Richest Americans Saw 400 Percent Increase in Income, 40 Percent Decrease in Tax Rates, According to Calif. Sen. Boxer (It's Almost True)
This whole class warfare thing is kind of cool. We haven't seen this much bloodlust among the masses since Apple introduced the iPhone 4.
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After President Obama proposed that millionaires and billionaires pay the same tax rate as working-class folks (sparking charges by the right that he's engaging in "class warfare" -- how dare he demand that our gilded titans fork out their fare share?), California's own Sen. Barbara Boxer recently weighed in.
She claimed that, since 1995 (an economic peak and the near-middle of the Clinton years) America's 400 richest taxpayers saw their income grow by 400 percent, and that the tax rates for this same, elite group, actually went down by 40 percent. True?
PolitiFact crunched the numbers and pretty much says yeah, true that.
Boxer, however, might have fudged the data a little. That ginormous increase in income happened from 1995 to 2007. If the end year 2008 was used, after the recession started, that 400 percent increase would have been reduced to only 276 percent (insert tiny violin soundtrack here), according to PolitiFact.
And yes, on that 40 percent reduction in taxes, it's almost 100 percent true. The reduction is more like 39 percent between 1995 and 2008, according to the site.
So shall we continue on this crusade against the rich? Hell yes.
Obama has yet to make good on a pledge to increase the capital gains tax from 15 percent to make it more reflective of the nearly one-third rate most Americans pay on their income. (Capital gains is basically income on stock market investments and the like. And while that's not exactly a traditional payroll job, it is what many wealthier Americans live off of. So why should they get a break in this time of dire economic need?).
[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]
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