CitizenOfTheWorld wrote:Strong Eagle wrote:CitizenOfTheWorld wrote:entitled to 40%
Where did you get that number?
Well, the top rate was 35% and is going up to 39.5% this year. Add to that Social Security and the 'self employment tax.' Then add to that the federal gasoline tax of 20 cents a gallon. Add to that the various airport "9/11" taxes (yes, you actually are paying for radiation or 'magnetic scanning' or to have a civil servant grope your crotch.)
You have produced a mish mash of fuzzy thinking in your attempt to damn all government in the USA. Allow me to point it out.
39.6% is the top tax rate and it is applicable to incomes in excess of $400,000. 35% for 388,350 and up, and 33 for 183,250 and up. The average tax percentage paid in the USA for all quintiles is 17.4% Lowest quintile is 1.0%, highest is 23.2%. Top 1% of earners paid 28.9%.
Federal gasoline tax is a user tax. Who is supposed to pay for highway maintenance? The tax is actually too low; it hasn't been adjusted for some time. You want to drive places? You want people to come to your business. You want goods delivered? Well... news flash... it costs money to pay for roads and bridges.
Yes... you pay airport taxes to be body scanned... and to to have your luggage scanned... and to have flight controllers guide your plane... and to have the FAA ensure that flight safety requirements are met. It's a use tax again. The biggest travesty here is that Congress is stealing funds from the airport tax for non airport issues. And... it is the bloody "small government" Republicans who introduced the TSA. It was signed into law by George Bush in 2001.
Then move on to state taxes. Fortunately, Nevada has no state income tax, but most states do, and that's on top of a sales tax, 8.25% here. If you live in Cali, New York or Hawaii, then you are probably past the 50% mark. And the sad fact is, most people don't even think about it.
How are state services supposed to be supported? Why, through state taxes, by jingo! There is always an ongoing debate as to the best taxation method, and I prefer a VAT tax on all goods and services as the best way. Why single out income tax? There are
property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes.
You are correct about one thing, though. People will pay about 59 percent of total income in taxes although 15.3% of that is social security. In this world however, what are the alternatives? How do you plan on funding police, fire, and the courts? What about highways and bridges, waterways, and airports? How do you want to fund them? What about parks, historic monuments? Or the big question of them all... how do you plan on funding the military, whose budget is larger than the next 70 countries combined?
Which is the whole idea, to keep the public distracted as they would surely be mad as hell if they thought about it. Or to make them feel greedy for not wanting to pay so much. Or to make them think that they are being cheated, NOT BY THE GOVERNMENT THAT"S ACTUALLY TAKING THEIR MONEY AT GUN POINT, but by those 'lying cheating f*cks' who feel they've had enough of it and manage, at the risk of harassment and prison, to keep a little of their wealth hidden. Now I can't stand Romney and would never have voted for him. But it didn't bother me at all that he manged to pay only 13% tax. I just wish I could afford the top flight lawyers, accountants, etc needed to do that myself.
So, it's a conspiracy to keep people distracted. And it bothers me a lot that Romney got away with 13 percent... and probably less than that. He does something that you will never get to do... and that is call all earnings from his investment portfolios "carry interest" when in fact the majority of the invested money belongs to someone else. Worse, Congress is bought and paid for when it comes to this tax issue... Republicans more so than Democrats but both guilty.
And for this you get a gigantic military industrial complex, bailouts of the to big to fail financial institutions, and a huge army of federal bureaucrats with the power to torment you if they feel like it, and who get payed, on average, more than people working in the private sector.
Anyway, sorry about that. The point of the thread wasn't to turn into s b*tch session, but to evaluate and compare life in Sing with life back home.
This is one thing we agree upon... out of control military spending, with little hope of paring it back because not one Congressperson will ever cut spending in their own district.
As for the "army of federal employees", the numbers look like this. Total federal employees are about 21,925,000 or about 6.9% of the population in 2012. This percentage is actually lower than for any previous president whose numbers were all above 7%.
How do those numbers break out? 34.2% are defense related, 14.7% are veterans affairs. 48.9% of all federal employees are military related. 9% belong to Homeland Security, 5.7% to Justice.
It's very difficult to support the argument that federal employees get paid more than the private sector. There are studies that show the exact opposite.
