Conservative Attacks on Medicaid, Jobless Benefits Lead America to Ruin

Treehugger, like most liberals you need to do some research and work off facts not jealousy, and stop accusing someone else of having a pea brain. Yes rates have fallen but loopholes were closed. No one ever really paid those high percentages. The people who do not pay taxes are the lower 50%. They pay only 3% of all taxes. Now concerning dividends only taxed at 15%, the corporations that paid the dividends also paid taxes on that money and then the receiver of the dividend pays taxes, so it is actually taxed twice. Dividends are not considered an expense to the corporation, so they do not get to deduct that money as an expense. Also dividends are paid for investing in a corporation so that money is at risk of being lost if the company goes out of business.

There are many websites that show who really paid taxes, this is just one of many:

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes

5. What has happened to tax rates in America over the last several decades?

They’ve fallen. In the early 1960s, the highest marginal income tax rate was a stunning 91 percent. That top rate fell to 70 percent after the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts and remained there until 1981. Then Ronald Reagan slashed it to 50 percent and ultimately to 28 percent after the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Although the federal tax rate fell by more than half, total tax receipts in the 1980s doubled from $517 billion in 1981 to $1,030 billion in 1990. The top tax rate rose slightly under George H. W. Bush and then moved to 39.6 percent under Bill Clinton. But under George W. Bush it fell again to 35 percent. So what’s striking is that, even as tax rates have fallen by half over the past quarter-century, taxes paid by the wealthy have increased. Lower tax rates have made the tax system more progressive, not less so. In 1980, for example, the top 5 percent of income earners paid only 37 percent of all income taxes. Today, the top 1 percent pay that proportion, and the top 5 percent pay a whopping 57 percent.

kewaal of GA 10:44AM April 08, 2011

The only people that are "leading" and I use that term loosely are the Democrats and their "progressive" sidekicks.

Earlier this week it was the old people, now it's the kids, next week it will be the police and firemen, same old song and dance to scare people into giving more of their property to the government.

Wake up " progressive populist " Americans aren't buying your BS any more. We have watched and we have learned your tricks and most of all we have seen what they lead too.

The class warfare crap is getting really old, "the Rich"! How about you stop saying the rich and just put a number on it, define what you consider "rich", for most it’s anyone that has more than they do. And on that same note how many poor people are creating business and jobs? NONE! So how about you stop whoring yourself out to the thugs slave masters in the unions and read a little history, socialism does not work and it has never worked.

What a left-wing clueless hack!

Larry of CA 9:45AM April 08, 2011

We're broke. Shut up.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 11:35PM April 07, 2011