Idiot Collaborators
by digby
Please someone tell me again about how the Tea Partiers are populists. I'm watching on of their spokesmen on MSNBC go on and on about how the rich pay all the taxes and it's time for the 50% of American slackers who don't pay anything to kick in to solve the debt crisis.
"I know a lot of people and I don't know even one who has a corporate jet. I do know that wealthy people create jobs. I've never worked for a poor man or a poor woman. They've all provided me with a good living."
If you're looking for them to bring in the guillotines, you're going to be waiting awhile. They are very happy to be serfs.
FYI:
Today, TPC released a new study that examines why these people end up paying no federal income tax.
The number one reason should come as no surprise. It’s because they have low incomes. As my colleague Bob Williams notes:
A couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.
Low incomes (or, if you prefer, the standard deduction and personal exemptions) account for fully half of the people who pay no federal income tax.
The second reason is that for many senior citizens, Social Security benefits are exempt from federal income taxes. That accounts for about 22% of the people who pay no federal income tax.
The third reason is that America uses the tax code to provide benefits to low-income families, particularly those with children. Taken together, the earned income tax credit, the child credit, and the childcare credit account for about 15% of the people who pay no federal income tax.
Taken together, those three factors — incomes that fall below the standard deduction and personal exemptions; the exemption for most Social Security benefits; and tax benefits aimed at low-income families and children — account for almost 90% of the Americans who pay no federal income tax.
Maybe if 50% of Americans weren't so poor, they'd be privileged to pay income tax too. But until these teabaggers come up with a jobs program beyond "let them eat cake" they'll have to be content with them paying their state tax, their property tax, their gas tax, their sales tax, their payroll tax and all the other taxes they still have to pay even if they are such "lucky duckies" as to be allowed to keep some tiny portion of the rest of their meager incomes to feed themselves.
I keep hearing that the Tea partiers are radicals and anarchists, as if they are some kind of intellectual force to be reckoned with. But there's no there there. They are simpletons, drunk with power, who in their zeal to serve their masters have decided to burn all the crops in order to save on watering costs.
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