Follow the money (if you can find it)
#1
The year 1981 marks the beginning of what has been called the "Reagan Revolution." In its simplest form, this process has consisted of a decrease in federal income (as the result of cuts in the tax rates) combined with an increase in federal spending (due to a variety of causes, especially two large wars and a number of smaller ones).

As a result, the national debt has gradually increased from around $2 trillion (in 2010 dollars) in 1981 to around $8 trillion at present.

Although begun in the Reagan administration, this increase has stayed fairly constant through four more administrations, reaching its steepest curve during the G. W. Bush administrations, due to additional tax cuts and a great increase in defense spending.

Before 1981, the highest tax rate hovered at around 70% for about 50 years (reaching as high as 90% during World War II). This was a period of great national economic growth, and the government mostly lived within its means.

Since 1981, through tax reform, the highest tax rate has mostly hovered around 35%, or about half what it had been since the 1930s. Let's examine how this has affected the finances of the top 0.12% (note: not 12% or 1.2%) of taxpayers, those with an annual income per household of $1.6 million or more. This is a group that has averaged about 120,000 households during the last 30 years, representing the top 0.12% of households reporting. Applying only the lowest income figure ($1.6 million) to this group and adjusting for inflation over the 30 years, they would have made about $132 billion a year as a whole, or a little under $4 trillion for the 30-year period. Their benefit, under the lower tax rate, would be about $1.4 trillion, or about $46 billion a year. If this amount were reinvested every year at a mere 2% compound interest, it would be worth about $2 trillion by now.

$2 trillion would be about enough to buy France, lock stock and barrel. The question is, where is this money? and what is anyone doing with it? I can't answer this question, but the point is, neither can anyone else, because it is in private hands, largely corporate, and since last year's Supreme Court decision, its use in political campaigns is not subject to public scrutiny. A concentration of wealth on this order is far more significant than mere differences in political party or philosophy, but it does, at least, suggest the source of the recent opposition to tampering with the existing tax cuts. It took nearly 50 years for the big money to get rid of the New Deal tax program, and they are not about to let it back in, default or not. The can always take their $2 trillion and go somewhere else.

It would be too paranoid, even for me, to suggest that this is the backstory to the selloff going on now in the stock market: are the pirates deserting a sinking ship?

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesameric...nager.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-j...01-21.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_i...ted_States
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infop...PNBH2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
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#2
(08-05-2011, 01:57 PM)Prospero Wrote: $2 trillion would be about enough to buy France, lock stock and barrel. The question is, where is this money? and what is anyone doing with it? I can't answer this question, but the point is, neither can anyone else, because it is in private hands, largely corporate, and since last year's Supreme Court decision, its use in political campaigns is not subject to public scrutiny. A concentration of wealth on this order is far more significant than mere differences in political party or philosophy, but it does, at least, suggest the source of the recent opposition to tampering with the existing tax cuts. It took nearly 50 years for the big money to get rid of the New Deal tax program, and they are not about to let it back in, default or not. The can always take their $2 trillion and go somewhere else.

It would be too paranoid, even for me, to suggest that this is the backstory to the selloff going on now in the stock market: are the pirates deserting a sinking ship?

Excellent analysis of the looting of America and how the public, a public that has been shown to be as dumb as a rock has been left holding an empty bag and left looking at a decimated country.

Open minded people have been saying this since Reagan's revolting revolution but the majority of voters were too caught up in their petty politics to see what was being done right in front of them.

The American people were played like an out of tune piano by some of the slimiest people in the history of mankind and the public refuses to understand it and never will.
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