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Raise
Taxes on the Rich
by Robert Reich, has he been
reading bartcop.com?
It's tax time.
Right-wing Republicans are setting the agenda for massive spending cuts
that will hurt most Americans.
The only way America can reduce
the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services,
protect Social Security and
Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not
raise taxes on the working
middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.
Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big
agriculture, and big Pharma - even if we
cut back on our bloated defense budget - it wouldn't be nearly enough.
The vast majority of Americans can't afford to pay more. Despite an
economy that's twice as large as it
was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud.
If they're employed they're earning
on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted
for inflation. That's less than a
1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing
somewhat better but that's only
because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)
Yet even as their share of the nation's total income has withered, the
tax burden on the middle has grown.
Today's working and middle-class taxpayers are shelling out a bigger
chunk of income in payroll taxes,
sales taxes, and property taxes than thirty years ago.
It's just the opposite for super rich.
The top 1 percent's share of national income has doubled over the past
three decades (from 10 percent
in 1981 to well over 20 percent now). The richest one-tenth of 1
percent's share has tripled. And they're
doing better than ever.
Yet, remarkably, taxes on the top have plummeted. From the 1940s until
1980, the top tax income tax rate
on the highest earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the
1950s, it was 91 percent. Now it's 35 percent.
Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are now paying a
far lower share of their incomes in taxes
than at any time since World War II.
on the super-rich. The networks won't allow the subject to even be discussed - they won't have it.
The super-rich control all media but the Internet and they're damned tired of paying their fare share.
I don't like Robert Reich (D-Traitor) but I gotta give him props
for having the courage to tell the truth about taxes and the super-rich.
Our brainless and sacless Dems are too afraid to list the facts:
Clinton raised taxes on the super-rich and created 22M new jobs and tripled the stock market.
WE KNOW that's the key to nationwide prosperity, but the Rethugs and the
Teabaggers have convinced the inattentive masses that their lives will be better if we turn the country
over to the super-rich and slash the safety net for the rest of us.
Our clueless Commander in Chief is mostly responsibile for this.
He dithered for over a year while the Teabaggers got a stranglehold on the TV airwaves
and then he gave an extra trillion dollars to the super-rich to set-up his re-election.
We deserve better.