goijewat

If we raise the income tax rate on the wealthy they will be paying a larger amount on these dividends, which even you must admit is a large source of their wealth. Money generates money. So using your Bill Clinton example, say Bill makes $20M on a book deal. By raisning his income tax you deny him a large portion of his advancment for the book but also you tax any income he earns after he invests the fee.

I guess I don’t understand what you mean by principal and wealth as most wealth today is not held in land but in portfolios.
How would you tax “wealth.”
Ironically, the estate tax is considered a tax that reduces wealth in that it deprives one’s heirs of a large portion of the capital that maintained the decedent’s wealth in life.

Also, given the size and location of the Clinton’s home, I am quite sure they pay property taxes that come close to $17,000. That is a drop in the bucket.

REDUCING TAX RATES DOES NOT NECESSARILY INCREASE REVENUES!!!!!!!!

From Andrew Samwick (responding to Bush’s claims that his tax cuts spawned record revenues):

You are smart people. You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues. We all agree that the ultimate reduction in tax revenues can be less than this first order effect, because lower tax rates encourage greater economic activity and thus expand the tax base. No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one.

Just so you know… Mr. Samwick is the former Chief Economist on Bush’s Council of Economic advisers (2003-2004).

That statement leads me to another thing that I wanted to point out…

CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION!!!!!

Honestly, anyone who sticks their thumb up their ass and extols the infinite virtue of indefinitely lowering tax rates (considering most sane economists put us on the left side of the Laffer Curve) is an idiot either by accident or on purpose…

But even a capital gains tax really amounts to nothing more than a tax on income. If I invest a million dollars and make 100,000 off it, the tax will be on the 100,000 I made – my million is safe from the tax man. Move that capital gains tax up to 35%…I’ll still have 65,000 more than I started with and that on top of a million dollars.

If you on the left want to tax the rich, as you say you do, then you simply MUST demand a tax on wealth…and if you make such a demand, you’ll find out mighty quick how two-faced your liberal heros are on the subject…Democrat leaders are all in favor of a tax on income, including capital gains income, but don’t you even think about eating into Ted or Hillary’s principal…oh, no; none of that. You see, Democrat leaders feel they are entitled to remain just as rich as they are now, because they deserve that sort of life style because they care about the poor, and they prove it by increases in taxes on “the rich”…except for themselves.

You ignore that most Democrats want to raise the capital gains tax. (Obama and Edwards for example) The wealthy of this country obtain most of their money from captial gains through investment. This includes Buffet and Clinton. The “money in the bank” is not in the bank but in the stock market and is being taxed at 15% thanks to Republicans, primarily Reagan.

If you actually listened to what Buffet said you would understand know this. His complaint is that he is charged at a lower rate than his employees. He doesn’t have an income, he earns money through dividends and increases in the value of his stock portfolio.

You’re not understanding what I’m saying…man, this gets frustrating: I’m trying to tell you that the class warfare “tax the rich” stuff is a bogus dodge by rich Democrats to get liberals and leftists to support them.