Wealth is all relative. In America, poor is not being able to buy a new car. In other countries, its not being able to buy your next meal. Regardless, even using your situation as an example, chances are even if you do make enough money to not need your regular job chances are you will not get "rich" off what you are doing in your lifetime. The system is set up to keep people where they are for the most part. Some people will make it, the majority won't despite their efforts.

The 47% number is true when referring to INCOME taxes. Some people have selective reading. Idiots come back and say "well those people pay this tax and that tax" yeah sure but that's not what was said. No said 47% paid no taxes at all. They said 47% pay no INCOME TAX which is in fact true. Once people get that then a serious intelligent discussion can be had.

Here's the problem let's say the government made Exxon pay say 25% of that in income taxes. Well Exxon will just raise the price of gas. Make wal-mart pay income tax well if they don't raise prices they'll just cut benefits, pay or hours of their workers or just fire some. Then those left will have to work twice as hard for the same pay.

They shifted their earnings over seas. Have you ever heard of business moving over seas, this is what they are talking about. Lower the tax rate and they will shift their money back here. This is the Laffer Curve in real time. If you close this loophole they will just completely move their companies out of the US.

The easiest solution, not to mention the solution that would bring in more money, is to lower the taxes below those other countries. We would see more businesses moving here and employing more Americans.

Or just getting rid of corporate income tax all together.

Just because someone has a color TV or a DVD player (I can get a color TV off of Craiglist for $30 and a new DVD player for the same) and has a microwave doesn't mean the poor is getting more wealthy. It means these things are becoming more affordable.

Take for example the VCR. I was in grade school when they first came out and they were anywhere from $1500-$2000. That is a lot of money now, even more so back then. Almost nobody had them. As they got cheaper and cheaper more people got them.

Here are some real numbers.

From 1980 to 2007 the average household income in the US went up $7804. That is an average of $289 per year or about .6% increase each year. Average inflation during those years was anywhere between 1%-2% with many years in the early 80% near 10%. This means that over the last 27 years the average US wage earner has not even seen their wages increase at the rate of inflation. So cost of living is actually outpacing wage increases.

Meanwhile the top 1% saw their personal wealth increase 232% during that same time period.

I'm not begrudging the top 1%, I'm just pointing out that during a time when the average wage earner wasn't even keeping pace with inflation the richest 1% saw their average income nearly triple.

Well yeah Im all for that. :thumbsup

I won't argue this. A lot of poor people have cable, computers, internet and live decent lives. Poverty in our country is nothing like poverty in many other countries. You go to many countries and those who live in poverty live in little shacks that might not even have electricity and they scrounge for food.

When I was growing up we were pretty poor and there were some years we were on food stamps or got food from food banks. There were some nights we went to bed with little to eat, but we always had a warm, dry home to live in, went to school and almost all of the time had enough food to go around.

One of my best friends is a cop and he says almost without fail when he goes into a poor person's place they are smokers and drinkers. My mom admits now that when my brother and I were little and she was struggling so much she still smoked and that ate through a bunch of her money. She didn't know it then, but she was depressed and smoking was the only thing that could help her deal with the stress of raising us on her own. Had she not smoked a pack a day it would have been another $20-$25 a week she would have had to spend and this was in the 70's when she was making $3 per hour so $25 per week ends up being a lot of money

All of the taxes is the reason why those big corporations don't pay them. We're supposedly a capitalist economy and almost entirely socialist(as far as social programs anyway) countries have lower corporate taxes than us by a huge margin.. like Sweden and France.

Oh and income tax is stupid anyway.

he's talking about relative poverty.

Hey dont forget, with the new supreme court ruling, Exxon is a citizen! LOL Wonder how exxon will vote?

It takes money to make money. The top 1% make a lot more then they spend, so they pump back millions of dollars into investments. its a snow ball affect... They pushing down the hill a big snow ball, we pushing down a snow flake. The majority of the population can't afford to invest tons of money or they simply spend more than they make and never have anything to invest. If they depend on their wages alone (from their jobs) then chances are they will never out beat inflation. But if they make more than they spend and they invest the rest, (their money is working for them) they will have a much better chance to out beat inflation.

There will always be the people at the bottom who don't have enough ambition or intelligence to be anything other than a fast food worker. Then there is people who have the ambition and smarts to make decent money. Of those people you need to find the ones who are willing to not spend all of what they make on crap and invest as much as they could.

Just about anyone with intelligence, ambition, and the ability to live modest and not blow it all, can work their way from the bottom to the top. Will they make it to the top 1%, maybe but it could take many many years to do or even a couple generations. But it is possible. IT COMES DOWN TO THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE CHOICES THEY MAKE.

Even daddy Bush called Reagan's "trickle down" economics "voodoo economics".

Yep, you make a good point.

My post was meant less about why the wealthy get more wealthy faster and more of an illustration. Bestxxxporn had said the rich get richer and the poor get richer and I was just pointing out that this really isn't the case.

It is a lot easier to make a billion dollars if you start with 300 million dollars than if you start with $300, that much is certainty.

Some interesting numbers about millionaires in the US:

* Only 19 percent receive any income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or an estate.

* Fewer than 20 percent inherited 10 percent or more of their wealth.

* More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance.

* Fewer than 25 percent ever received "an act of kindness" of $10,000 or more from their parents, grandparents, or other relatives.

* Ninety-one percent never received, as a gift, as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business.

* Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents or other relatives.

* Fewer than 10 percent believe they will ever receive an inheritance in the future.

Good, I enjoy the jobs and production in industry they provide, why don't you check out the other numbers in money they paid out to other companies in subcontracts ;)

every country has the same shit problems...

We tested out the car that tom hanks has (it's his second electric vehicle), for a new TV show i'm involved in. The car needed an energy top up before it was supposed to be due, and the place we stopped at to charge it had closed down because of lack of funding. We had to abandon the car in the end. Unless there is massive widespread adoption of these vehicles its not going to make sense for most families because you cant do long haul trips and who has room for 2 cars?

There's so much wrong with this argument, I don't know which fallacy to rip apart first.


To begin with, France's corporate tax is a steady 33.33%. Sweden's is 26%. The US is a scaling corporate tax country. You can pay as low as 15%, to the highest at 39%.

If income tax is stupid, tell me how we would fund the services deemed necessary? IE fire, medical, police, etc.


And serious LOLs @ the US being almost entirely socialist. Stop it.

i must be doing something very wrong.. i have a great accountant but how do you guys write off everything to basically have no tax..

let me give you an example..

you make $1mil in 2009
your expenses to make that $1mil are only $120,000 meaning computer, internet, ads, etc, everything..

Please explain how you can avoid paying the IRS tax on at least $800,000 income,

only way i see is to take like 800k and dump it into buying websites, etc... otherwise how else can people who make millions pay no taxes, legally

Here's the problem with you logic. Say Exxon pays 39% on that $45 bilion so aorund $18 billion. Sounds good right? They are paying thier share right? Well except to get that $18 billion back they raises gas prices 25 cents a gallon or cut employee benefits or pay or hours. All of which has negative effect on the economy. Now if you could somehow force them to pay the taxes without doing that then I'd be all for it but you can't.

I have room for a few cars :)

I completely agree with the lack of "charging stations" but I'd have another car for road trips. .. I just want an all electric for in town driving :) No reason to burn the gas if it's not needed :)

The problem with my logic? I proposed no fix to this issue, all I did was state facts. Not sure where you're coming from or going with this.

You can't put exxon in jail for not paying taxes. Only slaves.

By the way your total income tax on that $880K would be about 30% max. Man that would suck having to live on only $616K.

I suspect most Americans would love to be rich enough to have to pay 30% if their income in income taxes.

Great stuff! :thumbsup

:1orglaugh

Yeah because using an electric car means you're saving the world - :1orglaugh

You know the electricity doesn't just magically appear in the socket in your wall right?

not really. you are forgetting SE taxes, and good ol state tax.. u r gonna live on more like $450k

Oh an on topic of cheating the IRS out of tax dollars:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/15/...ex.html?hpt=C2

Very interesting read!

they should put that 45Billion into developing electric cars.

Ok if you're going to be technical. SE taxes would be about $125K but since you get to deduct half that off your income it reduces the taxes I mentioned earlier by $22K. So an overall increase of around $103K. State taxes? Good thing I live in a state with ZERO income tax. So I'd "only" have $513k to live on. Even if I did live ina state with an income tax that tax is dedectable on income taxes too.

Also this isn't taking into account personal exemption and dependant deduction. If you were married with 2 kids you're taxes would be lowered even more, but I won't get into that.

So if you have an income of $880K and you only have $450k left over I'd sue your accountant.

other oil companys manage to pay tax and stay competitive.

Btw, if you make more then $85k or so, you can't deduct your wife and kids. The deduction is head of household which is very small.

He's still looking at 300k in taxes which is more then you paid in 20 years he pays in 1 year.

Where are the sources ? While I general believe as you do and the points you are making I think you are swinging way to the extreme.

is t his networth millionaires or people who make million dollars a year in income etc... "millionaires" needs to be defined. Someone can own a million dollars worth of property and only make 50K a year from it or less. If it is just net worth, gathering a million dollars of networth over your life time is not a hard thing to do if you have a decent income and invest money instead of blowing it all.

I've always read and been told that more millionaires are made from:
1. Lotto
2. Inheritance
3. Law suits

than anything else.

Pffft. That doesn't even include the financial subsidies the government gives them, and THAT doesn't even include the tax payer funding of wars to open up new exploration territory and naval protection of shipping lanes to transport the oil. This shouldn't be news. And you wonder why alternative energy finds it hard to compete. Still, it is important to lock up these resources.

So Bill gates should pay a few $$ in taxes because that's what others pay?

Yeah those three things... sure people get money from them but not nearly as many as whom make it on their own...

Those came from NY Times... go research it yourself if you're that interested...

They're the largest company in the U.S. That means they can do whatever they want.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s...llionaire.html

It's about his book "Millionaire Next Door", that NY Times article is a pretty good summary of it...
probably get the book though, the book isn't really that great, but it's filled with interesting, eye-opening facts, worth checking out if you are interested in learning more... :thumbsup