House votes to extend tax cuts

[OK Jeanne]

tax cuts, that is, for capital gains and dividends.....here's a couple
of cartoons that sum up the fact that our middle class seems to
be disappearing & the usa is looking more and more like a 3d
world country of rich&poor with little inbetween.

 

[Faster horses]

Are you inferring that a capital gains tax cut would only benefit the rich?

Guess again.

I read a real good article in Readers Digest about some folks that bought a house to fix up. They worked on it themselves. They did business with a variety of retail businesses. Spent a lot of money on what they needed. When they got done and sold the house, because of the capital gains they had to pay, they didn't make $3/hour working on that house. Said they would never do that again.

Capital gains tax stifles growth. The less of it, the better.

Here in Montana at one time we paid 11% and Federal was 28%. That is 39% in capital gains tax. Horrible!!!!!!

Now I think Montana is 7%. Federal has been reduced to 20%, thank you GWB. But it is still too high. Any reduction will help growth and expansion in this country.

 

[jodywy]

Think of it this way: less than four dollars out of every $100 paid in income taxes in the United States is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of wage earners. Are the top half millionaires? Noooo, more like "thousandaires." The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $26,000 and up in 1999. (The top 1% earned $293,000-plus.) Americans who want to are continuing to improve their lives - and those who don't want to, aren't. Here are the wage earners in each category and the percentages they pay:

Top 5% pay 53.25% of all income taxes (Down from 2000 figure: 56.47%). The top 10% pay 64.89% (Down from 2000 figure: 67.33%). The top 25% pay 82.9% (Down from 2000 figure: 84.01%). The top 50% pay 96.03% (Down from 2000 figure: 96.09%). The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.97% of all income taxes. The top 1% is paying more than ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 50%! And who earns what? The top 1% earns 17.53 (2000: 20.81%) of all income. The top 5% earns 31.99 (2000: 35.30%). The top 10% earns 43.11% (2000: 46.01%); the top 25% earns 65.23% (2000: 67.15%), and the top 50% earns 86.19% (2000: 87.01%) of all the income.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/top_50__of_wage_earners_pay_96_09__of_income_taxes.guest.html

 

[Disagreeable]

And what's really funny is when you guys complain and scream about Theresa Heinz Kerry only paying a small amount of taxes even tho she's rich. As if George W. Bush wasn't doing the most he can do to make her not have to pay any taxes at all!

That's where this is going. The rich, many who never worked a day in their life, who earn most of their money off investments left to them by their parents or grandparentswill pay less and less taxes. But they'll drive on the roads and be as protected by our police, Army, fire depts, as the rest of us. Who'll make up the difference? And it does cost a lot of money to keep a standing Army, our roads in good condition, etc. The working people in this country will make up the difference.

We can already see the effect of the first tax cuts in the Federal deficit that continues to grow. Where are the benefits to the economy? GM laid off thousands of workers, Ford will likely lay off thousands of workers, as the housing market slumps, that's thousands more that will likely draw unemployment.