And would it kill you, on April 15th..

[hippiewannabe]

And yes, I was working in the '80s. I came of age in the Carter inflation and malaise days, and in my first full year of working as an entry level engineer, faced a marginal tax rate of over 50%. Reagan fixed that. And then the economy grew 36% between 1983 and 1990. There has been an increasingly desperate attempt to rewrite that history.

Desperate on your part. Try this out:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3220


edit: I'm adding a brief explanation, so it's clear what I'm pointing at. A quick image search of google using the keywords "growing gap between the rich and poor in the us" will return a dozen variants of this chart. One version is the chart named figure 1 in the link. No one, on either side of the debate is arguing:

1. The fact of the change
2. Its origins in Reagan's tax cuts

You went through a fair amount of effort, wrote a lot of words, and refuted nothing. As you mentioned, the group behind that link is unabashedly liberal. Nevertheless, the data they choose to present are well researched. Having knowledge of statistics, they are careful to avoid stating outright fallacies. But they deliberately leave things open for biased, unsophisticated readers like yourself to misinterpret the data. To wit, “Its origins in Reagan’s tax cuts” implies the inequality was caused by the tax cuts. They never stated Reagan’s tax cuts caused inequality, they leave it to you to make the mistake of “post hoc, ergo proctor hoc”, “after this, therefore because of this". Correlation does not mean causation.

I have to give them some credit, they mention a few inconvenient truths, but try to gloss over them. For example:

The bulk of the increase in after-tax income inequality since 1979 reflects changes in pre-tax incomes. The incomes of the top 1 percent rose 141 percent from 1979 to 2007 before taxes are considered, the CBO data show. The top 1 percent’s share of before-tax income (like its share of after-tax income) more than doubled from 1979 to 2007, from 9.3 percent to 19.4 percent.

They were all about the change since 1979, but then switched to more recent history:

The rapidly rising pre-tax incomes of the wealthy help to explain the notable rise in the percentage of total tax revenue collected from these households. CBO’s data show that the share of total federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of households rose from 25.5 percent in 2000 to 28.1 percent in 2007, the second-highest share since 1979 (only 2006 was higher).

Why did they stop at 2000 for the tax data, instead of going back to 1979? Because they didn’t like what the data show (from that conservative scandal sheet, the NYT):

With all this being said, it is also true — as you often hear — that the wealthy are paying more in taxes than they used to. The top 0.01 percent paid 6.5 percent of all federal taxes in 2005, up from 2.7 percent in 1979. More broadly, the top 1 percent paid 27.6 percent of federal taxes in 2005, up from 15.4 percent in 1979. (You sometimes hear larger numbers, but they tend to apply only to income taxes, rather than to all federal taxes.)

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/ ... blogs&_r=0

So, according to your sources, the share of total income earned by the 1% about doubled, and their share of taxes paid about doubled.

Therefore:
-as I have never disputed (though have showed how it is exaggerated by the choice of data sources) income inequality has increased
- it is not caused by, nor can it be reversed by, tax policy
- the share of taxes paid by the wealthy has gone up, commensurate with their share of income earned
- when tax rates were reduced, revenue collected went up

The truth is not subject to a majority vote. Just because the media is overwhelmingly liberal, and give more air time to liberal interpretations, doesn’t make those interpretations correct.

[Amskeptic]

But they deliberately leave things open for biased, unsophisticated readers like yourself to misinterpret the data. To wit,
Just because the media is overwhelmingly liberal, and give more air time to liberal interpretations, doesn’t make those interpretations correct.

In 1983, the U.S. media was spread among about 50 major companies.

In 2012, it was six:

GE > Comcast > NBC
News Corp > Fox News > Wall Street Journal
Disney > ABC
Viacom > CMT
Time Warner > CNN
CBS > NFL

Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations. All are affiliated with Fox News.

That is just 232 media executives who control the flow of information to 227 million "sentient" American citizens.
NewsCorp skipped out on 875 million dollars in taxes last year (could fund NPR for 40 years right there) by declaring home base off our soil even though they rake in our dollars.
GE bailed on about 2 billion dollars in taxes and continues to aggressively outsource production.

"Liberal media" is but again Republican canards that help to obfuscate the truth.
Colin

[Cindy]

The "liberal media" offers very little insight to someone who's actually interested and curious. It's so dumbed-down. I don't know why conservatives decry it like they do.

It's the least of our worries.

Cindy

[hippiewannabe]

In 2012, it was six:

GE > Comcast > NBC: Liberal
News Corp > Fox News > Wall Street Journal: Conservative
Disney > ABC: Liberal
Viacom > CMT: Huh?
Time Warner > CNN: Liberal
CBS > NFL: Liberal

Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations. All are affiliated with Fox News.

Yeah, true enough, but AM radio was the only outlet open to conservatives at one point, so they embraced it. I hate Rush Limbaugh and actually listen to NPR on FM.

"Liberal media" is a fact.

[glasseye]

"Liberal media" is a fact.

Good grief. Was everything Colin related about media ownership a lie?

[Bleyseng]

No, it's just the conservatives continue to love to decry about being victims of the "liberal media". WSJ now is just like FoxNews and not worth reading IMHO, at least the NYT is still quite the source for interesting and thought provoking articles.

[hippiewannabe]

"Liberal media" is a fact.

Good grief. Was everything Colin related about media ownership a lie?

You missed my additions to his list. Emphasis now added.

[ruckman101]

Liberal media is a myth. PBS is as left as it gets. Essentially token nods. Democracy Now with Amy Goodman is about it.

neal

[Lanval]

they deliberately leave things open for biased, unsophisticated readers like yourself to misinterpret the data. To wit, “Its origins in Reagan’s tax cuts” implies the inequality was caused by the tax cuts. They never stated Reagan’s tax cuts caused inequality, they leave it to you to make the mistake of “post hoc, ergo proctor hoc”, “after this, therefore because of this". Correlation does not mean causation.

(emphasis mine)

That you are unaware that:

1. I did refute your argument;
2. Your attempt at suggesting I was guilty of fallacies (using Latin, no less!) is categorically wrong (should I point out that your failure to explain why your answer is better than mine is itself an even greater rhetorical failure, because it attempts to disprove something, but doesn't explain how/why your claims of fallacy imply?);
3. Your language (which I highlighted above) is exactly what you accused me of? (To wit: ad hominem attack... more Latin! Should I tell you that unlike you I can read/write Latin, and that I remain duly unimpressed by your use of the same?)

I understand that you have a viewpoint. It remains staunchly myopic, based not in facts (again, no serious economist outside of a few neo-cons agrees with the interpretation you offer) but in your personal ideology which is simplistic, your inability to even acknowledge that you *might* be wrong, in the face of a broad range of people who have argued otherwise, and do so, unlike you, with the benefit of both an extensive and pointed training/education and the time/tools necessary to prove their point?

Good luck to you... I feel sorry for you, though I doubt that evinces anything more than the sneering insolence which has been your calling card throughout these boards. Sad.

ML

[hippiewannabe]

Aww, come on now, wipe away those tears and get in the game. Show me some analysis that proves tax cuts caused inequality. Better yet, do you own analysis.

I have shown you, using your own data sources, that the income inequality is based on pre-tax income, that total taxes paid have gone up commensurate with that increase in pre-tax income, and the share of total taxes paid by the wealthy has gone up. Instead of throwing a hissy fit, and saying some really cool people disagree, show me the numbers.

I have been reading excerpts and reviews of Piketty's book. It's an important and valuable addition to the canon. But those who latch on to it's conclusions need to read it first. It has a new theory about the sources of inequality. Here's a hint; it's not tax cuts.

[Bleyseng]

"Bill Moyer: ‘We are heading to a future of inherited wealth’ Patrimonial Capitalism"

It is a mathematical fact that if the wealthy’s income and wealth is growing at a faster rate than the wealth and income of the middle class in a virtually closed world economy, then it is being done at the expense of the middle class. In other words, the middle class is being robbed. The middle class is being pilfered. It has nothing to do with the wealthy being bad people. It is that politicians have created bad policy that have allowed an economic system of selected haves and “have nots” based on who has access to capital.
Governmental policy has allowed the hoarding of capital after the New Deal since the inception Reagan’s supply side economics. No one needs to guess what has occurred. It is found readily in the charts. Now that the hoarding of capital has reached an unsustainable rate, many on the Right would have citizens believe the country is broke and that even more sacrifices are required of the middle class. This is a false premise. America is not broke. It is being pilfered from within.
The disparity in how one’s money is taxed allows for those who are wealthy to increasingly accumulate ever increasing wealth at a faster rate than a working person. Why; because “income” from capital appreciation (that increase in stock value) is taxed at a much lesser rate than income from work. As such the investing person (likely the wealthier person) has more disposable income to reinvest than the working person. That is a formula that is not easily overcome.
Contrary to popular belief our tax system is engineered to keep the average worker always at a financial disadvantage to the investor. In other words our tax policy rewards those that move and manipulate capital over those who would do an honest day’s work.
It is not at all difficult to understand this reality; however with a Right Wing echo chamber that is good at conflating mutually exclusive issues, they have been able to convince a substantial number of Americans that the equitable taxing of wealth and the wealthy would be detrimental to our economy. Many Americans are likely willing to believe the fallacy because they naïvely believe that the American dream of anyone having equal opportunity to make it applies to them. Unfortunately under our current implementation of capitalism, the tenet that everyone has the same opportunity is nothing but a pipe dream.
If you are born poor in a poor neighborhood, you likely will attend an underfunded public school with substandard resources. A substandard education in one’s formative years is a high mountain to climb that most simply do not even attempt.

[Amskeptic]

"Bill Moyer: ‘We are heading to a future of inherited wealth’ Patrimonial Capitalism"
It is a mathematical fact that if the wealthy’s income and wealth is growing at a faster rate than the wealth and income of the middle class in a virtually closed world economy, then it is being done at the expense of the middle class. In other words, the middle class is being robbed. .

Thank-you.
Bill Moyers put it a bit pungently, "The government is running a racket to protect the 1%".
Colin

[hambone]

What is going to change it?

[glasseye]

What is going to change it?

We, the people.

[glasseye]

They're allied, those rich, those bankers, those "job creators" to game the system in ways unimaginable to those of us who toil in the workday world.

Read "Flash Boys" and understand the real meaning of the term "Casino Capitalism"

http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-S ... flash+boys