Follow the money

From a recent Email:

Tax rate cuts don't give anything to the so-called rich. They don't "get" someone else's money. Tax cuts allow people to keep more of their own money to spend and invest as they see fit.

Exactly. Look where the money goes:

The total Federal Budget is $3.7 trillion for FY'10
Income: $2.164 trillion
Outlay: $3.720 trillion
Deficit: $1.556 trillion

Here are the top 5 spending categories and the percentage of total outlays:
1 Social Security $722 billion 19.4%
2 Defense $719 Billion 19.3%
3 Welfare $557 billion 15%
4 Medicare $457 Billion 12.3%
5 Welfare, healthcare (like medicaid) $335 Billion 9%


Add together the money we give people not to work (all of the above, except Defense) and you get $2.071 trillion, or an amount equal to virtually all of the taxes collected.

For 2004 (the last year I could find data) The top 25% of wage earners in the country comprise everyone making more than $139,491 (per return, not per person). That top 25% paid 84.8% of all income taxes.

(Source: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/04in06tr.xls)

Yeah, the problem is the rich.