Relentless focus on the Income tax alone is a complete distortion of the total tax picture. So are the ridiculous excuses about 47% not paying income tax when that was part of the goal of the Republicans who cut the taxes in 2001 and 2003 – to remove people from the income tax roles through higher exemptions, deductions, and credits.

I think many of us really enjoy “train pornography.”

General taxes (property, sales), paid by all earners (rises w/income) pay for the basic purpose of government—protection (military, police, fire, courts, laws, etc.) for all.

That’s roughly ? (almost $2 trill) of all gov spending . About another ? goes to a very small % of end-users, including public transit, handling <2% of all passenger-miles (<5% of commuter trips).
Is it fair & just to tax the masses for the benefit of so few?

Compare to roads (85%+ of adults driving), primarily (~80%) paid for by user-based taxes. An additional 50¢/gallon could roughly fund all road spending; $1/gallon for much expansion & improvement (get rid of the inefficient, unfair, dangerous & unworthile HOVs).

The rich are demonized & falsely accused of paying little, & that they should pay more.
For federal income taxes, the lower 47% of filers pay zero.
Filers above $100,000, top 12.4%, paid 74.7%, in 2009 (source: IRS).
Filers above $500,000, top 0.52%, paid 30% of the total. If their effective tax rates were doubled (ceteris paribus—doesn’t happen—money behavior changes), that would pay for only 2 months of the deficit.

P.S. Great idea to do the train blog page. Please don’t stop posting occasional train photos here too.

I changed the settings so now you can register and log in to post comments. Thanks for letting me know this option was missing.

Antiplanner

Scanned this for you, it’s a pic I took back in 1984, when the 4449 was being rebuilt in a yard north of Albany.

http://tenmileisland.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post.html