The Rich Agree: Tax The Rich
I’ve been calling the Republicans the party of no ideas but I’m wrong about that. They do have one idea – tax cuts. Tax cuts are the solution to any problem. You have to give them credit, they’ve managed to make an upopular idea (continuing the tax cuts from the wealthy) and turned it into a political hot potato, with Blue Dogs cowering in fear of being accused of “raising taxes.”
What’s not often pointed out is that we’re already operating under the Bush tax cuts and they’ve been an abysmal failure. In fact, tax rates are the lowest they’ve been in decades. The last decade was horrible for job creation and income inequality. The evidence is that when taxes are low for the wealthy, they tend to keep it for themselves instead of creating jobs or investing. Remember the Slate series on income inequality?
In the period labelled “The Great Compression” marginal tax rates on the wealthy were much higher – at one point reaching 90%. You see the income inequality start to skyrocket when Reagan began cutting those tax rates (even then the highest tax rates were 50%).
Even though Republicans have found a lot of greedy Wall Street executives to whine about how hard their life is, even 64% of people with incomes greater than $250K think their taxes should be higher. Some are even speaking out. Garret Greuner wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times arguing for tax increases.
For nearly the last decade, I’ve paid income taxes at the lowest rates of my professional career. Before that, I paid at higher rates. And if you want the simple, honest truth, from my perspective as an entrepreneur, the fluctuation didn’t affect what I did with my money. None of my investments has ever been motivated by the rate at which I would have to pay personal income tax.
As history demonstrates, modest changes in the tax rate for wealthy taxpayers don’t make much of a difference if the goal is to build new companies, drive technological development and stimulate new industries. Almost a decade ago, President George W. Bush and his Republican colleagues in Congress pushed through a massive reduction in marginal tax rates, a reduction that benefitted the wealthy far more than other taxpayers.
We were told the cuts would accelerate business growth and create jobs. Instead, we got nearly a decade of anemic job growth, stagnating wages, declining incomes and high inequality.
The supply-side, trickle-down economic policies of the last decade benefitted people like me, but the wealth didn’t trickle down. So while we did quite well, people who live from paycheck to paycheck didn’t.
Our politics are so silly that we can’t even discuss what the tax rates should really be and what is effective. I, for one, am tired of hearing about the sadness of rich people.
I just spoke to a Republican who said that he has never been more embarrassed to be a Republican. the real problem is not Republicans though it is the Democrats who have internalized all of the GOP’s “protect the rich” arguments.
I have never been more embarrassed to be a Democrat.
And U.I. we aren’t allowed to use the term class warfare because it destablizes our society. Hogwash! As Warren Buffet said, it is class warfare and the rich have been winning. And once again members of my party have demonstrated that they don’t have the ethics or the courage to stand up for us. Pushing back the tax vote until after the election is pure cowardice. Sheesh!
You have to wreck everything.
Garrett Gruener is not rich, he’s filthy rich. If he feels so guilty about not paying more in taxes, why doesn’t he send Obama a nice big check? Gruener is a Democrat/Liberal ideologue. The most damning evidence against him is that he lives in whack job central,Berkeley CA. I’ll concede tax increases if you libs concede spending cuts. I’ve spoken to many Democrats, and quite frankly they have no shame.
Anvil, you first. There are no Republican lawmakers that will vote for tax increases. In fact, the so-called serious Republicans on the
Cat FoodDeficit Commission are talking about tax cuts. I think the panel was supposed to cut the deficit, not increase it, but that’s what Republicans do. They increase the deficit and blame Democrats. It’s the only policy Republicans offer.“I’ll concede tax increases if you libs concede spending cuts. ” Anvil
You’ll never concede tax increases or spending (war) cuts.
Anvil,
You are the man. I say we cut defense spending first since that is the biggest chunk of our budget! Missle defense, Gone! Bases in Europe, gone!
Woohooo, partisan schmartisan! who says both sides can’t work together?
Spending cuts in what, Anvil? Social programs? Why is it you self-loathing middle-class Republicans always want to cut the aid to those who can least help themselves?
As with the Pledge to America, Anvil doesn’t offer any meat for his recipe. Here’s one idea – everyone complains about Social Security going bankrupt, so to solve this problem, get rid of the SS Maximum Wage Base. No more cutting off SS deductions at $106,800 (for this year).
I find the “Social Security is going bankrupt” panic very odd. By bankrupt, they mean in 30 years SS will only be able to pay 75% of its obligation. How many programs pay for themselves like that? Not many. Cutting social security is a way to steal our money to give it to rich people.
I wonder how many Republicans realize that Social Security was really a jobs program – it allowed older people to retire so younger people could take those jobs. Something that could spur job growth now is to allow people to retire early with full Social Security benefits. But no one’s talking about that.
We can all get an economist to argue both sides of the tax cut issue with statistics to support both arguments. The Bush tax cuts were his version of a stimulus package and were meant to expire because the economy was supposed to take off. I don’t have a dog in this fight because of Bush’es stupidity and Obama’s ideology my household income has dipped far below the “rich” threshold. Our nation can not keep spending at this high level, and taxing at this low level, and survive. Both “D”&”R” politicians will continue to pander to their respective bases while the country goes to hell.
“I’ll concede tax increases if you libs concede spending cuts. ” Anvil
Don’t dismiss Anvil so quickly. This is actually the basis for a reasonable compromise. (pretending for the moment that Anvil or any conservative would bargain in good faith).
Instead of arguing about tax increases vs. spending cuts, just take a look at the numbers and you will see we need to do both.
Obama missed an opportunity by not clearly separating temporary spending increases and relief payments from structural spending increases, and educating the public on the difference. By failing that, Obama has allowed Republicans to pretend that the temporary spending increases are part of some vast new increase in the structural budget.
A reasonable compromise with fiscal conservatives would be: We will cut long-term structural spending by introducing consolidation and efficiencies, if you support temporary investment and stimulus spending.
But instead, Dems have taken the untenable position that any and all increased spending – including bloat – is good and necessary to get out of the recession.
But remember, when Republicans say “spending cuts,” they mean cuts in Social Security and health care. If Democrats won’t introduce their own program of Democratic spending cuts, Republicans will take advantage and we will end up with Republican spending cuts instead.
Corzine is the perfect example. If Corzine had enthusiastically implemented some reasonable spending cuts, even along with modest tax increases, he’d be in office today. Now Obama is on the same path.
I disagree, anon. The obvious places to cut spending are defense and corporate welfare — the ag bill would be a good place to start. Go after any existing spending and you’re giving all those folks an excellent reason to turn to the Republicans.
We are well on our way to ceding primacy in geopolitics, our absurd levels of defense spending notwithstanding, and it’s not because of spending on the lower and middle classes. Raising marginal tax rates to Reagan-era levels should not require a compromise. If it does, we are all fucked.
Anvil: I agree with your comment at 9:37.
If “the rich agree: tax the rich,” then my site stands ready to help! On my sidebar, I have a button link directly to the United States Treasury, through which anyone who believes he is undertaxed may voluntarily pay more in taxes!
When I raised this point on the far-too-little-trafficked Iowa Liberal, a gentleman named A J Kamper said that he, personally, was undertaxed, but by God, he wasn’t going to pay more in taxes voluntarily, not unless he could squeeze more money out of other people who might not feel so inclined.
Well, I call hypocrisy on that! If you feel that you are undertaxed, whether you’re one of the 64% the article mentions, or just a poor working slob like Donviti, then you have an easy opportunity to contribute more voluntarily. Until those who claim that they ought to pay more in taxes actually put their money where their mouths are, and pay more voluntarily, they’re nothing but hypocrites as far as I am concerned.
We’ll start right after all those Republicans who hate government stop taking that sweet, sweet government money.
Using quantum math on the Unstable Isotope, we get the translation: No, just because I think we ought to pay higher taxes, I’m not going to pay more taxes voluntarily!
Dana, paying taxes is just one of those things in life that works better as a team effort than an individual achievement.
Remember what the REAL Boston Tea Party was about? Hint: It wasn’t about getting out of paying taxes.
And Dana, if you want to implement spending cuts, feel free to stop using all taxpayer-funded services.
No, the translation is I don’t trust Republicans to do the right thing or to act on their beliefs. Of course, I’m not one of the poor, put upon richest 2%. If the tax rates go up, I’ll pay them without whining about it. I’m certainly willing to do my part. Like anon said, taxes are not an individual thing but a collective thing.