Being somewhat cynical, I decided to see what the U.S. per capita income looked like in terms of commodities rather than dollars.
If you are curious how the 1967-2003 per capita income looks expressed in ounces of silver, cwt beans, bushels of corn or cwt of cotton Goto
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to bottom of page and click on comwage.xls [for commodity wages] to open or download file.
If you don't have Microsoft excel on your computer I have included a link on the page to the Open Office foundation website where you can download a wordprocessor and spreadsheet program for 'free."
There does appear to have been substantial increases in the per capita income in terms of these commodities but the volatility appears to be very high.
============================= I was able to find historical gasoline and coffee prices without too much problem. I used West Texas Crude oil for that benchmark. There does not seem to be a futures market [and thus historical data] in cigarettes or whiskey. See updated charts if you are interested.
The yearly spikes are of particular interest, and would be critical is wages were paid "in kind." Many people certainly do starve to death (or in this country at least go bankrupt, although it is reported that hunger is rapidly increasing) with any significant drop in or interruption of income that lasts more than a few days. With the average family's credit card debt, which does not include collateralized debt such as their auto and home, now about equal to or slightly more than their annual income, they are not years, not months, ==> but only weeks or even days away from disaster.
Shocked and upset? But if you really want a challenge try proving to the right wing commoner that he is being sold out so that the investing class can grow ever richer at his expense. Now that's a challenge.
You could start by explaining how a new bill eliminating all taxes on stock dividends is beneficial only to the upper class but costs the average winger. Then you could try explaining to them how the goal of making income from investments free of all taxes is the ultimate aim of the Republicans. This would be the culmination of a dream they have had for a century; that of making the income of wage earners fully taxable and income derived from investments tax free. It's a beautiful scam for the rich. But let's see if you can get your average winger to grasp the concept. I'm betting it's impossible.
There isn't one. But there might be a net income-producing asset line, and it's somewhere around $1M, +- $250K at present; depending on your ability to live on a particular level of income, rather than spending your capital, running up debt, etc.
If I had about a million bucks (or so) in income-producing investments (ie, not house, car/truck or other money sinks), I could have the same amount of yearly income that I presently get by working at a job. Why should the guy that works for a living pay taxes on that income while the guy who does not work for it pay none? No, I don't want to hear a rehash of the BS that the slime in power are selling - the simple answer is that the slime in power are in the "no work" class, and therefore they think that they should not pay taxes. Simple as that, the rest is spin. One could make the same BS arguments spin the opposite direction, they would still be BS and spin.
Same income, no job required, that's the low-end difference. I see no need to worry about differentiating the various levels of "no job, modest lifestyle" on up though "no job, not worth the time to pick up a dropped $100 bill". They are all in the "investing class" as you call it. "Commoners" can get there in theory, but in practice, Horatio Alger is not a realistic model in this century in this country. But the investing class likes to keep the commoners believing, and can spend plenty of money to do so. So a bunch of poor folks that will be hurt by such measures vote for people who will benefit from them.
I don't know about all investments, but the elimination of federal (but not state/local) income taxes on stock dividends will only have minimal affect because most U.S. corporations for the last generation or so have paid only nominal dividends, more or less as a formality.
I have contacted my representatives in Congress urging them to support this with the requirement that 50% of all profits claimed in their annual reports must be distributed as dividends to the stockholders within 90 days of the close of the fiscal year.
Some of the so-called profits are currently slipped to the stock holders, at greatly reduced tax rates under the capital gains provisions, as increases in the per share cost of the stock.
However this had several bad effects on the total economy, other than the obvious one of allowing a tiny elite group to largely escape their fair share of the costs of operating the government, i.e. taxes.
(1) If the "profits" were real, this left enormous sums of money under the control of management increasing comfortable in speculation and arbitrage increasingly uncomfortable with manufacturing and product design/development. This had the easily foreseeable effect of diverting investment away from the core business and into activities such as foreign exchange trading, derivatives, and "racing elephant breeding farms" in which they had their clocks cleaned, and the stockholders money was quickly dissipated. Example -- General Motors
(2) It allowed, indeed promoted, the replacement of most real stock holder assets retained by the company, which by their nature tend to grow slowly, with fictional or ersatz assets, of no real value, but which appear to appreciate rapidly. Typically this occurred when a competing company with worn-out or obsolete equipment and product lines was purchased with the new "assets" now carried at full "book value."
(3) Large sums of money under minimal supervision and with minimal outside oversight soon disappeared or evaporated into excessive executive bonuses, outrageous executive compensation, questionable deferred compensations plans, excessive retirement benefits, and the infamous "golden parachutes." This ranges from mere gluttony to out right 'till tapping.'
(4) Many people in management soon realized that producing anything was simply a waste of their valuable time and efforts, and devoted themselves entirely to, at first arbitrage and speculation, and then the even more efficient book cooking, producing financial powerhouses such as Enron, Tyco, World-com, Adelphia, etc.
There is an even deeper reason for supporting the drive to make stock dividends free of federal taxes, and one which I suspect will prevent it from ever being adopted. The rich are not a monolith. Two of the major divisions are "old money" and "new rich." The "new rich" [example George Soros] exist and prosper because of the services they provide to "old money," [ example Prescot/George Bush] such as the avoidance of taxes. This is not a free service, but costs less than the taxes. This symbiosis is extremely costly to the general economy, not only because of the shifted tax burden, but because of the manipulations and diversion of productive assets required. For some examples do a google search on LILO [lease and - lease out and SILO [sell in
-- lease out]
Enactment of a law exempting stock dividends from Federal taxes would in large part put the "new rich" and "old money" on a collision course, much to the benefit of everyone else. It would also put a large portion of any "real" profits back into circulation, where they would be taxed several times, and would quickly cause the sham corporations, that produce little or no real profits, to collapse.
I say do the opposite. Eliminate all personal taxes and increase corporate taxes sufficiently to provide all the tax revenue that now is collected from individual taxpayers. That would simplify the tax system immensely. Right now everyone who makes an income pays taxes including corporations and individuals. But if you had the corporations pay all the taxes you would collect the same amount but it would come from far fewer sources. Instead of all the workers of, say, GM paying taxes individually just have GM pay the same amount in one check to the government. Instead of paying individuals and then having them take money out of their checks just have the employer pay it and then reduce the paychecks by that amount.
Since most Americans work for employers and not themselves you could reduce the total number tax payers from millions to a few thousand by having employers pay the taxes instead of individuals. Everything else could stay the same. The only difference would be to reduce the huge number of taxpayers who are individuals and replace them with a relatively small number of employers as taxpayers. It would also prevent a lot of the tax avoidance that we have under the current system. How much easier would it be to keep tabs on the few thousands of employers rather than keeping tabs on everyone? It would be a much simpler system than the current one.
the simple answer is that the slime in power are in the "no work" class, and therefore they think that they should not pay taxes. Simple as that, the rest is spin. One could make the same BS arguments spin the opposite direction,
they would still be BS and spin.
You talking about the Kennedys, Kerrys, dodds, etc., ets., etc.? Bugs
What's the difference? Aren't the consumers paying the taxes now? If you believe that no corporation really pays any tax because of the pass through to the consumer angle, then whether the corporation pays the tax for the worker or you pay the worker and then he pays the tax, in the end it's still the worker or consumer paying the taxes. By having the employer pay the taxes though you eliminate workers having to file at all, and by having so many fewer "taxpayers" the system would be far more efficient, simple, and less prone to abuse and evasion.
When you pile the taxes on the corporations, the tax is hidden from the voters and they distort the economy so that the jobs are moved to a country with lower taxes. If the taxes were piled on the voters they would see what the alphabet agencies are costing and would at least have a chance of correcting it before economic collapse.
But only the same chance they have now..... slim to none. Without an informed electorate, democracy is a cruel illusion. When the voter is deliberately mislead, how much chance does he have?
Dark clouds, a peasant standing in a field, holding a pitchfork; staring at the castle, listening to the madmen screaming inside.
"Hawke" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:
If you raise taxes say on General Mills for example, they will in turn raise the price of the food they sell. Low income workers will have no choice but to pay extra. The recent tax cuts have lowered the tax burden on millions of poor folks, as well as some rich folks who didn't need them.
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Corporate taxes are regressive as the system can't let poor folks opt out. It also takes money away that the corporation might otherwise invest in new equipment and additional employees.
Gee, maybe the Founding Fathers were right in their fears about giving too much democracy to the masses. The way the right wing politicians pulled the wool over the eyes of the public concerning the tax cuts, the war, and their profligate spending, it seems clear that offering the public whatever it wants makes the line between democracy and mob rule rather hard to find.
Obviously, the corporations are much better at cheating the system than individual taxpayers are. Buy you are overlooking the fact that instead of
100 million taxpayers there would probably be less than a million if the corporations paid all the income taxes. The IRS would still have the same number of employees. With so many less taxpayers most of them would have nothing to do so they could spend all of their time making sure that the corporate taxpayers stayed on the straight and narrow.
You are not burdening business with huge taxes. Overall, taxes would stay exactly the same. Instead of paying the employees more money, with which they pay their taxes, they would pay them less the same amount they would have paid in taxes. The total amount of taxes paid to the government would be the same. The only difference is that since most people are employees and receive their pay from an employer, they would get less in pay and not pay taxes. The companies would pay less to the employees but only by the amount the employees would have paid in taxes. It's really pretty simple. All you are doing is changing the tax revenue source from millions of individuals to thousands of employers. Aside from that, everything is the same. It just eliminates waste and redundancy and simplifies the tax system, while keeping the system revenue neutral. It's just an idea though.
The Founding Fathers had it right; NO DEMOCRACY. They founded the American Republic, and only qualified people were allowed to vote. Specifically the landless city rabble had NO vote. It worked until fools gave the vote to everyone. The only way back is to restrict the vote, my web page gives a glimpse of that in the 21st century.
Senators are no longer picked by the state legislatures, and the states have lost their domestic sovereignty.
Women got the vote, and we became a nanny state.
People who don't pay federal taxes got the vote, and they voted themselves a paycheck.
Humm. If I had my druthers, the Senate would be a house of ambassadors of the states, one senator per state who serves at the will of the state executive.
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