"In terms of tax policy, all of them [2016 presidential candidates] say they are going to cut taxes on the poor, but that’s a fake because the American poor already pay no taxes. Approximately 50% of American wage earners don’t pay any tax already, so that’s a fake."
A fake? Ben Stein says that it's "a fake" to claim that that 100% of Americans pay taxes. FAKE TAXES? T A X E S ?
Mr. Stein's glib, fatuous and utterly false remark is beneath him. To be frank, it marks him as either a) a dumb shit or b) a mean prick. Sorry for the apparent gutter language--it is actually a clinical description of the identity Mr. Stein's duplicity earns him. Ben Stein is a very bright
and well-educated witty man who knows full well that the income tax (which he declines to name even as he references it) is not the
ONLY tax people pay. And yet he never mentions The Income Tax. Mitt Romney, to his eternal credit, DID refer to income tax when he otherwise disparaged and demeaned the 47%. But he ignored tax realities when he made his outrageous, and he thought secret, statement. Ben Stein gives the 50% or 47% or whatever credit for paying no taxes of any kind--that is what he says. Twice. He knows what an utter lie this is because he's an economist like his father before him.
I'm sure I could think up some really clever and apt analogies to encompass the bizarre duplicity of Stein's language, but why should I? I've got Stein's language and the facts of life to rebut them with.
The income tax is (almost) the ONLY tax that some people don't pay. They don't pay income tax (if they get their payroll tax refunded) because in our wonderful economic system where wages have been flat for 43 years, they can't earn enough income to pay income tax--paying income tax is a sign of success, it's a symbol of the power of and honor to be an American citizen...unless one is a Republican. So why does a bright man make such an asinine and utterly false statement? A statement that defies reality? Because Ben Stein lives in a different reality.
In his alternate reality, the income tax is the only tax that causes the well-off, with their huge incomes, enough pain to lie and complain about, because the other taxes don't affect their quality of life AT ALL. Well, the inheritance tax does, but that's a separate story... Poor people pay all of the taxes rich people pay at the same rates--except the income tax. For the income tax, however, the poor pay payroll taxes which range between 7.3 and 10%, money they receive back when and if they file income tax returns. The undocumented, lacking SS numbers, can't get their federal or state income tax refunds and thus pay ALL taxes the rich pay. They also pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes which they can never claim the benefit of. These payments they make benefit only us citizens. THINK ABOUT THAT. The undocumented, unless they work completely off the books (in which case they still pay all the other taxes other poor Americans do) pay the highest taxes relative to personal wealth of anyone in the country.
What could those other taxes amount to? Sales tax. Here in CA it is pushing 10%. Property tax is huge for people on a fixed income or just poor. 1% of the value of a tear-down in the SF Bay Area is many thousands. Due to the grossly inequitable property tax structure resulting from Proposition 13, the new purchasers of property pay tax at many times the actual value of long-term owners whose 1% rate may be based on an assessed rate as old as 1975. Liberals who own some of this old property are not calling for a fairer system. This measure was sold to the voter to benefit elderly people being pinched by the tax. How about the elderly super rich? Every year millions of poor people lose their homes either to foreclosure or unpaid property taxes. Car tax, gas tax, alcohol and tobacco tax. Highway tolls. Court costs and fines which push the poorest into debtor's prison or destitution. Building and other types of permit and fee costs, the list is much longer than this. Am I boring you, yet?
As a matter of fact, I left out payroll taxes. All those 47% pay payroll taxes at a much higher rate that their richer, better fellow citizens. A look at the table below will show that taxpayers in the top 10% pay at a rate half that of the majority. Taxpayers in the top .01% pay at only 10% of the rate of those in the middle. Incomes over $118,000 pay nothing additional at all. Between the time the payroll taxes of the lower income people are taken out of their paychecks and the same money is returned to them (if it is), a wealthy person's money which is not taken out is used to make more money. Does that make sense? The bottom 50% could be using their money for up to a year before they get it back in a refund--if they actually file properly and do so. It is difficult to explain something so unequal and unfair. Ben Stein, in the words of Al Franken, is a lying liar. He is just a Republican on message.
Republicans on this issue are simply LIARS. I can't stop myself from saying this. The truth feels so good, so right. I'm not calling names--I'm describing the truth value of their endlessly repeated libel on the 47/50%. This is not a pejorative opinion but a fact. The real question is, Why be liars? Why not give the less affluent their due for the combination of kinds of taxes and vastly higher percentage of individual wealth that they pay? Well, obviously because it's the truth! If the American people ever understand how they are actually being raped by the top 1%, bad things could happen, and nobody wants that, right? As for lying, it is dishonorable to knowingly attempt to deceive people, unless you do it for a living--like a CIA agent or a salesman.
The most savage of truths on taxes, is that poor people (in the US, millions of poor people are offended at being called "poor") provide with the ultimate tax: the "donation" of their children to serve as the cannon fodder for our military adventures since we decided after Vietnam to spare the better sort of people the need to sacrifice their precious sons to our idiotic wars by having a 100% volunteer force. These patriotic families have just spent 15 years with their father, mothers, sons and daughters fighting the wars for the other 98% of us at the cost of their death, dismemberment and mental destruction. Since US states have cut our higher education budgets to the bone, the only way most children of the poor can go to college is through tuition payments earned via military service--call that a "voluntary tax" Mr. Stein, if you are so heartless.
My point is just that it is shameful for Republicans like Stein and Romney and all the rest to continually deny the tax contribution and impactful tax burden of absurdly regressive taxes that people living near or below the poverty line make to our government operations year in and year out. There is a mental defect among Republicans and it is a form of ingratitude. Why deny that the poor make a tax contribution which is proportionately far in excess of your own when it is manifestly true? Everyone who lives here pays taxes. Illegal aliens pay taxes. Repeat after me: Everyone who lives in the USA pays taxes because we have taxes for everyone. Stop the LIE, Ben Stein.
And yet to think that the white portion of that ill-educated, brain-washed group will vote for Trump, who despises them, as Stein recommends! You gotta love this fucked-up country!
I'm sure I could think up some really clever and apt analogies to encompass the bizarre duplicity of Stein's language, but why should I? I've got Stein's language and the facts of life to rebut them with.
The income tax is (almost) the ONLY tax that some people don't pay. They don't pay income tax (if they get their payroll tax refunded) because in our wonderful economic system where wages have been flat for 43 years, they can't earn enough income to pay income tax--paying income tax is a sign of success, it's a symbol of the power of and honor to be an American citizen...unless one is a Republican. So why does a bright man make such an asinine and utterly false statement? A statement that defies reality? Because Ben Stein lives in a different reality.
In his alternate reality, the income tax is the only tax that causes the well-off, with their huge incomes, enough pain to lie and complain about, because the other taxes don't affect their quality of life AT ALL. Well, the inheritance tax does, but that's a separate story... Poor people pay all of the taxes rich people pay at the same rates--except the income tax. For the income tax, however, the poor pay payroll taxes which range between 7.3 and 10%, money they receive back when and if they file income tax returns. The undocumented, lacking SS numbers, can't get their federal or state income tax refunds and thus pay ALL taxes the rich pay. They also pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes which they can never claim the benefit of. These payments they make benefit only us citizens. THINK ABOUT THAT. The undocumented, unless they work completely off the books (in which case they still pay all the other taxes other poor Americans do) pay the highest taxes relative to personal wealth of anyone in the country.
What could those other taxes amount to? Sales tax. Here in CA it is pushing 10%. Property tax is huge for people on a fixed income or just poor. 1% of the value of a tear-down in the SF Bay Area is many thousands. Due to the grossly inequitable property tax structure resulting from Proposition 13, the new purchasers of property pay tax at many times the actual value of long-term owners whose 1% rate may be based on an assessed rate as old as 1975. Liberals who own some of this old property are not calling for a fairer system. This measure was sold to the voter to benefit elderly people being pinched by the tax. How about the elderly super rich? Every year millions of poor people lose their homes either to foreclosure or unpaid property taxes. Car tax, gas tax, alcohol and tobacco tax. Highway tolls. Court costs and fines which push the poorest into debtor's prison or destitution. Building and other types of permit and fee costs, the list is much longer than this. Am I boring you, yet?
As a matter of fact, I left out payroll taxes. All those 47% pay payroll taxes at a much higher rate that their richer, better fellow citizens. A look at the table below will show that taxpayers in the top 10% pay at a rate half that of the majority. Taxpayers in the top .01% pay at only 10% of the rate of those in the middle. Incomes over $118,000 pay nothing additional at all. Between the time the payroll taxes of the lower income people are taken out of their paychecks and the same money is returned to them (if it is), a wealthy person's money which is not taken out is used to make more money. Does that make sense? The bottom 50% could be using their money for up to a year before they get it back in a refund--if they actually file properly and do so. It is difficult to explain something so unequal and unfair. Ben Stein, in the words of Al Franken, is a lying liar. He is just a Republican on message.
Republicans on this issue are simply LIARS. I can't stop myself from saying this. The truth feels so good, so right. I'm not calling names--I'm describing the truth value of their endlessly repeated libel on the 47/50%. This is not a pejorative opinion but a fact. The real question is, Why be liars? Why not give the less affluent their due for the combination of kinds of taxes and vastly higher percentage of individual wealth that they pay? Well, obviously because it's the truth! If the American people ever understand how they are actually being raped by the top 1%, bad things could happen, and nobody wants that, right? As for lying, it is dishonorable to knowingly attempt to deceive people, unless you do it for a living--like a CIA agent or a salesman.
The most savage of truths on taxes, is that poor people (in the US, millions of poor people are offended at being called "poor") provide with the ultimate tax: the "donation" of their children to serve as the cannon fodder for our military adventures since we decided after Vietnam to spare the better sort of people the need to sacrifice their precious sons to our idiotic wars by having a 100% volunteer force. These patriotic families have just spent 15 years with their father, mothers, sons and daughters fighting the wars for the other 98% of us at the cost of their death, dismemberment and mental destruction. Since US states have cut our higher education budgets to the bone, the only way most children of the poor can go to college is through tuition payments earned via military service--call that a "voluntary tax" Mr. Stein, if you are so heartless.
My point is just that it is shameful for Republicans like Stein and Romney and all the rest to continually deny the tax contribution and impactful tax burden of absurdly regressive taxes that people living near or below the poverty line make to our government operations year in and year out. There is a mental defect among Republicans and it is a form of ingratitude. Why deny that the poor make a tax contribution which is proportionately far in excess of your own when it is manifestly true? Everyone who lives here pays taxes. Illegal aliens pay taxes. Repeat after me: Everyone who lives in the USA pays taxes because we have taxes for everyone. Stop the LIE, Ben Stein.
And yet to think that the white portion of that ill-educated, brain-washed group will vote for Trump, who despises them, as Stein recommends! You gotta love this fucked-up country!
There is another metric that no one, to the best of my tiny knowledge, calculates, but it is this: what percentage of a taxpayer's net worth is paid in taxes? For the very poor it can easily go to 10% or more. That is 10% of your total wealth given in taxes every year! When all the money that comes in must be spent to live, sales and other taxes BITE. However much it is, they can't really afford it--10% of little is less--that's why such taxes are called regressive.
For the very wealthy, most of whose wealth is superficially inert (generating value increase in investments or property not taken as income) and barely if at all taxable, the percentage might be 1-2% of one's total wealth. That's not nothing, as they say, but these are people who have so much wealth they can live on a 2% annual return (not that they would ever be happy about it--they are never happy with things...) Those folks certainly never have to stint on anything for themselves or their families, except maybe holding off a year before purchasing the salmon stream in Scotland--and that more for appearances. Well-off, successful people generally despise the unsuccessful almost as a reflex action. This is their right. You EARNED it, no? Liar or not?
But such an unchristian attitude (Ben Stein famously loves all manner of Christian stuff) should not be made easier by this bare-faced lie that you tell each other and repeat so foolishly as Ben Stein (Thanks, Ben!) did. Ignoring not only the fact that poor people are much more impacted by taxes than the well-to-do, but pretending, as most Republicans do (as a matter of doctrine) that the poor "don't even pay taxes" is a blood insult--like saying that those people don't love their children or feel pain. It's insulting beyond imagining to those who suffer it, and you who dish it out (all the while pretending you are just stating facts) should be in no doubt as to why you are loathed and despised by those less well-off, as you sulk in your gated communities between rounds of golf, wiping the gun oil off your fingers while clipping those coupons and filing your Social Security checks away in a back drawer.
No comments:
Post a Comment