Lies, damned lies, and statistics

There is an old saying about statistics, that there are lies, and damned lies, and statistics, as though statistics are lies.

See, I don't believe that accurately calculated statistics lie. Any given statistic is what it is, but no one statistic can or ever will tell the story by itself. Statistics are only useful in the context of all the associated statistics that go with them. For instance the average number, such as taxes paid is meaningless without knowing the standard deviation around the mean.

And so while statistics don't lie, you can sure as hell lie with statistics. I keep hearing the mother fucking god damn Repiglicans claiming the rich already pay more than their fair share of taxes in this country. It is true, the rich pay a lot of the taxes but that claim is meaningless and a distraction meant to keep us from looking further into the truth of it.

The question is not how much the rich pay as a percentage of the tax burden in this country. The question is how much they pay as a percentage of their own income. I have written this before and I will write it again. They pay LESS as a percentage of their income than tax payers in the middle class.

So if a rich guy paid a million dollars in taxes last year, you would say, yes, that lord master over us paid a lot of money in taxes.

But if that lord master made a hundred million dollars and only paid 1 million dollars in taxes, then he only paid 1% of his income in taxes while we, with our almost infinitely smaller incomes paid a hell of a lot more.

Under President Eisenhower that rich person would have had to face a progressive top rate up to 91% on that $100 million and President Eisenhower argued strongly in favor of that tax rate on the rich.

And so when you see pot holes in the roads that aren't fixed, or schools closed, police and fireman fired, and all sorts of public services cut, that is the direct result of the rich and corporations paying virtually nothing in taxes while they have the vast bulk of the wealth Michael Moore spoke about.

So don't buy the bullshit repiglican line about the rich already bearing the burden, They aren't. They are free loaders on us.

And one thing they should remember, no one ever gets rich in a vacuum. Corporations should especially be concerned about that. If there is no middle class because we have all become poverty stricken serfs, who is going to buy their product? No one, that is who, and as we spiral into the poverty they are imposing on us, their gravy train ends.

Stumble It!

Tax the Rich! That's American values ...

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise”

-- Thomas Jefferson

It's not socialism ... it's plain old American values.

From a recent article about Glenn Beck in The New Yorker "Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party's Cold War roots" by Sean Wilentz:

Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote approvingly in 1811 of having federal taxes (then limited to tariffs) fall solely on the wealthy, which meant that "The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."

What's wrong with taxing the rich more? [No name calling. Just tell me in real terms -- what's wrong with it?]

Stumble It!

I pay taxes so the filthy god damn rich don't have to!

Yes, our precious, needy rich should not have to pay taxes. None at all. The only people who should pay taxes are us poor suckers in the middle and lower classes, at least that is what Republicans think. No wonder I hate the fucking bastards so much.

How much do the rich pay? A lot. Yes, it's true, the rich pay a tremendous amount of taxes in this country, they really do and I don't dispute that for a second.

Except that is the wrong fucking question.

The right question we should all be asking is how much do the rich pay as a percentage of their income? Warren Buffett has famously said that he pays less as a percentage of his income than his secretary does and he says that isn't fair. And you know what, I totally agree with him.

Indeed, I would like to see this country return to the progressive tax system that we had under President Eisenhower, where the top rate was 91%. There are all kinds of great reasons to return to that tax policy and as far as I am concerned, there are NO (ZERO, NADA, ZILCH, ZIP, NONE) good reasons not to and to keep things the way they are.

But since it is late and I have to get up early in the morning, I am going to leave you with one good reason found in the quite below that we should be soaking the rich, the fucking freeloaders that they are. Need I say more?


"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
Louis D. Brandeis (Supreme Court Judge)

Stumble It!