Thanks for the graph, Ubiquity.

Lendaddy, you seem really smart sometimes.

Hey Camb: you said "The part in bold is laughable - can anyone honestly raise their hand and say that the tax rate is their only disincentive to working harder and making more money?"

Actually while its not the only disincentive, it certain is one. My wife and I chose to have her stay at home and only work a local 1/2 day job, as opposed to going back to a full time career making a lot more money for several reasons, including teenagers not being home in the afternoon with out adult supervison. However, between Federal income tax, social security, state income taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, disability insurance taxes, gas and sales taxes on the commute, city parking taxes on parking at work, sales tax on buying lunch, and sales taxes on professional clothing, it all added up to the government taking about 50% of what she would gross in our higher tax bracket. That made our decision for her to stay home in the afternoons a lot easier. So actually while not the "only disincentive" it was certainly a major contributor to our decision.

I'm in that bracket. Where's my $100k?

In America, all people are born equal. But that's it. It's from that moment on that makes them different. There are plenty of success stories of people who dropped out of high school, had kids and are now doing quite well. I don't buy any "help the poor through taxes" agument. Proportionally, I will never see the benefits from my federal tax dollars that the lower tax brackets see.

And personally, I couldn't care less about the poor. I studied hard, and now work hard to live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. And yes, I partied very hard in my early days. I just woke up and wanted some of the finer things. Now I have to help contribute to the poor by giving up more of my hard earned money. Give me a break. I should be rewarded, not punished. I benefit society (assumably). The poor leach off society (no assumption there). Who deserves more rewards - the self sufficent or the leaches?

I like my neighborhood. If the cops see a transient or "the wrong car" in my part of my City, the police will stop and question/arrest or transport out of the City limits. I like it that way. I don't go to poor neighborhoods and I don't want them coming to mine. There is no reason for them to even be there.

I get sick and tired of politicians, Hollywood types and the like, who have ridiculous numbers in their personal bank accounts and beleive that the "rich" should pay more taxes to help the poor.

I would love to see a list of the non-tax deductable donations these politicians have made to the poor in their life. I am confident it would be a short list. All they care about is saying the correct thing to the masses to get elected. As the "rich" is porportionally a smaller voting population, guess which one they will support. It's all BS and the mass magority really don't care if the poor live or die.

Underneath that hard shell is a humanitarian trying desperately to gto out.......

Paul, we're all born equal in the sense of rights and liberties, but that does not mean we are born equal. A person born with an IQ of 70 and a cleft palate is not going to have the same earnings ceiling that you have. One of my favorite things about our economic system is that there can be big winners. BIG WINNERS, in fact. But one of my problems with capitalism is that in order to allow for a few to hit the jackpot, there are going to be losers too. Some will be winners, some will be losers. And for those of you whose brains are in the "off" position, and are thinking that we can all be winners.....aside from noting that at the foundation of our system is a sea of minimum wage workers that the system cannot do without......an eve deeper investigation will uncover the insidious fact that our system requires losers in a broader sense. We love competition here. And that's what capitalism is. It's not a win-win game like some of you have been fooled into believing. It's a win-lose game like most others.

If you've got rose-colored glasses on, you'll call it "englightened self-interest." Otherwise known as "greed."

The world needs ditch diggers, too

And if you work on a public works project, you are entitled to $31.38 for straight time and $41.43 for overtime, per hour. Use a tractor or bobcat and now you are entitled to $41.15 for straight time and $55.13 for overtime, per hour. This is solely because it is a government funded job. Our tax dollars at work.

With the min wage at about $6.75 per hour why should we be taxed more so a ditch digger can make $79K a year when the private sector employee would make $14,040 (ditchdigger working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year). This is only one way in which our government spends our tax dollars, and it is waste.

We could probably cut all taxes 75% and have a better society (poor are better cared for) if the government quit wasting tax dollars.


BTW, well said Superman. I always enjoy reading your perspectives.

As I said I am not one of the Big winners but who in the hell ever said everyone must win.

There are rewards to hard work. The reward is winning. Why don't we give all those Olympic athletes a gold medal because they all competed. But that would mean the people that where not good enough would be left out. Better give them gold medals too.

We all have the same opportunities. We are all given the chance to attend school from kindergarten through 12th grade. If you take advantage of it you can get into a college for free (work hard good grades you know the drill)

College is what you make of it. Sure an Ivy league will open more doors than the local college but if you do well in either you can apply yourself and work your way up.

Oh and for all those that say we need to give more to the poor, why don't you put you money where your mouth is and DONATE 100% of all income above what is required for you to live to the poor. Don't take a tax right off just give it away. Until you do that you are full of it.

Oh while you are at it. Rent your Porsche out for free to those less fortunate. Everyone deserves the right to feel the thrill of driving a Porsche. Why should you be denied that thrill just because you didn't work hard enough to earn one on your own.

Thanks Paul. I appreciate your posts too. And as long as we're benefitting from each others' views, here are a few factoids on wage laws, particularly prevailing wage laws. They are modeled after the federal Davis-Bacon Act. Davis and Bacon were conservative Southern congressmen. Their Act was proposed to stop folks from eating their lunches. It seems that when large highway contracts came up for bid, out-of-state contractors would underbid their local contractors, and then import cheap labor from other, more depressed, labor markets. Those workers would drain local public assistance and goodwill stores, then take their earnings out of the state. Without a prevailing wage law, California would be an economic "sitting duck."

$79k in earnings would be nice, but that's not the reality. The construction season is perhaps eight months long, not twelve. The construction career (unless you move into management) is perhaps 20 years, certainly not 40. The work is skilled, not unskilled (sure' flagging is fairly easy, but I'd guess that a certification course is required and it is one of the most dangerous of all construction occupations). Finally, while Californica is pretty nice, there are days when I promise you would not trade your job for that of a Seattle Iron Worker erecting red iron on top of an eighty foot structure in freezing rain with a howling wind.

Prevailing wage laws simply mandate that local wage standards be respected on public works. They do not "make up" the wages, they are the local workers' wages. And contractors need this protection, otherwise you'd see nothing but brown faces in those jobs, your unemployment rates would be breathtaking, apprenticeship and other training programs would be a faint memory and you'd get what you pay for.

Super, if you do a search on yahoo under "California prevailing wage attorney" look at the number 1 link. You will notice that you and I have something in common. And yes, I am for the worker. That's the irony in my life - I work all day getting these workers their wages and come here and complain.

Paul, Paul, Paul. I may laugh for the rest of the day. You may also know that I ran the prevailing wage program here in Washington State for a dozen years. And so, I think we can understand each other. I am still a Labor advocate, but just between you and me, well nevermind...others are listening.

I've got a great idea. Let's figure out what everyone needs to live on. Tax everything above that at 100% and redistribute that money to the people who earn below the line. Wouldn't we all be better off for it? I mean, that way we could all have new Trabants instead of Porsches and still have radios with vacuum tubes in them that we'd get to save for 10 years to get. And think how much better bread would taste, if you stood in line for it. Yep, capitalism sucks. Socialism is clearly the better system.

-Paul

I heard about a man who took his wife and kids to his furnace at work, threw his wife in and then jumped in himself. I guess he just wanted the kids to see. The story reminded me of the opinions of some folks here who believe that people make rational choices from unconstrained free will. Many of you will not see the connection I suppose, but I would argue that this man was not making a free, rational choice. But I guess life and death are different from job search decisions. Life and death can come to us as an irrational choice, but employment decisions are always free and rational?

I think we should put poor people in prison, for being so poor.

Until drugs and treatments are affordable to everyone,
and until minimum wage is enough to live on,
we need to keep talking about class-warfare.

From Island: And Paul (pbs, not ettsn who is trying to wind me up ;)) I fundamentally agree with you both - the government doesn't do a good job spending tax money. It needs to be less wasteful.

Your solution is to take the money away - I would rather they just spent it better (besides, you have a huge deficit to deal with). I do not, repeat that - DO NOT - want to see an unbridled welfare state. I just don't think the current tax system in the US is way out of kilter. Spending might be, but tax is not too bad. Like it or not, you guys have pretty bad outcomes for lower socio economic people.

You guys continually focus on the extreme cases - the transients who choose that lifestyle. Those deliberately screwing the system.

The system isn't designed to cover these people - welfare is designed to make sure that those who need it get it. That (inevitably) means that certain people screw the system. Certain corporations perpetrate huge fraud, but I don't believe all corporations are seeking to do so. Similarly, not all beneficiaries are bad.

People have the same rights, but they don't have the same opportunities. There is a suprisingly high percentage of NZ school children who go to school without breakfast (and sometime lunch) at least occasionally, because their parents are either too poor or have mismanaged their funds over the week.

These children don't learn well. They get sick. In these circumstances, while not impossible, it becomes significantly more difficult for someone to lift themselves out of poverty through education.

PS, interestingly, Anna (with the total wisdom of her 24 years) considers you guys to be naive ;)

Here a little clipping that I like from Salon.com:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said one-third of the tax cuts had gone to the richest 1% of Americans, who earn an average of $1.2 million a year.

The average tax cut for them totalled $78,500.

By contrast, those in the middle income bracket got a tax cut of $1,000 and the poorest fifth were doled out the majestic sum of $250 for the whole year. Some tax cut.

The problem for the economy is that rich people don't spend tax cuts as a rule. Poor people do, as any economist could have told Mr Bush, had he been inclined to listen, which is doubtful.

I won't dispute the figures, but the flaw in those numbers is that they leave aside taxes paid.

$250 may not be a majestic sum but if you only paid $500 in taxes, well it's quite a deal to get half of it back.

Perhaps the guy who got $78,500 back paid $157,000 and got half of his back also, but in the end he still paid $78,250 more than the other guy.

My numbers were just random, but you get the point.

Anna is right, many of us are naive. Our federal school lunch program was not created just because we felt sorry for the hungry kids. We noticed that hungry kids don't learn. So, we feed them and it allows them to listen, and learn. similar to your experiences in NZ.

BTW, those of us who are passionate about public policy stuff know that events can occur which are exceedingly frustrating because we cannot believe that someone in public office can be so idiotic, or greedy, or whatever. You can be certain that I was emotionally explosive in my reaction to the suggestion of Mr. Gingrich, et. al.'s suggestion that we PRIVATIZE the school lunch program. I'm not even going to outline why since those of you who trust corporations wouldn't listen and those if you like me do not need to be told what would become of that program. I will point out that my emotional condition was affected by the observation that it was poor kids' food we were talking about. I still shake my head at that one.

I grew up with lunch assistence and food stamps and welfare. It helps, it works, its worth keeping around.

Suck-up. She wasn't so kind to limit her judgement to include only "many" of us as naive.

Sounds like an argument for Methylphenidate (Ritalin).