Meet The Depressed

[FOTD]

Charlie Rengel made the best observation: 'I can't believe our democracy is so fragile that people who have no answer to very serious problems will try to create animosity and hatred..."

[tshane250]

Thought this was interesting. Source

"In 2007, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 40.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.8 percent of adjusted gross income. Both of those figures—share of income and share of taxes paid—are significantly higher than they were in 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes."

"The 2007 numbers show that the top 1 percent's income and tax shares reached all-time highs for the third year in a row. That is likely to reverse direction when data from recessionary 2008 is published a year from now."

"For the first time this year, we are also presenting data on the top 0.1% of tax returns (the top 10 percent of the top 1 percent). This 10 percent of the returns in the top 1 percent amounts to only 141,000 tax returns but accounts for nearly 12 percent of the adjusted gross income earned and approximately 20 percent of the nation's federal individual income taxes. The average income for a tax return in this top 0.1 percent is $7.4 million, while the average amount of income tax paid is $1.6 million, indicating an average effective individual income tax rate of 21.5 percent. This very top income group actually has a lower average effective tax rate than the rest of the top 1 percent of returns because these extremely high-income returns are more likely to have income from capital gains and dividends, which are typically taxed at lower rates. (Note that in the case of capital gains and dividends, in most cases the income has already been taxed once by the corporate income tax, which is not included here.)"

"The IRS data also shows increases in individual incomes across all income groups (see Table 3). Just as the highest earners lost the largest percentage of their incomes during the recession of 2001, so they have prospered the most as the economy continued to rebound through 2006. For example, from 2000 to 2002, the AGI of the top 1 percent of tax returns fell by over 26 percent. In that same period, the AGI of the bottom 50 percent of tax returns actually increased by 4.3 percent. However, since 2002, as the recession has ended, AGI has more than doubled for the top 1 percent (an average of over 20 percent per year), while the bottom 50 percent of returns have seen an aggregate increase of AGI since 2002 of 24 percent."

"The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $66,532) earned 68.7 percent of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $410,096) earned approximately 22.8 percent of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns."

[Conan71]

Stay classy wealthy, brother.  Stay classy wealthy.

Stay golden Pony Boy.

[Conan71]

Charlie Rengel made the best observation: 'I can't believe our democracy is so fragile that people who have no answer to very serious problems will try to create animosity and hatred..."

"Busheviks" ?  Pot? Kettle?

[FOTD]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x355109

Rachel Maddow Got Dick Armey Fired!

She cuts him up good!

Rachel Rocks!