"The top 5% of wage earners pay 95% of income taxes. How much more would be "fair"?"

For that matter, how much less would be "fair?"

Are you sure they are WAGE earners? Are they punching clocks? Do you really mean INCOME earners?

If the top 5% pays 95% of income taxes, then they must be pretty goddamned well off/overpaid. No sympathy here.

Also: Let's say A makes more money than B, in part because A takes money from B or, if you prefer, B gives money to A. There was a time when one would argue that it would follow that A would make Investments that employ B (this includes a moderate taxation that itself is an investment in the entity that is the country/state in the form of infrastucture and security that benefit both A and A's source of income, which is really B). Thus, the more A had to invest, the more B's could stay afloat. So, when taxes on A were cut, some of the wealth that A "earned" from B simply stayed in A's pocket. When "free" trade agreements bacame fashionable, A discovered that A could make more money not by investing in America's worker B's, but by investing in places like communist China - C, if you will. So now we have A "earning" more than ever on the backs of C labor while B is finding itself shut out. This worked for a while as B burned through credit and savings, but suddenly, B is tapped out. Now there is less for everybody: B can't afford to buy the products made by C at A's factory. This is slightly more elaborate than a Ponzi scheme, but the net result is a bust.

This is a precursor to the BIG problem ahead (probably a ways off yet, but looming below the horizon). Namely, that capitalism as we have come to know it, is predicated on two conditions that have been true since the beginning of capitalism, but that cannot possibly remain true forever: 1) Capitalism assumes that there will always be more resources available out of which to make products and power the making, distribution, and use of those products. 2) Capitalism assumes that there will always be more consumers to consume these products and services. Neither condition can remain true forever.

Either capitalism will have to undergo some dramatic changes, or we're gonna need a whole new system.

This is gonna be fun to watch either way.

Assuming this sub-set of Republicans actually thinks such racist imagery is funny, why the hell would the make it public in an information environment where the images are going to go global in a matter of seconds? It seems that if they really cared about the Republican image/brand, they'd keep such things to themselves.

Why would they risk further alienating people from thier cause? (As if their fiscal policies haven't done enough damage...)

Unless you have something intellligent to share with us, please have the McCain campaign assign you to a different site. You're wasting your time here.

"Can someone explain to me why individuals who live on capital gains are entitled to pay a lower tax rate than those who live on paychecks?"

Clearly, it is because Republican Jesus likes them more. Rewarding labor is so un-American.

Congratulations, you found some right-leaning economic commentary on the internet. No shortage of that.

Have you read a newspaper lately? Any of them? You probably think that all of this talk about the economy falling apart is just liberal media bias, but it is very real. It is also a product of the supply-side / trickle-down economics that Republicans favor (where the hell have you been since 1980?).

"Facts: they're stubborn things, but ideologues never let that slow them down." - Look who's talking.

Who sent you here, by the way? Team McCain? It looks like a number of you are assigned to blog detail today. Is this part of the last final push of the McCain campaign? You're wasting your time here.

"The more money there is in consumers' pockets, the better the economy does. (It is, after all, their money to start with.) The more money in government's pockets, the worse the economy does."

If the money sits in anybody's pocket, it doesn't do the economy much good. Government uses tax dollars to employ people, who in turn spend in the private sector. Republicans call it "wealth redistribution," as if that money just evaporates. How do you think businesses would fare if everybody employed by the government (directly or indirectly) simply stopped spending because they stopped getting paid? Isn't this what McCain meant last night by advocating for a spending freeze and taking a hatchet to government spending? (Any word on whether that hatchet would be applied to the likes of Blackwater or Halliburton contracts?)

What the Republicans call "wealth redistribution" in order to score cheap political points with low-information voters is really the recycling of wealth. To that end, the Republicans have chosen to ignore a fundamental rule of business - one must spend money in order to make money. Government taxing/spending is one means of ensuring that consumers have jobs and, therefore, money to spend. Of course, some Republicans have it in their heads that they can just spend and spend without taking in any revenues.

1) McCain's stint as a board member of the US Council for World Freedom, an organization that funded Right-wing death squads in Nicaragua in the 1980's. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015061.php

2) Republican fund-raisers in south Florida who once were part of an anti-Castro group that planted bombs right here in the USofA. http://www.slate.com/id/2202183/

People who live in glass houses...