WIN: Tax Wealth Like Work To Spare Education And Health Care From Cuts

4/20/2011

---

By Doug Cunningham

[Mazher Ali]: “To start taxing money made from money the same as money made from work is a commonsense measure that could generate significant revenue. And we think we should tax wealth like work.”

United For A Fair Economy’s Mahzer Ali. He says their Responsible Wealth campaign wants America to return to true progressive taxation as an alternative to huge budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable. The Responsible Wealth campaign includes many upper income individuals who advocate higher taxes on investment income as an alternative to slash and burn budgets that shred the social safety net. Taxing wealth like work could generate more than $80 billion a year in federal revenue.

[Mazher Ali 2]: “The wealthiest people in this country are paying tax rates that are ultimately lower than most middle class families. Because of this special treatment of capital gains and dividends we’re losing $84 billion in revenue that could be used to avoid budget cuts. It could be used as federal aid to states so that we don’t have to put education and health care on the chopping block.”

There’s overwhelming public support nationally for taxing the rich more. A national McClatchy-Marist April poll found 64 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year.

By Doug Cunningham

Mazher Ali: “To start taxing money made from money the same as money made from work is a commonsense measure that could generate significant revenue. And we think we should tax wealth like work.”

United For A Fair Economy’s Mahzer Ali. says the Responsible Wealth campaign wants America to return to true progressive taxation as an alternative to huge budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable. 

The Responsible Wealth campaign includes many upper income individuals who advocate higher taxes on investment income as an alternative to slash and burn budgets that shred the social safety net. Taxing wealth like work could generate more than $80 billion a year in federal revenue. Ali added:

The wealthiest people in this country are paying tax rates that are ultimately lower than most middle class families. Because of this special treatment of capital gains and dividends we’re losing $84 billion in revenue that could be used to avoid budget cuts. It could be used as federal aid to states so that we don’t have to put education and health care on the chopping block.

There’s overwhelming public support nationally for taxing the rich more. A national McClatchy-Marist April poll found 64 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year.

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA   Netcraft rank: 6018 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

Rightardia Editorial on taxes: the Right is conning you

The New York Post is suggesting the Democratic health care prescription will be a poison pill in New York.

A terrifying 57 percent tax looms for biz, top earners,” by Charles Hurt, et. al: “The top [income tax] rate in New York City … would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.

During and immediately World War 2, the tax table for top earners was 90 per cent. The government financed the war and the handled the Great Depression with the income tax. Since then the top taxes have been chiseled away for the wealthiest Americans. In fact tax tables dropped for top income earners to about 33 per cent during the Bush administration.

But wait, there's more! Bush cut capital gains take to 15 per cent that was round 28 per cent when Clinton was president. Most billionaires and millionaires make their money with capital gains, not through their salary.

The rich were big beneficiaries of the deficit politics of the GOP during the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. In fact, the Reagan tax cuts fractured the Middle Class. About one third became affluent and the other two-third either tred water or declined. Many of the problems we have today started with the tax table experiments of Reagan Republicans.

If we want a society that allows people to make unlimited incomes such as the big corporate CEOs who make 300 times the income of the average corporate worker, these same people should be prepared to pay some big taxes.

The GOP would like you to believe that most taxes in the US are progressive. A progressive tax with a rate that increases proportionately with taxable income. A Republican. Theodore Roosevelt, brought the progressive tax system to the US.

A flat tax is in fact the prefered GOP tax approach because such taxes are regressive. Most US taxes are regressive: sales tax, real estate tax, licenses, tariffs, Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are all regressive. Two well known taxes that are progressive are Income Tax and the Estate Tax. of course, Bush suspended the Estate Tax while he was in office and cut the income tax rates for top American earners. It is clear that any tax in the US that is progressive is a right wing target. The tax cuts had a negative effect (see figure 1).

The US Congress is smart to raise taxes on the most affluent Americans to pay for health care. Affluent Americans were the biggest beneficiaries of GOP Supply Side economics. The wheel needs to turn and middle class needs to be built back up. Bridges, roads and levees need to be repaired. Obama needs to do exactly what FDR did by spreading the wealth around.

We know from the Bush years that supply side economics is a conservative pipe dream that doesn't create jobs or improve the economy. All 'tickle down did was created a large deficit and national debt and retard job creation (see figure 2).

source: http://www.politico.com/playbook/

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811

Get 30 days of free traffic analysis simply by going to Web-Stat: http://www.web-stat.com/?id=2955

Contact Rightardia: eelder1@gmail.com

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu

Improve blog traffic with TrafficG http://trafficg.com/splash/splash01.php?uid=eelder1

Netcraft rank: 44637