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New "percent-er" group: The 53%

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John James Posted: Fri, Oct 14 2011 11:46 AM

I'm wondering if this will take away from the (possible) collective influence of the OWS movement (as I talked about here) by pitting the people against themselves (as the elites usually manage to do) or if it will help add to it by lighting a fire under more people.

the53.tumblr.com/

 

13th October 2011

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Frank DeckerConstitutional Convervative & TeacherVancouver, Washington

Frank Decker
Constitutional Convervative & Teacher
Vancouver, Washington

 

13th October 2011

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I am Steve and I am the 53%

I am Steve and I am the 53%

13th October 2011

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Autolykos replied on Fri, Oct 14 2011 11:53 AM

Where does the 53% figure come from?

The keyboard is mightier than the gun.

Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.

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Bert replied on Fri, Oct 14 2011 12:02 PM

"You want to 'occupy' something?  Occupy a job and start contributing." - This made me chuckle.  I expect to see memes with these types of slogans.

I had always been impressed by the fact that there are a surprising number of individuals who never use their minds if they can avoid it, and an equal number who do use their minds, but in an amazingly stupid way. - Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
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John James replied on Fri, Oct 14 2011 12:10 PM

That's the percentage of people who pay income tax.  There's already news coverage...

We are 53%

 

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i dont know if I like this... basically this whole 53% movement was started by Erick Erickson, a conservative that likes the whole idea of crony capitalism. The 99% people are right in that the current system is screwed up, but they are completely wrong if they think they can change the system through the demands they set up.

My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/

Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises

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Kakugo replied on Sat, Oct 15 2011 2:19 AM

They haven't stopped to wonder that perhaps the main reason we are in the worst mess since the '30s is the fact people who pay their income tax just stay quiet and work. While I can sympathize with the old dictum "Just let us work" the problem is they don't let us work anymore. Everybody is out to get his cut: the big corporation suit, desperately wanting to push the latest product the market rejected; the bureaucrat, wanting to justify not only his existence, but his continually increasing power; the politician, wanting to show people he's "tough" and he "cares"; the police chief, who built his career on using violence against non-violent "criminals"; the labor union boss, who wants to bolster his own political power... who do you think has to pay all the bills? A few hippies forming a drum circle? The Chinese? The "rich"?

One of the great victories of the present socio-political system is in the complete political anhilation of the working class, from humble cobblers to well-off medical practicioners. The working class has been tamed and conditioned to think there's nothing it can do, so it has fallen back on itself: "Just shut up and work". Sounds more and more like slaves talking among themselves.

 

Together we go unsung... together we go down with our people
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Eric080 replied on Sat, Oct 15 2011 2:32 AM

While I disagree with the spirit of OWS, you have to admit this is a pretty good meme:

 

"And it may be said with strict accuracy, that the taste a man may show for absolute government bears an exact ratio to the contempt he may profess for his countrymen." - de Tocqueville
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Marko replied on Sat, Oct 15 2011 5:56 AM

Is the 53% figure correct? Tax-feeders don't actually pay tax, that's an accounting trick. The guy in the photo could be a parasite, say a cop, and not "a provider".

Also excluding wage earners who earn too little to pay income tax is wrong. They probably still have a greater percentage of their earnings taken away in taxes than wealthy people. Sales tax, traffic tickets, municipal fees, vices tax, etc disproportionally hit the poorer people.

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Marko:
Also excluding wage earners who earn too little to pay income tax is wrong. They probably still have a greater percentage of their earnings taken away in taxes than wealthy people. Sales tax, traffic tickets, municipal fees, vices tax, etc disproportionally hit the poorer people.

I don't see how that's possible.  If you earn too little to pay income tax, I don't see how you could survive if 30-50% was taken away.  And let's not forget what kind of a deal these people are actually getting...

 

 

As a result of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, the share of taxes paid by the top 10% increased to 72.8% in 2005 from 67.8% in 2001, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. He reduced the bottom tax rate to 10% from 15% and increased the refundable child tax credit to $1,000 from $500 per child, both cuts that President Barack Obama says we should keep. In so doing, millions of lower income taxpayers were removed from the tax rolls, shifting the remaining burden to those at the top, even after their taxes were cut.

According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 -- 60% of the country -- paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005,almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation's income.

When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that's a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes. For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.  [More than double].

-Wall Street Journal, APRIL 13, 2009
 


So let's recap...thanks to the "only-for-the-rich Bush tax cuts", not only does almost 60% of the country pay zero income tax, the bottom 40% actually gets money when the rest of the country pays taxes.

 

Have a look at the charts:

 

 

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Marko replied on Sat, Oct 15 2011 10:12 AM

I don't see how that's possible.  If you earn too little to pay income tax, I don't see how you could survive if 30-50% was taken away.

More than that is taken away.

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And of course, you have evidence for this?

 

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Marko replied on Sun, Oct 16 2011 5:06 AM

Sure I have, I'll post it as soon as you post evidence for people not paying the income tax not being able to survive if 30-50% is taken away.

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I have to assume that means you don't have any support for your claim that more than that is taken away.  Thanks for playing.

 

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Marko replied on Sun, Oct 16 2011 8:52 AM

If you won't put work into defending your statement, then where do you get the guile to expect I will put work into defending mine?

Show me how a family of four that earns $50,000 and therefore does not pay income tax can not survive if $15.000-25.000 of that then goes to the state.

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That's the whole point.  Those families don't exist.  That's why you can't show me a family of four that makes that much and actually ends up with 15k-25k worth of income.  Anyone who makes that little in wages to begin with is getting outside assitance, be it from a private shelter, private charity, church, or government assistance.  And anyone who makes $50k is not getting taxed at 30%-50% in the first place.  Thanks again for playing though.

 

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What is a "Constitutional Convervative & Teacher"

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Gief like button plz.

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Yeah I've wanted one of those since I joined here.  We've got one in the new community forums.  Now we just need to get the bugs out and migrate this one over there.

 

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Hurray. I hope it is also equiped with a dislike/troll button? : D

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I didn't actually see this on that 53% site...I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with it, but I figured quite a few might like it...

 

 

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That graph Share of Total Federal Tax Liabilities is very interesting.  Does anyone have data on how much the top 1% (officially) pay?

I have got the figures for the UK and they are far more even.  Top quintile pays 45%, then 23%, 16%, 9% and the bottom quintile pays 7%.  If anyone wants to check this, the figures are on page 44 in The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 2009/10.

So either the US is far more progressive than the UK, or taxes at the State level are much more even than the Federal level.  Which is it?

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If you follow that link in the graph (PDF), the top 1, 5, and 10 percent are broken out.  In 1979 the top 1 percent paid 15.4% of all federal taxes.  In 2006 it was 28.3%.  The top 10 percent account for 55.4% of all federal taxes.

On another note I'm also going to yet again assume this means our no-face friend has no evidence to support his claim.

 

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Wheylous replied on Fri, Oct 21 2011 8:03 PM

Which no-face man?

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The one bickering about how more than 30-50% is taken away in taxes from families below the poverty line.

 

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Taxing wealthy people faced a bigger attention during its blast and now that the bill is on hand, it brought a brighter shadow to US economy.I also read from this article After tax income for wealthiest one percent has tripled since 1979 the news about the tax of the wealthy which correpsonds on the tax plan. The after-tax revenue of the country's wealthiest 1 percent tripled between the years 1979 and 2007. A brand new report from the Congressional Budget Office presented the results. The incomes of Americans in other tax brackets rose at a much slower rate. The report likely will give fuel to the Occupy Wall Street movement as well as the national debt-reduction debate. I hope, this would brought a brighter light to US economy.

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Dave replied on Wed, Nov 2 2011 1:21 PM

I saw the Dailymail article but they did not provide a link to the source. It may be true but I would like to see the source. Anyways, I found some other statistics and info.

.

You can see from the graph above with the Gini coefficients (o=perfect equality, 1=perfect inequality),  there was a gradual increase from the 60's to the 90's but from 1994 to 2010 it leveled off. 

 

As for Federal taxes paid and the income share, I whipped up a graph for 1980 and 2009 (yes, I could have probably organized it a bit better). 

 

I have much more info here.

 

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That last graph is confusing. You certainly do not get the percentages by taking income and dividing by the taxes paid. So how do you do it?

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Dave replied on Thu, Nov 3 2011 9:45 AM

I appologize for the confusion. All I did was take the 1980 and 2009 figures from the charts below.

 

 

This following is what was graphed.

 

The first two bars in each column represent 1980 figures, the last two are 2009 figures. The percent figure on the Y-axis represents both the percent, based on group, of the amount of total income and total taxes paid in those years. Have any ideas on how to organize it better? I dont usually chart these things but I wanted to compare them.

 

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Does anybody find it terribly ironic that these people are saying "I work my ass of and I'm still broke!" surprise

Anyway:

In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!

~Peter Kropotkin

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Malachi replied on Thu, Nov 3 2011 11:46 AM
He said he was an American, so it makes perfect sense that he was denied access to affordable medical care because of a legally enshrined trade union. It also makes sense that he was denied access to an all natural cancer treatment that has been proven to be effective, because he lives in the united states.
Keep the faith, Strannix. -Casey Ryback, Under Siege (Steven Seagal)
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