Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: I haven't read the book.

Do the numbers.
Tom Brosz — (archived)

Tally up the entire budget of the SEC ($1 billion in 2005), the IRS budget (about $11 billion in 2005) overhead, government R & D, and the combined total of all government resource, land, and other subsidies (about $100 billion a year). We're assuming for the sake of argument that only rich corporations benefit from all these things, of course.

It's a drop in the bucket in the entire Federal budget, and a fraction of the approximately $300 billion in taxes paid by corporations, and the added $250 billion paid by the top 1 percent of individual taxpayers. $500 billion if you extend that to the top 10 percent.

The numbers don't add up, Robert. The rest is all money spent for no direct return. If you want to justify massive taxes on the rich, you're going to have to think of something else.

In an earlier conversation, you claimed that the top 1% of taxpayers pay 34% of the taxes, and I responded by pointing out that the top 1% also has about 34% of all the wealth in the country. How could there possibly be anything unfair about that?

Actually, according to IRS figures, the top 1 percent of individual taxpayers accounted for 14 percent of the income, and paid 33 percent of the taxes. By your reasoning, their tax rate should be about half what it is.

If you assume that the function of taxation is to loot the wealthy and spread it around for political gain, you'd be consistent. If you try to pretend that the function of taxation is to have everyone carrying their fair share of the load, your position is horse manure. By that token, it would be "fair" if everyone paid different prices for everything based on their income.

This isn't about cognition. I understand your position perfectly. I'm not sure you do. In fact, what I'm beginning to understand is that leftist "cognition" is largely based on an unwillingness to let facts, results, and reality get in the way of an attractive idea.

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