Category: Financial
Click here: 63% of Americans can’t deal with a $500 emergency
Is man-made climate change our biggest problem? Are the wildfires, droughts and hurricanes we see on the news an omen of even worse things to come? The United Nations and many political leaders think so and want to spend trillions of tax dollars to reverse the warming trend. Are they right? Will the enormous cost justify the gain? Economist Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, explains the key issues and reaches some sobering conclusions.
Advocates for bigger government continue to press their case for higher taxes because, they argue, the “rich” are not paying their “fair share.” However, a review of the actual tax statistics undercuts this argument, or at least raises questions about how to define “fair.” The IRS figures for Fiscal Year 2013 (the most recent set of data available) show that the richest Americans bear a disproportionate share of the federal income tax, and despite a tax hike that went into effect, that share was smaller than the previous year.
One year of data does not make a trend, but for 2013 at least, the conclusion is pretty stark: after President Barack Obama got his way and Congress raised tax rates on the wealthy, the top 1 percent shouldered less, not more, of the tax burden.
The richest 1 percent of income earners in the U.S. paid 37.8 percent of all income taxes, down slightly from last year’s mark of 38.09 percent. The share of taxes paid dropped despite a new higher tax rate of 39.6 percent on income above $450,000. The amount of taxes paid by those in this percentile is nearly double their Adjusted Gross Income load.
The top tenth of filers paid nearly 70 percent of all income taxes. One-quarter of all income earners were responsible for 86 percent of all taxes and the upper half accounted for nearly the entire burden at over 97 percent. The bottom half of all earners contributed less than 3 percent.
These snapshots continue to depict two common-sense trends: when people are allowed to keep more of their own money, they prosper, and once prosperous, they pay a bigger part of the bill for those who aren’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj-r7U-9cFQ
PRESS RELEASE
The Des Moines County Sheriff’s Office would like to warn area residents of a phone scam. There has been several incidents in which residents have received phone calls informing them that there are bench warrants for their arrest because they had failed to show up for jury duty or for other offenses. The person making the calls identified himself as a person who is a current Des Moines County Sheriff Deputy. A recent scam in Johnson County Iowa was very similar, but added the demand that the person send money or face arrest. The Des Moines County Sheriff’s Office does not call people to inform them of warrants, and would certainly never ask for money over the phone to take care of a warrant. The Des Moines County Sheriff’s Office would like to caution residents about phone calls requesting money, as most calls of this type are a scam. Always ask the person’s name and a number to call them back at as legitimate businesses will have no problem with that.
There were thousands of college commencement speeches around the country this year for the Class of 2015. But there was one missing — one very truthful, funny and witty speech that graduates should’ve heard, but didn’t. Well, here it is, spoken by George Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the Washington Post.