All it takes is two sources of information… One was Ted Cruz’s rebuttal of Obama’s State of the Union where he castigated Obama for income inequality… His words: the top one percent earns one fifth of the national income…
Then, take the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revision in August 2014 for 2013 and it lists the national income for 2013 at $14.55 Trillion. For 2014 we shall just round our estimates up to $15 trillion.
So one fifth or 20% of $15 Trillion is $3 Trillion… The income of the top one percent is pegged now at $3 trillion per year. (reminder: this is income, not wealth. Income is taxible, wealth is not).
So here is the macro of what happens if we raise taxes on the top one percent…..
Raising 1% on $3 trillion returns $30 billion.
Raising 2% on $3 trillion returns $60 billion.
Raising 3% on $3 trillion returns $90 billion.
Raising 5% on $3 trillion returns $150 billion.
Raising 10% on $3 trillion returns $300 billion.
Raising 15% on $3 trillion returns $450 billion.
Raising 20% on $3 trillion returns $600 billion.
Raising 25% on $3 trillion returns $750 billion.
Raising 33% on $3 trillion returns $1 trillion to the middle class….
Romney payed 14%. So raising rates by the max would make his regular rate at 47%… Ronald Reagan cut the 1%’s taxes to 50% and was a hero… Our nation didn’t tube then… It certainly won’t tube on 3% less.
This is where you begin to see the damage behind the lie being told by Republicans. We don’t need to tax the one percent less. We need to tax them more… Just imagine if the one percent paid the same rate they did under Reagan, who they hold up as their hero … We’d have over a trillion extra dollars each year to spend on making our nation stronger … That is stolen money we should be spending upon ourselves, but can’t.
Instead, we are cutting back, cutting back, cutting back on all the essentials we need to live as a free nation…
Yet all we have to do,…. is tax the one percent a little more… It is so simple.. really.
kavips 
3 comments
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July 9, 2015 at 6:35 am
Rob
Charity or Philanthro-Feudalism,
Click on,
http://www.thenation.com/article/charity-or-philanthro-feudalism/
July 24, 2015 at 6:26 pm
Joanne Christian
No Reagan fan here. He took away the credit card interest tax deduction, and I swear that moment in time should have stood still to the bankers—and the middle classs—and everyone should have been outraged. Why not keep everybody happy kavips—bring back the deduction—allowing for low, middle, upper-middle to get a break on that purchase whether emergency or unnecessary. Banks get money, stores get customers, states get money, and consumers can’t say at any level there is no break for them…….
July 27, 2015 at 12:43 pm
kavips
Oddly enough, Joanne, you bring up something I cut out of the original. With higher rates on all upper level incomes, society does get to choose areas to channel private investment with tax breaks in that direction… Green energy is just one example….
Unfortunately with uniform low rates, one can divert money to where they want… Like China, Russia, Arab Eremites, Nigeria, and bring those products back to sell here….
Credit card write-offs is just one deduction… I believe it was originally enacted to steer more people into using credit cards instead of cash. They were new at the time…. It worked. and I guess for that reason was deemed to be no longer a priority requiring the large loss of government monies…There were other priorities calling….