T1B

Paul Fanlund wrote:Before he died in a recent car accident, I'd never heard of Charles Wyly.

He was killed near Aspen, Colo., when his Porsche was struck by a sports utility vehicle. Wyly, 77, and his younger brother became billionaires by building and trading companies from their base in Dallas.

The brothers reportedly gave $10 million to Republican candidates over the years, including $30,000 to the Swift Boat campaign that smeared the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004. Wyly's obituary in the New York Times said he later regretted not studying the ads more closely.

Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against the brothers for allegedly using offshore havens to hide more than $500 million in profits from insider stock trading, but that's beside the point.

No, my point is that Wyly's activism exemplifies how some of the wealthiest among us are obsessed with buying influence to further shake off tax and regulatory constraints and to expand the already yawning gap between themselves and everyone else.

In Wisconsin and elsewhere, it's working for them. The top 1 percent of U.S. earners receives nearly a quarter of the nation's income, which is more than double their share of the income pie from only 25 years ago.

I recently wrote about how wealthy, masterful Republican strategists are using our formerly progressive state as a proving ground for how to use limitless spending to purchase extreme outcomes. At the same time, they have worked feverishly to slant future elections by destroying unions, distorting political boundaries and suppressing voter turnouts.

The question I keep asking myself, probably naively, is why?

They already have the best houses, the best schools, the best cars and the best medical care. They have the best overall lifestyles and do not need government help. They have already achieved the greatest wealth gap in U.S. history and it is growing. Their tax burden is historically low.

What more, exactly, do they want?

Talk all you want about Gov. Scott Walker and fellow Republicans "leading" in this radical direction. But Walker and more moderate GOP legislators are themselves being led. They are career politicians who keep sashaying to the right for political self-preservation via campaign dollars.

Even ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson, the state's most successful Republican politician of his generation, is dutifully retreating from his laudable record of centrism and even-handedness in submissive pursuit of the big-money crowd to get the 2012 Republican nod for the U.S. Senate. So now he proclaims, he was never for health-care reform or high-speed rail. Yeah, right.

No, the politicians are pawns.

"The brakes are off and that's our system of government now," observes Andrew Kersten, a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay labor historian. Kersten's new book is titled, "The Battle for Wisconsin: Scott Walker and the Attack on the Progressive Tradition." Kersten has been asking why wealthy donors in and out of Wisconsin seem so relentless. "Why are they even doing this? I kept thinking that the people who have the money wouldn't go for everything because they need a middle class to sell to," he says in an interview.

But with global markets, maybe that is wrong, he says. "I don't think they even want the American consumer anymore," Kersten says. "How much money do they want? The answer is they want it all. You almost have to question their patriotism at some point."

A recent in-depth article in Vanity Fair magazine was headlined, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%." That top 1 percent controls 40 percent of the nation's wealth and their share is growing rapidly. Their income has increased 18 percent over the past decade while the middle class has seen income fall.

If these are "job creators," the euphemism used by Walker and others to describe the wealthy, where is the evidence? It is pretty clear job creation has much to do with education, infrastructure and technology, headings under which government plays a role. The unabated wealth gap and historically low taxes on the rich do not seem to be working to create jobs for many of us.

The New York Times reported last week that 63 percent of respondents in a Times/CBS News Poll support higher taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year to help reduce the federal deficit.

But the wealthy, with a stranglehold on the GOP, rejected a deficit deal by President Obama that had spending cuts far greater than tax increases aimed at the wealthy. The resulting turmoil has contributed to the financial market havoc affecting ordinary families who are trying to build wealth to send their children to college or to retire.

In Wisconsin as in Washington, the media have consistently gotten it wrong by suggesting the two parties are equally at fault and need to meet in the middle, says Professor Erik Wright, a UW-Madison sociologist and an expert in the relationship of politics and social class. The political center is where Obama and state Democrats already reside, he says. "The Republican Party has been captured by extreme right-wing ideologues."

In recent days, the post-recall Walker strategy is as transparent as it is ludicrous, but some editorial writers still buy it. Walker is calling for the two parties to work together. Honest to God, he is. This from the guy who only months ago told a congressional committee that bipartisanship is a bad thing. One reason is obvious. Those pulling the GOP strings have forced through all they wanted, so now can afford to pretend they care about the views of roughly half of Wisconsin citizens.

But back to motivations.

In a recent article, a noted psychologist says studies show that rich people really are different. Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told an MSNBC interviewer that multiple studies produced a consistent outcome. "Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it," he says.

Beyond that, rich people "think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic," says Keltner.

"Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped," interviewer Brian Alexander writes, paraphrasing Keltner, "they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it." (I keep thinking of the words "born on third base but think they hit a triple" and the image of George W. Bush comes to mind.)

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Juneau Republican, proclaimed of the two Republican senators who lost recall elections: "They took a bullet for the taxpayers."

They took a bullet, all right, but it wasn't for taxpayers. It was for the millionaires and billionaires whose water they carried.

88 wrote:No time to respond now. I've got some poor people to get over on at the moment. I'll check in later.

Goober McTuber wrote:Their tax burden is historically low.

Dinsdale wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote:Their tax burden is historically low.

Aren't statistics wonderful? They can be skewed to say almost anything.

Actually, I believe the tax burden of both the top 1% and the top 5% is historically high, when looked at as percentage of the total federal budget.

Dinsdale wrote:
Aren't statistics wonderful? They can be skewed to say almost anything.

Actually, I believe the tax burden of both the top 1% and the top 5% is historically high, when looked at as percentage of the total federal budget.

Goober McTuber wrote: Which only makes sense when they possess a historically large piece of the pie. I’d just as soon have a flat tax.

Dinsdale wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote: Which only makes sense when they possess a historically large piece of the pie. I’d just as soon have a flat tax.

I'd justas soon have no personal income tax -- flat-excise tax, scaled tariffs... you know, the way we did it for about 140 years.

National sales tax would work, but not aswell as the traditional style taxes.

Mikey wrote:If you think your taxes aren't high enough you're free to write a check to The Government.

Goober McTuber wrote:Thanks. I’ll breathlessly await your explanation of how much tax the 1% pay.

mvscal wrote: Despite the sarcasm, this is true. There is nothing stopping you from paying your "fair share."

Felix wrote:

mvscal wrote: Despite the sarcasm, this is true. There is nothing stopping you from paying your "fair share."

my "fair share" last year was about 31% of my taxable income

Warren Buffets "fair share" was 17.4% of his taxable income

and this is equitable?

Mikey wrote:
But he pays a lot more than you do in actual dollars

Step it up dude, you're not pulling your own weight.

Felix wrote: my "fair share" last year was about 31% of my taxable income

Martyred wrote:In America, everyone is free to play the lottery.

Hooray for democracy.

Mikey wrote:Tax revenue, overall, as a % of GDP is at its lowest point in over 50 years.

Felix wrote:

mvscal wrote: Despite the sarcasm, this is true. There is nothing stopping you from paying your "fair share."

my "fair share" last year was about 31% of my taxable income

Warren Buffets "fair share" was 17.4% of his taxable income

and this is equitable?

Jsc810 wrote:

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. .....

I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

88 wrote:

BSmack wrote:Those who bitch about the poor not paying taxes neglect to mention the regressive sales, user fee and excise taxes poor people have to pay at a FAR greater percentage of income than the rich. Gee, I wonder why that is?

Maybe because sales taxes, user fees and excise taxes are paid uniformly and not as a percentage of income.

Only someone who is completely insane would compare taxes that are not income based on basis of income.

Riddle me this BSmack, how much of our national defense and public welfare system are financed by sales taxes, user fees and excises taxes? Why aren't 50% of this country paying their fair share of those expenses?

88 wrote: Now, I'm not going to call bullshit, but your self-professed income rate puts you in the top 1% of US taxpayers:

88 wrote:
If you are married and file a joint return, your taxable income for 2010 was: $742,000;

mvscal wrote:

Mikey wrote:Tax revenue, overall, as a % of GDP is at its lowest point in over 50 years.

...and unemployment is at its highest.

88 wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote:

88 wrote:No time to respond now. I've got some poor people to get over on at the moment. I'll check in later.

Thanks. I’ll breathlessly await your explanation of how much tax the 1% pay.

According to this link:

http://www.financialsamurai.com/2011/04 ... e-percent/

In 2010, the top 1% of US taxpayers collected 20% of the total Adjusted Gross Income in the United States and paid 38% of the total individual income taxes collected in the United States.

The liberal Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center had the numbers for 2010 a little bit different:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/ ... ocTypeID=2

It claims that in 2010, the top 1% of US taxpayers collected 17.0% of all "cash income" and paid 32.9% of the total individual income taxes collected in the United States.

Now as far as I am concerned, either way you slice it, the wealthy are getting hammered in taxes at a greater rate than they are taking caysh off the playing field.

mvscal wrote: What was stopping Warren Buffet from paying "his fair share"? He says he isn't being taxed highly enoungh, right? Why didn't he scratch a check for the difference? That would have been the right thing to do.

Why should we listen to somebody who quite literally doesn't put his money where his mouth is?

Becky: OK, there were a couple of emails that came in that people that said if you think the government should be able to tax more money, why don't you just give your money away to the government instead of charity.

Buffett: Well, that's a choice and it's an option that... If I had to give it to a single individual, or make some young Buffett a multi-billionaire, or give it to the government, I'd absolutely give it to the government. I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations, will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government.

88 wrote:Now as far as I am concerned, either way you slice it, the wealthy are getting hammered in taxes at a greater rate than they are taking caysh off the playing field.

88 wrote:
If he pays more or less in taxes, does it affect you significantly?

Goober McTuber wrote:

88 wrote:Now as far as I am concerned, either way you slice it, the wealthy are getting hammered in taxes at a greater rate than they are taking caysh off the playing field.

And yet they continue to acquire more and more of this country's wealth. Ponderous.

Killian wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote:

88 wrote:Now as far as I am concerned, either way you slice it, the wealthy are getting hammered in taxes at a greater rate than they are taking caysh off the playing field.

And yet they continue to acquire more and more of this country's wealth. Ponderous.

Yes, truly shocking.

Goober McTuber wrote: So do you feel that it’s in the best interests of this country that our wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very small minority?

Killian wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote: So do you feel that it’s in the best interests of this country that our wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very small minority?

Didn't say that it was in our best interest, but the wealthy are that way for a reason. They are extremely good with their money and invest it wisely. There is nothing that will stop the wealthy from gaining more wealth. If you raised their tax rate to 50% ('sup Canada), the top 1% would still gain wealth. The people in that bracket all very likely have one major thing in common that helps them build their wealth. I'll let you try to figure out what it is.

Goober McTuber wrote:

Killian wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote: So do you feel that it’s in the best interests of this country that our wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very small minority?

Didn't say that it was in our best interest, but the wealthy are that way for a reason. They are extremely good with their money and invest it wisely. There is nothing that will stop the wealthy from gaining more wealth. If you raised their tax rate to 50% ('sup Canada), the top 1% would still gain wealth. The people in that bracket all very likely have one major thing in common that helps them build their wealth. I'll let you try to figure out what it is.

They own the politicians.

Killian wrote:The people in that bracket all very likely have one major thing in common that helps them build their wealth. I'll let you try to figure out what it is.

88 wrote:

Goober McTuber wrote:

88 wrote:Now as far as I am concerned, either way you slice it, the wealthy are getting hammered in taxes at a greater rate than they are taking caysh off the playing field.

And yet they continue to acquire more and more of this country's wealth. Ponderous.

Your response infers that you believe the purpose of the tax code is to prevent wealth accumulation by certain segments of the population (ostensibly by taking it from them so that it can be redistributed to other segments of the population) instead of funding government on a fair basis. Do you mind sharing with me what part of the Constitution gives the President and Congress the authority to do that?

Killian wrote:The people in that bracket all very likely have one major thing in common that helps them build their wealth. I'll let you try to figure out what it is.

Screw_Michigan wrote:

Killian wrote:The people in that bracket all very likely have one major thing in common that helps them build their wealth. I'll let you try to figure out what it is.

They didn't attend Notre Dame?