Is It Really Belt Tightening

[PanzerJaeger]

You made an over generalization. Don't even try to cover it up. You said this: One could also point out that the poor, who use by far the most public services, pay absolutely nothing for them. You said nothing about federal public services, you just said public services. I thought were were talking about the Federal government?

...in a discussion about the Bush era federal tax cuts. Why in the world would such a discussion have anything to do with state sales taxes? Why would that need to be spelled out?

You made an incorrect assumption. Don't even try and cover it up.

All I said was that the poor don't get out of paying sales tax. Lol, I guess the poor don't shop at the upper middle class stores like "Target" and "Smart and Final", let me rephrase it. I have never seen a poor person manage to walk out of the door of Walmart without paying the 9.25% sales tax. Tax which goes to public services which the state and local governments provide.

You are aware that state sales taxes a) have nothing to do with federal taxes and b) vary by state, correct?

All that chart shows is that the rich are not paying enough. Lol, all you did was look at the last two bars and saw that for the top 1% that paying 27% of the total dollars gained in taxes is more than the 18% of the total national income that they constitute thus we are socialist and taxes are too high. This of course, doesn't mean anything without taking into account the relative discrepancy of the average salaries between the different quartiles.

The fact is that the top 1% are making at least 18.9 times more money in terms of dollars than the middle 60% on average. However, the top 1% pay 27% of the total taxes while the middle 60% pay 30% of the total taxes. The middle class are paying more in tax in a total dollar amount even though the top 1% are making over a magnitude of order more than them on average.

Of course they do. There are also far, far more middle class people than there are rich people, yet they pay only 3% more of the total tax receipts.

Oh blah, blah the poor still making off like bandits. Yeah, well the rich are as well, leaving the burden on the middle class. Wonder why it is disappearing.

You're making more assumptions. I never said the poor are making off like bandits. I simply disagree with the talking point that the Bush tax cuts were exclusively for the rich. Great efforts were made (overreach in my opinion) to ensure that everyone benefited from them, even those that pay no taxes.