Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Getting a few facts straight in my head.

Mr Romney tells us that 47% of Americans pay no taxes. This is correct in only one small area - Federal Income taxes. They do of course pay other taxes such as payroll taxes, State taxes, sales taxes, property taxes etc.
Now, of the 47%, sixty percent work. The other 40% is mainly made up of retired people, military people, students etc.
The people who pay no Federal income tax range in income levels from those who earn very little to more than 3,000 people who earn more than $3 million a year!
And in fact it is very likely that most of the 47% who "Pay no tax" actually pay a larger percent of their income in taxes than Mitt Romney pays! For starters if they work - and 60% do - they pay 6.2% in SS payroll tax alone. Mr Romney doesn't pay this -actually he does but it is 6.2% of $110,000, not 6.2% of all his income, which is what you pay. As his income last year was $21 million, 6.2% of $110,000 represents .0003% of his income, compared to the 6.2% that you pay!(21,000 times more than he pays - as a % of income!)

Mr Romney also thinks that President Obama wants to "Redistribute wealth". This has already been done. By the rich. The "top" 1% of Americans own 50% of its wealth! Lets use a simple little story to give an idea of what this means. There are 100 people in a room. They order a pizza. When it arrives it is cut in half - 50% - and that half is given to one person in the room. The other 99 people in the room get to share the other half of the pizza. That is how the wealth in America is "Distributed".

And it is getting worse :-
The "top" 1% owned :-
in 1960 10% of America's wealth.
in 1976 35%
in 1982 40%
in 1992 43%
in 2002 65%

Seems pretty inequal to me. Obviously these wealthy 1% have much more access to lawmakers than the other 99% and so are able to get laws passed that favor them.

Another little fact - while the top 1% own 50% of America's wealth, the bottom 50% of Americans own just 1% of it's wealth! That is HALF of ALL Americans TOGETHER own just 1% of America's wealth!

One more comment here, Mr Romney has been saying for some time cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes, now that the result of what this policy would do is shown - that less and less people would be paying taxes - which is what he keeps advocating, he gets all disgusted that there are people "Not paying taxes". Just what does he expect if taxes get cut? That more people will be paying taxes? I also suspect that he is one of the people who pay no taxes - why else would he refuse to show his tax returns? Every other President and Presidential aspirant has shown their taxes - but not Mitt ! ! Hmmm.