patrick.net

Why is either of the above comments a stretch?

From the article...

"As Bruce Bartlett reminds us in his latest Economix column, leading Republican figures, including Eric Cantor, as well as a majority of party members, argue that taxes should go up ... on the poor"

This overlooks several facts. One, which Bartlett points out, is that many people don't pay income tax because of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, both of which were increased in the Republicans' 2001 tax cut. (The child tax credit also originated in the 1997 budget bill, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. The earned income tax credit has a longer history, but has been periodically expanded by both political parties.)

Another is that focusing on federal income taxes is misleading, especially now that payroll taxes bring in almost as much money as the individual income tax. If you include payroll taxes, it turns out that only 18 percent of households pay no direct federal taxes."

Ruki says

Why do the poor get a free ride from having to contribute SOMETHING to pay for that?

They do pay social security and medicare, the proceeds of which are funneled into the gnereal fund as you well know. But you don't care because that reality goes against your agenda.

Here are the link to income, taxes colected and tax rates by income share. The link is at the bottom. (Table 8)

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=129270,00.html

If you clicked on it (I know you won't) you would see that the bottom 50 percent paid $29B in taxes on $1.08T in income. You would also see that there were $70M returns in the bottom 50%. That is an average tax paid of $414 per return, and average AGI per return of $15,429.

Doubling the tax rate on this cohort will increase government revenues by $29B.

If we look at the same thing for the top 1%, however, we see there are 1.4M returns earning $1.8T in AGI. That is an average income of $1.29M per return. They also pay $378B in taxes, which is an average of $270,000 per return. This is an average rate of 21%.

Doubling the rate on this cohort would bring an extra $378B in government revenues. In order to raise the same $29B that doubling the tax rate for the bottom 50%, we would need to raise taxes on the top 1% from a 21% average rate to 22.6%.

Notwithstanding the hardship that would be caused by raising taxes on someone who doesn't have any money, as a practical matter of reducing the deficit and balancing the budget, how do you propose doing so? Raising taxes on low incomes sure doesn't raise much revenue...

To answer the question, why do the poor get a free ride from having to contribute something? Well Defense first. They have nothing to protect. Therefore, I would make the argument that they should pay nothing for defense. The wealthiest 20 Americans have slightly more wealth then the bottom 50%. Who stands to lose more? Saying the poor should pay for the best defense in the world is like installing an alarm system on a '74 ford pinto. The courts? Again, they have no property rights that need protection. They have nothing that criminals would steal. Why should they pay for "protection" from criminal activity or property rights when they have nothing? Highway funding? Who benefits more from the federal highway system? The poor don't travel. They don't ship goods. They receive shipped goods but the cost of using it in that sense is already contained in the cost of the good itself.

Anything else?