The Cellar - Any comments about Mr Madoff?

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This is so good, I think I'll just post the whole article...

Published on Monday, October 22, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Billionaires Up, America Down

by Holly Sklar

When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.

Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only.

This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires.

A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion.

When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king."

Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer."

The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America.

We have a record 482 billionaires -- and record foreclosures.

We have a record 482 billionaires -- and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.

Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires -- and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.

The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).

Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.

In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit.

In 1982, when the Forbes 400 had just 13 billionaires, the highest paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation in $2006. Last year, the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage.

The Forbes 400 is even more of a rich men's club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 39 today.

The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, Forbes 400 wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP.

And the rich, notes Fortune magazine, "give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us. HA! Why is that not surprising.

Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumbles from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing.

The top 1 percent of households -- average income $1.5 million -- will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest.

The children and grandchildren of today's underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today's plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists.

It's time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionaire hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us" and "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future." She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.

This essay was distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
Copyright © 2007 Holly Sklar

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Originally Posted by tw (Post 542715)

Which is why the people who pay a higher percentage - the average income earning - do not pay 40%.

They pay the % they are required, how much of their income is taxable is, I believe your issue. Poorly written or intentionally misleading?

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Originally Posted by tw (Post 542715)

A flat tax does not become fair until the numbers are more like 23%. Then the rich will pay more taxes.

Cite please.

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Originally Posted by tw (Post 542715)

40% is the myth classicman keeps promoting. A 15% flat tax is only another mythical tax cut as defined by Buffet. Since the only tax cut also cuts spending, then a 15% flat tax only makes more recessions - as demonstrated repeatedly by history.

Cite please. You're back to making all these statements without a shred of proof or support ... again.

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Originally Posted by tw (Post 542715)

Problem is a mythical and economically destructive number - 15%.

Problem is mythical posts without ANY substantive data to back them up.

I noticed you've not posted much recently - Convenient is how it was right after you were last asked REPEATEDLY to support your claims with evidence and you wouldn't or couldn't?

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Originally Posted by classicman (Post 542809)

Cite please.

Citations were already provided. Posting repeatedly without any citations is classicman's mythical 15% number. A number that has zero basis in economic reality and only means an increasing national debt. That 15% is promoted by those who are so dumb as to want even more tax cuts ... as if we have not done enough damage to the economy.

We still have many extremist lies to pay for: ie "Mission Accomplished". A $1trillion bill that will do to the American economy what Nixon did to the 1975/1979 economy. No money game - ie 15% flat tax - will cure a problem created by economic perverts who thought tax cuts are good.

Buffet was blunt about such stupid people. “The only tax cut is one that cuts spending.”

We cannot cut spending. Cheney created massive deficits while bragging, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." We will be paying for fiscal mismanagement for the next ten years. And now some want to make it worse with a 15% flat tax? How much longer do we have to listen to extremists propaganda?

Tax cuts, in the long term, create a worse economy. 15% flat tax is nothing more than another tax cut. We are now seeing the 'wealth' created by wacko extremist tax cuts and other economic incentives. The only solution to long term wealth includes a balanced budget. Something we almost had - and then wackos started inventing money games to *stimulate* the economy.

A balanced budget means the world does not get rich funding American deficits. To fix a mess created by George Jr and his Project for a New American Century administration will probably take the next ten years. And still fools are promoting another destruction of America - a 15% flat tax.

Maybe it might be possible. But first we must to pay for the George Jr disasters starting with the most obvious of lies including "Mission Accomplished" and a zero effort to get bin Laden.

Citation for that 15% tax cut: endorsed by extremists. And still some don't acknowledge that is a source of economic perversion.

Another bill created by George Jr economic stimulus - Madoff. He could not have done it without government cooperation - such as ignoring a long list of whistleblowers.

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July 18, 2008

Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data

by Gerald Prante

Fiscal Fact No. 135

The latest release of Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes comes from calendar year 2006, a year in which the economy remained healthy and continued to grow, increasing individual income tax collections along with overall average effective tax rates.

This year's numbers show that both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs. In 2006, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 39.9 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.1 percent of adjusted gross income, both of which are significantly higher than 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes.

The IRS data also shows increases in individual incomes across all income groups (see Table 3). Just as the highest earners lost the biggest percentage of their incomes during the recession of 2001, so they have prospered the most as the economy continued to rebound through 2006. For example, from 2000 to 2002, the AGI of the top 1 percent of tax returns fell by over 26 percent. In that same period, the AGI of the bottom 50 percent of tax returns actually increased by 4.3 percent. However, since 2002, as the recession has ended, AGI has risen by over 81 percent for the top 1 percent (an average of over 20 percent per year) and 17 percent (an average of around 4 percent per year) for the bottom 50 percent.

In sum, between 2000 and 2006, pre-tax income for the top 1 percent of tax returns grew by 34 percent, while pre-tax income for the bottom 50 percent increased by 22 percent. All figures are nominal (not adjusted for inflation).

This pattern of income loss and growth at the top of the income spectrum is the same during every recession and recovery. The net result has also been a sharp rise in federal government tax revenue from 2003 to 2006 compared to previous years.

The IRS data below include all of the 135.7 million tax returns filed in 2006 that had a positive AGI, not just the returns from people who earned enough to owe taxes. From other IRS data, we can see that in 2006, 92.7 million of the tax returns came from people who paid taxes into the Treasury. That leaves 43 million tax returns filed by people with positive AGI who used exemptions, deductions and tax credits to completely wipe out their federal income tax liability. Not only did they get back every dollar that the federal government withheld from their paychecks during 2005, but some even received more back from the IRS. This is a result of refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, which are not included in the aggregate percentile data here. (For more on the limitations of the data on this page, see the notes below. For a detailed paper on the distribution of the entire U.S. fiscal system, including all federal, state and local taxes, read Who Pays Taxes and Who Receives Government Spending? An Analysis of Federal, State and Local Tax and Spending Distributions, 1991 - 2004.)

Number of Returns with Positive AGI
AGI ($ millions)
Income Taxes Paid ($ millions)
Group's Share of Total AGI
Group's Share of Income Taxes
Income Split Point
Average Tax Rate

All Taxpayers
135,719,160
$8,122,040
$1,023,739
100%
100%
-
12.60%

Top 1%
1,357,192
$1,791,886
$408,369
22.06%
39.89%
> $388,806
22.79%

Top 2-5%
5,428,766
$1,185,828
$207,311
14.60%
20.25%

17.48%

Top 5%
6,785,958
$2,977,714
$615,680
36.66%
60.14%
> $153,542
20.68%

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

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