Do the Wealthy Really Pay More Taxes?

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Do the Wealthy Really Pay More Taxes?
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Thu, 10-29-2009 - 1:47pm
 August 8, 2009 The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd

By David Sirota


With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance, this group is using the argot of fairness and morality to hide its real motive: selfish greed.

I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Healthcare and Tax War. And yet, I’m euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face.


Finally.


Finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.


The group’s core gripe is summarized in a letter I received that denounces a proposed surtax on the wealthy and corporations to pay for universal healthcare:


“Until recently, my family was in the top 3 percent of wage earners,” the affluent businessperson fumed in response to my July column on taxes. “We are in the group that pays close to 60 percent of this nation’s taxes … Think for a second how you would feel if you built a business and contributed more than your share to this country only to be treated like a pariah.”


This sob story about the persecuted rich fuels today’s “Tea Parties”—and I’m sure you’ve heard some version of it in your community.


I’m also fairly certain that when many of you run into the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd, you don’t feel like confronting the faux outrage. But on the off chance you do muster the masochistic impulse to engage, here’s a guide to navigating the conversation:


What They Will Scream: We can’t raise business taxes, because American businesses already pay excessively high taxes!


What You Should Say: Here’s the smallest violin in the world playing for the businesses. The Government Accountability Office reports that most U.S. corporations pay zero federal income tax. Additionally, as even the Bush Treasury Department admitted, America’s effective corporate tax rate is the third lowest in the industrialized world.


What They Will Scream: But the rich still “pay close to 60 percent of this nation’s taxes!”


What You Should Say: Such statistics refer only to the federal income tax. When considering all of “this nation’s taxes” including payroll, state and local levies, the top 5 percent pay just 38.5 percent of the taxes.


What They Will Scream: But 38.5 percent is disproportionately high! See? You’ve proved that the rich “contribute more than their share” of taxes!


What You Should Say: Actually, they are paying almost exactly “their share.” According to the data, the wealthiest 5 percent of America pays 38.5 percent of the total taxes precisely because they make just about that share—a whopping 36.5 percent!—of total national income. Asking these folks to pay slightly more in taxes—and still less than they did during the go-go 1990s—is hardly extreme.


Stripped of facts, your conversation partner will soon turn to unscientific terrain, claiming it is immoral to “steal” and “redistribute” income via taxes. Of course, he will be specifically railing on “stealing” for stuff like healthcare, which he insists gets “redistributed” only to the undeserving and the “lazy” (a classic codeword for “minorities”). But he will also say it’s OK that government sent trillions of dollars to Wall Streeters.


And that’s when you should stop wasting your breath.


What you’ve discovered is that the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd isn’t interested in fairness, empiricism or morality.


With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance and with Warren Buffett paying a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd is merely using the argot of fairness, empiricism and morality to hide its real motive: selfish greed.


No argument, however rational, is going to cure these narcissists of that grotesque disease.


http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4722/the_me-first_screw-everyone-else_crowd/

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Registered: 10-22-2009
Thu, 10-29-2009 - 4:33pm

((With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance...))

Could you please provide the link for the source of this 22,000 Americans dying because they lack health insurance?

I find that excessively high...the poor have insurance (medicaid). The elderly have insurance (medicare). Emergency rooms cannot deny access to anyone because of their inability to pay.

I don't know of a single hospital or doctor who denied treatment to a patient because they had no insurance. Hospitals do not kick people out who don't have insurance. They will still treat them, only the patient is responsible for their own bill. But, they are still treated.

TIA for the link to the source.

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Registered: 01-04-2009
Thu, 10-29-2009 - 5:16pm

I think the "lack of insurance" claim relates to people not being treated for chronic and/or acute conditions due to not having insurance. There is a gap between being so impoverished as to qualify for Medicaid and being able to actually pay for an insurance policy if one doesn't have access to a policy through one's employer. Medicare probably doesn't play into this at all, since the vast majority of seniors qualify for Medicare. If you have, for example, an undiagnosed case of colorectal cancer (because you don't have insurance so you don't go for the tests) you may not have symptoms of that cancer until it is too late. Arriving at the emergency room as your insides are filled with cancer, doesn't guarantee that the doctors in the emergency room can cure your cancer. That said, there was a study out that attributed deaths to lack of insurance. How valid the study is, is another thing altogether.

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/05/05/gvsc0505.htm

State-by-state analysis ties lack of insurance to earlier death

People without health coverage are at higher mortality risk because they skip preventive care and necessary treatment, researchers say.

By Doug Trapp, amednews staff. May 5, 2008.

Washington -- Uninsured people die prematurely at a rate that equals several additional deaths per day in highly populated states, such as Texas, Florida and California, according to recent analyses by the consumer group Families USA.

The reports, released in March and April, are based on earlier studies by the Institute of Medicine and the Urban Institute, a policy research organization. Overall, uninsured people between the ages of 25 and 64 were 25% more likely to die than their same-aged insured counterparts, concluded the 2002 Institute of Medicine report from 2000 data. This increased mortality equaled an additional 18,000 deaths in 2000. The Urban Institute found that lack of insurance caused 22,000 adults' deaths in 2006.>>>>full article at the link above

 

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Fri, 10-30-2009 - 8:42am
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Fri, 10-30-2009 - 9:48am

Geeze....no need to be so hateful. I just asked a question.

Never mind....Mombitsy provided a the source, and she was NICE about it and not nasty and rude.

I am actually IN healthcare (I am a pharmacist) and my husband is a surgeon....so I really don't need YOU explaining to me how things work in healthcare. Thanks anyway.

I have seem many, many people refuse to buy medicines for their children....but purchase their cartons of cigarettes and beer. I have paid for these medicines out of MY pocket so the THEIR children will not suffer.

My husband has operated on many, many people without insurance. He does this for FREE. He doesn't get reimbursed one red cent....however, he does accept 100% of the liability. Does he HAVE to do it? NO, but if he doesn't they would surely die.

I can hardly wait for the government to cut his reimbursements by 40%. I am so glad that Obama and his administration are caving to the trial lawyers and not introducing any meaningful tort reform. (sarcasm).

You better be VERY careful what you wish for.

Avatar for ddnlj
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-30-2009 - 10:01am

Sorry, if you thought I was being nasty. I was just providing the information you asked for.

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Registered: 10-22-2009
Fri, 10-30-2009 - 10:56am

((I would appreciate it if you would stop picking at me.))

Ditto.

((I realize you are absolutely adamantly against healthcare reform, but don't take it out on me.))

First of all, I am NOT against healthcare reform. I just don't like the way the democrats are going about it. Their plan will do nothing but increase premium costs, do nothing to decrease any medical costs, do nothing to prevent frivolous lawsuits, do nothing to make people accountable for their own health, etc. Obese people are still going to eat unhealthy foods and live unhealthy lifestyles and ALL Americans are going to have to pay for that. Smokers are still going to smoke and ALL Americans are going to have to pay for that. Diabetics are still going to eat what they want and not monitor their blood sugar and ALL Americans are going to have to pay for that too.

Nothing is "free".

If they don't fix the doctor reimbursement issue, doctors are going to stop taking medicare/medicaid. Less and less people are going into medicine. There is a real crisis here and it will really impact us all in about 10 years.

I hope you are ready for long lines and healthcare rationing....because it IS going to happen, regardless of what Obama tells you. Remember, he is still in campaign mode....he is going to tell you whatever you want to hear.

Ask any doctor if they had to do it all over again if they would go into medicine.....just guess what the answer is going to be.

Second, how in the world am I taking anything out on you? Because I question you? This is a debate board after all.

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Registered: 08-30-2002
Fri, 10-30-2009 - 12:48pm

***I just don't like the way the democrats are going about it. Their plan will do nothing but increase premium costs, do nothing to decrease any medical costs, do nothing to prevent frivolous lawsuits, do nothing to make people accountable for their own health, etc. ****


I don't like the way the Republicans have gone about doing it either, which is to simply do nothing.


As someone with a partner with a PE condition who would like nothing but an opportunity to BUY IN, at a reasonable rate, the current system sucks. To continue with the current, status quo, do nothing, I have mine, blinders on, let's pretend 44 million +



Avatar for ddnlj
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-30-2009 - 2:25pm

Agreed. As as someone with a son with a PE condition that's not even a condition anymore, I know too how hard it is to find insurance so that he can go to a doctor if he's sick and not have to plead poverty if he's ever hospitalized so that that cost is thrown back on the public.


I'm tired of the horror stories about something that hasn't even happened. The death panels, the socialism, the tax burden.

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