We hear often that the 'rich' should pay their fair share.
Who are the 'rich'?
What - specifically - should be their fair share? What percentage of their income should they be forced to pay to the government?

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

I think the the rich, the poor, and the in between should all be pay the same amount of taxes.

People with greater income benefit disproportionately from the protections provided by the sociey in which they live. How many of the rich serve in war? How many of them sacrifice their health in labor? How many would survive with their wealth intact if not protected by the legal system under which they operate (and often hide behind) so successfully.

Meanwhile, those who are poorer get disproportionately less assistance from the society in which they live. What is the compensation for losing a child in war or to inadequate emergency health services in a neighborhood? What is the value of waiting much longer for a police response to a serious crime?

The rich would not remain rich long were they not defended by those who have less. They use up greater resources and more than often do not contribute nearly a proportionate amount to the society in which they live.

So, they should pay an amount that relates to the protections of the society in which they live.

Maggie, the fact alone that you know that these questions cannot and will not be answered to your satisfaction, together with your specific insistence, make me angry.
But I believe this is exactly what you are aiming for.

But to your questions, my not very specific answers.

I think that somebody who - together with his family - can live comfortably on the result of the work of others, and not his own, is rich.

You seem old enough to have noticed that there is no fairness in life, so your second question cannot be answered.

Instead of rephrasing questions, what about rephrasing your attitude?

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"Before I speak, I have something important to say."Groucho Marx

I have asked questions that I think are not only pertinent to today’s economic debate, but ones which also should have an answer. As long as one gives an honest reply as to the specifics of what they think is fair, then there is no answer that I consider satisfactory.


Our president has asked ‘the rich’ to pay their fair share. I understand that concept and agree with it. But though he targets a specific group -“the rich” - he doesn’t tell us who they are. Without knowing who comprises this group and how much is considered a ‘fair’ contribution, we are left in the dark. Each of us in the U.S. must be wondering whether we qualify for inclusion.

I simply ask the group for their opinions as to who, in their opinion, makes up this group, and how much you think they should pay.

If you give a nebulous definition for both, then it would be easy to see why some people say that such a stand is simply an ongoing attempt at class warfare. Without a number, then whatever the undefined ‘rich’ are paying, it can always be said that they should be paying more.

If you give specific numbers, then we can more clearly understand what is meant by ‘fair share’.

I have expressed no particular ‘attitude’ and do not wish to develop a confrontational exchange with you. I you have no opinion on this issue, then perhaps it would be interesting for you to see what others may have to say.

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

Thanks Geeman.
You are correct that some people receive more from the public domain than others. However I'm still a bit confused about what you mean. Our Federal income tax has always had the same rates based on income regardless of where one lives in the country. But the 'protections of the society' where each of us lives will be different from state to state and even county to county. Are you suggesting that the nation have different tax expectations depending on where we live?

If not, then there can be a 'value received' index which we can apply to everyone according to income. That brings us back to looking for a specific income that would be considered 'rich' and a percentage for what would be 'fair'.
Do you have any ideas on this?
Thanks

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. discussed this recently and noted that in 1989 households earning $30,000 or less a year paid an average annual interest rate on auto loans that was 16.8% higher than what households earning more than $90,000 a year paid. In 2004 the discrepancy soared to 56.1%. The same thing happened with mortgage loans: a leap from a 6.4% gap to one of 25.5%. Insurance rates are the same. While bankers and insurance CEO's have had their earnings soar while working wages have been stagnant for the last 3 decades. Having access to credit should help people but it has become a debt trap.

Let's take the District of Columbia, for an example. The top wage earners made nearly 5.5. times more than those on the low end of the wage scale. ( We are talking about wage earners, not those on any type of help and it doesn't take into account any capital gains, etc.) And more and more households have seen themselves slip from the middle to the lower levels. Thus there is less consumption and so business slows.

I would say that anyone who doesn't pay the same rate as the poor should be forced to pay up.


Who are the rich? One reason it is hard to set a number is because the number varies according to circumstance and speaker. Another thing that complicates the situation is that in most households there are two wage earners. The top 5% of households having incomes that are 10% greater than the minimum wage householder would qualify in my book. But I don't think that we should only be talking about households or individuals. What about corporations? If they are equal to a individual in rights, then shouldn't their earnings be taxed at an equal rate? Corporations pay at a lower rate than you or I. They have lawyers and lobbyist fighting for them. Who fights the average working American?

Hmmm, how to define rich...

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

By this measure I guess most of the corporate vampires who sucked at the neck of the public purse to recompense their various malfeasances are poverty stricken indeed !

Seriously, though. Maggie, I'd say an income over $250 000 p/a would qualify as ' rich '. But then again as Chris Rock said : " Shaquille O'Neal is rich : the guy who writes his paycheques is wealthy."

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Sanity is not statistical

That you become angry is a comment about you and not about what Maggie wrote. There is nothing objectionable about
the questions she posited. One infers a certain bias inherent in your comments but so what? There is no reason for
anyone to care about your opinions unless they echo the European chorus. How is that EU working out for you? From
what one reads in the newspapers, the European model is strangling on its political and economic assumptions.

Big businesses, banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, oil companies - these are the ones who need to pay their fair share. Not just here in our country, but all over the world. They moved businesses to 3rd world countries where little kids go through our trashed electronics exposing them to all sorts of toxins instead of staying here in our country and learning how to do these things safely. They are polluting world, eating up resources and buying up the government! These are the people who should be paying their fair share. I am sorry if you invested your life savings in these "things" instead of into society (people) and now we are all saying no you didn't pay your fair share.

Why not start from the other end? Who are poor, and what is their fair share of the profit in which they contributed their labor?

Society sets the standards of poverty/richness. Why not judge, by that standard, whether anyone is getting a huge chunk of the pie while others are losing out despite putting in equal or more useful labor? Then maybe we'll be able to better decide who are rich and what's the fair share that they should pay?

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In this world there is no literate population that is poor and no illiterate population that is other than poor. - J.K.Galbraith

Maggie, ask your representative and let her / him know your worries.
You are in rhe wrong place here. But you knew that before, didn't you?

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"Before I speak, I have something important to say."Groucho Marx

Don't be so mean spirited. One of the reasons I like coming here is because there are many different people with a wonderful variety of ideas and opinions.

(JJ-- found this to follow your post)--

American upper class
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The American upper class describes the sociological concept pertaining to the "top layer" of society in the United States. This social class is most commonly described as consisting of those with great wealth and power and may also be referred to as the Capitalist Class[1] or simply as The Rich.[2] Persons of this class commonly have immense influence in the nation's political and economic institutions as well as public opinion.[3][4]

Many celebrities, heirs to prestigious multi-generational fortunes, top level corporate executives, financially-successful entrepreneurs, investors, speculators, and venture capitalists are considered members of the American upper class. Successful traders, highly compensated investment bankers, successful asset managers, seasoned investment advisors and stockbrokers with a well established base of clients who typically are attached to the financial sectors such as Wall Street are or have a strong likelihood to become members of the upper class. Other occupations may include high-ranking government officials and politicians, lottery winners, and financially-successful gamblers.
Some white collar professionals with advanced post-secondary education such as (top flight doctors or lawyers) who are rather part of the American upper middle class who earn above average incomes (typically exceeding $250,000) comprise a small cluster within this class of people if they attain great wealth through other sources income other than salaried employment. These people are also considered members of this class yet constitute a very small percentage of the upper class. This can further supported by the fact that contemporary sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert, argue that this group is not part of the upper class but rather part of the upper middle class, as its standard of living is largely derived from occupation-generated income and its affluence falls far short of that attained by the top percentile.
While the vast majority of people and households derive their earned income solely from their salaries, many of those in the upper class, usually devote a substantial portion of their income to branch into various business ventures and investments to generate additional and earn often a colossal amount of portfolio income and passive income that exceed those of a typically salaried individual. This directly applies to particularly successful and financially savvy entrepreneurs and investors who built their financial independence and derived their passive income from various assets such as (business ownership, real estate, stocks etc.).
The main distinguishing feature of the upper class is its ability to derive enormous incomes from wealth through techniques such as asset allocation via (investments that typically include businesses, real estate, stocks, bonds, commodities etc.) that disperse cash flow and capital gains, and savvy money management, rather than simply relying on wage-labor or salaried employment.
Wealthy individuals that belong to the upper class usually participate in many sophisticated and speculative investments such as hedge funds, private placements, and initial public offerings that are offered by the SEC to increase their wealth exponentially. Such investments are reserved by law to only accredited investors and not to the vast majority of American households for the reason that they aren't eligible due to strict regulations, income threshold requirements, and the need to possess vast amounts of wealth typically a net worth exceeding US $1 million or more.
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Personally, here in Finland, I would consider a family of four earning more than 100 000 Euros a year wealthy and more than 200 000 Euros rich.

The line of poverty and rich is hard to compare in different countries (taxes, rents, prices, etc...)

The official EU poverty line is 1100 Euros per month per person (single adult, I think). That is not the same in different EU countries, say, in Finland, Germany, Greece or Bulgaria.

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Thank you JJ. So for those families making 200 thousand euros a year and more, what would you consider their 'fair share'?

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"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

Effectively, we already do apply different tax rates to people depending on where they live. Rural areas pay less tax than urban ones. Real estate taxes are higher, income rates are higher, costs for government services are actually lower per capita. It's easier to deliver mail to 100 people in an apartment complex than 100 people spread out amongst a few dozen rural homes.

That doesn't necessarily make the urban folks rich, of course, but I'd argue that the value to society to having rural populations is comparable to the value of society itself to the very wealthy.

As for the rates of taxes of the rich versus the poor, I'd suggest that we look at how people are taxed in other countries. The idea that the tax rate is too high on the rich now rather flies in the face of reality and economic history. The greatest economic growth in the history of the world was under Clinton. Bush2 lowered tax rates on the wealthy, and the economy dropped. Of course, that's overly simplistic. The economy REALLY collapsed because the wealthy are playing a sort of end game with the economy, expecting to cash out of society in expectation of a drastic shift in world politics. If they gather their resources into more liquid assets now they'll be better able to move when the time comes.

...or maybe he'd be forced to sell to someone who could better produce from the land and the equipment, make better use of his workforce, and establish a more efficently scaled economy. That would be the kind of thing that would help the economy.

If someone is making a 1% return on investment, he can do better in a savings account. Somehow... I doubt the veracity of that number. But, let's say it's correct. Does it even exist at 1% without the $20 billion in annual support from agricultural subsidies? Might that $20 billion be better spent in supporting agricultural research and development?

Are those questions any more pointed and specific? Do they cast any more light on the smokescreen put up? Who is really presenting a red herring?

People who are at an economic advantage always play a double speak game. When they make profits they decry the cost of workers. When they are taxed, they proclaim the plight of the workers as their defense. That's political BS.