LTTE: Upper-income people generate employment

[mgc1961]

In a recent letter to the editor, a writer referred to “unfairly low tax rates for people making over $250,000 a year” (“Republicans ignore positive economic news,” April 29).

Either this writer is totally unfamiliar with our tax laws or is simply trying to distort the truth.
The largest source of U.S. government revenue is the personal income tax.
Our current tax laws are written so that the upper-income 25 percent of Americans pays 96 percent of the personal income tax.

That leaves the remaining vast majority to pay only 4 percent of the total.

These are accepted, published facts, not someone’s speculation. The upper-income 25 percent creates most of the jobs in America. They could create many more jobs if their capital wasn’t being siphoned off to Washington for boondoggle “programs.”

Yep, there’s unfair taxation all right, unfair to those who ought to be allowed to use more of their resources to generate jobs.


http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100510/OPINION02/100507043/1007/OPINION/Upper-income+people+generate+employment


The first thing that comes to my mind is anyone with money in their pocket, be it saved or spent, is generating somebody's employment.

Secondly, for private wealth defenders like the one linked above, who may live in a state of constant aggitation over government "boondoggles," I would have them consider the following:

The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years, and is reported to be haunted. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, but is now a tourist attraction. Under Winchester's day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around-the-clock, without interruption, from 1884 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. The cost for such constant building has been estimated at about US $5.5 million(if paid in 1922, this would be equivalent to almost $70 million in 2008 dollars).

The mansion is renowned for its size and utter lack of any master building plan. According to popular belief, Winchester thought the house was haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles, and that only continuous construction would appease them. It is located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, California.

More to read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House

Winchester Mystery House™ is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftsmanship – marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Tour guides must warn people not to stray from the group or they could be lost for hours! Countless questions come to mind as you wander through the mansion – such as, what was Mrs. Winchester thinking when she had a staircase built that descends seven steps and then rises eleven?

Some of the architectural oddities may have practical explanations. For example, the Switchback Staircase, which has seven flights with forty four steps, rises only about nine feet, since each step is just two inches high. Mrs. Winchester arthritis was quite severe in her later years, and the stairway may have been designed to accommodate her disability.

The miles of twisting hallways are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might be following her.

This wild and fanciful description of Mrs. Winchester’s nightly prowl to the Séance Room appeared in The American Weekly in 1928, six years after her death:

“When Mrs. Winchester set out for her Séance Room, it might well have discouraged the ghost of the Indian or even of a bloodhound, to follow her. After traversing an interminable labyrinth of rooms and hallways, suddenly she would push a button, a panel would fly back and she would step quickly from one apartment into another, and unless the pursuing ghost was watchful and quick, he would lose her. Then she opened a window in that apartment and climbed out, not into the open air, but onto the top of a flight of steps that took her down one story only to meet another flight that brought her right back up to the same level again, all inside the house. This was supposed to be very discomforting to evil spirits who are said to be naturally suspicious of traps.”

Read more at http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/thehouse.cfm

[dmallind]

1. They always miss one thing in this argument

Of course the basic premnise is true - poor people seldom, directly, are in a position to hire anyone.

But the question of tax fairness is moot, as all employee costs are deductible in both large and small businesses, so ironically one way to reduce your tax burden would be to hire more people.

[OHdem10]

4. This argument held argument prior to late 70's. Yes, the changes

initiated by Reagan changed this argument forever.

They may provide jobs---for the people in other
countries. No allegiance to USA.

Early in Bush Administration, the Republicans in
Congress gave $139 BILLION DOLLARS to Business and
esp. Corporations. As they held this "Presser" on
the Hill, I can remember Trent Lott proclaiming
"This is a JOBS BILL". The jobs ended up in TEHRAN,
China, INDIA and Asia. GE got 8 billion dollars as
an example.

Sure, the Higher Incomes create jobs. Good paying
jobs have left US to go to cheap labor countries.

[sui generis]

5. generalizing is not speaking truth to anything.

And why oh why do we confuse corporate strategy with individual wealth, time after time?

Corporations are as interested in their own survival as the poorest subsistence almost-welfare Mom. Moms use coupons and go from store to store to get the best deal, and so do corporations.

The real ill is not corporations or wealth, or "wealth worshippers" even, but our own legislation proposed by our very own democrats that offers corporate tax incentives to outsource, sponsored of course by the corporation.

The real ill is is that our very own representatives are doing NOTHING to disincentivize corporations from going to the overseas store for cheaper labor. There are sharks in the ocean, and they are a vital part of the economic ecology. If we keep throwing them legislative chum, WE are responsible for their habits. Maybe if we make it more cost effective to hire local labor, and more competitive to sell their products by reconsidering our open trade policy we will encourage corporations to hire locally and encourage locals to buy domestic.

[Warpy]

2. No business, no matter how well capitalized by a wealthy owner,

is going to survive long without customers.

That's the part the wealth worshipers always miss.

[begin_within]

3. Customers are what generate employment. Upper-income people just skim profits off it.

[unpossibles]

6. they also tend to obfuscate that they are comparing two different percentages

To know if it's unfair that "25% pays 96% of personal income tax" one would need to know what percentage of wealth they also own, and also what other taxes the poorer 75% pay and what other loopholes do the upper 25% use in order to effectively reduce their taxes.

Personal income tax is not the only tax, and most studies I've seen which attempt to figure out the actual tax burdens on the different quintiles of the population conclude that our tax system really is not as progressive as it seems, and that the majority of the actual tax burden in the form of percentage of wealth/income actually falls on the middle class.

In other words, these useful idiots are comparing apples to oranges because the Cato Institute told them to, through the mouthpieces of Fox, Rush, Glenn, et al.