This will be the day that I die
We had to watch the clip several times to make sure it wasn’t the Riesling messing with us, yet it is true: on The Daily Show last week Ari Fleischer said that the problem with Barack Obama’s tax plan is that it would leave too many people paying no income tax:
Under his policy it’s about 45% of this country would no longer pay any income tax. […] You can’t have a country that’s gonna be strong if you’ve got about 45% of the country that is excused from paying income tax.
First of all, what the fuck?!? Second of all: 45% of all tax returns just gets into the range of returns that show a total income of $25,000 to $30,000. Ari didn’t say (and Stewart just moved on to capital gains taxes), but how much should someone with say, an adjusted gross income of $25,000 pay in income taxes? How does making that person pay $1,800 (average tax liability on returns with a taxable income between $25K and $30K) make the country “strong”? It’s not like there aren’t lots of other taxes paid by that person/family? Third of all: when did the Republicans become the party of let’s have more people paying taxes?!? Talk about running on empty.
Discussion question: Does the flat tax, the ultimate Republican tax dream, threaten to destroy the country by exempting millions of Americans from paying any income tax? And if Rush is right that only the rich pay taxes, haven’t we already reached the “not a strong country anymore” point?
Answer to first question: No. The country is already destroyed.
Answer to second question: see answer to question #1.
Ari Fleischer is part of my tribe, so taking him to task for flagrant inconsistency means you hate America, you America-hater you.
Liberals. Hmf.
And Jesus said unto the poor man: “Cough it up, muthafucka!@”
I really don’t know much about taxation, but I find myself wondering whenever I read glibertarians masturbating over flat taxes/fair taxes/national sales taxes whether there are any countries who have successfully implemented these options on a grand scale.
So, paying taxes makes the country strong. But paying taxes is not patriotic. Ergo, making the country strong is not patriotic.
You can’t argue with that kind of logic. By which I mean you shouldn’t try because you’re clearly arguing with a crazy person.
Uhm, I think that’s REPUBLICAN Jebus
Every time I see Ari’s broad seascape of a forehead, and hear his subtle, winsome voice, I feel like stepping on small, defenseless animals.
Because I so much hate America.
Not that Wikipedia is definitive or anything, but…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Around_the_world
This is why we can never have good things.
Ah, Flieschie, that detestable little shit. My favorite take on him was from the Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002. To wit,
I only recently changed my Fark handle from rosemary’s steamer.
He really was the beginning of a certain “Yes, we’re lying. Fuck you. You think you’re going to do something about it” mentality that has pervaded the entire Bush administration. Scotty would never have been able to handle a press corps fresh from being used to wailing on Clinton without Ari having softened them up with a sockful of oranges first.
He is truly among the worst of the worst. I can’t really think up a properly ironic sentence for his crimes.
Doesn’t “45% of this country” include, you know, toddlers, prisoners, etc?
I don’t know about this 45%, but apparently there’s an even bigger, more lucrative revenue group that really doesn’t pay any federal income taxes:
Study says most corporations pay no U.S. income taxes
Somebody tell Rush ‘n Ari.
Off topic, but equally vomit-worthy,
Sarah Palin considers herself intellectual.
Excuse me?
I do not think that word means what you think it means…
Ari Fleischer? ARI FLEISCHER? I thought we were finished with him. Can’t it be Ari Gold, at least? Talk about yesterday’s man. Please.
Ooohh, a reference to The Beast. That, Artvoice, and Ani DiFranco are probably the only good things to come from Buffalo. My sympathies to anyone still living there.
It’s not like there aren’t lots of other taxes paid by that person/family?
Such as income tax.
What Ari conveniently neglected to mention was that the McCain tax plan would leave nearly 44% of income tax filers paying nothing (i.e., just slightly less than the Obama plan). Source is Steve Hodge of the Tax Foundation and Teh Heartland Institootle.
Of course, the difference is that Obama plans to make up the difference by taxing the shit out of every rich muthafucka whereas McCain will give the rich further tax breaks and borrow the difference from China using the future slave labor of the grand-children of the soon-to-be-destroyed US middle-class as collateral.
the flat tax, the ultimate Republican tax dream
Ultimate? A flat tax is insufficiently regressive. There is still the theory that the lower your income, the more of it you should pay in tax. This policy would provide a incentive to become wealthier, which a large number of people evidently lack (as shown by the way they stubbornly remain poor).
Possibly the only thing stopping Republicans from promoting this policy is the fear of copyright suits from the Goodies, who thought of it first.
Please god tell me you will be mocking this later:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=48009e42-978b-4535-8f03-a6bcad5ca10d
I don’t really look to Ari Fleischer for informed commentary on tax policy.
On the other hand, if I ever wanted to make the top of my head look like a glowing pink billiard ball, Fleischer’s input would be invaluable.
the only good things to come from Buffalo.
Umm, Wings? Four failed trips to the Superbowl? OJ Simpson?
Comedy Gold, I tell ya!
Actually, there was this woman from Buffalo who I knew back in my A2 days. She went back home and organized a large protest of laws that discriminated against women going shirtless in public while allowing men to do so. She even sent me pictures.
So, on balance . . .
Flat taxes have only really been implemented in places where there is generally no fucking hope of getting people to pay their taxes at all. The US virtually has a flat tax system already, because the very rich evade so much taxation they pay a similar percentage rate as the working class. The middle class? Oh, they are fucked.
In theory, even a person who does not pay income tax contributes to the tax coffers. Even if they do not pay property tax, or even sales tax on the crap they buy, everything they buy comes from a company that pays taxes, and their purchase increases the taxable income of the company.
Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily be the case in the USA, where many corporations either pay no taxes, or are effectively taxpayer subsidised.
via dadanarchist:
Pardon for the caveat, but that’s my MO. I’m a little confused with what I see as the current definition of paying income taxes.
You see, in my life, I’ve grossed less than 23,000. Granted that was 30+ years ago, when not everyone was making 250,000 per year. However, I had federal taxes withdrawn from each of my paychecks. Is that what everyone is referring to a payroll taxes? ‘Cause payroll taxes/withholding tax, according to Wikipedia (with attending caveat) , include federal income tax and FICA.
Are they defining “income tax” as additional to the withholding tax one has already paid per paycheck, i.e., your underpayment? Because, I’ve never in my life gotten a refund that equaled the federal tax withheld from my paychecks, so I consider myself having paid income tax.
If the new definition of income tax is the additional amount some have to pay when submitting their income tax forms, that seems rather a sleight of hand.
…I find myself wondering whenever I read glibertarians masturbating over flat taxes/fair taxes/national sales taxes whether there are any countries who have successfully implemented these options on a grand scale.
There’s sort of an example close to home for me – the Mormon church tithe of 10%. Which is not compulsory, but it’s referred to as “fire insurance” by some, if you get the drift. The tithe is, I think, why a lot of Utahns are furiously opposed to pretty much any government tax – 10% is already coming out of their pocket – and why support for the flat tax is so pervasive here. Though every time I’ve asked someone here why they support the flat tax, their entire explanation is “It’s more fair. Everybody pays the same.”
I’ve gotten a couple people to think hard about it by explaining the basics of progressive taxation (i.e., a guy making $1,000,000 a year can afford to live on half of that just fine, but a guy making $10,000 a year can’t live on half of that). This stuff really should be in civics classes.
Sarah Palin considers herself intellectual.
She wears glasses. Is there more to it than that?
Hi guys, I’ve been very busy with my research lately, which is why I haven’t posted here in a while.
But here’s something you all should know, something that might further persuade you that there is something to these Bigfoot sightings. Reports of hairy bipedal hominids are not unique to North America. There are reports of hairy bipeds from every continent except Antarctica.
In addition to the Sasquatch of North America, there is also the Yeti of the Himalayas, the Yowie of Australia, the Yeren of China, the Alma of Central Asia and the Wildman of Europe, to name just a few of many.
Now it would be one thing to say that large bipedal apes of the gigantipithecus variety don’t exist if the reports were only coming out of the Pacific Northwest. But it is an entirely different story to dismiss these reports as hallucinations or mere fabrications, since these creatures have been reported all over the world, in some cases for thousands of years.
Not everyone is lying, and not everyone is just seeing things. These are people from completely different cultures, who speak completely different languages, who live on different continents, and in most cases never had the opportunity to communicate with one another for most of their history.
Think about it 1000 years ago, how would a Tibetan Yak herder have been able to communicate with an American Indian to swap stories? They wouldn’t of. And yet both peoples completely isolated from each other have reported very similar creatures for hundreds, even thousands of years. Coincidence? I think not my friends.
I saw a hairy bipedal homind!
In the bathroom mirror.
I saw a hairy bipedal homind! In the bathroom mirror.
My apologies.
I strongly advocate going back to the sort of tax structure utilized by the Old Regime in France, complete with tax farmers and the corvée. It generated plenty of popular enthusiasm.
I read that as Hairy bipedal Hovind.
I think in bizarro flat tax world only income is taxed the same across the board. Capital gains is not income, so it is taxed at a much lower rate. So if they want to tax income including the all profits (capital gains) at a flat rate, than I think there will not be many trust fund babies thinking it is a good idea. When people work, tax them. When money works give em a break.
In what?
In what?
Sorry, I keep forgetting not to assume everybody knows about stuff that only exists in my dreams.
Civics class is now called shop and its text is import tuner.
About 2 minutes with the census data would reveal that 36% of the population over 16% of the population over 16 years of age is not in the labor force and that about 25% of the population is under 18 (they do not record the precentage under 16, but it is most certainly more than 6% of the population). If you are not in the labor force, which includes everyone under 14 and most under 16, you do not pay income taxes because you do not have any fucking income. Idiots.
OK. That came out somewhat incoherent, but the point is that far more than 45% of the country have no income so pay no income tax. Even if you only count those likely to be in the workforce (those over 16), 36% are not in the workforce. This is a really stupid and misleading statistic.
Yeah, that’s what America needs now: a Flat Tax!
Then it can finally take its rightful place among all the OTHER economic powerhouses – Lithuania, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Mauritius, Slovakia … uh, Guernsey … Mongolia … uh, wait …
Bye bye, my Phat Slice of the Pie
Barry’s a heavy, he raised the levy
By 3 percent, I could cry
My CPA’s where looking for loopholes to try
Singing <insert post title here>
Even my daughter, who is only 15 and has no income other than what I give her pays tax. Try buying something a 15 year old girl wants without paying tax. She may not pay income tax but there are plenty of other taxes floating around.
Try buying something a 15 year old girl wants without paying tax.
That pony tax is horrific even after the Republican cuts.
I just looked up “pony tack”, and the prices just for the singular form were bad enough.
Okay. I have no idea how I missed this the first scan through the “Sarah as Intellectual” article, but there it is…
Doesn’t that actually show up in the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator somewhere?
Try buying something a 15 year old girl wants without paying tax.
What about black market Fall Out Boy tickets?
Fleischer is correct IF 45% of Americans make 10,000 or less. I know ’cause some years I’ve made under 10k and gotten all my taxes back. The income gap has increased, wages are stagnating, etc. Anyone know 45% of Americans make 10k or less? I don’t think it’s that bad but I’m curious.
the only good things to come from Buffalo.
Umm, Wings? Four failed trips to the Superbowl? OJ Simpson?
Buffalo: Canadian winters, American government. ‘Nuff said.
Um, I think that Buffalo has five failed superbowl trips.
“Third of all: when did the Republicans become the party of let’s have more people paying taxes?!?”
Actually, Republicans are only for cutting taxes on the rich. In fact, I have actually heard at least one Republican (I think it was Norquist, but I’m not sure) once say that it was GOP policy to *raise* taxes on the poor and middle, so as to increase anti-tax sentiment among the non-rich, which would ultimately result in cutting taxes on the rich.
This is why you never hear the GOP talk about cutting Social Security taxes. Cutting *benefits*, yes; but not SS taxes, which are grotesquely regressive.