OT: Rating the President

[rextorres]

Originally posted by Fian:
Once again only a small portion of SS is spent on things other than Social Security.

I know it's crazy and people refuse to believe it but in the 80s congress ordered the Treasury Department to use the money in the Social Security Trust Fund as though it were general revenue, promising to pay it back. So Social Security is just a very large tax collection tool.

If you look at the US budget at:

http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy...get/tables.pdf
that's how its presented.

Originally posted by Fian:
Not quite sure how the top 5% pays most of the income tax, their portion of Social Security, and they end up paying less than the rest? Would you explain your numbers in more detail?

(if the below is too dry for you than you can just take my word that the top 5% pay less taxes than the rest but make more than a third of the income).

People don't get this but you only pay SS tax on the first 77k of income. So someone making $1million pays same gross dollar amount as someone who makes 77k for social security tax which is 8.9%.

According to the Government report on Rush's website ( http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/men...res.guest.html ) the top 5% pay 56% of the income tax and have 35% of the income.

But the way the government SPENDS is by revenue collected. (look at link above)

44% is social security
10% is corporate tax and fees
46% is income tax.

So the 56% is really (56% of 46% of the total money the government collects and spends).

There were ~8million tax returns by people in the top 5% out of ~128million total returns.

The other 120 million paid 44% of the income tax + most of the social security tax.

If you do the math (if don't want to take my word for it look it up) then the #s you question hold up.

Originally posted by Fian:
And here is another fundamental issue. Should the rich be obligated to pay for the poor? Is it the obligation of a rich person to pay for a woman on welfare with 3 kids? And if they want to reduce how much they give, do they then become evil and greedy in your view? Should the rich not instead deserve our praise for all the help that they provide for the needy?

Well first of all I wouldn't call someone who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage lazy. There is a myth that welfare is a huge part of the budget when it is less than 4%. No one is saying that the rich shouldn't be rich. But the disparity of wealth is getting so bad that it's dangerous.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If you get your information from extremely biased web sites, it can't be relied upon, period.

I am not sure what Data your questioning:

Distribution of Wealth: The data is from the census - I guess we can argue if the census was accurate but the census tends to miss poor people.

Here is another website that says the same thing
http://www.policyideas.org/Issues/So...old_Wealth.pdf

Senators: You can look up the ratio of senators that is pretty cut and dry I don't know what argument you have with this.

The Deficit: Data comes from the website below which is a government agency.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm#history

Income information: Data also comes from a government agency.

[ February 07, 2003, 00:56: Message edited by: rextorres ]