What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.592 Comments
- SEGA4life, on 04/18/2008, -32/+138at last something the Clinton and Obama diggers can both agree on.
- yodaj007, on 04/18/2008, -6/+84These are some really cool figures presented in a clear format, but the source(s) of all this information isn't readily found. I can't find any citations for a lot of it. I am not a Bush apologist by any means, but it's important to keep in mind the source(s). Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. For instance, look at the section "Getting By in America." Where do these numbers come from?
- MeanYogurt, on 04/18/2008, -16/+80FTA: Bush's tax cuts for the rich have reduced annual tax revenue available for public needs by $300 billion each year.
According to the facts: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html The richest Americans pay more taxes now than they did before Bush was elected. How can there be tax cuts for the rich if the rich are paying a larger percentage of the tax bill? In 2001 the wealthiest 1% paid 33.89% of the tax bill. In 2005 (last year for tax figures) the wealthiest 1% paid 39.38%. Does no one call you on your facts as long as your bashing the current administration? An earlier submitter joked about this being marked as inaccurate because of moronic bush supporters. I hope that someday it will cross their mind that the article was marked as inaccurate because it was.
Also, if tax revenues have gone up how can you claim that tax revenue is down by 300 billion per year?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/business/13defic ... - slvrbullet87, on 04/18/2008, -44/+100For everybody that bitches about the rich getting the tax cuts, it is because they already pay all the taxes. http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js1287.htm
When the bottom 50% only pays 4% of the taxes you cant cut much more. - lhbaker, on 04/18/2008, -22/+70And yet they're significantly wealthier, while our incomes have decreased over the past eight years. Look at the charts: Income for corporations has skyrocketed, while income for the working class has decreased significantly. Is it just that we're not working as hard, or is that tax breaks for the richest 1% have deprived working Americans a decent living. Fortune 500 CEO incomes have grown, but working class Americans are increasingly falling into poverty. The truth is, ***** rolls down hill, but money rolls uphill.
- elebrio, on 04/18/2008, -52/+99I'm not a Bush supporter but I'm calling ***** on this one. 9/11 and inheriting a recession from the dot com bursting bubble had a far greater impact than any president (who is essentially a figurehead) could possibly have, and lets remember something... most of the ***** in this country were FOR THE WAR when it started. Thats why 98 senators voted in favor of authorizing the use of force. Calling it Bush/Cheneys occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is passing the buck. Either way you stand on the issues, this "article" is completely devoid of anything that could possibly be considered empirical.
- inactive, on 04/18/2008, -4/+46Clinton diggers? No Clinton diggers here. I haven't seen one possitive story about Clinton on Digg yet.
- inactive, on 04/18/2008, -11/+46Well, they certainly know how to rig voting machine computers.
- hipnerd, on 04/18/2008, -5/+40I'm positive she's going to lose. Does that count?
- inactive, on 04/18/2008, -22/+56I read this story expecting *****, and was pleasantly surprised. For once, an article without excessive sensationalized nonsense.
- lhbaker, on 04/18/2008, -16/+44A figurehead? Are you kidding? Conservatives blame Clinton personally for everything that went wrong in the Bush administration, so I'm guessing HE wasn't a figurehead. Bush has created the least transparent government in American history, has personally broken hundreds of laws, has squandered trillions (TRILLIONS!) of dollars on an unjustified war, has made decisions resulting in the deaths of THOUSANDS of American soldiers. If Bush is just a figurehead, then who do we hang?
- Stonecipher26, on 04/18/2008, -16/+44People who support Pres. Bush know how to use computers?
- theaceoffire, on 04/18/2008, -3/+29^_^ Silly, you don't have to rig the voting machines.
Just lie about the results, and own the people who check for lying.
That is lots cheaper, easier, and faster. - swrostmore, on 04/18/2008, -7/+31Read the ***** Article, Mr. Spaza. "Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the tab is well over $2 trillion."
- AbsurdParadox, on 04/18/2008, -8/+30Wait, wait. I've got a radical idea. How about we end the income tax altogether?
I am NOT a slave. - GalacticCmdr, on 04/18/2008, -1/+21Actually the reason the wealthiest 1% is paying a higher percentage of the tax bill is that their ratio to the other 99% has increased. Thus even if the rate at which they are taxed has decreased they will pay more actual dollars in taxes even though as a percentage of their own income they are paying less.
If in 2001 I made $200 and 100 other people made $10, these low-earners are taxed at 4% and I am taxed at 35%. Thus I am paying $70 in taxes and the low-earners are paying $40. This means that I am paying 64% of the tax bill. Along comes 2005 and I am now making $600 and each low-earner is making $20, their tax rate has dropped to 3% and mine has dropped to 25%. Thus I will be $150 in taxes and they will be paying $60, which yields 71% of the tax bill to me.
This is how the numbers work. In overall terms we all had our tax burden as a percentage decreased, since I was taxed at a higher rate than the others my percentage fell more, but I actually payed less in total terms since my income rose. However, if you just go off the percentage of the total bill I am paying a higher percentage of the total amount.
It all comes down to how you slice your numbers and for whom you are spinning them. - The_Red_Monkey, on 04/18/2008, -6/+26Yeah it has to do with the presidency and not that people do not save, they are in bigger credit card debt than ever and buy homes they could not afford. Yeah I can see why its the president's fault.
Sorry but Bush is a jackass but its not his policies that sent this in motion. The economy has fallen for many reasons and its the Senate and Legislature that make those spending decisions and they suck. They will not cut spending but they want to bail out the McMansion morons. Its not as black and white as blaming old Bushy boy. Its the Feds as a whole and you need to wake up. Dems and Republicans are criminal about it. - darkhand, on 04/18/2008, -5/+24What about the cowardly congress that allowed it to happen? They're just as guilty.
- CeeAyy, on 04/18/2008, -3/+21Here we go with the percentage thing again...
Quick math lesson... If I make $100/hour and you make $10/hour and we both pay %10 of our income to taxes, who pays more in total amount? Me. Now... who is paying a larger portion of their income? Neither. Percentages are misleading and are intentionally used in certain situations to purposely be misleading.
Here is the next part of the puzzle. If it costs %50 of your income (at $1600/month) to rent an $800 apartment (very rare in NYC) but only costs me %.05 of my income (at $16000/month) to rent, who is better off? I'm better off, by a lot. Who does raising taxes hurt more? Who can afford a rise in taxes more so?
Then consider, the more money you have the more likely it is that you own a home rather than rent which means that you get tax breaks for that. The more money you make the more tax breaks you may be eligible for (generally speaking). Remember, the less money you have, the bigger a deal it is to have your taxes raised as your money doesn't go as far.
Trying to get the poorest in the nation to pay the same amount as the richest in the nation is a little silly. If I had to pay Bloomberg's tax bill I would owe the IRS for the rest of my natural life without having money to buy a 5 cent piece of candy.
That's actually skipping the idea that an income tax is unconstitutional in the first place, even if it were based on a flat tax. We should have a usage/purchase tax. Also keep in mind that the wealthiest in this country don't pay taxes on wages... they don't work! Their money comes primarily from investment and ownership! They do NOT pay high taxes , if any taxes, on those things. Don't be fooled, the poor pay a LARGER percentage of their total income even if it might be a smaller dollar amount when compared to the wealthy. The wealthy pay a much smaller percentage of their total income, even if it is a much larger total dollar amount. - MakiMaki, on 04/18/2008, -0/+18Mirror: http://duggmirror.com/politics/What_8_Years_of_Bus ...
- V3n0M, on 04/18/2008, -2/+19Try 20 years of Bush/Clinton.
- DiggasWAttitude, on 04/18/2008, -4/+20Isn't it because the rich are now much more wealthy than they were in 2001 so they have more money to tax? If the US had a bigger middle class that percentage would be quite different, right?
- dshPls, on 04/18/2008, -10/+26Go away, you add nothing but wasted space to this conversation.
- TomK88, on 04/18/2008, -24/+3946.9 million Americans without health insurance. That's a scary thought.
- DefendThyself, on 04/18/2008, -5/+19Quit working for some a-hole and go work for yourself, that is the only way to become rich.
- theright, on 04/18/2008, -8/+22"The World Trade Center is now a proven controlled demolition."
Proof? - inactive, on 04/18/2008, -0/+13Step away from the crack pipe.
- Wargalas, on 04/18/2008, -5/+18Oh I don't know, how about with the money you're spending on Xbox games and internet access? You need money to make money. Growing up and throughout my 20's, I was on the verge of bankruptcy tons of times. You know who I blamed for my predicament? Me. Stop wallowing in self pity and do something to make your life easier. The world doesn't owe you anything.
- hoopslife, on 04/18/2008, -8/+20Wow, that's an ignorant comment. You do realize that the top 10% of the US makes 90% of the income. So I would be willing to bet that the bottom 50% actually make close to 4% of the US total income. That's why they only pay 4% of the tax. Think people. Think.
- TRScheel, on 04/18/2008, -7/+19Ah the power of percentages. In case you missed that, well i would like to say day in school but we all know it was a little longer than that... here's how they work:
If you take 10% of $0.00 you get, $0.00
If you take 10% of $20,000 you get $2,000
If you take 10% of $2,000,000 you get $200,000
So... they do pay more. Or are you pissed that they make a ***** ton more money than the low end? Regardless of if they 'personally' earned it, someone along the line did. To just take it from them because they have it... well in all honesty that's either theft or communism (Which depends on if you're the government or not). - banderwocky, on 04/18/2008, -3/+15I have NEVER waited for anything in our healthcare system. That is of course not to say it doesn't happen. Of course it happens as this system is not perfect. I have experienced both systems and I still 100% stand behind the Canadian system as opposed to the American one. The fear mongering rhetoric is laughable. The people in power who have issues with it have money invested into private medical enterprises I would imagine.
- digxag, on 04/18/2008, -1/+13The rich are paying a larger percentage of the tax bill because they are making much more money than before. (To use an extreme example, if you pay 50% of a million dollars in taxes, but the next year you pay 20% of 10 million dollars, your tax rate went down but your tax payment went up.) Consequently, the poor and middle class are, proportionately speaking, making less money than before. We pay a lower share of taxes because we don't have much to draw from.
Tax revenues increase in nominal terms because inflation makes the dollar amount go up from year to year. Even so, the percentage of the GNP going to income taxes has gone down, and with it, the deficit has skyrocketed.
The question I have for you is, if lowering taxes makes the rich pay more, then why aren't the rich lobbying for higher taxes so they can pay less? - TomK88, on 04/18/2008, -10/+22Do you have any evidence to back that up or are you just making ***** up to make you feel better about the situation?
- kukyona, on 04/18/2008, -2/+13Actually, the trend on all percentiles is upward, though there has been a slight downward trend in the last couple years due to the fall of the US dollar but has been picking up. The income gap that has been increasing. Many people make the common mistake of thinking the economy is a zero sum game and that that means the poor are getting poorer when actually it means they are getting richer at a much slower rate.
The bottom 20% has seen a downward trend since 1979 of 1%... as to why they specifically dropped, there are plenty of reasons on both sides of the isle... possible reasons range from minimum wage which reduces the number of people that can be employed by a company, or increased dependency of welfare that discourages people from taking higher paying jobs for fear of losing their benefits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_t ...
http://www.demos.org/inequality/numbers.cfm
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/ave ...
On a side note, I believe Bush is a horrible president and look forward to his replacement. - TXAgs911, on 04/18/2008, -6/+17The bottom 50% only makes something on the order of 15% of the total income. Paired with that statistic, yours does not seem nearly so out of line. Don't look at the tax distribution in isolation...look at the income gap as well. While it's true that we have (and I would argue rightly) a progressive taxation system, it's not as dramatic as you are trying to make it seem.
- mrsammercer, on 04/18/2008, -8/+19Congress voted for the war based on false information that was pushed to the forefront by the Bush administration. Some people saw through it. Actually, I specifically remember Trey Parker and Matt Stone being on Conan O'Brien and shouting "don't do this! This war is a baaad idea". Unfortunately Congress was fooled, or at least too scared to speak out against it. After all, we were still in the super patriotic post 9/11 phase where you can't question any policy that's supposedly going to prevent further terrorist attacks. The Senate voted for it(didn't actually declare war), but it was the Administration that rammed it down their throats.
- cyks, on 04/18/2008, -0/+10"Internal service error"
yup that sounds about right to me! - TomK88, on 04/18/2008, -10/+20Really? I would love to see "proof" of this that doesn't include outdated news reports, grainy pictures, and "science" that has been disproved by many scientific experts.
- zydeco, on 04/18/2008, -1/+11It doesn't matter who is getting the tax cuts. If you're not cutting spending to match the tax cuts, everybody loses. Look at government spending for the last 8 years, then tell me again how Republicans always run on fiscal responsibility and smaller goverment and somehow WE KEEP BELIEVING IT.
- TomK88, on 04/18/2008, -1/+11You do realize that socialized medicine does not equal slow service, right?
- toxicityj, on 04/18/2008, -10/+20you could have just submitted a picture of crap in a toilet under that title and it would work out.
- klco, on 04/18/2008, -0/+10What does outsourcing have to do with the balanced budget???
- neognostic, on 04/18/2008, -19/+29When all of the evidence presented to the Senate was a lie, how is that vote to be considered a mandate? And it is the President who has his signature on a Federal Budget that he also submits to Congress in advance, so yes he does have impact on out of control spending. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S. ...
- rulezgetbent, on 04/18/2008, -1/+10What Bush did for America:
Internal Server Error - GhostyBoy, on 04/18/2008, -1/+10I don't like how the article ends as though electing a democrat is going to solve everything. It won't. Bush doesn't suck because he is a Republican, he sucks because he is a tool. Tools come dressed in blue.
- spectecjr, on 04/18/2008, -2/+11You're missing a piece of the equation here.
Cost of living is a somewhat fixed cost. Someone who is taxed at 40% on $1,000,000 is going to still have $600,000 left at the end of the year. If the cost of living for that person is $80,000 a year, they still have $520,000 left.
Someone making $40,000 a year might have a cost of living of $30,000 a year. If they are taxed at $20,000, they have only $32,000, which leaves $2,000 after cost of living.
People making less can afford to pay less in taxes. People making more shouldn't even notice the increased tax burden - they are still earning way above their cost of living, and their situation will exponentially get better if they save that money and invest. - bearsandbulls, on 04/18/2008, -3/+12Boo hoo you paid more taxes than the average person makes.
The only thing I am going to be happy to see from Obama as president is when he jacks up the taxes on the rich and maybe helps to repeal the patriot act. - enri, on 04/18/2008, -3/+12I do not blame Bush for the 2000/2001 recession, but his administration is to blame for our current recession.
... and he is the only president to cut taxes while we were engaged in a war.
... and his administration gave no-bid contracts, which goes against free market principles, to their business associates.
... and those contractors repeatedly overcharged us for goods and services, which his administration refuses to investigate.
That's all the economic faults I think of right off the top of my head. I'm sure I've missed a few. - galeninjapan, on 04/18/2008, -9/+18If only we had a system where the president and vice president didn't even have the power to ruin the economy in the first place...
- mrsammercer, on 04/18/2008, -1/+9The OP wasn't talking about stories getting buried. He was referring to the fact that anti-bush stories are always "marked as possibly inaccurate" by fellow diggers. And that happens CONSTANTLY.
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