Three minute excerpt.
Today's show: Limbaugh Endorses Slave Labor In India.
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Limbaugh admits the true rightwing agenda -- shift taxes to the middle class. Is there a way to deconstruct the fundamental premises of his ideology -- and why do you need to? Find out today on Conceptual Guerilla Radio.
Today's links:
Year of AMT Pain Worth the Gain?
Do they go out and play class warfare, make it sound good until incrementalism sinks in, have sneaky little fine print that won't be apparent until they, like Clinton, leave office? You want to fix it for one year, Mr. Rangel? Fix it forever! He just wants to fix it for one year on an election year. See, this is why I ask: Would the pain of this tax increase be worth the gain? Would the pain of a bunch of people learning how soaking the rich soaks them be worth it, during an election year? Would it? It's something to think about. I don't know if it would turn the blue states bluer or turn some blue states toward the red. But all of America would learn the rule of liberal politicians. The rule of liberal politicians is: They make a mistake, you pay. They make another mistake, you pay. They make another mistake, you pay. The decent thing to do is to just can the thing. Perhaps the greatest lesson of all. The AMT was a mistake that must be ended. They weren't entitled to this money, but they already spent it. They spent it all. They haven't collected all the money yet, but they have spent it all. We're running a budget deficit. It would be a learning experience, I think, for the blue states, a two-by-four cross the noggins of the class warfare crowd. This could end up being that, the pocketbook lesson for the blue states and their love of more spending. Let's show the blue states and let's show some Doubting Thomases maybe in the red states, what liberal "soak the rich" really means. The AMT was designed to soak the rich. It's going to get 20 million Americans next year who were never intended. Is it worth them feeling the pain to learn the lesson how liberal legislation on tax policy works?
Pete Dupont Trashes Rangel's AMT Reform In WSJ
Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.
From Inequality.org, the reason revenues from the rich have gone up. They made more money -- a lot more than their taxes increased.
The top one percent of households received 21.8 percent of all pre-tax income in 2005, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. (The top one percent's share of total income bottomed out at 8.9 percent in 1976.) This is the greatest concentration of income since 1928, when 23.9 percent of all income went to the richest one percent. (Piketty and Saez)
. . .
In 1979, the average income of the top 5 percent of families was 11.4 times as large as the average income of the bottom 20 percent. In 2005, the ratio was 20.9 times. (EPI, State of Working America 2006-07, Figure 1J)
All of the income gains in 2005 went to the top 10 percent of households, while the bottom 90 percent of households saw income declines. (EPI Snapshot, March 28, 2007)
Rangel's WSJ Editorial On His AMT Bill