"About Those 47 Percent Who Pay “No Taxes.”"

Finally some counter to the BS garbage put out by the GOP/ CATO INstitute about hwo the middle class is a bunch of low life tax deadbeats. These are the same people who, not too long ago, claimed that GM factory workers make $73 an hour.

> Many shelled out Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes

Once again, SS isn't a tax... its a "contribution".... and these people will likely get MORE of that back than they put in...

The arguments from the lefties just dig themselves in deeper.

And yet you ignored the very next point, which is that MOST of those not paying federal income taxes are elderly and on social security. THAT is who you propose to tax.

Furthermore, there were about 10 other arguments in the piece you ignored.

ANd SS is NOT a "contribution." Its a pay as you go system. My taxes pay for current retirees, not for myself. A "contribution" would be what you do for a 401k or IRA.

> These are the same people who, not too long ago, claimed that GM factory workers make $73 an hour.

And they were right. The cost per worker hour is $73 (or at least was before these wages and benefits busted the companies)

"And yet you ignored the very next point, which is that MOST of those not paying federal income taxes are elderly and on social security. THAT is who you propose to tax"

Talk about ignoring... you clearly haven't read any of my posts. I didn't propose to tax ANYONE....

> ANd SS is NOT a "contribution."

Tell the government that. Thats their label.

But it 'aint a tax...

> Furthermore, there were about 10 other arguments in the piece you ignored.

You're confusing arguments with rationalizations. The other points didn't contradict the assesment - they just gave reasons it SHOULD be so.

Which is really an admission of mistake.

"Your honor... I didn't do it... but if I did, it was in self defense!"

FOr most of the history of this country, most people did not pay ANY income tax. For most of the history of the income tax era, the vast majority of people did not pay the tax. Republican and Democratic presidents alike - including both Bush's and Reagan - made it a priority to DECREASE the number of people who paid income taxes.

You guys are trying to make a non-issue an issue.

And if you say the majority of people who pay no taxes (who are, in fact, elderly and poor) should NOT pay higher taxes, then what exactly are you saying? WHy complain about it at all?

This all boils down to "lower taxes for the rich, raise them for the poor" and nothing else.

This is completely hillarious given... YOU STARTED THE THREAD!

Supposedly everyone else is complaining, but you're the one actually doing it!

> This all boils down to "lower taxes for the rich, raise them for the poor" and nothing else.

Good to see that besides your hypocrisy, now you're pulling out bullsh*t strawman.

And you tried to insult others for being dumb.... ironic.

"And they were right. The cost per worker hour is $73 (or at least was before these wages and benefits busted the companies)"

I just knew you were going to say that. So I had this link on standby ready to go:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html

"Detroit’s defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year)."

From the article: "and end up at roughly $70 an hour." Took about 20 secs to find it.

deception is evil. yes darkbird, if you include things that most people don't count when they are considering BASE compensation. the article clearly states that, took less than 20 secs to find it.

No, we were talking about what auto companies pay, and that's what they pay. Really lets apply the same logic to Wall Street bankers, their base pay is usually not that big. So you're clearly confused here, I give you a hint there is no word "base" in the article. An another hint - bonuses aren't the base pay.

American cars generally sucks, employees make shit cars, auto execs steal money, and union are happy to steal more money. They should went bankrupt, though same as banks. I have no love for either, thieves are thieves.

"From the article: "and end up at roughly $70 an hour." Took about 20 secs to find it."

Did you read the entire article? Don't answer that, because you did not. The workers only make $70 an hour when you add the cost of the current retirees to the salaries of current workers. The current workers never see $70 an hour. Their actual salary is $53 an hour, including benefits.

Oh lets not get distracted from the OP, I am a liberal (or I think so). But retirement plans are broken and you can't force (well they can) US public to pay for it. So US automakers should go out of business except Ford. Same as the banks that we bailed out.

I did, you just read what you want to read. Same as me, it doesn't matter what they bring home, they still have retirement benefits as part of their union membership. We count what these employees costs to the company, and that's the price.

And articles still says it clearly $70, not sure what you're trying to argue.

so somewherelese, if your not ptoposing that the 47% who don't pay federal income tax be required to pay it, why are you so hostile? What exactly is the argument your trying to make? Either you support the 47% of peopel who don't pay taxes or you support them being required to pay it. It's A or B.

Darkbird hint here. Compensation structures are different here than at gs. I was talking compensation as most think of it. My husband has lovely retirement benefit options. Defined benefit plan matching 401k and profit sharing. But of course if someone wanted to know his salary that wouldn't be it. I guess on the mortgage app you get to list the current monthly value of nebulous future benefits?

From the article. "The first category is simply cash payments, which is what many people imagine when they hear the word compensation. It includes wages, overtime and vacation pay, and comes to about $40 an hour."

How about would anyone tell us what would be the tax revenue if these 47% paid their taxes?

What taxes darkbird? The only reason they don't pay taxes is because they're f'ng poor. You just don't get it. but carry on with your misguided anger.

@ar $40/h is the base compensation, no argument here. You don't know how the compensation is different since GS employs variety of employees: for example shared services (IT, admins, cleaners, you name it) don't get lavish bonuses since they're the expense. I can recall that plenty of them didn't get bonuses at GS last year.

Same as COOPs don't give a damn about bonuses ?!

Oh and the tax revenue would be negative. because they're paying more in sales taxes per dollar spent than they would pay for federal income taxes. (the poor spend all their available cash because generally they have to).

@ar You're misjudging me, and I already pointed out twice. Uh I am not angry, I am pointing out holes in the arguments. Overpaid US automaker employees that have even base salary at about 80K. Sorry, but I am not going to cry about them. They don't deserve their compensation compare to the real poor people that make min wage.

Darkbird we are talking about base salaries differently here. GM emoyees don't get a bonus on the worker level of up to major multiples of their salary. I was saying that these people don't make that amount unless benefits are counted. When you think about your salary do you calculate and add on the value of your benefits?

@ar I mean the tax revenue if there were no credits, I had the links to the tax articles.. But I;d guess 100bl at most, which can be easily covered by getting troops back home.

Sorry darkbird. I type slowly. I often miss posts.

Darkbird I'm fairly certain that taxing most of the poor, and do recall our curent U6 rate is at just below 17 percent, actually leads to net negative collections.

you claim you aren't angry. I'm f'ng pissed. there's no reason why we couldn't have had relatively well-paid (and face it it is a crap job witout a decent wage), industry. I agree with juiceman here. What an f'ng waste.

I checked some of the numbers:

http://radioviceonline.com/were-already-spreading-the-wealth-around/

So the folks who make $30k and less only make about $200bln gross, so not that much tax out of them anyway. If i read the tables correctly, and that's about 45% of total returns.

Ok, I'm wrong about gross.

Returns: Gross income:
< 30k 67,407,107 828,311,066,000 or 800bln
> 30k 70,987,649 7,202,531,879,000 or 7.2triln

67mln returns constitute about 48% of all returns, but only make 10% of the total gross.

man I haven't been on this board in ages, I pop in and I see a perfect example of why. Was that article supposed to be interesting or informative? What was even the point? Yes we get it, the 47% don't make a lot of money, who could have guessed. Incredible that someone actually thought there was something compelling in there.

ccdevi, the post was in response to the outrage expressed in earlier posts that 47% of people don't pay federal income taxes. apparently many people think that the 47% who aren't making much money still ought to fork over some of their minimal funds for taxes.

Why did I post this thread, Darkbird? Are you that dense? There is a 300+ post thread on this from two weeks ago.

I am not dense or care that much. Really why are you all here are so mad about either side of the argument? I don't care about 47, 100 or 0%. Though you did miss a major point, how much EITC costs us? And the answer is about 45bln, is that a lot of money? No, it isn't.

But I do care about overpaid employees of US automakers, and their extremely overpaid and retarded auto execs. This was my the initial post about. I didn't bring up about GM, The_President did. They make ugly, low quality cars that don't make any money for the car makers. Getting paid 80k base isn't POOR at all, and isn't part of this thread at all.

> From the article: "and end up at roughly $70 an hour." Took about 20 secs to find it.

ROTFL!!!!

Oh my lord, alpo the moron doesn't even read his own "evidence".

"Why did I post this thread, Darkbird? Are you that dense? There is a 300+ post thread on this from two weeks ago."

Uh, sounds like you're the dense one.... you just pointed out there was already another thread on this. Making this one unnecessary.