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John R Huff Jr
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Instagram Rises as Social Web Embraces Photo Sharing
“It's fun and easy. Who cares if it's not "real" photography? "Instagram Rises as Social Web Embraces Photo Sharing" - http://nyti.ms/iITKNG”pictures . . .I will have to take a walk. I am still resisting Apple.It looks like a wired connection is required.DSL does it here. There is probably fiber at the pole.That service is not everywhere. DSL is most places?
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Amanda Cox
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Business Day
Correction Nov. 5, 2007 A chart with the Economic Scene column in Business Day on Wednesday about trends in tax rates by income group referred incompletely to the taxes that were analyzed. The tax rates included capital gains, payroll, estate, gif..."The tax rates included capital gains, payroll, estate, gift and corporate taxes"October 31, 2007
Note the end date. Things are more dramatic now.
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tdeletto
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Business Day
Correction Nov. 5, 2007 A chart with the Economic Scene column in Business Day on Wednesday about trends in tax rates by income group referred incompletely to the taxes that were analyzed. The tax rates included capital gains, payroll, estate, gif...
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=tax+ratesThe Distributional Effect of Tax Cuts — A Brief Note
With taxes on the wealthy on the political radar, we’re going to drowning in a vast wave of double-talk and smothered by vast amounts of fuzzy math. Still, one has to try. So, a couple of notes.
One is that you have to beware of the old trick of saying “taxes”, then slipping into “income taxes”. Most Americans pay more payroll than income taxes, but the reverse is true at high incomes. So focusing only on income taxes makes it seem as if the rich pay much more of the burden than they really do.
Another, more subtle trick involves comparing percentage changes in taxes as opposed to tax changes as a percentage of income.
The starting point is that federal taxes are indeed progressive on average (although there are billionaires who pay a lower rate than their secretaries). And this in turn means that you have to be careful about the question when evaluating a change in taxes.
Suppose that it’s 1979, and individual A is a member of the working poor, paying 12 percent of his income in taxes — basically payroll tax and not much else. Meanwhile, individual B is very wealthy, and pays 40 percent of his income in taxes — as the very wealthy did on average 30 years ago.
Now suppose that 30 years of conservative governance lead to a fall of a quarter in both individuals’ average tax rates; A’s rate falls from 12 to 9, B’s from 40 to 30. Would it make sense to say that they have gained equally from tax cuts?
Clearly not. A’s after-tax income has risen from 88 to 91 percent of pretax income, a gain of 3.4 percent. B’s after-tax income has risen from 60 to 70 percent of pretax income, a gain of 16.7 percent. The distribution of after-tax income has become substantially less equal. And that’s the calculation I was doing here.
Now, right-wingers come back and say that this is what has to happen when you cut taxes. No, it doesn’t. And anyway, cutting taxes is itself a choice — and they’re a choice that then leads to demands that we cut programs for the poor and middle class to close the deficit those tax cuts created.
The point is that yes, tax policy these past 30 years has been very much tilted toward benefiting the rich.
Taxes and the Wealthy
Well, sometimes I really do get tired of trying to reason with these people. Are we really back to the line that the rich are sorely oppressed, because their share of tax payments has risen — never mind how much their share of income has risen?
Let’s look at the tax data — the CBO estimates that separate the really rich from the only very rich only go up to 2005, but things probably haven’t changed much since then. And let me present what they say using one technique the Tax Policy Center uses routinely, asking what effect a change in taxes would have on after-tax income, other things equal. Here’s what I get for changes from 1979 to 2005:
Changes in tax rates have strongly favored the very, very rich.
Now, they’re only a fairly small part of the huge growth in the after-tax inequality of income. But tax policy has very much leaned into that growing inequality, not against it — and anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on this issue, or any other.
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John McElhenney
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Instagram Rises as Social Web Embraces Photo Sharing
“It's fun and easy. Who cares if it's not "real" photography? "Instagram Rises as Social Web Embraces Photo Sharing" - http://nyti.ms/iITKNG”
Noted.
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