I don't understand what you're saying. I'm probably having a Homer moment. :D

I believe most of the money paid out in income taxes comes from the majority of the people - you know, the middle class, the working class, and upper middle class - not the people at the top who end up paying less because of tax loopholes and offshore accounts.

I don't understand what you're saying. I'm probably having a Homer moment. :D

I believe most of the money paid out in income taxes comes from the majority of the people - you know, the middle class, the working class, and upper middle class - not the people at the top who end up paying less because of tax loopholes and offshore accounts.

So what did you mean by this? When the minority of income earners pay income taxes there is a huge problem.

These were the latest figures I could find.

"Dear Mr. Madoff,

I hope you sit on a sno-cone."

Love, America

OK that is really confusing. Does the top 50% include the other tops? What are the income levels?

Sorry - I forgot to include the link

The column headers are:
1st - Percentiles Ranked by AGI
2nd - AGI Threshold on Percentiles
3rd - Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid

Note: AGI is Adjusted Gross Income
Source: Internal Revenue Service

Read it like this: The top 10% pay 71% of all income tax collected, the top 25% pay 86% of all income taxes collected, etc.

Also an interesting side statistic - 90% of Americans make less that 108k

That's why they end up paying less of the total amount I suppose. But, they DO pay a bigger PERCENTAGE of their actual salary. Unless they are self-employed, and they can write off a bunch of expenses.

You know, really, if you make a half billion dollars, you can afford to pay a large chunk of it. It really wouldn't affect your lifestyle because you would never miss it. Who can spend that much money? No one. If you make $50,000, you WOULD miss it. It would affect your lifestyle. Or if you make $30,000, or $20,000, or shit, $10,000. It's much harder to give away part of your earnings when you're barely making money, and let's face it, those salaries, that is not much to live on. $500,000,000.00 though? Come on. You (not you personally classic) can't honestly say you think they should have the same tax rate as someone who only makes $30k? That is insane!

Look at it if they both paid 15%.

Do you think its fair to take almost 40% of someones income on federal taxes, not to mention any applicable state, local, county and/or city taxes? That puts their gross tax rate well over 50%. How would you like that? Does that seem fair to you? :eyebrow:

If they have a billion dollars, yea, I do. And EVERYONE pays all those other taxes. You make it sound like only rich people pay them. We are taxed to death in this country.

And how many people have a billion dollars? GTFOH.

Individuals or households?

Which is why the people who pay a higher percentage - the average income earning - do not pay 40%.

A flat tax does not become fair until the numbers are more like 23%. Then the rich will pay more taxes.

40% is the myth classicman keeps promoting. A 15% flat tax is only another mythical tax cut as defined by Buffet. Since the only tax cut also cuts spending, then a 15% flat tax only makes more recessions - as demonstrated repeatedly by history.

If the flat tax required the rich to pay 23%, then the rich suffer a tax increase. Flat tax is not the problem. Problem is a mythical and economically destructive number - 15%. A number not possible due to unpaid bills such as $1trillion for "Mission Accomplished".

I don't know, exactly, and I was exaggerating, sort of. But, there are quite a few billionaires in this country. Quite a few. And there are many people who have hundreds of millions...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/22/4734

This is so good, I think I'll just post the whole article...

Published on Monday, October 22, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Billionaires Up, America Down

by Holly Sklar

When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.

Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only.

This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires.

A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion.

When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king."

Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer."

The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America.

We have a record 482 billionaires -- and record foreclosures.

We have a record 482 billionaires -- and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.

Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires -- and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.

The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).

Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.

In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit.

In 1982, when the Forbes 400 had just 13 billionaires, the highest paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation in $2006. Last year, the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage.

The Forbes 400 is even more of a rich men's club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 39 today.

The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, Forbes 400 wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP.

And the rich, notes Fortune magazine, "give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us. HA! Why is that not surprising.

Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumbles from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing.

The top 1 percent of households -- average income $1.5 million -- will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest.

The children and grandchildren of today's underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today's plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists.

It's time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionaire hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us" and "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future." She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.

This essay was distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
Copyright © 2007 Holly Sklar

They pay the % they are required, how much of their income is taxable is, I believe your issue. Poorly written or intentionally misleading?
Cite please.
Cite please. You're back to making all these statements without a shred of proof or support ... again.
Problem is mythical posts without ANY substantive data to back them up.

I noticed you've not posted much recently - Convenient is how it was right after you were last asked REPEATEDLY to support your claims with evidence and you wouldn't or couldn't?

Citations were already provided. Posting repeatedly without any citations is classicman's mythical 15% number. A number that has zero basis in economic reality and only means an increasing national debt. That 15% is promoted by those who are so dumb as to want even more tax cuts ... as if we have not done enough damage to the economy.

We still have many extremist lies to pay for: ie "Mission Accomplished". A $1trillion bill that will do to the American economy what Nixon did to the 1975/1979 economy. No money game - ie 15% flat tax - will cure a problem created by economic perverts who thought tax cuts are good.

Buffet was blunt about such stupid people. “The only tax cut is one that cuts spending.”

We cannot cut spending. Cheney created massive deficits while bragging, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." We will be paying for fiscal mismanagement for the next ten years. And now some want to make it worse with a 15% flat tax? How much longer do we have to listen to extremists propaganda?

Tax cuts, in the long term, create a worse economy. 15% flat tax is nothing more than another tax cut. We are now seeing the 'wealth' created by wacko extremist tax cuts and other economic incentives. The only solution to long term wealth includes a balanced budget. Something we almost had - and then wackos started inventing money games to *stimulate* the economy.

A balanced budget means the world does not get rich funding American deficits. To fix a mess created by George Jr and his Project for a New American Century administration will probably take the next ten years. And still fools are promoting another destruction of America - a 15% flat tax.

Maybe it might be possible. But first we must to pay for the George Jr disasters starting with the most obvious of lies including "Mission Accomplished" and a zero effort to get bin Laden.

Citation for that 15% tax cut: endorsed by extremists. And still some don't acknowledge that is a source of economic perversion.

Another bill created by George Jr economic stimulus - Madoff. He could not have done it without government cooperation - such as ignoring a long list of whistleblowers.

Number of Returns with Positive AGI
AGI ($ millions)
Income Taxes Paid ($ millions)
Group's Share of Total AGI
Group's Share of Income Taxes
Income Split Point
Average Tax Rate

All Taxpayers
135,719,160
$8,122,040
$1,023,739
100%
100%
-
12.60%

Top 1%
1,357,192
$1,791,886
$408,369
22.06%
39.89%
> $388,806
22.79%

Top 2-5%
5,428,766
$1,185,828
$207,311
14.60%
20.25%


17.48%

Top 5%
6,785,958
$2,977,714
$615,680
36.66%
60.14%
> $153,542
20.68%


http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

WHERE? If true, then post a link to them.
I post cites with virtually EVERY POST. If I am posting my opinion it is clearly apparent that it is my opinion and obviously no cite is needed. tw however has been posting his opinions as facts for years. Since getting called on it, tw has been unsuccessfully trying to use this as a diversionary tactic with other posters. Take a look at your last 50 posts, tw and post how many of them had cites to back up your "facts" - read opinions. I already know the answer.

Now back to the topic at hand...
The 15% was an arbitrary, hypothetical figure mentioned for discussion - a starting point, nothing more. That figure was chosen as it has been discussed in the past. Nothing was etched in stone as tw would have some believe. Perhaps the number is 10%, 17% or even 25% - That is not the point. The point being discussed when that was brought up which was as usual, missed by tw, is
the concept of a flat tax versus the current structure.

Thats not at all what Mr. Buffet said this morning on CNBC. In fact, he thinks we need to do both. He repeatedly stated that doing exclusively one or the other is foolish. He continued that using both means is not only necessary, but the most prudent. Guess that bluntly makes tw stupid.
As previously stated - this is off topic, but if that is true, then why are the rich so adverse to it? Because it removes all their deductions? Because, in fact, it really wouldn't be a tax cut if done properly, for example the right percentage?
With this, I agree 100%

Madoff victims' lawyers converge on New York

cough\BULLSHIT/cough

My guess is that the whole family was in on it and things were going just peachy until the recession kicked the crap out of the scam. Old Man Madoff decided to take the fall on his own because he doesn't have that much time left anyway. His boys get away scott free having turned in dad to take the fall for all their crimes.

/adjusts tinfoil/

I heard on the news that he was making a deal so his wife could keep the $7 million condo (or house, whatever) in NY and the $65 million they have. I certainly hope they don't let her keep it. That would just be wrong.

Psst - hey Sugah see post 141 ;)

Apparently he is pleading guilty, which means he is under no obligation to help the prosecution in any way find the money. I hope they investigate his sons and wife as well, and investigate every single person at his firm.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...dg7oo&refer=us

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ure-demand/?hp

His wife is getting her own attorney
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29598391/

I too hope they investigate AND prosecute all of them. Perhaps seize their assets as well and put it towards those who were wronged.

Additionally, I'd like to see all those "regulators" or whatever who were basically informed of what was going on and did nothing investigated and prosecuted as well since that was their responsibility.

If he's pleading guilty without making a deal with the prosecution, then I think it's likely he is falling on his sword to protect his family. I would hope any investigation would include the family, and if there is enough evidence found to implicate them, they should be charged as well.

It irks me that the family should retain any wealth at all. They should lose virtually everything and be put in a position of starting over from scratch, assuming they don't go to jail too.

The bloomberg article link from sugarpop (post # 145) is very good.
I agree glatt, I think he is trying to protect his family and whomever. Sickens me that he is basically gonna get away with it. The money, if it really existed, is already gone.

yeparoo, espcially they since they were warned, over and over and over by that Markopoulis guy. He tried for what, 12 years? to get them to investigate? Lazy bastards never did anything. If they had done their damn job, from the beginning, none of this would have happened. People who have oversight get way too comfortable with the people they are supposed to be regulating and watching. It's almost incestuous.

Well my take is, since he didn't make a deal, they are not protected. I believe (hope) they will be investigated, and I agree, in cases like this, people who acquire wealth should have to lose all of it to help make retribution and start over.

Yes and no. While it's true that there is no official protection from the government now, any deal he would have made would have required him to divulge information about the entire scam and would likely have implicated his family. So making a deal for a lighter sentence would have hurt his family more than pleading guilty and shutting his mouth. He is protecting the family from the government as best he can by staying quiet. They are more protected this way.

I suppose time will tell. If he had a made a deal, he might have been able to get them immunity. But then again, maybe not. IF they are guilty, I hope they go down as well. Too many people and organizations were hurt by his actions.

Billionaire Stanford to take the 5th in fraud case

Anyone for waterboarding?

No.

Yeah, I have a comment. He's been wearing a bullet-proof vest going to court, because so many people are so angry, but his big giant pasty head is hanging out there like a beacon. Why don't people ever get bullet-proof ski masks or something?

lol.

Should I have put a smilie on that Pie?

No. It's still a little too close to the bone for me to take it as a joke.
But to quote you -- "Hey, my views aren't popular, they're just mine."

Well it was intended as a joke.

But... but...

WTF? Please explain.

Try this

Just making sure I understand... So your desire to see his wife/children prosecuted stems entirely from the hypothesis that they are also guilty? And their guilt rests entirely on whether they *knew* Madoff was doing illegal things, not necessarily participating in the business? And then based on that, you would support confiscating "their assets as well" (say, his wife's salary from some unrelated job) because they are guilty to begin with so their punishment can be in any form?

So if I steal a million dollars, and just walk up and give it to a stranger on the street, that stranger doesn't have to return it?

If someone was knowingly doing something illegal, yes. Otherwise, wouldn't we have to punish everyone who worked there? As far as confiscating the wife's salary from another job or other unrelated sources.... I dunno how to figure all that out. Thats a little beyond me. I guess if we could say that she is responsible for x dollars illegally then she should surrender that same amount. Could/should we add a punitive amount on top of that??? I don't know how to calculate all of it. What do you think?

Person A owns a car.
Person B steals it and sells it to person C, who does not know it is stolen.

Dunno about you lot, but down here, C is not guilty of any crime, but must give the car back to A.
General principle: you can't keep stolen stuff even if you didn't know it was stolen when you got it.

So for the Madoff family, they should be stipped of all assets that the didn't earn themselves. IMHO YMMV etc...

The whole family were officers in Madoff's operation. It's impossible for them not to have known.:eyebrow:

The bottom line is this, his family is living off money he stole from other people. Regardless of wether they were complicit in that theft, they should still have to return the money. Why should they get to keep it when there are people out there who literally lost EVERYTHING? shit, he even bankrupted some charities, did he not?

Welcome Home Bernie
 

So are the families of all the employees at the company and and and...

The recipient is held partially responsible for knowing that profits / money are not from ill-gotten enterprises. It’s not fair. It’s legal. But the family could never have been that ignorant.

If you see a crime and don't report it, then you are an accessory to that crime. Can also be and should be prosecuted.

I turned the knob and someone screamed in pain. But I was told to turn the knob. Therefore I was not responsible for killing him. Conservatives don't like this requirement for responsible actions. Being responsible (and regulations that require it) would infringe on my god given freedoms.

How does what you said differ from my post? Aside from the fact that it took you three paragraphs to answer a closed ended question?

Dude is going to jail. His story ends but it sounds like the investigation is just beginning.

I hope so. I also hope they didn't "wait long enough" for everyone to hide what they already got.

Madoff accountant charged with fraud
David Friehling arrested, accused of helping Madoff defraud thousands

Hopefully this is only the first domino to fall.

Wow. This is a guy who could have blown the whistle at any time, who knew exactly how many millions Madoff had--and Madoff was paying him less than $175,000 a year? I wonder if he had some other kind of blackmail on the guy...

that or he paid him millions in offshore accounts or something. :shrug:

We don't know he did not. Many did blow the whistle on Madoff. Since the political agenda demanded deregulation and no government oversight, those numerous blown whistles were ignored.

A poltical agenda could not have been more apparent. Both Democrats and Republicans offered to double the SEC budget. Harvey Pitts (representing the George Jr adminstration's political agenda) refused to accept that money. That was the 2002(?) Enron hearings. It only got worse because the political agenda was to deregulate everything. Later, laws were passed to make regulations of derivatives illegal.

For all we know, Madoff's accountant did blow the whistle. What we do know is the George Jr administration ignored numerous Madoff whistleblowers. Even refused to prosecute Skilling and Lay for Enron until embarrassed by the state of Oklahoma. We do not yet know if this accountant tried to blow a whistle. We do know that if he did, he would have been ignored.

That is true the previous administration did nothing. Perhaps that is because all the warning went to Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd or Barney Frank the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Also why is it ok to blame the George Jr. Administration here whereas it is not ok to mention transparency and accountability with anyone other than Obama himself? Seems rather hypocritical albeit typical for some posters. :eyebrow:

Again you are reading wacko extremist mantra. Numerous whistle blowers went to the SEC. Some SEC investigators actually did look into Madoff. But when the lowest paid regulators in Washington are also manipulated by the political agenda, then the SEC never bothered to do any serious investigation.

So the wacko extremists instead lie right here in the The Cellar. Extremists again blame Dodd and Franks. Not blame the SEC that was defanged by an extremist political agenda. Amazing. This time Obama was not blamed.

Yes, yes, we know. The Bush administration danced with the angels.

:lol:

I wonder if Madoff knew the scheme was going to blow up in his face soon and told his children to turn him in to save them from jailtime?