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Taxes and Generational Equity in 2011: The Young Still Pay A Higher Percent Despite Lower Incomes

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I was going to complete my posts on federal finance with a discussion of the national debt, but it turns out that the Federal Reserve’s Z1 data for 2011 will be released on March 8th, allowing me to extend an important part of the discussion – the part concerning total U.S. debts including state and local government, consumers and the private sector– by one more year. So instead I’ve decided to once again check in on two Brooklyn fictional couples: the Young Hopefuls, both age 32 with a six-year-old child and a newborn, and the Senior Voters, now both age 72. How do their circumstances and taxes differ?

The Presidential campaign has shined a spotlight on the inequities in the federal tax code, with wealthy former private equity executive and current candidate Mitt Romney paying a far lower share of his income in federal taxes than most middle-income workers. Between growing tax inequities, less restrictive regulations leading to an era of legalized fraud, and corporate bailouts, it has become clear that the so-called one-percent rule the federal government in Washington. But who rules state and local government, where the serfs – and particularly the young – are paying even less attention? In New York that is clear as well: senior citizens, particularly retired and soon to retire public employees. The fictional Senior Voters are such retired public employees, and they are on the way to having a “retirement” that lasts as long as – or if they are lucky longer than — they worked. The Young Hopefuls, in contrast, may face poverty in old age, as they (like most younger private sector workers) do not have any employer-provided retirement benefits, and their federal old age benefits are being encumbered by the soaring federal debt. But how are they faring now? Let’s fire up the Turbo Tax and find out.

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