Larry Dighera wrote:

On Sat, 3 May 2008 17:27:12 -0500, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote in
:

Larry Dighera wrote:

Who benefited from the Bush tax cuts?


Taxpayers.


I would venture, that you and I, and the vast majority of tax payers
were not among those families earning more than $1 million a year who
benefited most:

So what? If you study history and economics you will notice that tax cuts
benefit the economy as a whole, as they have since John Kennedy's massive
tax cuts in the 1960s . Obviously if you are paying less to begin with, a
tax *cut* will be less too. If you don't believe that you are paying
enough, the Treasury would be happy to cash your check. In addition, most
of the taxes are paid by a minority of taxpayers as it is. If you want
high taxes a la Europe style tax rates, you also are demanding Europe
style unemployment and Europe style economic malaise, which makes the
current USA situation look like the 1920s.

From your article:

"The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy
households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their
share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal
income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20
percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from
66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those
with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and
received money back from the government. That so-called negative income
tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that
benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from President
Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were
not paying much in taxes anyway."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/wa...=1&oref=slogin