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TechnoratiOnly Little People Pay Taxes
It's odd, this urge I have to mark the passing of Leona Helmsley. The diva of a hotel empire whose abrasive arrogance was given a full public airing during her tabloid-terrific trial on tax-evasion charges in the late 1980s died earlier this week at 87. Her epitaph: the Queen of Mean.
Nostalgia for New York City is a common affliction among those of us who once made our homes there. It drives an entire industry built upon the memory of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and infuses people with the determined outlook that somehow life on the Lower East Side was better when it was an immigrant ghetto than it is today as a gentrified enclave for suburban college students in search of a cool nightclub.
There is an awful lot to legitimately miss about New York without resorting to a gauzy glance back at the 1980s, a time when the very rich -always a source of curiosity and perverse civic pride-held cultural sway. Wall Street rose up as a way of life instead of as a mere industry. Real estate barons such as Helmsley and her husband, Harry, were titans. Donald Trump was building his career as a developer, investor and political player-viewed as a savior of struggling municipal projects or as an instigator of self-enriching sweetheart deals, take your pick. This was before Trump became a caricature of himself for TV.
Average New Yorkers gained little from all this money sloshing up and down the avenues. The trickle-down economics of the Reagan era didn't turn the aging subways around, fill the potholes or shore up the bridges. Public investment of all kinds was starved in part because of deep federal budget cuts.
So when a former housekeeper testified at the queen's trial that Leona Helmsley once told her that "only the little people pay taxes," something snapped. It was as though the decade had been unmasked for what it was: an era of individual rapaciousness, backed in good part by government itself.
How could we know that two decades later that sound bite of selfishness-"only the little people pay taxes"-would become public policy?
Recalling Helmsley has jogged another memory. It is of Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill after the 2002 midterm elections. According to Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill wanted the White House to abandon its plan for a second round of big tax cuts. The federal deficit already was rising, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, necessitated enormous new expenditures for security, and the war in Afghanistan created another big demand for funds. But, Cheney told O'Neill dismissively: "We won the midterms. This is our due."
So the second installment went forward, part of a tax-cut tab from the still- unfinished Bush era that amounts to a 10-year, $2 trillion drain on the public treasury. By any measure, the cuts flow disproportionately not to the "little people" but to those who already are living large.
The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, says the combined effect of the Bush tax cuts was to raise the after-tax incomes of those taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income by 6 percent-more than twice the benefit for those with incomes between $20,000 and $75,000.
Looked at another way, those with incomes of more than $1 million got an average tax cut of $118,477. That compares with $1,205 for a taxpayer whose income falls between $50,000 and $75,000.
As the Bush presidency limps to a close, the country is frantic about Iraq and weighed down by concerns over terrorism. The central theme among Democrats running for president is undoing President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy mistakes. Republican candidates, by and large, solemnly swear to stay the course in Iraq.
There's been little discussion of how to repair the damage from a fiscal policy based on the premise that only the little people pay taxes. Some Democrats have pledged to repeal the tax cuts for those with the highest incomes-say, people earning $200,000 or more a year. No attention has been paid to the inevitable future program cuts to bring the federal budget into line. These will almost certainly fall upon the public at large-whether they are drivers or hospital patients or students or retirees.
Such is the legacy of this particular decade of greed. At least back in the 1980s, we were appalled by it.
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
37 Comments so far
Show AllI've got it all figgered-out, folks...
Tax consumption across the board - then leave the "do-it-yourself-ers" (like gardeners and hemp growers), the barterers, the garage and estate sellers alone - so the rich can shuffle along like the rest of us... for a change.
If they want to park capital overseas and head for the hills - great... just tax every transaction per its amount!
Slap a tax on all food and beverages except that produced within 100 miles from your homestead.
Personally, I'm going into the security biz... as this seems like a growth industry. Maybe I'll become a sprouts tycoon!
Then put the FedGov into bankruptcy, eliminate the Fed Reserve, and divide what's left over... by divvying it up to the states for infrastructure repair, mass transportation and such.
If an individual or corporate entity is trashing our air, water, or the ground we all walk on... make 'em pay through the nose... until they clean up their act... or shut down.
The FedGov will eventually be cut down to the size recommended by the framers of our Constitution - if we still have one, that is (take your pick).
Finally, we'll get to rediscover what liberty and freedom - and America - is really all about!
Seize control of what matters most in your life, and finally live it up, folks.
Call home, and tell everybody about it. And if you can't do that... hell, take a sailing cruise... or be prepared to buy a horse!
In 1913 the law regarding income tax was never ratified by the states and has not been even to this day. There is no law on the books saying you HAVE to pay income tax at all, but filing a false tax return is another matter.
OSWALD SPENGLER wrote a great deal about cultures and civilizations and what causes them to collapse. A nation reaches its apex in art, science, language, music, literature, government and other things, and is considered a great power, while other nations and cultures have not achieved as much at that particular time in history.
While "nation A" is at its peak and presumably can do no wrong, "nation B" is rising from down below, also on a quest to reach the imaginary apex of nation A. But for some reason throughout history, once a country reaches its zenith, a subtle but gradual decline in things mentioned above begins, and "nation A" is no longer at the top, but sliding down the scale, while "nation B" is rising to its apex, and stays at a high level for a time, only to repeat the devolution of "nation A", while another society and culture evolves upward. I guess it is a pendulum theory for countries over time.
Starting with Ronald Reagan, and continuing non-stop, our country and our culture has been on a perilous course in a race to the bottom for most of us. All we have left are a well paid military machine blindy following orders to destroy weaker countries. And the most disgusting group of politicians since decadent Rome.
As we are slipping, China is rising ( with all her numerous faults and violations ) and Russia is making a comeback. Both countries are very aware of the pyschopaths in D.C. and the Project For A New American Century group.
Siouxrose: You are so right, my dear, about the driving habits. And Walmart? They opened a store in my community almost a year ago, and myself and others have'nt spent one penny there.
And all you other Common Dreamers...thanks for caring about our world, ( not like the undeveloped "god bless america " crowd ) for writing insightful posts on many of these articles. I don't know any of you, nor do you know me, but I feel closer to you than I do with many relatives and friends of mine.
IOWARISH: right on! Those who argue FOR wealth in the hands of those who have it forgot a few logistical points such as the way laws have been bent to favor the rich. Since the lobbyists ultimately bribe legislators through "campaign contributions" to get their bidding done, where is representation for the interests of workers in this scenario? It is one thing to have a stratified society based on ACTUAL accomplishments, and another when money makes money and does not pay its fair share into the collective equation. The very fact that CEO salaries now tend to be hundreds of times the salary of workers, when 30 years ago it was perhaps 40-60 X the workers' salaries, is itself obscene. The lack of accountability is obscene, particularly with the no-bid contracts that has fattened the military industrial complex while billions have gone missing, and agreed upon projects have NOT been anywhere near satisfied. Money being bled to the least conscionable in the name of war/patriotism/fighting terrorism is NOT a viable paradigm for fiscal responsibility or sanity.
Today's US economics remind me of our roadways. Years ago ONE driver might be in some kind of insane hurry putting everyone else at risk as he took off at lightning speed. Other drivers would comment, "what an asshole," etc. But today, it's the "asshole" who honors the speed limit, or drives prudently, as EVERYONE seems to race off in some dangerous frenzy. Economics simulates this scene in that people rush to "the top" and squash everyone on the way. Look at Wallmart like a big dog eating up every other little dog on its path? What we're missing are honor, decency, accountability, a sense of the greater society, social justice, a sense beyond what profits the self. Just as war satisfies nothing in the long run but the fruit of waste, an economic model of everyone for him (her) self devalues the shared society, a FACT we witness as infrastructure that many rely upon begins to dangerously crumble.
That UGLY plastic faced bitch went to PRISON for almost 2 years. I hope she got a taste of the real little people inside.
This quote from NPR below shows what kind of person she was and what kind of other people are out there now that I personally have had to deal with. Maybe we should all live on communes and let these people do their own painting, carpentry, plumbing, wipe their ass, etc.
"The Helmsleys' charitable gifts may have run to the tens of millions, but people who dealt with them spoke bitterly of being stiffed............
One of them, a painting contractor, said Leona Helmsley wouldn't pay an $88,000 bill for work on Dunellen Hall because she was entitled to a "commission" for the $800,000 worth of other jobs he got in Helmsley buildings........
After making a sales clerk rewrite a bill for earrings to save $4 in sales tax, she reportedly said: "That's how the rich get richer."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13747892&ft=1&f=17
Those tax cuts helped to add $3 trillion dollars to the debt too. They want you to believe the deficit is going down, but there is some odd accounting going on. You can not accumulate $3 trillion more debt in 6 years with the $200-$300 billion dollar deficits that they have been declaring. It quite literally does NOT add up!
Edwards seems to be one of the few - maybe the only - democratic candidates willing to talk at length and in detail about the failed domestic fiscal policies of the current administration. Clue me in if you think I'm wrong about this. -
PS - I'm speaking of democratic candidates who actually have some real chance to get elected.
I would guess most of you at this site are college graduates with pretty good jobs and income. How many of you use every tax deduction available to you? I would guess 100%
You could always refuse to use them and pay more taxes. You could even donate more money to the IRS. Why do you think the wealthy should do any different than you.
And don't try to tell me that you would voluntarily pay more taxes if the money wouldn't go to the military. What a bunch of hipocrites.
Welcome to Master's Plantation. 3 Classes: Masters, Overseers, and us. We are the meat for Master's table, the Overseers are there to cook us and slice the meat. And for those of u who still pray for Democratic saviors, fogettaboutit.
No Impeachment
No Censure
No Prosecutions
Patriot, MCA, PAA FOREVER
Iraq- 10 more years
We go to hell, Master lives in wealth power and privilege forever -
Until the coastlines drown
Until the bubbles all burst
Until this Empire shatters into 50 separate states
Until we cut off the Masters heads.
But we won't, it wouldn't be polite.
Wealth is good. Taxes are bad. Wealth is created by a strong economy. I learned in Economics 101 that cutting taxes on the rich helps the economy. Most poor people don't know what to do with their money anyway. Anybody can invest in the capitol markets but most poor people don't bother. They dream about the mansion on the hill and ignore the modest well-built brick home down the street that is just as comfortable. They drool over the Bentley and complain about their reliable Toyota. They really enjoy TV, movies, and we really enjoy making money off them. I think that's the way it's supposed to be. I believe in just letting people be happy. I drove down a poor neighborhood the other day and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I'm certian that they don't even know who Dennis K is. My housekeeper Debra voted for Bush and beamed with pride as she bragged about it (she doesn't like gay people). She said the $300 tax refund she got was nice and she bought a TV. God bless her - I hope she doesn't get sick because she doesn't have any health insurance, poor thing. She *hates* Hillary and has a lot of jokes about her. She thinks I'm laughing at her jokes but I'm actually laughing because Hillary's health care plan would have provided her with over $5000 in health benefits for free. That's when I realized that middle-class people are stupid too. They defeated the plan because they wanted to be able to choose their doctor and now most of them are in HMOs. That's one thing I feel kind of bad about but I'm also glad because I've made a lot of money from my Pfizer and Aetna stock.
Back when the French were celebrating the bi-centenial of their revolution National Geographic had a big spread and mentioned how the French felt guilt for the horendous wholesale executions of the aristocracy. My dad observed, "Yeah but those suns o' bitches never came back to bother them again."
real world 8/24: 8:44 pm "And don't try to tell me that you would voluntarily pay more taxes if the money wouldn't go to the military. What a bunch of hipocrites."
Agreed that few of us would like voluntarily pay MORE taxes. However, most of us want the taxes that we do pay to stop going to the out of control military and be REALLOCATED to social services like universal health care, better and free education (including post-high school education), successful programs like Head Start, infrastructure repairs, services for single parents, pre-natal care for at-risk youth, etc. The military does nothing except bring more harm into the world at increasingly high social, environmental, and financial costs.
If we would simply stop funding the military (the fear generating machine), the entire world would be a safer place.
Re: the wealthy. The old axiom - those who have been given more have the greater responsibility - is true, but has been forgotten. It's been replaced with 'those who have been given more deserve it. The rest of you don't.'
There will be a karmic reckoning for this attitude. Maybe not in this lifetime. But in some other lifetime.
Leona Helmsley is to be pitied in the same way that the Nazi faithful taking their cyanide pills in Der Fuhrer's bunker as the sounds of Soviet artillery ka-boomed in the near distance of Berlin's suburbs. Like the song by the Pozo Seco Singers "I believed it All"* so did Leona. She was not a cynical sarcastic--just delusionally immature and viciously stupid.
This modern Marie Antionnette went from glittering success (before she ever married into the Helmsley wealth she was a real estate millionaire in her own right) to dishonorable disgrace. Her deluded spirit survives intact among both the "nouveau riche" and "old money" of today's owner-exploiter class of people.
*Mary had a little lamb
One and one make two
Candles on a birthday cake
Blow them out and your wish comes true
Does she love me does she not
Tell me daisy do
Oh to be a child again
Oaks from acorns grew
One and one make two
I believed it all
Didn't you?
Bill Gates Sr. has been advocating that the floor for estate tax purposes should be seven million dollars which would only affect the top one percent. He has said that it was lowered in order to convince Americans to do away with it altogether.
Freedom Loving American-- I totally agree with you on the need to restore the progressive income tax. We all know it is insane to have it as low as it is now and will have to be raised especially now that we owe the Chinese for our great war of liberation or the government will default on their debt. I believe though, realistically, we cannot return to the rates you suggested in a short time. It took Reagan and Bush a number of years to get them down where they are today.
RuthK-- We definitely need to keep the estate tax as you seem to believe also. However, I disagree that a two million dollar exemption is too high as you cannot hardly be called a family farm any more if your assets are less than that. That amount would protect most smaller farms from being forced to sell for taxes, and would still catch the mega-farms. In any case, we need to keep the estate tax as it would be an accounting nightmare if it is completely repealed as the stepped-up basis of assets at death would no longer apply.
This would require heirs to go back 50 or more years in some cases where gifting has been done in an attempt to establish a tas basis.
evelyna-- I would like to see some "trickle up" economics for a while, woudn`t you? Of course, that is what is going on mow, but it is the hard earned money of lower income people and not government help that is trickling up.
Wow the great Bush legacies "Trickle down economics." People got pissed on.
Bush junior's "increase productivity." Work till you drop to make the corporations money. Yet they are still going out of business and losing money. How so, the working people do not have any money to spend.
Oh and Ronnie Reagan's "there are plenty of jobs in the want ads."
Next term maybe people will elect a president that lives in the planet earth. I have almost given up hope, though.
Privatized Americans' wealth: from the many to the few. Government has aided the rich in taking our wealth from our public lands to our private pensions. Our main taxes are now called fees: a few dollars here and a few dollars there and all from the pockets of working people. Our sales taxes are far too high for working people to pay; yet working people pay it again and again every day. And soon they will empty the social security accounts to pay for the lost war and war profiteers.
We need a new deal for working people
So why haven't we yet incorporated as America, Inc., moved our assets offshore and told the Bushists to stuff their internationally criminal warrin' policies and Bush wars by cutting them off at the bills?
damon13, I like Goodwill's current promotion - "used is the new new". The only real counter to the "new is better" philosophy of our culture is enough of us getting sick of feeding the corporate machine, we work to get money- to get stuff- which gives money to others- so they can get stuff, it all looks rather tawdry and cheap, but hey, I'm a cynic. We need to repeat the message over and over, ya know- "catapult the propaganda". A catchy new holiday phrase wouldn't hurt either...
(I got nothing)
Leona Helmsley's death reminds me that all people bring great joy into this world.
Some by their arrival, others by their departure.
frank1569,
Good idea. We can start by cancelling cable/satellite TV. There's nothing good on anyway except the ballgames. Hell, even Al Michaels was shilling for the iraq war in between the play by play on MNF. Let's not pay for our own brainwashing. Better yet, turn that fukker off all together and use it for a plant stand. Go outside. Get some excercise and meet your neighbors.
See Aaron Russo's film on youtube. Maybe Little People shouldn't be paying taxes at all.
I agree, vote with your wallet. Let's organize a massive Progressive "Holiday" Strike, and vow not to buy any merchandise (presents) this year, unless they are re-sold. Goodwill, Craigslist, Local antique store, garage sale down the street. I know my friends and family will think this a great "quaint" idea (maybe we can even design cute gift tags that explain the significance of the gift). We'll put money back into the hands of people who need it etc. My husband and I are having a friend (whose home-improvement business is starting to suffer from the real-estate slump) build our daughter a wooden Barbie house, from scrap wood he has around, for Christmas this year. Let's stop buying so much stuff in order for other humans to just buy more stuff, it's just gotten weird.
Progressive taxation would be a good idea in any decent country, but the USA no longer has any claim to that status. What justice would require, after the depredations of the last 7 years, would be not merely the re-introduction of progressive taxation, but confiscating the wealth that Bush's "base" has accumulated from the criminality of his regime.
The entire war expenditure, the war-profiteering, the Halliburton overcharges, the rip-off of billions in the California energy scam of 2001, the oil-company profits ever since, the tax cuts for the rich, the gouged profits from mergers & deregulation -- all this and more is wealth stolen from the public through the policies of a regime which has revoked our Constitution, degraded & disgraced us, & begun spying on us. That these soulless fat cats behind Bush should be permitted to enjoy this stolen wealth in perpetuity (their spoiled brat kids won't even have to pay taxes on it!) is abhorrent, intolerable, & incompatible with the faintest notion of democracy.
Incidentally, though Marie Cocco's article is on the right side of the taxation issue, it's a remarkably poor article, upon close inspection. 'beavercleaver' above already pointed out her false claim that "The central theme among Democrats running for president is undoing President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy mistakes." Actually, they're competing to continue the mistakes (though they'd like to cloak them with different rhetoric).
Cocco also says, "As the Bush presidency limps to a close, the country is frantic about Iraq and weighed down by concerns over terrorism." This is mealy-mouthed BS. "Limping to a close" is hardly the way to describe a regime of vicious murderous gangsters who have defiled & betrayed the Constitution, & successfully converted the country into a militarist outlaw and human rights violator abroad, & a police state at home. // Furthermore, we're not "weighed down by concerns over terrorism." Some 99.9% of what they call "terrorism" is just lies of the US govt. Americans have a far greater chance of being in a traffic accident, than affected by "terrorism" -- unless of course we're speaking about the terrorism of our own government. That indeed is an extremely serious matter which we all should be weighed down by (though it's not what Cocco was talking about).
scheiber6923, this is a brilliant idea! With the advent of ebay and craigslist; there's really no end to a universal concept of recycling consumer products, AND, cutting out the corporations. But, in order for it to be effective, there has to be some psychological counter to our ingrained notion of "new is better". Any ideas?
Repairing the "damage" has become impossible, because the super-greedy have now accumulated such a vast amount of wealth, they can offer any politician anything they've ever dreamed of - and pay for it with the cash in their pockets. And to fix the game, all you need is one or two refs and maybe a few players on the payroll - AKA, loyalbushies, for example.
The only weapon we have left is our wallets, because all "they" care about is taking what's left of our money. If the majority of Americans now in opposition stopped rewarding the enablers and economic terrorists with their hard earned dollars, said enablers and economic terrorists would either have to change their behavior or cease to exist.
Vote with your wallet.
I suggest a progressive tax system which:
1) doesn't even kick it until the median income
2) begins gradually as a continuous curve equation
3) then caps out at approx. 50% between multi-millionaire and billionaire status.
For decades now there has been a steady movement toward taking the tax burden off corporations and the financial class and placing it on the backs of the working class. Cutting the capital gains tax rate, for-profit healthcare, the move to repeal the estate tax, loopholes that allow corporate profits to be ficticiously attributed to foreign subsidiaries etc, all work toward this end. In fact the entire purpose of our byzantine tax code is to allow the rich to pay less and less taxes. The first $30,000 or so of yearly income should be tax free because that represents basic living expenses for the average American. Above that amount, the rate should be constant with no exemptions deductions or looholes.
The effort to eliminate the estate tax continues. Right now, only estates that exceed 2 million dollars pay federal estate tax. The term "death tax" is used to make is sound like something horrible.
There have been TV ads claiming that the estate tax causes small farmers to lose their farms. This is stupid. Small farms are already disappearing because of subsidies to agribusiness and factory farms. I have relatives who have small farms. The only way they keep them is to have jobs outside of the farms. No way are they worth more than 2 million dollars.
Thanks to the little people I'm rich. Profits from your needs, hunger, medical,housing,education,desater,military,water whatever you need I must profit.It's called CAPITALISM.!!
I agree about Kucinich, too. He's a TRUE Democrat and represents what real democrats are supposed to be about --- NOT bound by corporate strings -- A president who remembers the PEOPLE in this country. He's about REAL REFORM.
See how they treat a REAL democrat? With CONTEMPT. We need to knock the phony democrats out of left field and make them join the party they really represent -- the corrupt Republicans. If we don't take back the Democratic party as it was meant to be, we can't take back the country.
I agree. The more I read about Kucinich, the more I like him.
"Once democrats get control they should immediately raise the taxes on the rich to 85%-95% with no deduction and pay payroll tax on every dollar earned. They should raise the corporate tax rate to 50%-90% this is the responsible humane thing to do."
This will never happen because the corporations and wealthy pay off the Democrats just as they do the Republicans. We never had a democracy--it was a republic--but even that's gone. In its place, we have an oligarchy.
"The central theme among Democrats running for president is undoing President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy mistakes."
Beg your pardon-but 2 out of the herd of brand "D" are the only ones planning to do any changing. Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel
The rest, to a larger/lesser extent, will continue sailing the HMS "Amerika" closer to the storm of armegeddon and financial ruin. The majority of Democratic POTUS hopefuls offer nothing to progressives-get used to it!
Nationalize the oil and energy companies also, along with any other industries that have the capability to produce jobs -- WalMart included wherein a living wage will be paid to all employee-owners of the company. Teachers, small farmers and small business owners will be supported and large companies broken up and managed by those who wish to see a more equitable wage structure.
Any company execs who don't like this can simply get out and live in Dubai or elswhere as the writer above suggested.
Protectionism will become both fashionable and unapologetic as well as just the right thing to do.
The good they die young
Once democrats get control they should immediately raise the taxes on the rich to 85%-95% with no deduction and pay payroll tax on every dollar earned. They should raise the corporate tax rate to 50%-90% this is the responsible humane thing to do. Next cut the most ridiculous war budget in the history of the world by 10 fold immediately then enact a constitutional amendment stating it can never be more than 10% higher than the country with the next largest war budget.
Once again the rich should pay a sin tax for the outrageous war spending since the main reason we have such a ludicrous war budget is to allow huge corporations to move their jobs overseas and feel safe from nationalization and internal unrest. Why should free Americans pay for protection for American corporations to move their jobs overseas? If we make the cuts I suggest I would bet that within 1-3 years many of the high paying jobs would be back in the United States.
If the repukes don't like this then let the freedom hating, liberty hating, lying scum, move to Dubai, we would be much better off without them.
Only little people need to obey the law, also. The other message that this law-free zone administration has clearly sent us: laws are for suckers.