Stop Your Whining about Taxes

Right now, July 2008, the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is at it lowest level since the Great Depression. The Super-Rich are being taxed at such a low rate, in fact, that Warren Buffett (the 3rd richest man in the world) has said that the Super-Rich need to start paying their fair share of taxes.

Buffet has offered $1 million to ANY of his fellow CEOs who can prove that they pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries. Buffet admitted that he himself pays at a tax rate of 17.7 percent but that the secretaries in his office pay a tax rate of about 32.9 percent. Buffet says that he doesn’t use accountants or tax shelters to decrease his tax rate he only uses the normal tax code.

The change in people’s After-Tax Income from 1979 to 2005 illustrates just how much the rich are getting richer and the poor getting nowhere at all. The amount of income that people have left over after they have paid their taxes has increased:
228% for the richest 1%
80% for the top fifth
30% for the fourth fifth
21% for the middle fifth
16% for the second fifth
6% for the bottom fifth.

The top .01 percent of the Richest families have 22% of the nation’s wealth.
Let me make that easier for you: 14,000 families have almost a quarter of all the wealth in America.

Contrast that with the bottom 90% of families. These 133, 000 families (yes, this is the category you are probably in) have just 4% of the nation’s wealth!

14,000 families have 22% of all the wealth.
133,000 families have 4% of all the wealth.

Both the wars we are fighting right now, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, are costing $10 to $12 Billion per month. Think about that--Every month we spend over $10 Billion dollars. To date, American Taxpayers have spent $628 Billion on the wars. I wonder what else America could do with $628 Billion?

America needs everyone to pay their fair share for these wars. Who do you think has more difficulty spending $80 to fill up the gas tank, someone who makes $35,000 a year and pays a tax rate of 32.9 percent or someone who makes $500,000 a year and pays a tax rate of 17.7 percent?

The White House has predicted a record $482 Billion deficit for the 2009 budget year.

The federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in from taxes and other revenue sources. The government must borrow money to make up the difference.

While the deficit would be a record in absolute dollar terms, it would be below the 2004 deficit, 3.6 percent of GDP, and the record deficit of 1983, 6 percent of GDP, when compared with the size of the overall U.S. economy. (Notice those years folks, ALL with Republican presidents and Republican controlled Congress.)

So if you are one who complains about taxes, you should ask yourself why 14,000 families who have 22% of all the wealth and pay less in taxes (as a percentage of income) than you do.