Well, if the NYT says it's so, I read it like PRAVDA--must be the opposite.

You are entitled to your opinion.

You had to have known you were vulnerable on this one Jack. Sam T. is correct.

Good try, but with the stupendous growth in the federal government Maryland should have had a big increase in millionaires. Instead jobs and money have been flowing across the river where the taxes and business climate are better.   If you drive around the Beltway you'll find high concentrations of for lease signs in Maryland and relatively fewer in Virginia.   Note that DC Metro Virginia has the top three nationwide median household income counties, and has five on the top ten list before Maryland comes in with its second.   If partners in DC law firms didn't have a penchant for living in Potomac Maryland, Virginia would wipe out Maryland completely.

I guess Tiger Woods telling the world three weeks ago that he left California for Florida because of taxes was too far in the distant past to have caught the New York Times' attention.  Stuart Varney is right about the impact of tax rates on residence decisions; the New York Times hatred of context, its penchant for reasoning from conclusions and biased selection of interviewees and so-called "facts" could hardly be more ignorant.

Whether you agree with the premise of the article or not, the above statement is absolutely true.

The rich have convinced the middle class that they will be better off, if they keep letting the rich get richer. I'll be honest, I used to believe this. "A rising tide lifts all boats" and all that.

But not anymore. Ever since Wall Street/Banks brought down the economy and then demanded a bailout, I have supported any and all tax increases on the rich. My dream is a tax on all stock transactions.

The truth of the statement I quoted is conclusively proved by how quickly middle-class people have appeared here to dispute the article. The rich look out for themselves. Middle-class right-wingers look out for the rich. The 99% has a lot of people in it who have been programmed to worship the 1%.

A statistical fact: seventeen percent of Americans consider themselves to be in the top one percent.

A rising tide floats all boats. Yeah, and it drowns the poor bastards who have live in shacks on the waterfront. So much for hackneyed old chestnuts.
I wonder what the numbers would pencil out for a universal value transfer tax? Full face value for a can of beans, heart surgery, stock trades, CDO's -- everything. If it moves, it's taxed. No weaseling, no hiding, no exceptions.
NYC sale tax is, what, about 12% these days? How about taking Peter DeFazio's plan full tilt? Each share of stock that gets churned gets NYC's 12% off the top. Your credit card siphons 3% off all charges -- Hit the banks and let the states wet their beaks.
Sales taxes really are unfair to the struggling because the affluent don't have to pay. New rule: Everybody pays full carriage. (Didn't Kant have a test for ethical behavior based on that?)

When a sizeable chunk of the middle class do not pay an income tax, it's easy to see how demagogue's like the maximum leader use higher marginal rates to whip up class envy. And how slavish party organs like the NYT try and say - as long as you read our paper - it doesn't really matter how much you pay.

It was either Sinclaire Lewis or John Steinbeck who said, "even poor Americans see themselves as temporarily embarassed millionairs".

At different times in my life I've been at the bottom of the income spectrum, I've been near the top (probably upper ten percent for a few years), and I've been around the middle. The truth hasn't varied one iota based on where little ole me out of 300 plus million people happens to lie in the income distribution. Concentration of economic power and fiat currency are at the root of much of what is wrong with our country. Your enemies aren't Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods people who are of extraordinary skill and came out of virtually nothing. Their predecessors, like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Ben Hogan started long-running successful American companies that competed with the big boys.

If you insist on framing issues in class warfare terms rather than structural problems (which means you will accomplish almost nothing) your class enemies are Warren Buffett, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, et. al. who in their areas have monopoly, oligopolistic or monopsony powers. The real enemies are these people who happen to do a damn good job of avoiding taxes, and ducking market forces altogether and who are friends of Barack. The tax system is not the tool that gets you to strong economic markets and growth. Step 1 is to end the Fed (as we know it today) which has accomplished little more than enrich the rich with its multi-trillion dollars money printing program over the last several years.

The 99% has a lot of people in it who have been programmed to worship the 1%.
That is a fact-JACK

“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

(Napoleon Bonaparte)

Newleaf:

" Step 1 is to end the Fed (as we know it today) which has accomplished little more than enrich the rich"

So very true newleaf. It was 100 years ago this year when we gave away the financial control of our country to private interests consisting of international banksters that formed the Federal Reserve. We haven't had a free country and a president with the balls to stand up to the banksters since Andrew Jackson (or perhaps JFK). History:

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

-Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson

I didn't catch that . . . what is FaceBook's tax refund this year ?
and I gotta pay how much?

Gotta love them "rules"

You got it BB. Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Fed) is probably one of the three or four most powerful people in the world. His salary is $199,000. It's fatuous to think that taxing the rich will do anything to address the distortions and damage caused by fiat currency.

a sizeable chunk of the middle class do not pay an income tax

How vague, and how false.

For what it's worth, much of Incline Village, Nevada is populated by the homes of numerous California millionaires and billionaires who claim their residences as "home" for tax purposes. Many live there at most two or three months of the year; spending most of their time in California. People as diverse as Larry Elison, CEO of Oracle Corporation to Mike Love, head of the Beach Boys call it "home".

Reading this, I don't think on a personal/corporate level increasing taxes will make people move (unless we get to a real pain level or you're a PERS retiree moving to WA to avoid OR income taxes.)

Nike/Intel have plant here, so are in a sense held hostage, but if Intel decides to expand in OR or AZ is going to be influenced by taxes (also who has a better school system and educated workforce.)

BTW - My solution, flat tax and exempt the first $xxK from taxes.

No matter how many taxes you throw at the rich, they have more deductions and better CPAs.

Jack's right. As previously posted, the middle 20% paid 2.2% of the personal income taxes in 2008 (and 2.7% in 2009).

I heard one newscast about 2008 that after measure 66 and 67 past, Oregon Tax Division expected 38,000 people to pay the higher tax in the law, but only 28,000 filed under the higher tax. Falls right in line with Maryland's results in taxing the rich.