Quote from QQQShort:
The top 20% of earners pay 69% of federal taxes, so it's this group of taxpayers that is providing the majority of the subsidy you mention. And, it is this group that will pay a large portion of the various stimulus programs funded at the federal level.
Yes and no. Remember that SS is regressive, while Medicare is flat. The low to middle brackets, 15 and 28, get it in the neck. Even if they have a house, it's possible that the combined mortgage & property taxes will either be equal to or only a little higher than the standard deduction. Combine this with their SS & Medicare tax burden and they get hit hard.
Someone like myself, who is well over the SS tax limit, has a mortgaged house, and can afford to pay quite a bit into my pension, partially (this is the kicker) as a result of the amount I can take off due to mortgage interest and property tax, is probably, when you boil it down, paying less as a proportion of my income than this person.
I know I'm mooching to some extent, because at one time I was on the other side of that tax line, and it was hard, much harder than it is now, to do something like fund my pension. But once I had the housing deductions, that became much easier, so that my final tax bill fell by far more than I had thought it would before I bought the house. It was only then that I truly appreciated just how much renters and, even, low to moderate income homeowners who aren't on the long form, are taken advantage of.
So I know there are people, working people, who are funding the lifestyles of folks like me - and Santelli. I'm quite sure Santelli is taking the full panoply of housing deductions, and is easily able to fully fund his pension, which lowers his tax bill even more. AND he's well over the SS limit, no doubt.
All of which makes his rant disingenuous, at minimum, ignorant likely, and hypocritical at worst.
For certain it's demagoguery. You just have to look at 90% of the posts on the threads related to his rant to see that.