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Originally posted by bilmore
You're confusing me again. I got a tax cut. So did you. When did he tell me it was going to be hugely bigger than what it turned out to be?
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According to his speeches and press releases, my tax cut was supposed to be about $4500. It was actually about $695. And incidentally, in case it has escaped your notice, we are among the wealthy. The top 5% of taxpayers earn about $129,000 or more a year. I assume you fall into that category.
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And, I offer this, as a way of speaking of math subjects that avoids the pain to me:
August 19, 2004, 12:01 p.m.
Killing the Class-Warfare Argument
The rich are paying more taxes since the Bush tax cuts.
http://nationalreview.com/script/pri...0408191201.asp
What the CBO report did conclude was that the total tax share by the richest 1 percent declined modestly from 2001 to 2004. But that wasn’t because of the tax cut. It was because of the recession. When the economy contracts and incomes fall as they did in 2001 and 2002, tax payments by the wealthy fall the fastest. This is because of the progressive rate structure of the income tax. In other words, if everyone’s income falls by 10 percent, the overall percentage of taxes paid by the wealthy falls, because they pay a higher marginal tax rate...
Those who actually read the CBO study will discover that it confirms exactly this point. From 2001 to 2004 incomes have fallen sharply for the highest income groups. IRS data shows that in 2002, taxable income fell by about 4.3 percent, with declines steepest among the highest income groups. In 2002, income fell for the second year in a row. Prior to 2000, annual incomes hadn’t fallen since 1953. The New York Times recently reported that income fell 63 percent from 2000 to 2002 for the highest income bracket. When the rich make less; so does the government. So why do members of the Left hate the rich so much? Without them, there would be no money to finance the government.
A recent report from the Treasury Department confirms that the rich are paying a bigger share of taxes than they would if the Bush tax cuts hadn’t passed. The Treasury estimates that the top 1 percent of earners will pay about 32.3 percent of taxes this year, which is the same as the CBO estimate. The Treasury also estimates, however, that absent the tax cuts, the top 1 percent would be paying only 30.5 percent of taxes, down 10 percent from 2001....
Those who argue that the Bush tax cuts were a “give-away” to the rich assume that incomes grow at a constant rate, regardless of how heavily they are taxed. That is the fallacy of the recent CBO study. The report concedes: “Our analysis does not account for incomes changing in response to the tax cuts.” It’s like assuming that you’re not going to take off any weight if you stop eating hot fudge sundaes with whipped cream and cherries on top. This is the same whimsical logic that compelled the tax accountants on Capitol Hill to famously estimate that a 100 percent income-tax rate would bring in billions of dollars in federal revenue...
— Stephen Moore is president of the Club for Growth. Phil Kerpen is a research assistant at the Club for Growth.
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It appears that the CBO study does not say what the authors claim it says. The last excerpt I highlighted in bold gives lie to the first excerpt. And the middle excerpt deals with the IRS SOI study I quoted from yesterday. Note that they don't apply the same (fallacious) logic to the SOI study that they do to the CBO study.
So much for math, Bilmore. Your source seems to have trouble with simple logic and rhetoric.
