Bucco, I won't argue with your statement from the Census Bureau saying that there are less people living in poverty than in prior years. All I did was take the numbers from the table in my post and totaled the percentages for those income classes less than what that same Census Bureau said was the "poverty level" of income. I wasn't trying to take statistics to support a pre-conceived point. All I did was take the numbers from the Census Bureau and make the resulting conclusion...there are about 20% of Americans living below the poverty line. Why the Census Bureau says one thing while some of their numbers say another is something I can't explain.

Regarding taxation, again, you seem to have mis-interpreted what I said. Briefly, what I said was that the Congress had regularly manipulated both tax rates and the income thresholds to which they would apply from the time when federal taxes were authorized in 1913 until the early 1990's. The changes were dramatic. The top marginal rate has ranged from 7% to 94%. The definition of the top marginal rate from $38,000 to $5 million. Since the early '90's we have financed our spending, even though it has increasingly created deficits, by borrowing rather than paying for government spending with a balanced budget--taxpayers paying for government expenditures from current tax revenues, minimizing long-term debt. I suggested that this has to stop and can be accomplished with both reduced spending as well as increased taxes. It will be a difficult thing to stop because by financing expenditures with more and more debt rather than funding spending with tax revenues, the public keeps asking for more from their government and happily re-elects those who keep giving it to them. That won't be an easy system to change.

Our current tax rates and marginal thresholds are towards the low end of what they have been historically. Personally, I think there is plenty of room to increase taxes on all who can afford to pay them until deficits are eliminated and the national debt is reduced to a reasonable level. Ultimately, that is what I think will have to happen, regardless of which President is in power and whatever his/her political party might be. I would hope that the political will would exist to make such a decision, but I don't think that is the case. We'll wind up having to raise taxes because the rest of the world will simply stop lending us the huge amounts of debt we are asking for, thereby forcing the U.S. to make dramatic cuts in government spending as well as increasing income taxes to all who are able to pay them. So, my reason for finding increased taxation acceptable has nothing to do at all with "take it away from one group who is successful and give it away to another group because they are statistically in some category", as you suggest. It DOES have to do with balancing our federal budget and reducing our national debt to a reasonable level as quickly as is practical. That will require everyone to pay increased taxes. However, I would place a caveat on increasing taxes to exclude increases on those who are already living in or near the poverty level.

As far as Alinsky is concerned, I don't see nor do I ascribe the tactics you describe to President Obama. What I DID say in my post above was that if the growth of lower and higher income classes are permitted to continue, it is not unreasonable to expect that someone using Alinsky's tactics will activate the lower classes using the democratic political system to satisfy their own interests. I said that the causal factors that were resulting in a growing and restive lower class and concurrent increases of the wealthiest in the country should be examined and corrected in order to prevent what might be a political upheaval which would have long-term negative effects on our way of life. Common economic theory says that economies which can build and sustain an economically-strong middle class will perform the best. The middle class in the U.S. has been eroding for the last twenty years or so, replaced by growth of both the wealthiest and economically poor classes of residents.

P.S. Please, let's not any of us get involved in debating the Milton Friedman thesis that lower taxes encourages economic growth while higher taxation inhibits such growth. Since the early 1990's, about the time Friedman set forth his thesis, it has not been supported by actual economic performance. Taxes have consistently been at historic lows while economic growth has ranged from strong to moribund. Friedman's thesis makes for nice ideaological political argument but unfortunately it has not resulted in a strong and vibrant economy nor can it be argued that its application will extract us from the current economic crisis.