fat_lazy and ucodogen. I will put in my 2 cent to the rich paying no taxes side thread.

I don’t claim to be rich by any means, but I have been an AMT taxpayer for a decade and I have a very very good accountant. I have no deductions/exemptions (via either AMT exclusion or regular tax rate phase out), no loopholes, and pay way too much tax as a percentage of my income. 35% is only the begining, since you don’t have the write offs you would have with a lower tax bracket.

Indeed, I bought into the whole “rich” don’t pay taxes thing my whole life until I made enough money to not only realize that is a bunch of crap, but to conclude that the rich pay way to much of the tax liablility in this country.

I am not crying publically here, but that notion is simply not ture. The opposite is. Seeing how many $$ I inject into our government bank account makes me that much more sensitive about what the government does with it.

I heard our governor say at his state of the state address that we should not rely so much on wealthy Californian’s paying so much of our state budget through their high taxes. His point was that, if the rich have a bad year, so does California and California’s health should not depend on a few wealthy Californians.

Again I don’t consider myself rich my any means, but I would not want to stick it further to those I do consider rich. Those are the folks who own the companies that employ us. Their contributions to the economy provide job opportunities for others and inject lots of $$ into our economy through a free market system, which improves the standard of living. Taking from them and giving it to an inefficiently run government will not make things better for us.

Ok. I was preaching. Apologies. Preaching always involves ad hominum generalizations to make a point, which begs rhetorical response. I will stop now.