[DismalScientist]

Towpath on 25mm tires? Why bother. Sling your bike over the shoulder and take the footpath from the corner of Glebe and Canal right up to the CCT! (You may not want to try this with loaded panniers.)

[DismalScientist]

Fairfax to Clarendon. Left on Lynn to Custis, MVT.

Of course, we have discussed this option before. On streets you deal with cars. On the Custis you deal with joggers. The street route avoids the Custis crossing at Lee and Lynn. Pick your poison.

[DismalScientist]

@KLizotte 11129 wrote:

I wish we had these kind of signs here – a little hard to miss by drivers.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]486[/ATTACH]

This only encourages salmoning:rolleyes:

[DismalScientist]

@WillStewart 11067 wrote:

Since the lowest income level of the top 1% is $386k by the following source, you may need to rethink how close you are to the top 1%. Of course, your stated position may well be understood in the light of your financial position.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/nyregion/where-the-one-percent-fit-in-the-hierarchy-of-income.html

You still haven’t named any couples in Government jobs that are in the top 1%, nor have you given any statistics that show what percentage of the top 1% they entail.

When I and a number of other posters refer to the 2003 Bush tax policy as tax cuts for the rich, it is your free speech right to say that we are ignorant or duplicitous, but you show yourself to be struggling in vain to deny the obvious.

Hmmmm….

The 2003 tax rate cuts were not the same at each level (the highest tax rates dropped the most, and the lowest rates did not change), so your allusion to average rates for everyone falling is not supported by the facts. More importantly, capital gains dropped dramatically, a major cut for the highest category.

Your discussion of AMT misses the point that much if not most of the top 1% receive a significant amount of their income in capital gains, which is taxed at the lower rate of 15%, which had dropped in the 2003 cuts. That’s one reason Warren Buffet’s aggregate tax rate is only 17%.

You said that once before, a few posts back…

Have a good night’s sleep.

[DismalScientist]

@WillStewart 11058 wrote:

So either you don’t have anything to address those other points or don’t believe what you have will suffice. If you change your mind, we’ll be happy to examine the substance of your claims in detail.

You make up a scenario, yet still are not able to substantiate your allegation. We will assume you were simply making up a scenario intended as a distraction.

Either you are not a scientist, or you think that none of us can do math.

Drop the top tax rate from 39% to 35%, and that means someone making $1,000,000 pays $40,000 less

On the other hand, the little (if any) tax cut afforded a poor family can now be used to buy much needed food and shelter.

The bottom 50% own 2.5% of the nation’s wealth – there is no handwaving that can begin to point to the poor or lower middle class as the problem. I can’t believe you would even try to go down this path…

I have yet to insult you and this is my last post.

I am approaching the top 1% with my government salary and my wife’s job as an IT consultant with a government contractor. Does anyone wonder why the richest areas of the country are around Washington?

When there are tax rate cuts, this must mean that average tax rates for all taxpayers (who receive cuts, which was everyone in 2001 and every one with income from capital in 2003) must have their average tax rates fall. When I said “Bush tax cuts for the poor” I was simply addressing the absurdity of politicians adding the “for the …” rhetoric either in an ignorant or duplicitous manner.

Much of the 2001 tax cuts went to upper middle class families with children because of the child tax credits. A large amount of high income taxpayers did not see a cut because they were subject to the AMT or were thrown into the AMT. And which party claims to support fixing the AMT, which by definition only falls on relatively high income folks?

[DismalScientist]

@vvill 11050 wrote:

So 1% being $344k is based on a married filing jointly return? Or single? :confused:

They took all filed individual tax returns (about 102 million) and found the cut-off point for the top 1%. So it is a combination of single and married. Returns of married filers tend to have higher incomes than single.
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html

[DismalScientist]

@WillStewart 11038 wrote:

You are still dancing around the subject at hand – the tax cuts reduced average tax rates on the upper tax bracket.

You didn’t address any of my other points (including providing names of those who are in the top 1% and in government jobs), so I’ll assume you concur.

Your assumption of my concurrence is misplaced.
Husband and wife GS15 step 10 combined earn about $320,000. That’s almost there by itself.

…Upon reading more carefully your post, you are right. Tax cuts reduced the average tax rates on the upper tax bracket. …. And everyone else.
But, of course that is not the subject at hand. Under these criteria, one could argue that Bush’s tax cuts for the poor is causing the mess we are in with the same information.

[DismalScientist]

@dasgeh 11010 wrote:

I disagree. Reading the original op-ed, he is referring to his effective tax rate, i.e. what he paid in taxes divided by his total income. This takes into account the progressive income tax rates, the differences in tax rates for regular income and income derived from capital, and all of the various deductions. I agree that this measure makes more sense to look at for the purpose of his argument.

His effective tax rate is his average tax rate. He takes his total income and payroll taxes paid (and payroll taxes paid on his behalf) and divides by his total income. For some reason, he does not include corporate taxes that are paid by firms in which he is invested. This is an interested argument: he assumes that payroll tax incidence is entirely on labor, but none of the incidence of corporate taxes is on the shareholder. Perhaps he is trying to make a misleading argument supporting his conjecture.

The source of his estimates of his underlings’ tax rates is entirely unclear and they looked a lot more like marginal rates than average rates to me.

[DismalScientist]

@WillStewart 11005 wrote:

Your claim is highly debatable, especially when taken in light of the deficit it engendered, but the tax cuts for the rich occurred in 2003, so the focus should be primarily on those in this discussion.

This is the functional equivalent of “Some say…”. You provide no evidence or supporting material, simply make a blanket allegation. Please provide names or official stats, or such an attempt to deflect will remain recognized as simply that.

I knew I should not have engaged, and this round will be my last…

I explicitly addressed both the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Look at the rhetoric in 2001: it was “tax cuts for the rich” then as well as in 2003.
(Increasing dividends instead of retaining capital does not change real income inequality, it just changes whether the income that stockholders get is in dividends or capital gains.)
The Tax Foundation figures come directly from the IRS and is the cutoff for the top 1% in 2009. Incidentally, it has fallen from around $380,000 in 2008.

[DismalScientist]

@baiskeli 10976 wrote:

You have no idea if they work or not.

Considering that Warren Buffett recently pointed out that his secretary is taxed at a higher rate than he is, maybe you should stop and think about the issues they’re trying to get you to think about though.

Unfortunately, Uncle Warren has a problem confusing average and marginal tax rates. His average income tax rate was a little over 17 percent. (This does not include the taxes paid by the companies in which he invested, which should be included in this calculation since taxes on capital income are assessed at multiple levels. As I discussed in my post responding to Will, how the incidence should be calculated is tricky.) His secretary is in the 25% marginal tax bracket, but her average tax rate is likely to be around 7%. Just plug her numbers into a 1040 EZ and find out!

[DismalScientist]

@WillStewart 10972 wrote:

On that subject, there’s a much bigger picture – the top 1% tax cuts that drive (and keep) the deficit up means that the repayment will merely come due later, which our children will have to pick up so that millionaires and billionaires can have their 10 houses and 3 yachts today.

I didn’t want to get into politics, but I must respond. There are no tax cuts proposed or recently implemented for the top 1%. Certainly, there was an extension of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 at the end of 2010. Certainly it was argued that the 2001 tax cuts favored the wealthy, but the 2001 tax cuts actually made the tax system more progressive. The big money was not in the rate reductions, but rather the child tax credits. These were phased out for the wealthy and therefore could not benefit the top 1%, despite the political rhetoric.
The 2003 tax cuts reduced taxes on dividends and capital gains. The incidence of taxes on capital is a very tricky thing because business do not pay taxes, but instead collect taxes that are part of their pre-tax profits. These corporate taxes are passed on to customers through high prices, to workers through lower wages, or to shareholders through lower after tax returns. (Having shareholders/business owners “pay” these taxes on capital through taxes on dividends or capital gains does not matter, as companies can change how capital is returned to investors. Note that when dividend taxes fell, companies returned more in dividends rather than retain the capital.) Many folks make the assumption that taxes on capital are “paid” by shareholders in the top 1%, but this is simply not so.
Defining the top 1% is difficult. Having a large capital gain in one particular year might put a taxpayer the in top 1% in terms of adjusted gross income. Does one year’s capital gain make one a millionaire? I think not.
To get in the top 1% takes less money than one might think. According to the Tax Foundation, to be in the top 1%, you need an adjusted gross income of $343,947. This means that there are a lot of families whose breadwinners suckle at the taxpayers’ teat (directly and indirectly) in this area that are very close to the top 1%.

[DismalScientist]

Can we please talk about sex or religion rather than politics?:rolleyes:

[DismalScientist]

@Tim Kelley 10871 wrote:

I’ve frequently used the KPP plan that Revolution Cycles offers: http://www.pedalpowerri.com/KPPBrochureSample12_12_08.pdf

Other than the staff and location, it’s the reason why I’ve purchased most of my bikes there.

What does this actually cover? Is repacking bearings, adjusting cables, truing wheels considered routine maintenance? Is truing wheels considered a normal result of wear and tear?

I sounds like it only extends the coverage on frames and components deciding to suddenly self-immolate. I’m not sure I would pay for it.

[DismalScientist]

Saw this on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TREK-ROAD-BIKE-JUNIORS-/180756550838?pt=Road_Bikes&hash=item2a15ee14b6
4 hours to go.

[DismalScientist]

@Joe Chapline 10834 wrote:

Those are three or four bikes per ton, right?

Steel is real! :rolleyes:

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