Shahien Nasiripour shahien@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost ReportingFirst Posted: 08- 4-10 06:09 PM | Updated: 08- 4-10 06:09 PM
The country is less equal today than it was just a decade ago thanks in part to the Bush tax cuts, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday.
[T]he policies put in place by the previous administration, prior to this great recession, have left us with a terrible legacy of challenges," Geithner said during a discussion on fiscal policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress. "And America is a less equal country today than it was ten years ago, in part because of the tax cuts for the top 2 percent put in place in 2001 and 2003.
The Bush tax cuts, credited with job creation during the George W. Bush administration, are now credited with expanding the nation's ever-increasing national debt. More jobs have been destroyed than the tax cuts could ever claim to have created, and with the economy in a moderate recovery the tax cuts have become less an economic issue than a political one:
Most Republicans, hoping to push their supply-side theories, want to extend them in hopes that the rich will spend, invest and create jobs in the process; Democrats, in an attempt to appeal to deficit-conscious voters, want them to expire so that the increased government revenue can be used to pay down the national debt.
Economists and policymakers, while not discounting the positive effects that continued tax cuts can have on the economy, have stressed that the best course would be to allow the cuts to expire. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a noted libertarian who was not opposed to the tax cuts when proposed during his tenure, has advocated that they should be allowed to expire.
The administration, too, is advocating their demise. And on Wednesday, Geithner laid out an argument touching not just on the fiscal and economic benefits -- he touched on the fairness of it all, too.
The most affluent 400 earners in 2007 -- who earned an average of more than $340 million dollars each that year -- paid only 17 percent of their income in tax, a lower rate than many middle class families," he said. "The legacy of the crisis is millions of unemployed Americans, idled factories, a national debt swollen by eight years of deficit spending and growing income inequality.
We live in one of the richest economies in the world," the Treasury Secretary continued. "But one in eight Americans is on food stamps today.
Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consultancy led by former Fed governor Laurence H. Meyer, estimated this week that allowing only those Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans to expire would trim about 0.2 percent from growth over 2011 and 2012.
Rightardia has written extensively on the inequality of wealth and income in the US. Much of this is caused by tax and other government policy that coddles the rich. According to senator Bernie Saunders, the top one per cent of Americans absorb 50 per cent of the income and 90 per cent of the wealth.
Bush not only cut the Income Tax tables for the most affluent Americans, he cut capital gains tax to 15 per cent and also suspended the Estate Tax. The millionaires and billionaires make most of their money off of stock and bond investments, so the 15 per cent capital gain tax was a real boon to the most privileged Americans.
Billionaire Warren Buffet even commented that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary who made about $60,000 a year!
The Bush Ownership Society had the goal of increasing home ownership in the US by cutting the reserve requirements of the big Wall Street investment banks. When the unsecured home loans started defaulting, it pushed the US into a recession and eventually destroyed 40 per cent of the world's wealth according to economists at a conference in Davros, Switzerland.
The Republicans will tel you the crises was caused by Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and Barney Frank. However, we did not find anything in a Wikipedia article on this subject that supported the Republican theses: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae
However, Fannie Mae has been involved in an accounting scandal. On December 18, 2006, U.S. regulators filed 101 civil charges against chief executive Franklin Raines; chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard; and the former controller Leanne G. Spencer. The three are accused of manipulating Fannie Mae earnings to maximize their bonuses.
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 11952
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
[T]he policies put in place by the previous administration, prior to this great recession, have left us with a terrible legacy of challenges," Geithner said during a discussion on fiscal policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress. "And America is a less equal country today than it was ten years ago, in part because of the tax cuts for the top 2 percent put in place in 2001 and 2003.
The Bush tax cuts, credited with job creation during the George W. Bush administration, are now credited with expanding the nation's ever-increasing national debt. More jobs have been destroyed than the tax cuts could ever claim to have created, and with the economy in a moderate recovery the tax cuts have become less an economic issue than a political one:
Most Republicans, hoping to push their supply-side theories, want to extend them in hopes that the rich will spend, invest and create jobs in the process; Democrats, in an attempt to appeal to deficit-conscious voters, want them to expire so that the increased government revenue can be used to pay down the national debt.
Economists and policymakers, while not discounting the positive effects that continued tax cuts can have on the economy, have stressed that the best course would be to allow the cuts to expire. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a noted libertarian who was not opposed to the tax cuts when proposed during his tenure, has advocated that they should be allowed to expire.
The administration, too, is advocating their demise. And on Wednesday, Geithner laid out an argument touching not just on the fiscal and economic benefits -- he touched on the fairness of it all, too.
The most affluent 400 earners in 2007 -- who earned an average of more than $340 million dollars each that year -- paid only 17 percent of their income in tax, a lower rate than many middle class families," he said. "The legacy of the crisis is millions of unemployed Americans, idled factories, a national debt swollen by eight years of deficit spending and growing income inequality.
We live in one of the richest economies in the world," the Treasury Secretary continued. "But one in eight Americans is on food stamps today.
Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consultancy led by former Fed governor Laurence H. Meyer, estimated this week that allowing only those Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans to expire would trim about 0.2 percent from growth over 2011 and 2012.
Rightardia has written extensively on the inequality of wealth and income in the US. Much of this is caused by tax and other government policy that coddles the rich. According to senator Bernie Saunders, the top one per cent of Americans absorb 50 per cent of the income and 90 per cent of the wealth.
Bush not only cut the Income Tax tables for the most affluent Americans, he cut capital gains tax to 15 per cent and also suspended the Estate Tax. The millionaires and billionaires make most of their money off of stock and bond investments, so the 15 per cent capital gain tax was a real boon to the most privileged Americans.
Billionaire Warren Buffet even commented that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary who made about $60,000 a year!
The Bush Ownership Society had the goal of increasing home ownership in the US by cutting the reserve requirements of the big Wall Street investment banks. When the unsecured home loans started defaulting, it pushed the US into a recession and eventually destroyed 40 per cent of the world's wealth according to economists at a conference in Davros, Switzerland.
The Republicans will tel you the crises was caused by Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and Barney Frank. However, we did not find anything in a Wikipedia article on this subject that supported the Republican theses: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae
However, Fannie Mae has been involved in an accounting scandal. On December 18, 2006, U.S. regulators filed 101 civil charges against chief executive Franklin Raines; chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard; and the former controller Leanne G. Spencer. The three are accused of manipulating Fannie Mae earnings to maximize their bonuses.
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 11952
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
Powered by ScribeFire.
No comments:
Post a Comment