Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living
Dear Editor,
This poll (April 11th, 2011) is completely right leaning. Where are the choices of yes, tax the rich, tax the large corporations and close the loopholes. This in itself will do much to help the budget. The choices that you gave were silly, unless of course you have more money than you know what to do with and therefore, your taxes will go up. There is a price to pay for living in a society and the rich are not above paying for this as well.
Of course this is not the only thing that needs to be done. Next, comes downsizing the military expenses which is our biggest bloat.
I like polls, but yours did not provide any answer that was acceptable to me.
Disgusted
Dear Disgusted,
I usually try to stay away from political debates because we have people from all persuasion who read our site. We are first and foremost about off-the-grid living. However this question was the exception to the rule. I feel our politicians try to stir up class warfare just for the votes, when the venom they spout is either full of half-truths or an outright lie. The income tax and who pays what is one of the outright lies.
I respect your position and opinion. However, I’d like to give you some figures to take into consideration. These are from the IRS’s website. They’re not from anyone’s opinion column, any think tank, or any publication that leans right or left. I got them straight from the Internal Revenue Service and they reflect the latest figures available, which is for 2008. I will compare some of them to 1986 figures, because the comparison significant.
In 1986, the bottom 50% of the taxpayers paid 15.55% of the total tax collected in the U.S. By 2008 that figure was down to 12.51%.
In 1986, the bottom 75% of the taxpayers paid 37.03% of the total tax collected in the U.S. In 2008, that figure was down to 31.42%.
According to the IRS, the top 1% of taxpayers, those whose adjusted gross income averaged $380,354, accounted for 38% of the tax collected in 2008. The top 5% of taxpayers, those with adjusted income averages of $159, 619 accounted for 58.7% of the total income tax collected. So, by the IRS’s own figures, five percent of all taxpayers pay nearly 60% of the taxes in this country, and these people are not filthy rich millionaires. The majority of them are in the $100,000 to $200,000 tax range. That is disproportionately unfair, no matter how you look at it.
I think we do everyone a disservice when we engage in class warfare instead of dealing with facts and figures. The graduated income tax is a boondoggle that does not invest every citizen equally in the funding of this country. For the president to say that those 5% who fund nearly 60% of the government now should dig deeper so that we can continue in the same way, instead of realizing that now is the time for fiscal constraint and a slashing of the budget, is to openly advocate thievery.
The simple fact is that if you taxed every person and corporation in this country at 100%, and took away all assets and converted them to cash, you could not pay off the debt. It is too large. Taxation is not the answer. We cannot tax our way out of this debt. I am not a rich person. I’m struggling to get by. I’m not willing to pay one more cent in taxes. Many others feel the same way.
I do appreciate you writing with your comments. We welcome them all, even when they don’t agree with us!
The Editor
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