How so? If I shouldn't rely on statistical evidence (e.g. "percentages"), on what should I better rely?

One of Republicans' favorite lies -- delusions? -- is that Americans are burdened with the weight of one of the world's highest tax rates. Not surprisingly, that couldn't be further from the truth. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice shows that in 2010, the United States collected less in taxes (as a percentage of GDP) than all but two industrialized nations that make up the Organization for Economic Development. Only Mexico and Chile collect less in taxes.

According to The Think Progress Blog, the U.S. share of taxes may have increased slightly, as the fiscal cliff deal restored Clinton-era tax rates on incomes over $450,000. However, that modest increase isn't enough to move our nation up on the OECD taxation list, and it still leaves us far below the average.

This report comes just one day before the President officially releases his new budget proposal, which will likely include additional cuts to our social safety net, in exchange for very modest tax increases. This means that once again, our nation will ask those in the lowest income brackets to bear the brunt of spending cuts, while millionaires and billionaires aren't asked to contribute much at all. This is simply unacceptable.

We should _not_ be implementing more Republican austerity -- we should be asking those who can afford it to help invest in our nation (to the extent that they once did), to help us with our struggling economy. In fact, we shouldn't be asking them to, we should be demanding it. The super-rich shouldn't be allowed to hoard cash by the billions -- as multitudes of the poorest among us are asked to sacrifice, so as to pay for the shortfall that arises from historically low taxes on the rich.

We can start this process by significantly stepping up the taxes on all individual income that exceeds $1 billion dollars. Find out how at www.NoBillionaries.com.

-- Thom Hartmann

>How so? If I shouldn't rely on statistical evidence (e.g. "percentages"), on what should I better rely?<

I said your reliance on percentages is faulty. You tend to accept them without examining their metrics.

So examine some of those metrics for us, and show us how that
should/would change my beliefs or contentions.  Or are you just
talking through your hat again?

It's your responsibility. I've point the way time and again. You refuse to even try.

For example, over the last 53 years, tax revenue from individuals has averaged 46% and tax revenue from corporations has averaged 13% of the total revenue collected. Over the last 43 years, 47% and 11%.

Over the last 20 years, 45% and 10%.

There just isn't enough swing over time for you to make such a huff over corporate taxes. Especially since the revenue from individuals, which includes tax pass throughs from LLCs, S-Corps, and partnerships, are used to business owners advantage. You're probably barking up the wrong tree, actually. You should be going after the businessman who plays with LLCs and S-corps. But you wouldn't know there's a potential problem with that group because Thom Thumb hasn't figured it out for you yet.

Your stats are completely bogus.  I suspect you made them up.

They are 100% on the mark and I've linked the source for you several times. You can even download the data and play with it in a spreadsheet if you know how to use one.

You're lazy Richard, relying on clowns like Thom to spoon feed you emotional bits of decay breeding plaque.

Some people in this Cafe are nothing more than propaganda artists who have no respect for the truth. I suspect you are the leader in this pack. I have presented evidence many times that taxes on corporations and the rich have been falling for decades, and if you chose to ignore that evidence and make up false claims, I have better things to do than try very hard to stop you.

I've just proven you wrong with government data. You are attacking corporations without critical review of the smoke blown up your skirt by the likes of Thom. Find the breakdown of the 43+ percent of the individual tax number and maybe you'll see the ones needing a review are the guys with S-Corps and LLCs spanking the system.

>Some people in this Cafe are nothing more than propaganda artists who have no respect for the truth.<

Look in the mirror if you want to see one.

We'll have to agree to disagree about that and a few other things.

"Some people in this Cafe are nothing more than propaganda artists who
have no respect for the truth."

Odd sort of statement.

When all men see different truths how can compromise succeed?

sometimes it can't.

Republicans like Rush Limbaugh, all trapped in (and blinded by) their ideology, seem to have a hard time understanding the means by which ever more CO2 in the atmosphere must necessarily cause global warming. In 20 seconds, and not very many more words, a real scientist explains the facts to Rush and to you:

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCYQowvhQVI&feature=youtu.be"

And guess what it is, Republican dunces, that causes ever more CO2 to be added to the upper atmosphere. It's hyper-production and hyper consumption, especially of fossil fuels.

I suggest that

"we disagree"

works.

"propaganda artists who
have no respect for the truth"

does nothing to strengthen your POV.

I know you are not alone in using these tactics and I don't intend to
pick on you particularly but there is no neutral audience to convince.

Of course I have no intention of stopping any of this if its vital to
participation but still....

I don't mind being picked on.' Really. One professor in particular used to browbeat me unmercifully for taking views contrary to his. Secretly I loved it. It made me feel special. Especially since I knew he was wrong and I was right.

More than 17% of large corporations were audited in 2012. Meanwhile, audit rates for individuals fell to 5.3%.

Corporations don't receive nearly the auditing attention that they deserve. According to a new report from U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 83 of the nation's 100 largest publicly traded corporations take advantage of these so called tax havens, costing the country billions in lost revenue. "Tax dodging is not a victimless offense," says U.S. PIRG analyst Dan Smith. "When companies use accounting gimmicks to move their profits to tax haven shell companies, the rest of us have to pick up the tab."

The consumer group's report, entitled "Picking up the Tab 2013," estimates "tax haven abuse costs the United States approximately $150 billion in tax revenues every year." That amounts to an average of $1,026 per taxpayer and $3,067 for small businesses, which typically cannot afford to use accounting tricks and may face a competitive disadvantage as a result.

"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57577914/report-big-business-no-stranger-to-offshore-tax-havens/"

The Tax Justice Network has just released a report estimating that the world's tax havens house anywhere from $21 trillion to $32 trillion in money that governments cannot tax.

http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=148

Richard, did you even read the report from TJN? It's a pile of "data" based on puff. This is one of the worst references you've ever put forth. What a crock of crap.

The Ignorance Of The Tax Justice Network

You may have heard of the Tax Justice Network. A small group of self- appointed experts who are insistent that really, the rich must pay lots more money in taxes. So that that money, I presume, can be spent in ways that the members of the Tax Justice Network approve of. A properly robust reaction to their claims would be that if they want to spend money in a certain manner they should go and earn it so that they can spend it. Insisting on being able to spend other peoples’ money without their permission is often considered equivalent to theft.

However, let us leave aside this philosophic difficulty and concentrate just for a moment on how much they actually seem to know about the real world. This is James Henry, author of their latest report on how much money is being hidden in the tax havens of the world:

For example, one characteristic of all this wealth is that it’s invested in relatively low-yielding time deposits and secure assets in First World countries. You know, and compared with investing in a high-growth developing country like Brazil, the opportunity cost is really pretty high here for this kind of investment.

And the people who are this wealthy are not consuming. I mean, they’ve consumed about as much in the way of real estate and yachts and art and other things as—you know, the finer things in life as they can, but at the end of the day, they are almost required to save it. So they do consume a lot of political power, which is—seems to be an outlet for virtually unlimited expenditures. But aside from that, you know, they’re not creating a lot of jobs with their savings here.

So all this vast amount of money is just lying around in bank accounts and not doing very much. This is their argument as you can see. Low interest time deposits: they are arguing that this money should be better deployed in more active investments. Building things, starting companies, creating jobs.

It’s rather worrying that such self-proclaimed experts should be so ignorant of how the financial world actually works. They seem to think that if cash gets stuck into a bank account then that’s where the cash is stuck. Which betrays a woeful lack of knowledge about what a bank does.

Yes, of course, a bank takes in deposits. But a bank also lends out that money again. In fact, that’s exactly what banks do, are designed to do. To transform low risk, short term deposits, into higher risk longer term loans. This maturity transformation is what banks are for in fact.

And Andrew Quinlan, president of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a group that promotes international tax competition and financial privacy, said, “Tax Justice Network and other opponents of tax competition assume that all earnings belong first to governments, which is why they seek to prevent even legal wealth management techniques if they result in less money for spend-happy politicians.”

I don't trust your sources.

Yours are totally bankrupt.

Pot, kettle, black.

"So all this vast amount of money is just lying around in bank
accounts and not doing very much. This is their argument as you can
see. Low interest time deposits: they are arguing that this money
should be better deployed in more active investments. Building things,
starting companies, creating jobs. "

So the rich are finally admitting that they don't build things, start
companies, or create jobs with all the money they got from their tax
breaks.

That's...."rich"

5 Ways The Republican Party Has Sabotaged Our Economic Recovery

The stimulus — along with the auto rescue — should go down in history as one of the most effective government interventions for long-term job growth since the New Deal. And without Republican sabotage/obstructionism, it could have been so much _more_ effective!

Because three Republican votes were needed in the Senate to pass the American Recovery Act, and could not otherwise be obtained, the total cost of the bill had to be kept under $1 trillion, when $1.8 trillion was needed to make the bill really effective. Those three Republican senators made specific changes to the bill that ended up killing as many as one million jobs. EPI’s Bivens and Fieldhouse explain:

"The price tag of getting these votes was nearly $30 billion in school construction funds stripped out of the bill at the insistence of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the three GOP votes in the Senate. These funds would have supported roughly 250,000 additional jobs. Further, the final version also included the nearly $70 billion cost of a one-year extension of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) ‘patch’ — a provision that provided no stimulus at all, since it was done literally every single year, but which was included to woo another GOP senator, Olympia Snowe. If this amount could instead have been spent on _productive_ stimulus, it could have created roughly 750,000 additional jobs. In short, just luring the minimal GOP votes needed to pass ARRA in the Senate, likely _kept it_ from supporting or creating nearly a million more jobs than it did."

What Republicans did after the stimulus passed was even more destructive. They coordinated their messaging and began calling it “the failed stimulus” before it even went into effect. That talking point was supplemented by millions in political advertising calling the stimulus “failed” and “reckless.”

These lies are easily disproven with the chart supplied at the link below, which tracks initial unemployment claims. President Obama inherited a nearly unprecedented layoff crisis and suddenly reversed it in the middle of his first year, right as the stimulus went into effect. The GOP’s propaganda attack, however, was effective and made passing any more stimulus impossible.

In March of 2013, The Wall Street Journal‘s Phil Izzo estimated that federal, state and local governments employed 950,000 fewer Americans than in June of 2009. Without those cuts, he estimated the unemployment rate would be .6 percent lower, meaning today it would be a flat 7 percent. A Brookings study suggests the unemployment rate could be as low as 6.1 percent if not for cuts.

Yale University’s Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott confirm that we’ve experienced “unprecedented austerity at the level of state and local governments, and this austerity has slowed the job recovery.”

"http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/5-Ways-The-Republican-Part-in-Best_Web_OpEds-130511-623.html"