I confess i used to be very apathetic about politics and world affairs. Even in the Viet Nam years I barely knew what was going on and it followed me for many years as i was focusing on my career and family. Now that i have more time along with cable news and the internet i can be accused of being too consumed by politics. Maybe there is a middle. But, i was talking with a good friend the other day who says he doesn’t pay much attention to cable news or anything political. He went on to say that the GOP lost him when they didn’t want to increase taxes on folks making more than one million dollars. Why? Because most of them do not pay any tax at all and the rest of us make up the burden. Mind you, he is a CPA, over 60, and probably in the top 10% of folks who one would think keep informed So, i showed him an article from USA Today that surprised him very much. Some of the comments from the article:
“The 10% of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70% of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that’s less than 1% of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.”
The full article can be found at http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/story/2011-09-20/buffett-tax-millionaires/50480226/1
He was shocked. But a bigger question is how many other seemingly educated people believe the sound bites coming from politicians? Any of them for that matter. And more so, how does the average, infrequent listener/reader of the news discern truth? Certainly not by being apathetic!
