Why do Liberals insist that President Bush's tax cuts only helped the wealthy?

Question

Income taxes are more progressive under Bush than they were under Clinton!!!

2000: Top 1% earned 17.8% of national income, and paid 36.5% of income taxes. The bottom 80% earned 45.7% of national income and paid 18.7% of income taxes.

Now fast forward.

2004: Top 1% earned 16.3% and paid 36.7%. The bottom 80% earned 47.3% and paid 14.7%.

For a quick recap for those who couldn't keep up, "the rich" are earning a smaller share of national income, yet paying more in taxes, whereas "the poor" (the bottom 80%) are earning a larger share of national income, yet paying a smaller share of taxes.

Anyone who argues that Bush's tax cuts helped only the rich have absolutely zero credibility.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/2120.html

Also consider:
"According to the Tax Foundation, the number of non-payers, taxpayers who either have no income tax liability or have none after taking advantage of all the credits and deductions available, has increased significantly since 2000. In 2000 the Tax Foundation estimates that about 30 million tax returns had no liability, but by 2004 that figure had grown to 42 million."

Cassie: OK. Then provide me statistics that refute what I have posted here. Until you can do that, your answer is just a cop-out.

Wow Judy! So more than half of our population is starving???? What are we going to do???

Are you all there?

B.Kirvorkian: Buy more stock.

g: Are you kidding? Where did you learn math? The top 20% is simply 100% - the bottom 80%.....

Here, I will spell it out. In 2000, the top 20% earned 54.3% of the income, and paid 81.2% of the taxes. In 2004, they earned 52.7% of the national income, yet paid 85.3% of the taxes. It tells the exact same story: the tax cuts made taxes more progressive, contrary to liberal propaganda.

And yes it is a blog, but the site is the Tax Foundation, which reports only numbers. If you think it is inaccurate, why don’t you check?

Answer 1

This is an easy one. The left does not see the tax code as a way to raise money, instead they see the tax code as a tool for social change. If given an opportunity the left would impose limits on income and use the confiscatory power of a tax code they would write that would produce 100% taxation at a certain point. This same tax code would eliminate all corporate profit, any dividends income, tax personal property and accumulated wealth, and send payments to people without incomes. Of course certain exemptions would be written in to this code so that the people and causes liberals approve of would not be held to the same tax rates as the rest of us. Most people think taxes are all about collecting the money needed to provide funding for what the government is responsible for. Liberals know better, for them taxes are a weapon to be used against those they see as opposed to their agenda

Answer 2

Uh, i don't know anyone who says that Bush's tax cuts ONLY benefited the wealthy. Issues with Bush are mostly related to the fact that while he cut taxes ( cutting Government revenue by an estimated 2.6 Billion over his term) he dramatically increased Government Spending ( most notably with 2 foreign wars). The GOvernment then had to borrow heavily to make up for the shortfall in revenue. Former President Bush also deregulated a number of areas of the economy, including the Financial Sector and the Oil industry ( admittedly he was merely following his predecessor, who also had a policy of deregulation) , but that deregulation led to a lack of oversight that allowed at least in part a collapse of economy, which had a ripple effect, causing instability in economies around the World.

Answer 3

There are a few different points of unclarity to keep in mind here:

1. A .02% difference in the percentage of taxes paid by the top income percentile is negligible. These data are based on statistical samples (the Current Population Study and the Statistics of Income, according to the 2003-2004 document), not exhaustive lists of the finances of everyone in America. I highly doubt that the difference is statistically significant.

2. More importantly, it is highly misleading to use the CBO's measure of income and then talk about the individual income tax numbers as if they were all the taxes paid. "Individual income tax" does not include social insurance taxes, corporate taxes, or excise taxes, but the income data are calculated by including the individual's share of those taxes as part of their total income. In other words, people are given credit for income that they would not generally consider their money. It's comparing apples to oranges; if you're using these income figures, you should look at the total tax liability, not just the individual income taxes paid, and that tells a different story: In 2000, the top percentile paid 25.6 of all taxes collected by the federal government, but in 2004 the top percentile paid only 22.9%.

3. Another issue to keep in mind is that the percentile rankings are not based on the raw dollar amount coming into a household. They are weighted for household size by dividing the income by the square root of household members, which makes things slightly less intuitive than they might otherwise be, particularly with respect to information about things like shares of the total income for all Americans. One household might have contributed more than another to the total income for the country, but be lower on the income ranking because more people live there.

4. It is misleading to say that " 'the rich' are...paying more in taxes." Irrespective of the share of total taxes paid, everyone across the board is paying less in taxes than they were seven years ago. In 2000, the top one percent paid 33.2% of their income in taxes, but in 2004 they paid only 31.7%. The top quintile (that is, the top 20% of the population) had a 28% tax rate in 2000, and that fell to 25%. Everyone, including the rich, is keeping more of their money.

Lastly, the insinuation that people argue that Bush's tax cuts "helped only the rich" is something of a straw man. There aren't many people who really think this, but there are plenty of people who argue with good reason that the tax cuts are most beneficial to the rich and that they place undue burden on the middle class.

The blog post doesn't link to the report from which it gets it's 2000 data, but I have included it in my sources for anyone else who wants to bypass someone else's analysis and go straight to the data.

Answer 4

If you forget the tax cuts have no funding due to Dubya's budget defecit of 4 Trillion, 11 billion before 9/11, somebody is going to have to pay for these tax cuts and it won't be Bush or his millionaire buddies, long term his tax cuts have a false benefit to everyone but the upper class, and they are currently inflationary to people living on low or fixed incomes, we're supposed to be fighting a war in the middle east and Bush wants to run a butter rather than guns economy and he has never been able to run either one competently.

Answer 5

This is simple.

Liberals & Democrats love big government, love taxation and love redistributing wealth through the tax code.

Liberals & Democrats believe in equality over liberty & freedom. They want everyone to be economically equal even if that means we are all poor. In their minds it is better we are all poor than have a society where some achieve more than others.

It is a pathetic and morally bankrupt train of thought that needs to be extinguished.

Answer 6

the numbers are bias, due to the fact they only take into account the TOP 1 PERCENT... GO TO THE TOP 20 PERCENT AND TA-DA your argument falls appart...

ever wonder why your cite leaves out that other 19 PERCENT OF the top 20 percent of AMERICANS? because it destroys their AND YOUR arugment...

where are the rest of the numbers?

and adding that onto the fact that it's a BLOG, pretty much GIVES YOU ZERO CREDIBILITY...

blogs make wikipedia look factual

and then there are sites like this, with information like this... seems a bit bias to me... but no less than your cite...
http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2004/ShiftyTaxCuts_pr.html

Answer 7

The Bush tax cut on dividends saved me a staggering $34 this year.

Answer 8

Because they don't actually look into the accusations. They say it's "fact", when it isn't. It's really scary actually how foolish peope can be. You boost the economy by boost middle class spending by middle class tax cuts. Which Bush did, and got us out of the slupting Clinton economy. Yet they choose not believe that.

Answer 9

Because it helps them politically. It makes Americans "feel" the class envy we all have.

Here are some more facts to support our side.

http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=150856,00.html

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

Answer 10

Your last statement just means the that extra 12 million have fallen below the poverty line. i wouldn't be bragging about that if I were you. 42 million adults living below the poverty line means at least 3 times that many children. So, that's 160 million people who don't get enough to eat or good health care in your so-called best country in the world! That's as many as half the population of Canada!