Sam, the very foundation of your flawed argument is that "working Americans" *only* includes the middle class. Without this assumption, your argument is worthless. Other problems with your argument: 1. You have yet to show proof that Bush's plan increases the tax burden on the middle class (though this is a tangent to the actual discussion) 2. You have made the simplying assumption that Dean's 'reversal' of the Bush tax relief will lower the burden on the middle class (though this again is a tangent). Prove this. It is not as simple as you lay out. 3. You only focus on the middle class tax burden. Howard Dean intends to raise taxes on all taxpayers, as my new thread lays out. Keep trying Sam. The pictures do nothing to advance your severely flawed line of thinking.
Sorry Junior, nothing more to see here, just unsalvageable wreckage. I have bookmarked this thread for posterity so that I can visit the wreck any time, how I will enjoy it!
Originally posted by Major ... (2) You may have your candidates confused. The relative tax burden on middle class families under *this* administration has risen substantially, as noted in other articles posted on these boards....[/QUOTE] As noted in other articles posted on these boards, that is untrue.
You must have missed the picture show: "Conservatives and liberals alike agree that Bush's tax policies have shifted more of the tax burden to the middle class. Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist with the American Enterprise Institute, said it "makes complete sense" that this would happen as a result of Bush's polices. "
It's not so simple. It effected different segments of 'middle income' Americans very differently. When someone here posted a reference that showed what happened to tax rates, a quick analysis showed that many Americans have done quite well with the tax cuts. I mentioned it, and no one refuted it. I then brought it up again in another thread, and again, it went unrefuted. The article above lumps all incomes from $28k (or $45k in another instance) to $337k in one cohort. Give me a break. Are people making $336k middle class? Are they trying to hide something by having one massive cohort? And 'relative' burden has some relevance, but can also be misleading. Overall tax rates dropped; we're ALL paying less. And you seemed to miss this part of the article:
? The original statement, that Major posted, was that the "relative tax burden" on the middle class as increasing. You pronounced this as "untrue". It's not untrue. While this article makes the cutoff at 337k (about where the top 1% cuts off, that was clearly explained in the article, I don't know why you think they were trying to hide anything) when you make it lower, at say, 70-90k, the effect is even more pronounced, as explained in this thread: http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71174&perpage=30&pagenumber=1 They got the least from the last tax cut, accordingly their relative burden is going up. Social Security and Medicare? huh? Why shouldn't they be included. Again, as I've pointed out numerous times, whenever Republicans start shilling and whoring on behalf of tax cuts for the rich, they always point to progressive income taxes, and purposefully don't include Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are more regressive, in order to exaggerate the burden being borne by the rich and justify their case. Again, why shouldn't they be included? To a middle class American, isn't every dollar that they lose on taxes fungible anyway? Granted, there's a theoretical argument that Medicare and SS taxes should be discounted by the present value of whatever money that taxpayer would ideally receive; however, given the dire straits of the programs over the long haul, and the fact that money currently being paid into Medicare and SSI is not being used to fund that taxpayer's future retirement, and instead is being used to fund present retirees, that is a very disingenuous argument to say the least. I didn't "miss" anything except for a vapid attempt by a Bush hack to disavow the reaction that any normal person, including the President himself had or would have, using standard GOP/TaxWhiner crapaganda.
