Get together another WMD search party

[CarlV]

We don't pay diddly in taxes, it is another political smokescreen if you hear otherwise. Much of it the GOP plan for turning the US into a plutocracy.

Carl

I googled it and this here is just the tip of the iceberg in hits returned. There is plenty more if you wish to go for it.

Polifact:
Barack Obama says taxes on families are at their lowest point in 50 years

The most detailed look at this question comes from a table compiled by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group that has analyzed tax plans of the presidential candidates. The table calculates the average federal tax rate for four-person families at three different income levels -- one-half the median income, the median income, and twice the median income. The "average rate" means actual taxes paid as a percentage of a taxpayer’s income after deductions and exemptions. The table includes data from 1955 to 2011.

For one-half the median income and the median income, average tax rates were lower in 2009, 2010 and 2011 than any year back to 1955 except for 2008. So Obama's largely right for these groups.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...their-lowest-/

NYT:
Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low?
By BRUCE BARTLETT

The economic importance of statutory tax rates is blown far out of proportion by Republicans looking for ways to make taxes look high when they are quite low. And they almost never note that the statutory tax rate applies only to the last dollar earned or that the effective tax rate is substantially lower even for the richest taxpayers and largest corporations because of tax exclusions, deductions, credits and the 15 percent top rate on dividends and capital gains.

The many adjustments to income permitted by the tax code, plus alternative tax rates on the largest sources of income of the wealthy, explain why the average federal income tax rate on the 400 richest people in America was 18.11 percent in 2008, according to the Internal Revenue Service, down from 26.38 percent when these data were first calculated in 1992. Among the top 400, 7.5 percent had an average tax rate of less than 10 percent, 25 percent paid between 10 and 15 percent, and 28 percent paid between 15 and 20 percent.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...s-high-or-low/

Think Progress:
No, American Corporations Aren’t Paying The World’s Highest Tax Rate

By Travis Waldron on Apr 1, 2013 at 1:30 pm
But while the companies are correct that America’s corporate tax rate is statutorily the highest in the world, what they aren’t noting is that few corporations actually pay the 35 percent rate. In fact, even as profits for American corporations hit a 60-year high in 2011, their effective tax rate hit a 40-year low, and the U.S. collects less in taxes as a percent of the total economy than every industrialized country in the world save Iceland. It’s been 45 years since corporations paid the full top tax rate, and 26 American companies avoided taxation altogether over the past four years.

Some of RATE’s members do, in fact, pay a rate equal to America’s top corporate tax rate. But corporations as a whole do not, largely because they are keeping record amounts of money in offshore tax havens in countries where they barely do business at all. To top it off, many of the corporations (though not RATE specifically, according to its letter) lobbying for reform are pushing for a “territorial” tax system that would make it even easier for them to shield profits from American taxation while leading to more investment and job creation in foreign countries.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...hest-tax-rate/

MSN Money:
Today's taxes lowest in 60 years

Yes, while we demand tax cuts, we're actually paying less, as a percentage of income, than ever before. And we're doing it while soldiers are fighting.
As Republicans and Democrats continue to bicker over who should be taxed and how much, one fact rarely gets mentioned: Most Americans today pay less in federal income taxes than they have in 60 years, and far less than they have during other wars.

This is particularly true for the wealthy: By 2007, the richest 400 Americans paid an average of 16.6% in income taxes, thanks to exemptions and low capital-gains taxes, far less than the same group had paid decades ago and well below the 26.4% that group had been taxed only 15 years earlier.

Add the hit of economic turmoil, and in the past two years the federal government has collected less of the nation's income than at any time since 1950: 14.9% of gross domestic product in taxes, compared with a post-World War II average of about 18%. One percentage point today equates to about $140 billion.
http://money.msn.com/taxes/todays-ta...-60-years.aspx

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by Wasillaguy

Practically everyone agreed there was something to worry about last time, so be ready for a decade of Monday morning quarterbacking if you're wrong.

Bull twinky. It was a sales campaign dreamt up by Rumsfeld and Cheney. Where have you been? Under a rock? It was all a lie, dude. There were no WMDs in Iraq. <shakes head>

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by MikeG22

Didn't war back in the day spark the economy? What is different today besides our insanely costly military? I'm not being a smart ass as usual that's really a question.

Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and no bid contracts. It used to be called war profiteering. If they instituted a draft? All of these little wars would up a vanish like a fart in the breeze.

[MikeG22]

So companies who made products for the military would benefit from war time production contracts which in turn helped the economy. But didn't the money for the companies bid come from tax dollars which doesn't help the economy which is what we have going on today? Why was it different then? Is it just that today an airplane is hundreds of millions versus back then when it was a less sophisticated machine?

[BlueStreak]

The problem, Mike, is that now when something benefits a company....it stops right there. It doesn't necessarily benefit anyone but the shareholders and top execs, who use foreign labor to make the products, then take the loot and stash it in offshore accounts.

That is the difference between now and the 1940s and 1950s...........

Dave

[merrylander]

Originally Posted by bobabode

Bull twinky. It was a sales campaign dreamt up by Rumsfeld and Cheney. Where have you been? Under a rock? It was all a lie, dude. There were no WMDs in Iraq. <shakes head>

But at one of the sites they identified they did find a warehouse full of vacuum cleaners. I think the plan was to suck our brains out.

[merrylander]

Article in WaPo today about how all those defense contracts in the VA area involved big kickbacks. In the WW II era people were patriotic and more honest, I think that today people recognize the MIC for what it really is and just want their piece of the pie.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Article in WaPo today about how all those defense contracts in the VA area involved big kickbacks. In the WW II era people were patriotic and more honest, I think that today people recognize the MIC for what it really is and just want their piece of the pie.

It's a moneymaking machine. It's product is death and destruction. Soulless people don't care, so long as it's putting money in their pockets. The Bible warned us about this. How does that go? "...the root of all evil."? Ironically the same people who support spending hundreds of billions to support the MIC and expand the empire also claim to be Christians..........which brings me to another comment about wolves in sheeps clothing............................. But, I am sure Conservapedia has twisted the Bible around to read that America has God-given exclusive right to bloodthirsty greed.

I love Republicans that point to my loss of faith and tell me I've lost MY way. It's watching those a-holes in action, and seeing how far off the path THEY'VE gotten that has shaken whatever faith in God and humanity that I may have once had.

Dave

[MikeG22]

So it's the rich get richer nowadays...got it. That's what I figured. So wasn't say WW2 war production sort of a stimulus thing, since the companies that received the contracts made money, from tax revenue, and it worked it way down to the laborers without the top execs raping it first? This is kind of what I thought, "trickle down" worked then, but now it pools at the top and drips down every once and awhile.

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by MikeG22

So it's the rich get richer nowadays...got it. That's what I figured. So wasn't say WW2 war production sort of a stimulus thing, since the companies that received the contracts made money, from tax revenue, and it worked it way down to the laborers without the top execs raping it first? This is kind of what I thought, "trickle down" worked then, but now it pools at the top and drips down every once and awhile.

Yep. That's it exactly. Whole different labor/management/government environment. Trickle down doesn't work anymore, because we have let the mantra of selfishness and greed go too far. Now, too many people at the top see ALL of the nations wealth as theirs and the rest of us are just sucking their teets. They see us as the "47%", basically. We were a nation then, we are a plantation now. When it comes to this topic, I see the period from about 1938-39 to about the mid 1960s as Americas day in the sun.

Then a movement gained traction, in about, oh, say 1962-64, that began preaching to these folks that they are the center of the universe, the John Galts of the world and they shouldn't have to take any crap from us little people. This has been followed by union busting, outsourcing, offshoring, mass plant closings and spiraling decline ever since.

Care to guess who that is? Where is Ebacon when I need him? Calling Ebacon!

Dave