|
|
Topic: Rick Patterson on the Income Tax
|
admin
Administrator
|
 |
Rick Patterson on the Income Tax |
| |
Posted on: 04/24/03 - 14:07:01 |
As published in the Memphis Commerical Appeal:
http://tinyurl.com/a9t4
Letters 04/24: Reduce spending first, then think about tax cuts
April 24, 2003
Producers are paying their fair income tax share
In his April 20 Viewpoint column ''Want to be patriotic? Pay fair tax share," Editorial Page Editor David Kushma indicated high federal deficits cause high interest rates. No empirical evidence supports that claim. During President Reagan's term, the United States had huge deficits, but low interest rates. Today we have large deficits, but extremely low interest rates.
Kushma never defined "fair share." He just wants the wealthy to pay more. Why should they? Our tax laws punish success and reward failure. Those who make good decisions in life pay more, while those whose decisions aren't as good pay less. To encourage people prop erly, the reverse should be the case.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 1999 taxpayers in the top 1 percent of adjusted gross income paid 36.2 percent of all federal personal income taxes. Those in the top 5 percent paid 55.5 percent, those in the top 10 percent paid 66.5 percent, those in the top 25 percent paid 83.5 percent and those in the top 50 percent paid 96 percent. The producers in our country are already paying too much in income tax.
The concept of an income tax is immoral because it says we do not own ourselves, that government owns us and has first claim on the value of our productivity. Each year government will tell us how much of us it owns and how much of ourselves we own.
Our problem is too much spending, not too little money. We need to reduce the federal government by about 80 percent and eliminate all of its functions not specifically mandated by the Constitution. By doing so, we could eliminate income taxation for every citizen who works to earn an income.
Rick Patterson
Germantown
|
 Logged |
|
Steve Trinward
Guest
|
|
Rick Patterson on the Income Tax |
| |
Posted on: 04/24/03 - 22:47:17 |
Well done, Rick ... and an attaboy to Jonathan for getting this on the site so smoothly.
NOW, folks, if we can only get all y'all to do this yourserlves, and let Jon just focus on the cleaning up (formats, etc.) where needed ... the site will truly become self-sustaining ... and he can focus the time he has for this stuff toward site structure and other enhancements...
Steve (your former webmaster, whose job is now obsolete)
|
| Logged |
|
neuralnoise
Administrator
|
|
Rick Patterson on the Income Tax |
| |
Posted on: 04/25/03 - 07:44:45 |
>NOW, folks, if we can only get all y'all to do this yourserlves, and
>let Jon just focus on the cleaning up (formats, etc.) where needed ...
>the site will truly become self-sustaining ... and he can focus the
>time he has for this stuff toward site structure and other enhancements...
Yup, this is exactly the idea for the "forums" on the site --
I agree with the general consenus that web forums blow chunks when it comes to discussion "chatting", that this email list is much better for that (though some might feel otherwise, hence the marriage of the list with the forum "discussion" category, so that those folks can go there without us all having two disjointed conversations)
Meanwhile the rest of the forum categories are meant to be a public bulletin board for posting just this sort of thing. LTE's, meeting announcements, action items, etc..
Among my ever-lengthening list of plans is to break the two sections up, so that the "forum" refers only to the discussion category, while the bulletin board categories are slurped in throughout the site, aligning the board content with the other site content, so they will no longer look so much like "forums", but literally as the public-content mechanism that I envision, while using the forum mechanics beneath the hood to keep it all together.
The niftiest part being that when content is added to these sections, this list gets automatically notified just like a discussion thread, as just happened with this thread, and replies from this list will wind up at the correct part of the site, as these replies also just did... : )
------------------------
|
| Logged |
|
Steve Trinward
Guest
|
|
Rick Patterson on the Income Tax |
| |
Posted on: 04/25/03 - 09:03:31 |
magnificent, Jonathan! This is actually pretty close to the dream i had when I took on the Webmaster duties, but since I didn't know how to program it that way (and was too stubborn to let go of the thing and get someone else to do it?), it never really happened ...
Oh well, evolution, I guess?
- S
|
| Logged |
|
lyn37167
Level 1
|
|
Re: Rick Patterson on the Income Tax |
| |
Posted on: 09/28/04 - 08:23:25 |
I am a newcomer to the libertarian party in TN and nationally, but I strongly agree with your tone and am impressed with your research. As a law student, I have little time for this level of empirical research, but I feel strongly about this issue and am eager to learn more and to be more involved. Thank you for this inspirational message and I hope the readers in Memphis found this as appealing as I did.
-------------------------
Lyn Graves
|
| Logged |
|
|
Forums
Pages: [1]
