less than 10% of the total taxes? You do understand that millions more became net tax gainer under the Bush tax program.
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#92
#92
bam15 said:
I don't understand what you are implicating. I never said that Republicans only gave tax cuts to the wealthiest percentile, however, they have concentrated tax cuts at a much larger percentage than other Administrations. Thus making the rich much wealthier, while the lower percentile has been stagnant in recent years.
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"making" is a loaded word here. the increase in wealth for the rich was not taken from the poor thus the notion of redistribution is flawed.

You could say that Bush redistributed wealth less than others since he didn't take as much from the rich but it's not correct to say the Bush tax cuts redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich. The system is still progressive.

As paul1454 points out, the Bush tax cuts increased the the number of people with tax rates less than zero. That is redistribution - that is a direct cash payment from one group of taxpayers (those with positive taxes) to another (those with negative taxes)
 
#93
#93
volinbham said:
"making" is a loaded word here. the increase in wealth for the rich was not taken from the poor thus the notion of redistribution is flawed.

You could say that Bush redistributed wealth less than others since he didn't take as much from the rich but it's not correct to say the Bush tax cuts redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich. The system is still progressive.

As paul1454 points out, the Bush tax cuts increased the the number of people with tax rates less than zero. That is redistribution - that is a direct cash payment from one group of taxpayers (those with positive taxes) to another (those with negative taxes)
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I'm astounded that something this basic actually has to be said.
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#94
#94
BigPapaVol said:
That sounds low. The top tenth pays an almost unfathomable % of our total tax bill.
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Yes. It is lower because it is based on 20% groups of income earners. The numbers for the top 10, 5, and 1 percentiles are staggering. I'm not in the office anymore so I don't have them in front of me. I'll try to remember to post them tomorrow.
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#95
#95
bam15 said:
I'm not following, if you give money to A, and refuse to give B money. B will stay stagnant and will not grow, A will get richer, thus leaving B where it was before. You see, I don't have a problem with tax cuts going to A, but increasing tax cuts for A, and refusing to help B doesn't make since.

Any differences following what I said, is going to be interpretations of what actually happened, in which I already know your answer.
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??? Who gave money to A? (the rich). Cutting the tax rate is not the same as giving money to someone.

If you are robbed and the thief takes 1/2 your cash instead of all of it the thief did not "give you money".

On the otherhand, the Bush tax cuts did give money to the low end. People who paid zero in taxes actually received refunds - the government gave them money directly.
 
#98
#98
paul1454 said:
Yes. It is lower because it is based on 20% groups of income earners. The numbers for the top 10, 5, and 1 percentiles are staggering. I'm not in the office anymore so I don't have them in front of me. I'll try to remember to post them tomorrow.
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Below are the numbers for 2007. As shown, the top 10% paid 71.22 percent of the total federal income tax.

Tax Year 2007
Percentiles Ranked by AGI
Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid

Top 1%
$410,096 AGI Threshold on Percentiles
40.42 Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid

Top 5%
$160,041
60.63

Top 10%
$113,018
71.22

Top 25%
$66,532
86.59

Top 50%
$32,879
97.11

Bottom 50%
<$32,879
2.89
 
#100
#100
BigPapaVol said:
You can't say things like this right after telling me that you weren't previously talking about concentrated tax help.
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?

Bush focused more on the top percentile, I don't know how you can deny that.
 
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