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Forget the Rich: Tax the Poor and Middle Class!
Nothing is certain but death and taxes, it used to be said, but in the madcap times we live in, even they're up for grabs.
No matter what proof the White House provides that Osama bin Laden indeed has had his bucket kicked -- and at this point even al Qaeda admits he's dead -- there still will be uncertainty. Whether they ever release those damned photos or not, a lunatic few will continue to insist that Osama's alive and well and running a Papa John's Pizza in Marrakesh.
As for taxes, having to pay them is no longer a sure thing either, especially if you're a corporate giant like General Electric, with a thousand employees in its tax department, skilled in creative accounting. You'll recall recent reports that although GE made profits last year of $5.1 billion in the United States and $14.2 billion worldwide they would pay not a penny of federal income tax. Chalk it up to billions of dollar of losses at GE Capital during the financial meltdown and a government tax break that allows companies to avoid paying US taxes on profits made overseas while "actively financing" different kinds of deals.
It gets worse. In 2009, Exxon-Mobil didn't pay any taxes either, and last year, they had worldwide profits of $30.46 billion. Neither did Bank of America or Chevron or Boeing. According to a report last week from the office of the New York City Public Advocate, in 2009, the five companies, including GE, received a total of $3.7 billion in federal tax benefits.
As The New York Times' David Kocieniewski reported in March, "Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less... Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation's tax receipts -- from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009."
What's greasing the wheels for these advantages is, hold on to your hats, cash. Over the last decade, according to the NYC public advocate's report, those same five companies -- GE, Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, Chevron and Boeing -- gave more than $43.1 million to political campaigns. During the 2009-2010 election cycle, the five spent a combined $7.86 million in campaign contributions, a 7 percent jump over their 2007-2008 political spending.
"These tax breaks were put in place to promote growth and create jobs, not bankroll the political causes of corporate executives," Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said. "... No company that can afford to spend millions of dollars to influence our elections should be pleading poverty come tax time."
And by the way, those campaign cash figures don't even include all the money those companies funneled into the 2010 campaigns via trade associations and tax-exempt non-profits. Thanks to the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, we don't know the numbers because, as per the court, the corporate biggies don't have to tell us. Imagine them sticking out their tongues and wiggling their fingers in their ears and you have a pretty good idea of their official position on this.
Meanwhile, last week Republicans like Utah's Orrin Hatch, ranking member of the US Senate Finance Committee, grabbed hold of an analysis by Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and wrestled it to the ground. The brief memorandum reported that in the 2009 tax year 51 percent of all American taxpayers had zero tax liability or received a refund. So why, the Republicans asked, are Democrats and others so mean, asking corporations and the rich to pay higher taxes when lots of other people -- especially the poor and middle class -- don't pay taxes either?
Hatch told MSNBC, "Bastiat, the great economist of the past, said the place where you've got to get revenues has to come from the middle class. That's the huge number of people that are there. So the system does need to be revamped... We have an unbalanced tax code that we've got to change."
All of which flies in the face of reality. As Travis Waldron of the progressive ThinkProgress website explained, "The majority of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes don't make enough money to qualify for even the lowest tax bracket, a problem made worse by the economic recession. That includes retired Americans, who don't pay income taxes because they earn very little income, if they earn any at all.
"And while many low-income Americans don't pay income taxes, they do pay taxes. Because of payroll and sales taxes -- a large proportion of which are paid by low- and middle-income Americans -- less than a quarter of the nation's households don't contribute to federal tax receipts -- and the majority of the non-contributors are students, the elderly, or the unemployed."
What's more, ThinkProgress notes, "The top 400 taxpayers -- who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined -- are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation, as their tax responsibilities have slowly collapsed since the New Deal era.” In the meantime, "working families have been asked to pay more and more."
So maybe death and taxes are no longer certain, but one thing remains as immutable as the hills. In the words of another golden oldie, there's nothing surer -- the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.
33 Comments so far
Show AllWhy should the rich get all the breaks?
No matter how much tax a person or business pays on the first million, they should ALWAYS pay more for the next million.
.
Next Tuesday is National Rich Person's Day. Take a Rich Person to lunch.
Trylon
Can I have a rich person for dinner?
.
There once was a fellow named Skinner
Who took a rich woman to dinner.
At a quarter to nine
They sat down to dine;
By a quarter to ten it was in her.
The dinner, not Skinner---
Skinner was in her before dinner.
Trylon,
Now was that Congressman Skinner you were referring to?
how will He be cooked?
Hmmm
First on a side note: I haven't heard much in the way of claims that Bin Laden is still alive. What many people and nearly every state intelligence community outside of the US, the Brits and Israel has been saying for years is that this guy died a LONG time ago. And further these same agencies have been saying right along that his ghost was kept alive to provide a boguy man for the gullible public to fixate on.
The USA has one of the LOWEST effective tax rates for multi-national corps in the entire world. Thats right the top 1000 corporations in the USA have one of the LOWEST effective TOTAL tax rates in the industrialized world. Instead of telling us that up front you first provided the standard quote of the 35% rate to readers. You wanted to firmly plant this number in their minds. You see this same tactic in literally thousands of articles posted in every imaginable media form all over the US. And you never, never quote the actual average effective rate for the fortune 1000. Now why is that? But what you do say like all the other article is that over 50% don't pay taxes. Of course they really do, but the reader isn't informed of that till further down. Again this is a standard script. Nice try.
Thanks for your side note. I HOPE we all knew that. The author seems to be appealing to U.S. gross ignorance in an attempt to increase his credibility, but if it succeeded for most, it definitely backfired for me.
I think this was a problem before 1865 as well when wealthy land owners in the Deep South complained that they didn't know of a single slave (all who incidentally have full-time jobs) who paid taxes, yet they demanded "rights?" The nerve of them!
I assume when the last vestiges of the middle class are snuffed out by the corporate controlled RepoDemos, the rich will complain that they're the only ones who pay taxes. This is commonplace already in other third world countries.
What needs most to be done is for members of congress to go through the entire tax code line by line and re-do it so that it's fair and sensible. Whenever politicians run, that's a sure fire applause-cheer line: "Let's revise the tax code!" But of course, once they get in, no revising happens.
But it's good to keep raising the issue. Let the people notice.
Sure, the tax codes are skewed to benefit the rich; but the real problem is where all the tax dollars finally end up. Arguing over the tax codes is, like OBL, a diversion to keep the ignorant occupied. Much of the wealth goes to pay off our debts and borrow more for the MIC. Bankers and arms suppliers see nothing wron with the status quo, and laugh at our petty squabbles over table scraps.
How many thousands of pages of "code" have been written??
Pardon me if I trip over the details, but the concept of any federal "tax expenditure" on our behalf is miniscule compared to the pilfered booty. Instead, why don't we just eliminate the Federal Reserve and the IRS??
Because we exist on a plantation.
"As The New York Times' David Kocieniewski reported in March, "Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less..."
That 35% is considered high is a large problem. This means that capital is getting concentrated. Unless all private capital type wealth created is eventually redistributed into the commons, private power and private interests will overtake public interests and power. There's no rationale for people and non-democratic organisations holding this much power. And people who love to claim that they deserve what they have should just shut up. Not a single Western middle-class (or richer) person actually "deserves" the wealth they have access to. We're lucky to be able to exploit nature, science, oil and of course other people, but nothing, not a single thing is only or even mainly our own work. Not even Thoreau :-/
The difference between a prostitute and a politician:
A hooker screws you and then takes your money. A politician takes your money and then screws you.
There are some things a hooker won't do for money.
The one that delivers what they promise goes to jail.
You screw the prostitute, the politician screws you.
No one ever enjoyed being screwed by a politician.
There's no difference. Either will assume a position for the right amount of money.
Direct democracy!
"And while many low-income Americans don't pay income taxes, they do pay taxes. Because of payroll and sales taxes...
Yup; state and local taxes are notoriously regressive - particularly in those states that brag "we don't have an income tax!" In the state of Washington, the poor (bottom 20%) pay 17.3 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the top 1% pay about 2.9%
The states that brag of a "flat income tax" like Illinois and Pennsylvania only fare a bit better: the poor 11-14%, the rich 4%.
Buu even states that have a graduated income tax (California, Virginia, Vermont) are hardly progressive overall - they are, at very best, flat - mostly due to the regressive nature of sales and property taxes.
http://www.itepnet.org/wp2009/statespecific.html
OK,OK, I get it. Congress needs to pass a law taxing the unemployed. Since as John Boehner has pointed out yet again, there will be no tax increase on the rich. They will continue to be subsidized by the rest of us, and why shouldn't the unemployed be doing their share? Aren't they breathing the same polluted air the rest of us are?
Because ORIN, the rich and large corporations use far more infrastructure, paid by tax dollars, than the poor and middle class combined. Pay your share rich cheaters. Cheater, liars, stealers, that's all the rich know how to be.
"No matter what proof the White House provides that Osama bin Laden indeed has had his bucket kicked -- and at this point even al Qaeda admits he's dead -- there still will be uncertainty. Whether they ever release those damned photos or not, a lunatic few will continue to insist that Osama's alive and well and running a Papa John's Pizza in Marrakesh."
_____________________
I give the previous commenters credit for sticking to Winship's ostensible subject.
Personally, I found his compulsion to reinforce his liberal-lite "street cred" by shoehorning this happy horseshit into his setup too off-putting to bother with whatever else he's chuntering on about.
It's time for Americans to wake up to the fact that our current government is the type of government our founding fathers revolted against. The land of the free and home of the brave has become a stinking morass of cattle who can't wait to give up what little they have left.
The Declaration of Independence--our charter document--demands we overthrow the tyrants who are stealing from us.
The working people revolted against this type of government. The "founding fathers" did not. They re-established it once the British ships had sailed.
I object to the description of working class people as "a stinking morass of cattle who can't wait to give up what little they have left."
You are praising and idealizing the rulers in the first instance and heaping contempt on the workers in the second.
Don't forget the argument that since the richest 10% own 90% of the wealth, why shouldn't 90% of tax revenue come from those super rich 10%?
The rich get richer because the poor buy their stuff. Sales taxes, NOW. If you want it progressive, prebate the amount for poverty level income.
The world is shrinking because so many people are consuming it. Time to put feedback into the system to stop the bloating of people and trash. The real decisions in this country are made at the cash register when people buy gas, junk food, and stuff they don't need, made by people they don't know.
No exemptions, no loopholes, no names when you pay. Stop making it a competition between people (us against Them) and realize that the problem our future faces is the overuse of ALL resources, especially using money to disconnect people from reality. Tax the flow of money at its source. Value doesn't come from on high, it comes from people doing necessary, useful things for each other. When they just shuffle pieces of paper around, they don't care if that paper represents their neighbor.
Yes, food, shoes, and clothing, and transportation are so extravagant. Tax them.
Sales taxes, especially on food and clothing, represent practically a war on the poor. Please read my earlier 1:19 PM post and visit ITEPnet.org and get educated.
Over half of the people in the country are struggling to pay for the basic necessities.
Life is not a shopping mall, and social issues are not solved at the cash register. The battle is in the workplace, not the shopping mall.
Only people with a relatively privileged and consumerist mindset could imagine that shopping is so important, or is a useful tool for social or political change.
When the last CEO, banker, lawyer and lobbyist is strangled with the entrails of the last politician, we may have peace, and perhaps get our country back.
When we revolted against British rule, one of the rallying cries was "No taxation without representation!"
I haven't been represented for years.
It's good that this article focuses on the root of the real inequity in the tax code--the corporations.
However, it's very biased to say that Democrats are asking the corporations to pay more taxes, or any taxes.
Obama never mentions corporations.
He takes on a much easier but more divisive target--individuals earning more than $250,000.
It's disingenuous to lump those making $250,000 a year in the same category as GE, Exxon and Warren Buffett. Label them all greedy, and declare it fair to throw half of what they earn into the huge abyss of government waste.
What a treat it is to travel and see the great cathedrals, palaces, and museums in various countries. These beautiful and magnificent tourist attractions would not exist if it weren’t for large sacrifices made by very successful and wealthy persons.
If one tours the areas of Havana that were originally beautiful homes and gardens of the wealthy one would see these same homes divided up into apartments for the poor. The houses are now dirty and run down while their gardens are left untended. Pride of ownership is a thing of the past.
When one goes to the LA Philharmonic concerts at Disney hall one should thank the wealthy who have donated thousands and even millions of dollars so that we average folks can enjoy the beauty of the music and architecture. To those of you who would tax the wealthy and spend it on the poor, go live in Havana or Tijuana where everything is average, dirty and run down.
I took a look at the list of 400 wealthiest people in America. My calculations are rough but reasonably accurate, i.e., I did it in my head. If we confiscate ALL the wealth of these people we would cover our monthly deficits for 14-15 months. We overspend about 100 billion dollars a month. The first two would cover the first month (Buffett and Gates) but by #56 the net worth drops to $5 billion and around #75 it's less than $3 billion.
Without drastic cuts in spending, raising taxes on the rich is useless. Except for a few lone voices on both sides of the aisle, cuts are all about balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, but that isn't enough. Without trashing SS and Medicare they can't get anything with sane numbers and they'd rather have sane numbers than a sane budget.
There has got to be some way for voices on all sides to, in unison, demand dismantling of the Empire. Nothing else will help.
Money does not disappear when it is spent, it merely moves. There is no such thing as "running out of" money. Money is a token representing wealth, it is not itself wealth, is not of any value in and of itself except by social agreement.
So long as workers are producing, there is wealth being generated, and workers on average are more productive now than ever even when we include those who are not currently working.
You are unable to find, or to imagine the location of the wealth that is constantly being created and transferred - mostly from the hands of the producers into the pockets of the investors and speculators. That is because you are not looking hard enough.
Confiscating the wealth of the top 1% would balance the current deficit for 300 months by my calculations, although the deficits are being caused by incomes of the wealthy not being taxed, so wealth is not really a relevant way to look at this, rather we should look at incomes.
Or perhaps you are worried bout imposing in any way on that 1% and think that it is OK that 99% should suffer so that the 1% can be further enriched - that is what has been happening, you know. That is why there are deficits, and "we are out of money" and "we can't afford it" are nonsense.
Concerning the Founding Fathers, -were they really for all the people, or just a few seleted?? They most all were free masons, wealthy, white male, who may have disgreed, but voted the same. Only the land owners could vote, meaning the wealthy who owned their land, ---people of color or women were not allowed.
I remember back when the wealthy did not pay much or any taxes, because they were to help the poor get jobs, and they did, as maids, butlers, nannies, garderners. These people were paid low wages, no benefits, but had to pay taxas out of their low income, medical care or whatever. Most could not afford cars so we walked, had our babies at home ,and so on. We have been slowly going backwards since 2001, and the Tea Party intends to put us back even farther in 2012. As for Laden, most know he died years ago,-- fake tapes to please Bush, died again to please Obama. Taliban were Bush Sr. freedom fighters, and the CIA formed Al Qaida-both were on the payroll . They refused to obey orders, became the terrorists to eliminate.