The Truth About Taxes
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Yep, the truth about taxes. I recently did a bit on taxing the rich. And yeah, we’ve talked about Social Security and Medicare, the problems with our debt and budget deficits, and the fact that both parties are nowhere when it comes to all of these problems that we have. Anyway, what’s the solution? What’s the solution?
Solution by the people on the left the Bidenites out there and the Marxist of course is tax the rich But it’s disingenuous and it’s bs quite frankly and they know it They know it no it’s there to It’s you know, I guess excite the ignorant masses And the people out there that don’t pay much at all Or pay nothing quite frankly um
Let’s take a look, Shelby. There was Brian Rytle from the Manhattan Institute did a study on taxes right now. And I did it as well. If you were to take every dollar, every dollar of income, again, you know, there’s some of these guys like Bernie Sanders talk about that. You should only be allowed to make so much money. So if you were to take every dollar of income earned over $500,000 in the United States.
it wouldn’t balance the budget. But to say that again, to all you left wing lunatics out there, you were to limit, they had an income, you couldn’t make any more than a half a million dollars a year. Man, that would decimate the NFL, wouldn’t it? I mean, who in the world would play that sport and get killed for that? Anyway, yep, anything over $500,000 a year, you’d have to turn in to Uncle Sam.
That wouldn’t be enough to balance our budget. If you were to go out and liquidate, steal, take it all, every dollar of every billionaire in the country, all of their wealth, that would fund the government for nine months.
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That’s it. So again, take a look, the Congressional Budget Office, which already exceeds 7% of GDP. It’s gonna surpass 10% within the next three decades. What are you gonna do? I know, we always get the tax rich, tax rich, pay their fair share. Well, you know, let’s take a look at the numbers, shall we?
The United States tax code is the most progressive of the 38, out of all the 38 countries in the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development. We tax the wealthy here in the United States at the same rates as they do in Europe. Now, the middle class here in the United States, they get taxed considerably lower.
than they do in Europe and these other OECD countries. The top, the top 5%, top 5% of income here in the United States, that’s CBO. And again, that’s around, you figure around $340,000 a year. That accounts for 58% of all income in the United States. Okay?
Top 5% counts for 50% of all income in the United States. They paid 69% of all federal taxes and 90% of all income taxes as a percentage. Again, if you were basing on all the federal taxes, okay, 69%, 90% of all income taxes was paid by the top 20%.
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You’re getting that? You’re following along here? The top earning 1%, okay, the evil 1%ers out there. They make 18% of all income in the United States. They, but the top 1% paid 40% of all income taxes. Now the bottom earning 60% earned 23% of income, but paid 13%.
of federal taxes and you got the bottom 40% actually because of tax, you know, deals and whatnot and refundable tax credits actually were a negative 6.4%. So they got money. They didn’t pay taxes, they actually received money. Negative 6.4%. The bottom 40% of this country paid negative
6.4% of taxes here in the United States. Now again, you people wonder why, well, how are you saying that? So, you know, we’re higher taxes than the OECD countries. How come they’re collecting more taxes in terms of their overall GDP? That’s because these countries have a value added tax, which is a tax on basically at every stage of production or service of a good.
We don’t have that here in the United States. That tax would get everybody. That tax would get everybody across the board. And again, it would be another smack upside the head. But I mentioned a truth about taxes, because again, nobody wants to, the lefties don’t wanna believe that. They don’t think that, oh yeah, all we need to do is to spend $80 billion at the IRS and.
everything’s gonna be hunky dory and we’re gonna make ends meet, which is not the case. Took me back, popped in my head and I pulled it up. And this is a column that I did almost 21 years ago. This is February 2003. I wrote this. Again, every single time I look at these numbers and I start dating myself in decades, I’m like, jeesh, I’m getting old.
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You’re starting to become, you know, as you get up in age, you start to be a little bit more self-aware. Now back then I was, yeah, I did a little bit of TV, not much, it was mostly just radio and radio appearances. Now I’m doing, you know, the video podcasts every single day and I got to look at my ugly mug every single day and I said, damn, I’m getting old. Anyway, truth about taxes. So I put this together, put this together, this is again, think about the tax code from 2000.
and I tried to make tax cuts and taxes in terms that everybody could understand. And how I did it was this. I said, let’s pretend we’re going to go to the neighborhood of Watchdog on Wall Street, Make Believe. Ten people go out to dinner every night. Now again, there’s a lot of Make Believe here. I’m just rounding numbers around. Ten guys go out to dinner every single night.
The bill for the 10, they got an arrangement. They got an arrangement with the restaurant owner. It’s kind of like a prefix. Comes in at $100. And what we did was we said, hey, you know what? We’re gonna break up this bill that the 10 men pay every single day with the way that taxes are calculated. And again, this is going back to 2003’s tax code. So, again, not far off from where we’re at today.
actually, it’s almost the same. First four men, first four men out of the 10, the poorest out of the 10, they’re paying nothing. paying nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay three, the seventh would pay seven, the eighth man would pay 12. The ninth man would pay 18. Now the 10th man, the richest man of them all, he has to chip in $59.
of that bill every single night. And that’s what they decided to do. They go to the restaurant, they eat there every day and they deal with the arrangement and it is what it is. Until one day the owner of the restaurant throws the 10 man a curve ball. Wait a second, he says, you guys are such great customers. You’re coming in here every single night. I tell you what I’m gonna do. I said, I’m gonna reduce your bill by 20 bucks.
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20 bucks. So now their bill for the 10 men is now $80. Now they still wanted to pay the bill the you know, the same way that you know that they were before the same percentage of way they’re paying taxes. So again, the first four men, they weren’t paying anything, they’re unaffected, they’re still eating for free. But what about the other six? How do you divvy up that $20? You know, they left these to windfall taxes.
How do you divvy up that $20 windfall so everybody could get their fair share? So the six men realized that, now it’s, man, 20 divided by six, $3.33. You subtract that from everybody’s share. That’s not gonna work. The fifth and sixth men would end up being paid to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested he would reduce
each man’s bill roughly by the same amount. And he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. So now the fifth man who was paying a buck is paying nothing. The sixth man was paying three is now paying two. The seventh man was paying seven is now paying five. The eighth man who was paying 12 is now paying nine. The ninth man was paying 18 is now paying 12, leaving the 10th man who was paying 59
He’s now paying $52. Every person at the table was better off than they were before, except the first four are the same. They weren’t paying anyway. But what happened outside the restaurant?
that bill. Again, get human nature. The men started comparing their savings. I only got a dollar out of the 20, said the sixth man. Pointed to the rich guy. Yeah, he got seven. That’s right. That’s right, said the fifth man. I only saved a dollar to it’s unfair. He got seven times more than me.
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Yeah, said the seventh man, why should he get $7 back when I only got $2? The wealthy, they get all the breaks. Wait a minute, said the first four men who never paid a dime in unison. We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor.
and the nine men surrounded the tenth man and they beat him up.
Next night he didn’t show up for dinner and the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time, obviously to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They were $52 short. That my friends is the truth about taxes. I know, I know some of you out there were horse blinders on, difficult pill for you to swallow, but it is what it is. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
