From Ike to Obama: What Wealthy Earners Pay in Taxes

usamamasan1

No. You have the above confused with what Al Gore did in his charts for "an inconvenient truth"
:-)

mikepegg44

Go Beavers wrote:

I'm not an economist, but I play one on AMT. Therefore, isn't what's being charted in the two graphs boom and bust cycles, and then sticking lines over the top in an attempted to say the correlation is causation?

I said what I think of graphs before. not always a great measure.

But i can tell you that an increase in tax rates does not necessarily result in an increase in revenue. If you have low capital gains realizations, you can tax 100% of them and get less than if higher returns are being realized and only tax them at 75%. The lull then spike that occurs after a drop in rates is certainly predictable however...Money made on capital gains is generally money that has already been taxed at an income rate unless you are lucky or skilled enough to live off of capital gains only. I don't really care that it is taxed twice, but it shouldn't be taxed at the same rate both times.
If you don't revamp the entire tax code and just fluctuate rates, all you ever do is appease masses and still allow those that know how to game the system a way out of paying more.

again...can you honestly tell me that ~ 2.2 to 2.5 trillion is not enough?