You are arguing that the top 5% got there because the are smarter, harder working or both and that is often the case but they also get here because of power and influence, something that the lower earners will never have. As a result the lower earners need the govt help. Now before you go wild about socialism this is to the advantage of the rich also because if a large portion of the population is destitute they will have a much smaller customer base for their products.
Henry Ford realised this early on when he paid his workers more than the going rate so that they could afford his product.
Henry Ford realised this early on when he paid his workers more than the going rate so that they could afford his product.
1. They don't have most. They have OVERWHELMING the majority of the wealth in this country.
2. I did not bring up fair/just/right. The initial poster did by implying that the top 1% are being robbed and treated unfairly.
3. When the top 1% have more wealth/income then the bottom 95%, don't you think they should pay more in taxes?
4. Somebody has to pay taxes. It makes sense the people who have benefited most from the current system should contribute it more.
5. Part of the reason they are paying more taxes is primarily because their grabbing more of the income/wealth of the country. Their income has being growing at higher clip then bottom 95% for long period of time.
Based on the CBO data, the top one percent of households (whose incomes average nearly $1.2 million) will receive an average tax cut of approximately $40,990 in 2004. This is more than 40 times the average tax break for those in the middle fifth of the income distribution. The gap is dramatic even though this calculation does not include the effects of two major tax cuts that disproportionately benefit very high-income households — the “bonus depreciation” business tax cut and the phase-out of the federal estate tax. The CBO study is the most comprehensive analysis available by a governmental body of who benefits from the Bush tax cuts.
The resulting increase in after-tax income is, on average, more than two and a half times larger for the top one percent of households than for those in the middle of the income scale. As a result, the top one percent will enjoy a larger share of the after-tax income in the nation than they would have received absent the tax cuts, and the bottom 80 percent will receive a smaller share. Economists generally believe that changes in after-tax income represent the most appropriate measure of the distributional impact of tax cuts, since after-tax income reflects the income a household has available to spend or save.
The top one percent will gain by far the most from the tax cuts even though it has already been the main beneficiary of income trends since the 1970s. Data from a separate CBO study, released in April of this year, indicate that between 1979 and 2001 (the latest year CBO examined), the average after-tax income of the top one percent of households rose by a stunning $409,000, or 139 percent, after adjusting for inflation.[1] This dwarfed the $6,300, or 17 percent, average increase among the middle fifth of the population, over this 22-year period, and the $1,100, or 8 percent, increase among the bottom fifth of the population.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2116
