-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It’s a common claim from the Right, but it’s not true. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), in a Senate floor speech, claimed “Fifty-one percent — that is, a majority of American households — paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada.” At least he used the often omitted “income” adjective. However, those individuals still pay payroll taxes, like Social Security and Medicare, sales taxes, and often property taxes.
When Republican Senators give speeches complaining about someone not paying enough tax, you can be sure of two things: one, they’re not talking about corporations and two, they’re not talking about the wealthy. If you’re not a member of either of those two groups, hold onto your wallet. The Republican hatred of increasing taxes doesn’t apply to everyone’s taxes, just those who can afford to them get re-elected.
A report from the Tax Policy Center examines the facts. Here’s an overview:
- 23% pay nothing because they’re poor. For example, a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero.
- 10% are elderly and pay nothing because their Social Security benefits are exempt from federal income taxes.
- 7% pay nothing thanks to provisions in the tax code designed to benefit low-income families: the earned income tax credit, the child credit, and the childcare credit account.
The other 6% benefit from tax-exempt interest, itemized deductions, education credits, other credits; and reduced rates on capital gains and dividends.
That’s whom the Republicans want to tax: poor families and the elderly, those least able to afford the tax increases. The shocking aspect of these facts is the existence of such a huge number of people that are so poor, they balloon the percentage up to 46%.
H/T: Kevin Drum, Roberton Williams, Donald Marron.
jeff-
Is your last name “Immelt” by any chance?
Blouise,
I think I understand….I think this is one that has been around a while….It has been kinda fun watching his head get cooked….brain dead to say the least…reminds me of putting foil in the microwave….it sorta sparks and then just burns out…You can open the door, the light comes on….but it just does not work anymore…Then they reinvent themselves…new name, persona and gravatar….You know what I mean….I think Idiot savant comes to mind…
Way back, in the late 60’s or early 70s I read about a particularly evil but profitable way black South Africans were exploited by their colonial masters. It was quite smart in that it worked on and against the economic, political and psychological levels of the slave class while appearing to do no more than prevent squatters. There was also a TV news show that did a program about it that I saw, something like “60 Minutes” or “Frontline” or a documentary on the local public channel. The practice had been going on since at least the 50’s.
Workers would be bussed in to the large cities from the reservations, bantustans, to their jobs and live in business owned barrack style housing for the term of their contract. They were terrible, overcrowded places. Contracts were regularly re-upped for good workers so this state of employment could go on for years.
After a while workers in stable situations would leave the barracks and put up a shanty on the edge of the city. Shanty towns, without any infrastructure, would grow up and over time thousands of people would live in them.
The materials, food, water, cloths, bits of furniture etc. were bought in the white city. The money earned in the city stayed there, recycled back into white pockets. After some time the shanty town would start behaving like a ‘real’ town with its own informal laws etc. People would also start to replace their tin and cardboard type shacks with more permanent materials, wood and concrete block. They, the workers, would send for their families also and some family members, a spouse, a child, would illegally come to live with their employed spouse.
People in the shanty town were ripe for organizing by illegal unions and political interest groups and after a while that activity and the fact that the towns were being upgraded with permanent materials became public and a threat to the status quo.
The white city government would then act shocked, shocked that it had a large, illegal municipality of slave-workers sitting on their border and send in the police and bulldozers to level it and send the occupants back into the bantustan’ s or barracks. The trouble-makers within that population would be arrested or fired from their jobs.
A year or two later the process would begin again. It was brilliant.
I have often suspected lately that the ownership class wouldn’t be happy until the working class were reduced to living the South African (spits) model of the black workers paradise.
I did not though think that anyone visiting this blawg would advocate that the poor, which is made up of the working poor, short and now long-term unemployed, disabled and elderly give up any pretense of higher expectations* and lower their sights to a shanty at the edge of town. I did not expect that.
*Expectations must logically encompass a social safety net as well as pre-paid entitlement programs which can satisfy their “wants”. Not to live like middle class persons but al least to live like working class persons making enough money to pay their own way and retain some personal dignity.
“I wonder what proportion of teabaggers “don’t pay taxes”. Given that they skew older and are more likely to live in poorer states (which get more taxes back than they pay), ”
And yet they are agitating for lower taxes for all, meaningthey are not acting in their own self-interest, at least according to your theory. Maybe some people do act on principle instead of self-interest.
Don’t feed the trolls. All they do is hijack. BTW, I wonder what proportion of teabaggers “don’t pay taxes”. Given that they skew older and are more likely to live in poorer states (which get more taxes back than they pay), I would guess that the proportion mirrors the rest of the US. They probably want other people who “don’t pay taxes” to be paying rather than themselves.
jeff –
Speaking of “often-repeated”…
SO WHAT if “corporations’ tax burden is just figured in the price of their goods/services[…]”? At least I could then choose whether to pay for those taxes on those goods/services, based on their actual total cost.
Shifting corporations’ taxes onto all of the rest of us, without giving us anything in return, and without giving us the choice of whether to support said corporations’ goods/services through our purchasing choices, is hardly an improvement. The users/purchasers of said goods/services should be the ones paying the full prices of those goods/services, including taxes.
It is amusing for you to “act high and mighty” and come to GE’s defense about the “HUGE amount of other taxes” they pay, but discount these “other taxes” when it comes to individual people.
AY,
Hey there, bud … fight the good fight! I think some short guy is stacking boxes behind you, climbing on top of them and reaching over your shoulder … the problem is, he forgot his knife! 🙂
tinfoil elf boy, so where do our homeless set-up their little chanties? Technically a trespass, but they appear to be tolerated if they squat on the right piece of land.
“America’s Pastor” Rick Warren has also weighed in on this issue:
“HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero. So they’re happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay taxes.”
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2011/07/26/no-tax-ultrawealthy-megachurch-rick-warren-writes-the-poor-pay-too-little-in-taxes/
Foilman,
They call it TRESPASS for a reason…..You like have to be some place the requisite number of years to take possession by squatting….But then again….Your Brand of Republicans think everything is just for the taking…kind of like a 3 year old in a candy store….no concept of what the cost is and they know they want it….so when no body is looking they take it….knowing somebody else has paid for it…Think Wall Street…..yeah…that is a great example….
It is amusing when people act high and mighty and denounce people for spreading the often-repeated bit about 1/2 of americans not paying taxes then turn around and spread the equally misleading bit about certain corporations such as GE not paying taxes.
Without even adding the fact that corporations’ tax burden is just figured in the price of their good/services and their payroll the two comparisons are the same. GE didn’t pay income tax but they paid a HUGE amount of other taxes.
@AY, they don’t call them squatters for nothing.
@Henman, you tell me.
I think at least for me, you kink of stop breathing for a second when you hear something like that. Are you kidding?
Hey Blouise…..
HenMan,
First of all they have to be aware in order to know what it is like…Just because someone acts out does not mean that they are in control of the mind….then again…some are just simply possessed and what normal folks would consider evil is just a normal function in the life they lead…..
HenMan,
We’ve been having a great conversation about you on the glass art post.
I believe I’ll go with rcampbell … personal experience combined with an understanding of market movements and tax facts … besides, that’s exactly how my accountant explained it to me.
Thanks for the numbers Nal. It’s helpful in understanding exactly what Bush’s administration left us and even, if you’ll forgive the segue, one of the reasons the teabaggers are so angry. Of course these numbers make them even angrier because “poor” has taken on a new nuance which is “living like a republican” and no one likes to admit that the damage to their lifestyle was done by their own hand.
Kderrhoid-
What’s it like to live every day of your life with that maelstrom of hellish torment swirling around in your damaged brain?
Tin Foil Master….Time to make sun shades….This time do not punch holes in the center of the foil and stare at the sun…..It burns you cornea….and the retinas never really heal either….
So where do you suppose the people place these pieces of metal…..Where do you suppose they take them from…..I think it is called Trespass and when you take something that does not belong to you its called larceny and they can really get nasty and add burglary…to it….But hey why let these facts get in the way…because if they are convicted enough times they can be put in prison for life….then they don’t have to worry about the issues on a daily basis…because you have said you do not mind paying your fair share of taxes to house these folks….Man are you ever generous…..
Is this Potterville….I don’t think you’ll really like the wonderful life you propose….
Frank, you never learn. It is practically free to find scrap material to build yourself a shanty and grow some food to eat. It only costs money when you try to lead a middle class lifestyle like our poor do.
Klownderosa – you may want us to but we still do not live in a third world county. Simply saying that the poor in America are not poor because they earn more money than people living in Somalia (a country your type should love because the government never gets in the way of anything its citizens want to do).
It costs a lot more to live in America than in your third world paradise so please don’t pretend the poor here are not poor because workers in China earn 75 cents an hour.