Presidential candidate Mitt Romeny received much attention, upon releasing his income tax statements, when it was revealed he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent on $42.5 million of income in 2010.
Carole Lombard was lauded an American hero when she chose to continue to work, despite paying $300,000 in taxes on her 1937 income of $465,000 The top tax rate in 1937 was 78% for regular income and 39% for capital gains. Meanwhile Ronald Reagan, at the top of his career found himslef disinterested in pursuing too many movies. In fact his reponse to the graduated income tax, was to “loaf” around rather than make more than two pictures a year.
“Why should I have done a third picture, even if it was Gone with the Wind?” Regan remembers Reagan asking. “What good would it have done me?”
How much worse could it get for the elite Hollywood of 1942? if Congress had let President Franklin D. Roosevelt have his way there would have been a 100% tax on income greater than $25,000 ($375,000 in 2012 dollars).
So here we are on a FISCAL CLIFF, I can hear Professor Harold Hill dancing around singing "we got trouble". The FISCAL CLIFF is applicable to you and I not the elite (aka 1%) in Hollywood who are protected by Congressional Districts which are inherited year after year. The FISCAL CLIFF is applicable to you and I not the elite (aka 1%) in DC. The ominous FISCAL CLIFF is applicable to you and I if we don't have a clever CPA, or friend in Sacramento and DC.
The year prior to the Pilgrims and American Indians taking time to reflect on Thankfulness was a lesson in taking from the have's and giving to the will-not-work have-not's. Now, before you jump up and down and say not everyone under our neuvo-socialism is a will-not-work hear me out. The Pilgrims decided to enact a system: pool all their resources, fruits of their labor, together.
Unfortunately human nature rose to his primal finest and some chose to not work quite as hard, others chose to not work at all. The harvest was bleak. Had it not been for the GRACE of the American Indians there would not be a colony of Pilgrims that year. The next year each person was responible for their own food harvest. There was no mandate to pool unequal results.
The lesson we must recognize today, over four hundred years later, is this: Enacting legislation to support not working or a single industry is not foistering a solid future for this nation. Whether we are creating a means for a Federally backed guaranteed-issued-mandated group health plan, or enacting legislation to support fractional banking, or acting as a co-signer for third-world countries to borrow money from China banks, or feeding citizens from womb to tomb it is wrought with historical disaster.
So let the Carole Lombards of 2012 pay 75% of their income into the US tax fund. But tell me will it be the illustrious Democrat fund raiser George Clooney? Or Johnny Depp the get-me-out-of-America? Or Oprah Winfrey the wealthiest woman in the world? Or ????
I would much rather pay a flat rate tax. I would much rather see you pay a flat rate tax. I would much rather the 1% pay a flat rate tax. AND then when a need arises I would much rather offer my 13% to help out and encourage the 1% to do likewise. So the next time I hear of XYZ mega star signing a $15million contract I will await the description of where they are applying their 13%.
