What Does Obama Mean by "Fair Share?"
With the Presidential speech last night back through to his campaign President Obama has been sounding the trumpet about the rich paying their "fair share." This phrase, "fair share" is being used and accepted as a fact, but no one has looked into what does those words mean to him and to everyone else. In fact, the phase itself implies that there should be an even-handedness between the rich and the taxes they pay. The phrase is also ambiguous because no one knows if the rich are taking more then their "fair share" or taking less. The President only assumes by using the phrase that people will understand what he is talking about because of how they perceive the rich.
With that said, let us assume that the President means that the rich are taking more then their "fair share." This would mean that the rich are not contributing to the "pie" as much as they are taking from it. That would imply that they are paying little in taxes, while getting a lot of benefits from the government. How many people would say that is true? Do you see a lot of Billionaires on Medicaid? Are the rich on Food Stamps, housing subsidies, or getting their utilities paid? Despite not using these programs the rich are still paying taxes. The rich are paying taxes and not receiving any benefits for those tax dollars. That does not sound like they are not paying their "fair share," but sounds like they are contributing to the pie and not taking from it.
It appears that the rich are not taking more then their "fair share" and are actually taking less, so what does Obama mean? One example he uses is how a Millionaire pay less in taxes then their Secretary. What is he talking about here? If you take him at what he says, he seems to imply that the Millionaire pays less in taxes. I know also Mr. Warren Buffet has also talked about how he pays less then his Secretary, but this is misleading. Let us assume that a Secretary earns 50,000 a year. That would mean that they would pay 25 percent or about 12,500 dollars in taxes. The Millionaire, who gets paid 1 million dollars a year, pays 35 percent on his income above 373,000 which means they pay over 210,000 just on their income above the 373,000. So they are clearly not paying less.
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