How about instead of "group of pro players and pro and college hopefuls" it was, oh I dunno, people who own tons of shares in the pro team... kind of like how it is in the executive boardroom. That may include a pro player or two, but they have a direct financial interest in making the club tons of money.

I can't give you a researched version, but I'd start by looking at three areas.

1) Compensation consultants weren't common. The rise of firms that exist largely to justify outrageous salaries has, no surprise, justified outrageous salaries.

2) The tax code was much more punitive on high wage earners and there weren't as many loopholes. I'm not advocating a return to 70% plus top rates, but when compensation was so heavily taxed there was less incentive to pay out such exorbitant salaries.

3) It wasn't legitimized. As compensation ballooned in the eighties and nineties it was legitimized by the type of rhetoric we see in this thread. That sort of talk wouldn't have worked as well in an era when the wealthy were less revered.

Who do you think decided CEO salaries in the 1950s? If you answer is anything other than the Boards of Directors of the companies then you are sadly mistaken.

ISiddiqui, do you not agree that those deciding CEO salaries have a vested interest (beyond shares in that particular company) in keeping CEO salaries high?

I reviewed documents in the Dick Grasso case and I can assure you that there was very little discussion in print relating to performance. While they didn't go so far as to say, "I like him so he should get paid," there was literally no one who suggested that his compensation shouldn't be the maximum recommendation of the consulting firm.

Business regulation entails a lot more than just that. There have been vast changes in the legal environment that corporations operate in, those are the changes that have allowed such a drastic change in the concentration of money, along with the economic success that's been mentioned elsewhere.

I'd agree. We should not re-write history here, and that includes ignoring any interventions and negotiations that the administration and the military did to further that process. The whole process not only involves brute force, but winning over the people. That includes both the good and the bad. It probably took longer than it should have, but no process is ever perfect. But implying that the adminstration and military leadership had no hand in Al-Sadr's cease-fire just doesn't wash any more than saying they were the sole reason it happened. Al-Sadr doesn't come to that decision without considering other factors.


I don't disagree with it at all. I think he gets far more credit than he deserves as we never would have reached that point so quickly had the U.S. done it his way, but I have no problem with the action itself.

I do not agree, unless of course the CEO is a member of the Board.

For example, this is Microsoft's Board of Directors:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/bod/bod.aspx

There are, out of 10 BoDs, 3 are currently executive officers (including Steve Ballmer, CEO of MS). 4 are former executive officers (what incentive would they have to keep the salaries high? - obviously they're not interested in another executive job or they'd have one). 2 are college professors. And one is the Chairman (Bill Gates).

So basically it doesn't have to do with a "monopoly" of BoD members who are just interested in increasing executive salary because they are executives or may become executives?

Forbes on CEO compensation for Fortune 500 companies:

What The Boss Makes - Forbes.com


I don't think people really realize how much in revenues and profits these companies are making.

In addition, if you read further, you'll note a LOT of the money (and for the highest paid, most of it) comes from VESTED STOCK OPTIONS.

It's not just about becoming a CEO. There are numerous other ways to make money due to decisions of the CEO. More importantly the naysayer is going to be kicked out of the club. No board is looking for people who are opposed to ever increasing CEO compensation. If you want on the team you have to play ball.

For one, I'd assume inflation-adjusted revenues are higher now than then.

Quite right.

CEO is a sweet gig, no doubt. Most jobs that require that type of education and skill level are.

But are people just arguing that they're overpaid or that the government should decide how much they make? And nobody would be concerned about those kinds of decisions having political motivations? Or the impact on lobbyists? Or the quality of CEOs going downhill?

I'm certainly not arguing for government intervention. But I think if people don't feel that there's *already* government intervention which acts in teh favor of corporate management and the very rich, then they're not looking very hard. I just don't want to hear highly paid executives praised as some paragon of the powers of the market, when they are just as much recipients of a weighted system as the "welfare mothers" everyone loves to grind axes about.

There's just as much work going on in Washington helping the rich hold on to more money as there is helping people who aren't working get more money. It's just ironic to me how much hatred towards "socialism" and "welfare states" I hear when it's directed towards the poor but people don't want to see that the rich get just as much of a helping hand.

That's a little skewed because it doesn't seem to count retirement package contributions. And this:


muddies the water as they could eventually make huge sums of money off of agreements made now.

Either way, I think 3% of profits is really high, especially when the examples they give show no connection between compensation and performance.

Common wisdom (and a simple google) states the following:

1. Al-Sadr's ceasefire for the Mahdi Army was mostly driven by his desire to not de-legitimize the political alliances he had made. By all accounts there was very little U.S. involvement, military, diplomatic or otherwise, here.

2. The "Anbar Awakening" was mostly the result of AQ overplaying its hand in Sunni areas and alienating the local tribal leaders. The extent of U.S. involvement in this lies in lower-level commanders (later referenced by General Petraeus) positioning the use of U.S. forces in a way that encouraged local Sunnis to turn to the U.S. when they tired of AQ.


The surge "succeeded" (and to this day the measures of its success are debated, both from a violence and a political stability standpoint) mostly due to these factors, not the addition of the extra troops. In fact, I'd propose that the most direct success attributed to those extra troops was a reduction in violence in Baghdad, to where the majority of those troops were deployed. Still, even that was largely due to the cessation of violence perpetrated by the Mahdi Army.

Making 1% to 3% of the total profits of a gigantic multinational corporation is pretty staggering. Not to mention that compensation does not go down for CEOs that run a business into the ground.

You've got more enthusiasm for this than me, though, I'm afraid. I'm bored while working and able to make little comments, but don't have the time to look up stuff to back them up. I should just stop getting drawn into these things.

Are you talking about corporate bailouts?

So why haven't wages for the rest of the working population risen at the same rate? (Or have they?)

The market changes. Our priorities change. Why would everything change at the same rate unless it was controlled by a singular, outside force (like a government)? The salaries of baseball players and hollywood actors have increased far more since the 1950s than regular workers' salaries (and also far more than CEOs, I'd guess). Does that represent some kind of shadiness, or something unfair or wrong? Or something the government needs to fix?

I never said it did. I'm just asking for a logical explanation. Surely there must be one.

Not really. More frustration at people like you who want to divvy up the population of this country into ever-smaller identity groups. Oh, and people who refer to President Obama as the first black president annoy me as well. He's bi-racial, not black.

Yes, but then we're playing the 'shuffle the troops' game and making a lot of assumptions. Without the increase in troops, many of the troops in the outlying areas who facilitated much of the change in the Iraqi groups would have had to go back to Baghdad to quell those troubles, and we would have had major setbacks in the outlying areas as a result. By pushing troops into Baghdad as you correctly mention, they allow the work to continue in other areas AND they nail down the Baghdad issues.

As far as political stability goes, it's never going to be guaranteed in that country regardless of what our military does. There's far too many factors out of our control to try to guarantee any sort of political stability. Iraqi and its citizens will have to work that out as best they can.

Oh, the irony! :D

There's no evidence to suggest that troops would have been re-purposed from Anbar to Baghdad without the surge. Other parts of Iraq to Baghdad, sure, but not likely Anbar.

I did take a couple minutes to try to find some data for what i"m talking about. I didn't have enough time but I did find one quote that spoke to it:

No. I'm talking about laws and regulations that exist for the purpose of providing tax loopholes and general assistance for those with a lot of money.

Most likely it is the result of increasing technology and the automation of a lot of the workforce. When robots can do the job that people used to do on assembly lines of making cars, those people on the line have to get lower paying jobs, while the guy that monitors and fixes the robots gets paid very well. The median amounts go down.

And FWIW, I don't think 3% of the profits to the CEO is that excessive.

Anyone else amazed at how quickly the health care issues have totally fallen off the radar in this discussion thread? I know that Obama is expected to make some comments where he presents what he thinks should be in the bill, but I think he's going down that path FAR too late. He should have never let Congress drive what was in the bills. He's realizing that, but I'm not sure that he'll be able to salvage anything at this point.

So we should put bandaids on the right knee because the left knee is skinned?

Fix the tax code if the tax code is broken. We really need to stop trying to fix these problems via the wrong mechanisms like just raising the income tax across the board on all rich people because some rich people may not "deserve" their wealth.

I for one have not proposed raising the taxes or any other way to "fix" this problem. Just pointing out that I don't think that the system works as well as people might think it does.

For those that think CEO compensation is completely out of whack...do you really believe that you know what a CEO of a Fortune 500 company's life is like? Do you really believe "qualifications" are all on paper and that business is done because somebody googles "the best product for X business"? Or do the "non-paper" qualifications have to be something like "great leader" or "visionary" or "donates half his salary to charity" type of nontangible qualifications? That just isn't how it works...nor should it.

Every aspect of your life is part of being a CEO. Everything. You are the identity of the company. Everything from how you treated a waiter in a previous business setting to your hobbies and interests to your father was a brilliant scientist to you are a Harvard guy/gal, to your brother is a loser has relevancy to the position of a given corporation (though not all apply to all situatons). You have to be considered a thoroughbred in business...at least if your business is "selling" something to other businesses. You are also responsible for attracting and retaining top level execs to help you run your company...this also requires significant and dynamic attributes not all of which you can control.

But at the end of the day...you are trying to do business with people of wealth. People of wealth that run businesses (whether they be top level execs or CEO's themselves) have a totally different lifestyle required of them than the guy who does his thing for 8-10 hours and goes home to watch Sportscenter.

:) I was wondering if someone would pick up on that. Hey, if you're going to sub-divide people into identity groups, at least get the identity groups correct.

Depends. There's a big difference between what Alan Mulally does and what Stanley O'Neal did, for instance.

CamEdwards: Defender of Political Correctness?

Don't mind me, I'm just going to go check the temperature in hell currently....

I thought the politically correct term was "person of color", which frankly I would never defend because it sounds too much like "colored person" to me.

I think we could use a ruling from Ben here....

:D

Nobody is saying they don't work hard. The argument is that they are paid at historically high levels and too often the compensation isn't related to performance. Just because they work hard doesn't entitle them to unlimited riches. Is it not fair to ask why they are being paid so much more than they were thirty years ago?

There's obviously an implication there though, either that the increases are somehow "wrong", or that the government needs to fix it.

Let's say the answer is - "they've played the system well", and that they've managed to artifically increase their wages beyond the value they bring to the company? So what? Isn't that a story of success?

For them, yes, but not for shareholders and not for the rest of the employees. IMO it's very similar to some bloated union contracts in that compensation has little to do with shareholder value.

This reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges from "The Office":

Michael: That would have really really showed him up, wouldn’t it, if I brought in some burritos, or, colored greens, or some, pad thai, love pad thai …
Stanley: It’s collard greens.
Michael: What?
Stanley: It’s collard greens.
Michael: Uh, doesn’t really make sense. Cuz you don’t call them collard people. That’s offensive.

I think its broke in other ways. Tax loopholes are more easily exploited by the rich. So let's simplify the tax code and make it equally difficult or easy to exploit for everybody.

As far as compensation...I have not seen this yet pointed out (coulda missed it)...but one of the many reasons for disparity is of course globalization and outsourcing of US labor. I'd venture a guess that CEO's would be more closely in line with their workers if ALL or MOST of their workers were US labor. But when you remove jobs from the US labor pool...you also decrease the demand for the "average" worker.

That's their choice, and the shareholders choice whether to buy the stock.

Are companies that pay their CEOs less money wildly more successful, or are their stock prices higher by comparison? If they were, CEO's would make less money.

I would imagine highly paid CEOs also pay more income taxes than the corporation would pay in corporate taxes if it paid lower salaries.

Average workers are a dime a dozen, and good CEOs are tough to find.

I would not imagine that at all. I'm quite sure their compensation is given in a way to reduce their income tax as much as possible.

And apparently good CEOs are very tough to find, since you can make 50 million while tanking your company. ;-)

That's especially true for manufacturing jobs that had the power of collective bargaining. The decline in unions for blue collar workers has given the average employee much less ability to get wage increases that come close to those of management.

I would imagine, though I have no proof, that CEO compensation isn't at all correlated to share price, which is the whole point. There's no good reason why CEO salries have skyrocketed other than they can get away with it. Personally, I'd like to make it tougher to get away with.

Saw this after I posted...see my last post for some (most IMO) of the reason for this disparity.

On the brighter side (tongue in cheek)...the more we keep deflating the dollar and outsourcing, theoretically, the more attractive US labor becomes.

Seriously, I don't see how we close this gap or do more good than harm by creating laws/taxes, etc. to take more money from wealthy Americans so we can make the improvement in lifestyle of the middle class and the poor live equal in value to the wealthier.

Rather than "taking" wealth from these people, we should be encouraging the "investment" of wealth. You have to allow greed to motivate the greedy...just as we allow complacency to the complacent. Not all people want the same things in life. EDIT to add: And most Americans have a limit on how much wealth (with all it's side pro's/cons) they care to adapt their life goals to...myself included. Sure, some get lucky (lotto, inheritance) but that wealth was created by "somebody" with talent...it isn't anybody's business if that talented person decided to give it all to their lazy ass stupid son or to charity. In any event...the lazy stupid son blows the wealth created (which ends up in "somebody" else's talented hands) or he creates more wealth and jobs by employing smart, talented people. They have demands for their talent...rinse and repeat.

I don't think we need to "take" any wealth, but there are laws already that govern how corporations function, how they choose their leadership, how they can award compensation, how they are taxed. It's not like we are not already intrinsically involved in this. So there should always be the possibility of improving the laws. That is what those executives and their lobbyists have been doing for decades. They possess the amount of wealth they do in part because of the way our laws function. There is nothing natural or intrinsic about it, it's the result of choices of lawmakers and regulators over hundreds of years.

If I were emperor I'd:

Go back to the Clinton era tax rates for everyone.

Add(bring back) a top rate at 2 percent higher than the Clinton top rate

Radically reduce the number of exemptions/deductions/credits

Give shareholders the right to hold a binding vote on executive compensation packages(with 2/3 required to cancel a package)

Bar anyone from serving on the board of a company who's executives sit on the their board for 3 to 5 years

Further enhance disclosure rules for public companies so compensation is more difficult to disguise

If possible(I'm not a tax attorney) look at ways to reduce the tax disparity between differing types of compensation.

good point

By far, most of that is in stock options, however.

With the option price set so generously that you can still tank your company and make money at the same time!

And while I believe about 50% of compensation is stock options, I don't think that's true for their "golden parachute."

With the really extravagent compensation you read (like Larry Ellison's $580 Million+), it's 99% stock options.

And usually the golden parachute is to buy a CEO out of his contract and get him out of there, so obviously they don't want them to be having a bunch of company stock. Though, actually stock options may indeed be a part of a golden parachute. Interestingly enough, the golden parachute took off during the 1980s, in response to a bevy of takeover and mergers, as golden parachutes tend to be views as semi-poison pills to those contemplating hostile takeovers.

If you don't like how a company is run and how well their CEO is compensated, don't buy stock in them. It's the easiest way to avoid any moral conflict you have.

I personally think capital gains should be taxes at the same rates income is. This change would lower overall income levels. It's absurd to me that we treat different ways of making income differently on the tax code. Income is income, doesn't matter how it's acquired. This would also stop douchebags from padding their salaries with stock options that is nothing more than a tax loophole.

Or I can talk to my Congressional representative and ask them to improve the laws governing corporations. Corporations are not natural entities, they exist because we as a society and a government have chosen to create them. Whether or not I invest in a corporation, we all have a stake in their creation and the regulations that govern them.

That is fine. But I do think it's dangerous to request your government demand to put restrictions on what a company can pay it's employees.

I believe there are many cross-company relationships like this, but how is that overly relevant to anything?

BoD's vary by industry. Not everybody is even qualified to sit on one of these, and of those that are, certainly not all wish to be a part of them. They are additive to an already busy workload. They tend to be serious people in their industries and people who actually attend every conference and every charity and every "thing" in their industry because ....they are important people and/or experts at something. Is there an element of collusion? Probably to a degree...but (the majority of) these types of people are lifelong industry veterans.

But at the end of the day...they work for profit-seeking companies that have shareholders who have differing levels of tolerance for the lack of profit. That means somebody (or somebodies in most cases) have volunteered their own acquired wealth to invest in this arrangement. They didn't invest their money because "Joey works in IT and he is one helluva Unix problem solver"...they vote based on pedigree of the execs involved. Successful people have track records which garner interest...when they f-up and loot the company...well, they certainly don't get a long line of investors next time...but they also have the side effect of making investors more cautious in the future. Not too much different than a Madoff really.

It tends to work itself out...but let's not kid ourselves. If they enacted a law tomorrow that said CEO's must not make in excess of 20x the lowest paid employee in their company then they would fire everybody non-management and contract the rest. It doesn't matter what you think should be fair in this world...rich people will not play a game if it means they are certain to lose.

The one thing I will say about CEOs. When does it turn into embezzelment? I mean if you have a bank that goes insolvent yet you take hundreds of millions in bonuses, how is that not embezzlement?

There's more millionares in the U.S. than any other country (by far), and about 40 of the top 100 richest people in the World are in the U.S. Why is that a bad thing? They sure provide a lot of tax revenue.

If a bunch of those rich people died tomorrow and left all their money to a foreign trust or something, we'd look a whole lot "better" on that chart. Would that be an improvement to our country?

And the modest tax increases that people always propose when this stuff comes up wouldn't make a dent in that disparity. I don't think a lot of you are saying what you REALLY want.

I mean, is the problem the disparity, that the rich have too much, or the poor don't have enough? When people focus on the first two, it just sounds like jelousy and bitterness.

Rich people rule the world??? When did this happen??? Well Obama can change that!!! Oh wait, he's super rich too? Never mind.

Well, he did tell us that we should vote for him because he had fewer houses than McCain.

Oh noes! Switzerland must be a capitalist hellhole where the ordinary people have to scrounge around for bread while the rich sit in their castles and laugh!

What's funny is that my guess is most of us are in the same boat on this board... $50K - $150K range. We sit around and listen to rich people from both parties convince us how to spend our tax money on either the millionaires or the poor and argue with each other about which is the better approach instead of getting together and collectively telling both parties to fuck off.

Am I a big fan of CEO's making more money through government created tax loopholes? No. Do I want to give my money to a lazy motherfucker who chooses not to work and have kids? No. Why do I have to be one or the other?

Good point. The middle class is usually completely forgotten in these debates. And they're (we're) the ones that stand to lose the most when government gets stupid.

Corporations, sure, to some extent. Of course, we need corporations for jobs. Not sure how hard we want to go after them for wealth redistribution.

Personal income - I always hear vague talk about "tax shelters and loopholes" - yet the top 1% of american households pays 40% of the taxes. And the top 5% pays 60% of the taxes.

I'm not seeing the gross injustice there. Should the top 5% just pay for everything? Will we feel better pychologically or something if we bring them down?

Tax Burden of the Wealthy Continues to Grow in 2006 According to Joint Economic Committee of Congress

Actually, as they tend to understand the system, want ordinary people to make money to be able to buy their goods, as Henry Ford understood.

Yay! Let's hear it for wacked out positions which won't get put into policy (especially not in the next 8 years).

So what's the goal - to bring up the poor to be equal the middle class?

Let's say we accomplish that. Then you have no more middle class, just a (bigger group) of poor, and the super rich. There's quite a few countries like that on the globe.

It sounds fair to me too. But you're apparently on a more rabid "rich is evil" thing and want MORE. How much more? 100%? Or are you content with what they're paying now - it doesn't seem that way. What's your ideal income tax rate?

There's an enormous number of millionares in this country. They pay for pretty much the entire government. We can make them pay more, of course. But these people invest, buy shit, hire people, develop ideas and product, produce world-class art, teach others, donate to charity, are often world leaders in their fields of expertise, etc. They do a lot of good. Any country would benefit from such a pool of talent. At some level, you have to let them do their thing and not entirely just think of them as "the enemy".

The rich don't pay 40% or 60% or whatever of taxes. They pay that share of federal income taxes which are the largest share of taxes, but by no means are they the entire tax burden. When you look at the total tax burden the rich are paying a near historic low percentage of their income.

Equating the income tax with taxes seriously skews reality.

If you do the math out in Steve's chart the top 20% still pay in that range (a little over 50%).

If this is too low, how do we take more? What's the magic number? Or will the answer to that always just be "more", no matter what it is?

Someone said they wanted the Clinton-era rates but 2% higher on the top incomes. We'll get that under Obama and this Congress, won't we? Everything will be fine then, right?

I'm not sure I get this chart...so the top 20% of earners in this country "average" $116k/yr? I must not be reading this correctly because there is no way I believe I am near the top 20% of earners in this country...no way. What year is this from?

Of course...this (and the previous chart) don't show anything in the way of the taxes they pay on property (cuz they certainly have fancier homes and more of it in general), sales tax (cuz they certainly spend more), and also doesn't count the amount of money given away to charity due to it being tax deductable. All of these are tax burdens as well...which makes the disparity of % of income so much more difficult to quantify...but it certainly doesn't put the wealthy's % lower when factored in.

It almost works out to a flat tax, which is the fairest thing to do anyway, IMO, so I'm glad to see that.

The greater % of wealth the rich control, the greater % of the government they'll be responsible for.

Poor people are typically poor for a reason. Propping them up does nothing to help advance society.

No way charitable contributions can be considered a part of the tax burden.

Sales taxes are generally seen as regressive because they take a higher percentage of income from lower income workers.

But in general, I'm very much in favor of discussing the overall tax burden when we talk about taxes rather than just the income tax.

That's my biggest problem with a flat income tax. We're already close to a flat tax if you look at the total tax burden so a flat income tax would mean a regressive total tax burden.

On the college part...this is another nice by-product of government intervention once again. Grants & loans have driven these costs up over the years. So instead of being "only the wealthy can afford college" now we're at "only the wealthy can afford college without a loan"...well, which do we prefer? Rinse & repeat on housing and the automobile industry. Automobiles should not cost $30k +...but of course they do because we always need to finance anybody...or we need to keep paying out increased benefits to unions...or whatever the reason of the day. It still does not have the net effect of reducing income disparity and I believe you can very easily argue that government has helped to increase it by sticking its collective nose into these markets where only the "rich" could have ever afforded to benefit long term. But...poor people benefited short term...so there you go. Short term comfort for longer term disparity...and we never learn, do we?

As I said...you can make all the financial assistance available, make new rules, laws, and the like to try and pry more money away from those who have it...but you cannot force them to play in a system that they do not percieve winning (or profiting) to be an option.

No, not part of their tax burden...but the fact that they tend to give much larger donations due to it being a tax writeoff(or did this change recently?). It benefits society in a more direct (and IMO) and efficient way than sloshing through the various government rep's agendas.

But there's no reason to believe they won't play if they are still winning but with slightly lower margins. The environment for the wealthy is about as favorable as it's been over the past one hundred years. There's no reason to think that we can't go back to the Clinton rates and still be prosperous.

I don't know how much difference returning to the Clinton rates will make when you're dealing with $9 trillion in federal debt. If we're just inventing money anyway, why are we so concerned about tax revenue? if debt's no problem, why not let the corporations and rich people even more off the tax hook so we can help unemployment?

And yes, there's no reason to believe "they won't play if they are still winning but with slightly lower margins." People will still try to do well (unless things got extreme and we wiped out the middle class to bring up the poor). It's just a matter of a dollar in a successful person's hands v. a dollar in the government's hands, and where exactly society as a whole benefits more from the former.

But we've been marginally raising taxes on the wealthy since the Clinton years...it's just not as obvious as an actual "income" tax appears.

http://www.house.gov/jec/news/2008/July/pr110-45.pdf

I'm sure this will be discredited as Republican spin or similar but...



Now...if you don't dismiss this data as somehow being spin...how does the highest tax brackets manage to earn more disproportionately while the income tax rate is higher on them? And conversely...after the Bush tax cuts they also managed to pay in a higher % than they had in 20 years.

Now...there are certainly many dynamics to the Clinton era and the Bush era which I think one can (rightfully) debate as being different and incomparable. But I don't see how taking more money from rich people ends up as a net benefit to the rest of us who fall in the middle class who play by the rules and try to earn a decent living.

Most of us work for rich people who decided to invest their money on a hunch that they could make more money. This is the typical story of wealth. If you take more of it away...then we merely pay more bureaucrats (of questionable skillsets) deciding how best to spend rich people's money. If you let rich people hold onto more of their money, they tend to try and find ways to make more of it. Sometimes they succeed wildy! Sometimes they fail miserably. In either case they have employed people, bought stuff, and contributed more to the economy than the bureaucrat.

Dola,

sorry about the formatting...it got stuck in the article font and I'm too stupid (lazy?) to figure out how to change it.

I don't really care how much of the federal income tax is paid by any particular group as I don't think that necessarily tells me anything. I'm more concerned about the percentage of income being paid in taxes for various groups, and as I've said the wealthy are currently paying near historic lows. There just isn't any evidence that the wealthy are currently overtaxed.

I don't know who you keep arguing with about the deficit, but play on playa.

I don't know the exact amount, but I'm pretty sure a return to the Clinton rates would mean a ten year increase in revenue of multiple trillion dollars. It would make quite a bit of difference.

Nice - so Bobby Jindal was using a government helicopter to travel around and speechify at Louisiana churches...to the tune of $45,000. Whoops!! Government waste? Separation of church and state? Which is it?

Well done Bobby.

FWIW

in the medical and insurance industry, self regulation is not an option. I know that the right, in the health care debate, isnt arguing against this but I thought it important to reiterate considering the felony guilty plea by Pfizer.

Pfizer whistleblower's ordeal reaps big rewards - Yahoo! Finance

From the man who always cries strawman comes Logic 101's Hasty Generalization.

One-thousandth of a point over what anybody else is paying is "overtaxed" afaic.

actually I think Ive used the term 'strawman' in calling out an argument once with MBBF about 10 pages back....maybe youre confusing me with someone else.

Its not really a card I use.

Ive also pointed out in so many threads that the corporate malfeasance in a drive to increase share price and profit is pretty broadly spread. The leukemia case in California most recently where the girl died just hours after the insurance company coalesced to approve the treatment.

But the concentration of that wealth occurred during the Clinton years...according to that document.

So, should we surmise that raising income tax rates on the wealthy leads to further concentration of wealth?

I'm not sure you can make that comparison without considering there are many dynamics to this...but if your numbers are accurate, and can be evenly compared to a US university (i.e. not a CC)...I'm inclined to believe they have socialized this just like they have socialized everything else. And socializing something means that nearly EVERYBODY should partake in its use or it becomes inequal in it's burden. So, police, fire, roads, military, basic government, etc. are all used by everybody that wishes to participate in society with only minor exceptions to this.

They have insisted that everybody (regardless of life goals, skills, etc.) must pay into a system which allows everybody to become a doctor or lawyer. The problem is that not everybody needs to be highly educated to contribute to society. So while its great that they might have some wonderfully educated trash removal personnel...it isn't necessary and it is wasteful for the rest of society to pay for (i.e. the rest will pay for it if taxation is progressive not the trash removal person...if taxation is non-progressive the trash removal person is paying for something that has no real world value to them).

So yeah...if everybody in the US went to college I'm sure we could leverage the economy of scale better. But again...because you chose a certain lifestyle and believe it to be the best path for you, why should everybody else pay into a system when they may not have the same desires, skills, aptitude, or goals in life as you.

No, we should surmise that income inequality grew during the nineties.

Great...agreed.

Then I assume there is no substantive credit given to the arguement that the rich got richer during the Bush years any more?

Don't really know what you mean, but according to the data I've seen income inequality has been increasing since the seventies. BTW a decent portion of the problem is wage increases for lower and middle income workers being diverted to fund rising healthcare costs.

I don't think that gets to the real issue. Costs have been rising at colleges and universities for a number of reasons, including a general desire to offer more programs, increased maintainence of new and upgraded facilities and increased staffing costs. Access to loans has allowed the pain of college tuition to be spread out and therefore less obvious. Students loans have a noble purpose and they have done a lot of good for a lot of people, but just as with anything in life there are also negatives.

It seems that every 20 pages or so someone raises the "but the top 1% pay 90% of all taxes" canard. It's routinely shown to be both misleading and somewhat irrelevant, but its strength as a meme can't be denied. Some of you, however, have been in the thread all along and should know better. At least quote the previous arguments as a starting point instead of starting from scratch each time....

This is good to see. The admin plans to start releasing visitor logs with only minimal exceptions.

I'm not sure if you're referring to my argument, but it had little to do with the % of taxes paid by anybody. It was to highlight the inaccuracy of arguements made about how the rich got richer under Bush...as if that doesn't happen under every administration.

Sorry if the thread gets cluttered with posts making arguements you disagree with. Perhaps I could throw in the occassional Bush admin lied about WMD for your sake. Because that certainly has only been stated once in this thread.