What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
Harry Hope
http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/nov23a.html
November 23, 2009
What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
Parties' � or the politicians who egg them on.
By Sam Pizzigati
You don�t have to dig particularly deep, in the United States today,
to find some striking similarities between today�s virulently
anti-Obama �Tea Party� crowd and the media darlings who birthed the
�Tax Revolt� phenomenon back in the late 1970s.
The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an
inflation-battered economy.
They blamed �big government� for what ailed America, and they offered
a simple remedy: cut taxes.
Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.
The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in
tough economic times.
They attack �big government,� too.
They even make the same promises about taxes.
But the Tea Party types, so far at least, haven�t scored any early
political success.
The Tax Revolters did.
In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative
in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property
taxes.
Within a few short years, almost half America�s states had followed
suit with tax cuts and caps of their own.
In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry
Ronald Reagan into the White House.
One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the
biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.
Tax relief had become, in the wink of an eye, America�s most potent
political creed.
Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation�s political
discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.
And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping?
Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a
useful assessment.
The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the
wealth of American families.
That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again
once taxpayers yanked �big government� out of our pockets.
The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes.
After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic
Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local
level?
Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea
Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?
The answer:
The rich have benefited the most.
The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after
state, let the affluent off the tax hook.
In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
analysis, �nearly every state and local tax system takes a much
greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from
the wealthy.�
In the entire United States, the analysis adds, �only two states
require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in
taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state
taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than
middle-income families have to pay.�
America�s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4
percent of their incomes in state and local taxes.
But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their
state and local taxes from their federal tax bill.
The state and local tax burden on America�s rich, after taking this
offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.
Middle-income families � to be precise, those families who make up the
middle fifth of America�s income distribution � pay, after the federal
offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.
America�s poorest families pay even more.
Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the
nation�s bottom 20 percent, more than double the share they take from
the incomes of the nation�s top 1 percent.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays?
A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers
non-elderly households.
Incredibly, the study details, some states �ask their poorest
residents � those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale � to
pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the
wealthy to pay.�
Now you could argue that none of this matters.
The Tax Revolters, after all, didn�t claim that their tax cutting and
capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a
lower rate than the rich.
They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous
whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.
That hasn�t happened, as Brookings Institution researchers Barry
Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the
Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support
from Social Security.
Bosworth and Smart �explore the consequences of the housing price
bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.�
Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family
wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early
1980s.
Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth
picture up-to-date for 2009.
For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing
story.
All American households � poor, middle, and rich � have lost wealth
since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall�s financial
meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of
their total net worth.
But low- and middle-income households under age 50 haven�t just lost a
big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007.
These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained
since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data
available.
Back then in 1983, the bottom third � by income � of U.S. families
under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as
measured in year 2000 dollars.
The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to
$27,000 in 2007.
Today, in the wake of that bubble�s collapse, researchers Bosworth and
Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those
same year 2000 dollars.
Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net
worth of $50,000 in 1983.
The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for
inflation: $45,000.
Older households in the bottom and middle income thirds � those over
age 50 � have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths
increase between 1983 and 2009.
But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they
held in 2007.
As older families, Bosworth and Smart note, they now �have less time
to recover.�
That recovery may take some time.
Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United
States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a
vibrant middle class.
The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave
the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.
That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that
rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames.
They don�t care who gets burned.
The rest of us should.
___________________________________________
Harry
Beam Me Up Scotty
> http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/nov23a.html
>
> November 23, 2009
>
> What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
It was all squandered in a PONZI program called "Affordable Housing"
Now the Progressives are going to kill future chances at prosperity with
their PONZI scheme known as "Affordable Health Care"
Bret Cahill
It was a Big Lie like everything Repugliars say.
Bret Cahill
Get lost
humanity in the U.S. did.
1-20-2013
>> http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/nov23a.html
>>
>> November 23, 2009
>>
>> What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
>>
>> Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
>>
>> By Sam Pizzigati
>>
>> You don�t have to dig particularly deep, in the United States today,
>> to find some striking similarities between today�s virulently
>> anti-Obama �Tea Party� crowd and the media darlings who birthed the
>> �Tax Revolt� phenomenon back in the late 1970s.
>>
>> The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an
>> inflation-battered economy.
>>
>> a simple remedy: cut taxes.
>>
>> Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.
>>
>> The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in
>> tough economic times.
>>
>>
>> They even make the same promises about taxes.
>>
>> political success.
>>
>> The Tax Revolters did.
>>
>> In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative
>> in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property
>> taxes.
>>
>> suit with tax cuts and caps of their own.
>>
>> In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry
>> Ronald Reagan into the White House.
>>
>> One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the
>> biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.
>>
>> political creed.
>>
>> Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation�s political
>> discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.
>>
>> And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping?
>>
>> Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a
>> useful assessment.
>>
>> The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the
>> wealth of American families.
>>
>> That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again
>>
>> The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes.
>>
>> After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic
>> Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local
>> level?
>>
>> Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea
>> Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?
>>
>> The answer:
>>
>> The rich have benefited the most.
>>
>> The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after
>> state, let the affluent off the tax hook.
>>
>> In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
>> greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from
>>
>> In the entire United States, the analysis adds, �only two states
>> require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in
>> taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state
>> taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than
>>
>> America�s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4
>> percent of their incomes in state and local taxes.
>>
>> But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their
>> state and local taxes from their federal tax bill.
>>
>> offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.
>>
>> middle fifth of America�s income distribution � pay, after the federal
>> offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.
>>
>>
>> Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the
>> the incomes of the nation�s top 1 percent.
>>
>> The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays?
>>
>> A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers
>> non-elderly households.
>>
>> residents � those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale � to
>> pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the
>>
>> Now you could argue that none of this matters.
>>
>> capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a
>> lower rate than the rich.
>>
>> They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous
>> whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.
>>
>> Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the
>> Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support
>> from Social Security.
>>
>> bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.�
>>
>> Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family
>> wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early
>> 1980s.
>>
>> Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth
>> picture up-to-date for 2009.
>>
>> For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing
>> story.
>>
>> since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall�s financial
>> meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of
>> their total net worth.
>>
>> big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007.
>>
>> These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained
>> since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data
>> available.
>>
>> under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as
>> measured in year 2000 dollars.
>>
>> The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to
>> $27,000 in 2007.
>>
>> Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those
>> same year 2000 dollars.
>>
>> Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net
>> worth of $50,000 in 1983.
>>
>> The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for
>> inflation: $45,000.
>>
>> age 50 � have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths
>> increase between 1983 and 2009.
>>
>> But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they
>> held in 2007.
>>
>> to recover.�
>>
>> That recovery may take some time.
>>
>> Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United
>> States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a
>> vibrant middle class.
>>
>> The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave
>> the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.
>>
>> That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that
>> rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames.
>>
>>
>> The rest of us should.
>>
>> ___________________________________________
>>
>> Harry
>
> It was a Big Lie like everything Repugliars say.
Speaking of Big Lies, where is the tax cut for 95% of Americans that
your Messiah promised during the campaign?
>
>
> Bret Cahill
>
Bret Cahill
>
> >> November 23, 2009
>
> >> What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
>
> >> Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
>
> >> By Sam Pizzigati
>
> >> You don’t have to dig particularly deep, in the United States today,
> >> to find some striking similarities between today’s virulently
> >> “Tax Revolt” phenomenon back in the late 1970s.
>
> >> The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an
> >> inflation-battered economy.
>
> >> a simple remedy: cut taxes.
>
> >> Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.
>
> >> The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in
> >> tough economic times.
>
>
> >> They even make the same promises about taxes.
>
> >> political success.
>
> >> The Tax Revolters did.
>
> >> In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative
> >> in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property
> >> taxes.
>
> >> suit with tax cuts and caps of their own.
>
> >> In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry
> >> Ronald Reagan into the White House.
>
> >> One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the
> >> biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.
>
> >> political creed.
>
> >> Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation’s political
> >> discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.
>
> >> And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping?
>
> >> Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a
> >> useful assessment.
>
> >> The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the
> >> wealth of American families.
>
> >> That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again
>
> >> The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes.
>
> >> After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic
> >> Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local
> >> level?
>
> >> Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea
> >> Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?
>
> >> The answer:
>
> >> The rich have benefited the most.
>
> >> The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after
> >> state, let the affluent off the tax hook.
>
> >> In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
> >> greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from
>
> >> In the entire United States, the analysis adds, “only two states
> >> require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in
> >> taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state
> >> taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than
>
> >> America’s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4
> >> percent of their incomes in state and local taxes.
>
> >> But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their
> >> state and local taxes from their federal tax bill.
>
> >> offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.
>
> >> middle fifth of America’s income distribution — pay, after the federal
> >> offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.
>
>
> >> Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the
> >> the incomes of the nation’s top 1 percent.
>
> >> The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays?
>
> >> A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers
> >> non-elderly households.
>
> >> residents — those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale — to
> >> pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the
>
> >> Now you could argue that none of this matters.
>
> >> capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a
> >> lower rate than the rich.
>
> >> They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous
> >> whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.
>
> >> Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the
> >> Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support
> >> from Social Security.
>
> >> bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.”
>
> >> Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family
> >> wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early
> >> 1980s.
>
> >> Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth
> >> picture up-to-date for 2009.
>
> >> For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing
> >> story.
>
> >> since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall’s financial
> >> meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of
> >> their total net worth.
>
> >> big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007.
>
> >> These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained
> >> since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data
> >> available.
>
> >> under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as
> >> measured in year 2000 dollars.
>
> >> The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to
> >> $27,000 in 2007.
>
> >> Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those
> >> same year 2000 dollars.
>
> >> Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net
> >> worth of $50,000 in 1983.
>
> >> The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for
> >> inflation: $45,000.
>
> >> age 50 — have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths
> >> increase between 1983 and 2009.
>
> >> But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they
> >> held in 2007.
>
> >> to recover.”
>
>
> >> Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United
> >> States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a
> >> vibrant middle class.
>
> >> The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave
> >> the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.
>
> >> That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that
> >> rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames.
>
>
> >> The rest of us should.
>
> >> ___________________________________________
>
> >> Harry
>
> > It was a Big Lie like everything Repugliars say.
>
> Speaking of Big Lies, where is the tax cut for 95% of Americans that
> your Messiah promised during the campaign?
In the tax code. Look it up.
Bret Cahill
ornamentalmind
Sadly, more people are inclined to watch FAUX news than know reality,
which in fact DOES have a liberal bias!
Werner
> http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/nov23a.html
>
> November 23, 2009
>
> What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
>
> Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
> Parties' — or the politicians who egg them on.
>
Whatever happend to the War on Poverty the BigGovernment promised?
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised the American people
that the new Social Security Tax would be invested at 3 per cent
interest, so that, by 1983, the tax could be ended and returns on the
investments would guarantee a retirement income for all Americans. NOT
TRUE.
He Promised participation in the Program would becompletely
voluntary; that the participants would only have to pay 1% of the
first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the program; that the
money the participants elected to put Into the program would be
deductible from their income for tax purposes each year; that the
money the participants put into the Independent 'Trust Fund' rather
than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would Only be
used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other
Government program, and that the annuity payments to the retirees
would never be taxed as income. NOT TRUE.
In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson in his Special Message to the
Congress Proposing a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty said, “
I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total
victory ... And in the future, as in the past, this investment will
return its cost many fold to our entire economy ... The new program I
propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars ...” NOT
TRUE AND OFF BY TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
How about federal health care programs? Medicare for the poor aged is
an extension of the original Social Security Act and financed much
like the Trust Fund. Like the Trust Fund it has no surplus, no
savings, no assets, only federal IOUs. Medicaid expenditures for poor
adults and children, financed directly by the treasury, are largely
out of control and demand an ever expanding part of government budgets
and the economy. Like the Social Security retirement program, both
medical programs are flirting with FINANCIAL CATASTROPHY.
The nation is bankrupt. It can not afford another government reform.
Dollars in the common treasury are like fish in the common sea -
anyone who can will harvest to extinction. That is why socialism is
fundamentally corrupting and can not work. The Fed is making a lot of
paper fish. This is an illusion of wealth. The real fish are gone.
----
http://www.capitaldistrict-lp.org/how.shtml
Governing has become a way to get privileges for some at the expense
of others.
http://www.capitaldistrict-lp.org/what.shtml
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2008/August/the-national-debt.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp8ZmQMCtqA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FSoXKapKQs&feature=related
palin@tsniffsniff.net J. Norman Gype
"Get lost" <rande...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a1d0de47-a4d8-49df...@31g2000vbf.googlegroups.com...
> Tax cuts didn't ruin the economy. Giving mortgages to the scum of
> humanity in the U.S. did.
Bush did that to make his bankers wealthier.
http://www.americandreamdownpaymentassistance.com/whsp12162003.cfm
Bret Cahill
>
> > November 23, 2009
>
> > What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
>
> > Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
> > Parties' — or the politicians who egg them on.
>
> >....
>
> Whatever happend to the War on Poverty the BigGovernment promised?
Reagan's "WiLl wORk for FoOd GoD BlESs" tax cuts for the rich economy
brought it to an end.
Bret Cahill
Harold Burton
<2fa3e53a-9a5e-4fa5...@v15g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
Bret Cahill <BretC...@aol.com> wrote:
> > >http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/nov23a.html
> >
> > > November 23, 2009
> >
> > > What Ever Happened to That Prosperity the Tax-Cutters Promised?
> >
> > > Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea
> > > Parties' � or the politicians who egg them on.
> >
> > >....
> >
> > Whatever happend to the War on Poverty �the BigGovernment promised?
> Reagan's tax cuts ... brought it to an end.
Tell us how well it was working under Carter, BEFORE the Democrat tax
cuts that were passed during the Reagan administration.
Snicker.