AMERICA:
THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get
the jobs!
Why do the billionaire class all want wider open borders and
hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater
profits!
“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the world” Sen. Josh Hawley
"This
is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist
billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked
with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the
cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing
but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our
communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and
human traffickers. These
people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats
who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA
McCARTHY
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government
owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to
the people. To
destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between
corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of
the statesmanship of
today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in
“public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in
the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a
political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists
essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business
support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal
fortunes."
"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for
the super-rich, on top of the fact
that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent
income bracket."
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes."
Graph from the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating
divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages
and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the
population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell
to only 61 percent.
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a
breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy,
skewed towards the very top.
At the
end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private
wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million
households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million
per household.
By Gabriel Black
The massive increase in the value of
the stock market, which only a small segment of the population
participates in, means that the top 10 percent of the population controls
73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos,
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of
America combined last year.
WHO BUT THE RICH WANT AMNESTY and WIDER OPEN
BORDERS?
WHO BUT THE RICH WANT AMNESTY and WIDER OPEN
BORDERS?
Well, the Globalist Democrat Party, Mexico, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and employers of illegals!
"Johnson tried
to push the 213 “Gang of Eight” amnesty through the House during 2014. If it
had passed, the amnesty would have shifted more wealth from ordinary Americans
to investors, according to the Congressional Budget Office."
The cheap labor policy widens wealth
gaps, reduces high
tech investment, increases state
and local tax burdens, hurts kids’
schools and college education, pushes Americans
away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with
fentanyl addictions.
Billionaire
Writes Scathing Letter to Warren Over 'Vilification of the Rich'
Source: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
“You proceeded to admonish me (as if a parent
chiding an ungrateful child) to ‘pitch in a bit more so everyone else has a
chance at the American dream,’” Cooperman, the manager of the Omega Family
Office, wrote in an open
letter.
“Your tweet demonstrated a fundamental
misunderstanding of who I am, what I stand for, and why I believe so many of
your economic policy initiatives are misguided,” he said.
“However much it resonates with your base, your
vilification of the rich is misguided,” Cooperman continued. “For you to
suggest that capitalism is a dirty word and that these people, as a group, are
ingrates who didn’t earn their riches … and now don’t pull their weight
societally indicates that you either are grossly uninformed or are knowingly
warping the facts.”
His letter told of his humble beginnings—his father was a plumber and his
mother an immigrant from Poland—and that his life is a “classic American
success story.”
Cooperman said his wealth has allowed him to donate
more to philanthropy than he has spent on himself over a lifetime—and he
intends to donate “substantially all of it” when he dies.
He went on to address Warren’s “soak-the-rich
positions on taxes and economic policy” and offered his take on what he
believes the U.S.’s fiscal policy priorities should be.
As a registered Independent, Cooperman said the two
of them should be working together on these issues, “not firing off snarky
tweets that stir your base at the expense of accuracy.” He hoped she would
“elevate the dialogue” and find a way all Americans could have a chance at the
American Dream.
In response, Warren issued a tweet saying he’s “wrong.”
Leon
is wrong. I'm fighting for big changes like universal child care, investing in
public schools, and free public college.
We can do all of that with a #TwoCentWealthTax. Leon can and should pitch in more—so that every kid has the same opportunities he did to succeed. twitter.com/schwartzbCNBC/…
We can do all of that with a #TwoCentWealthTax. Leon can and should pitch in more—so that every kid has the same opportunities he did to succeed. twitter.com/schwartzbCNBC/…
By Barry
Grey
11 November 2017
The push is accelerating for an overhaul of the US tax system that
will divert trillions of additional dollars to the corporate aristocracy, widen
the gap between the rich and the working class and set the stage for the
destruction of basic social programs.
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means
Committee passed a White House-backed tax bill on a party-line vote, after
which House leaders said the measure would come to the House floor for a vote
next week. On the same day, the Republican-controlled Senate released its
version of the measure, with plans for a floor vote in the upper chamber before
the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.
If passed, the two versions will be reconciled and a final bill
will be moved through the two chambers and signed into law by President Trump.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are pushing
for passage of the handout to the richest 5 percent by Christmas. The Democrats
are putting on a show of opposition that is cynical to the core. They are
denouncing the Republican bills for skewing the tax benefits to the wealthy,
while fully supporting the centerpiece of the legislation, a huge tax cut for
US corporations.
While there are differences between the House and Senate bills,
both versions adhere to the same basic framework. The corporate tax rate is to
be permanently reduced from the current level of 35 percent to 20 percent,
saving US corporations $2 trillion in taxes and generating an additional $6.7
trillion in revenues over the next decade. The House bill enacts the corporate
tax cut in 2018, while the Senate bill, in order to reduce the projected deficit
from lost federal revenues, delays the corporate tax cut one year, until 2019.
The House bill keeps the top federal tax bracket at 39.6 percent
(down from 70 percent in 1980), but applies it to households making more than
$1 million a year, as compared to the current threshold of $500,000. The Senate
version provides a bigger windfall for the very rich by reducing the top
bracket to 38.5 percent.
Both bills eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which almost
exclusively impacts the wealthy, and they both slash the tax rate on so-called
“pass-through” income reported by business owners.
Each bill allows corporations that have stashed hundreds of
billions of dollars overseas to avoid US taxes, such as Apple and Amazon, to
repatriate their profits at a sharply discounted tax rate even lower than the
new 20 percent corporate rate.
The bills either sharply restrict or eliminate outright the estate
tax, which is currently paid by the wealthiest 0.2 percent of households. The
House bill doubles the exemption for an individual to $11 million and
eliminates the estate tax entirely in 2025. The Senate version doubles the
exemption but does not repeal the tax.
Either way, the change underwrites the right of the richest
households to pass on their wealth to succeeding generations,
institutionalizing the transformation of the United States into an oligarchy,
presided over by a semi-hereditary dynastic caste.
Other boons to business are included in both bills, including an
immediate 100 percent tax write-off for capital investments. Neither bill
eliminates or reduces the so-called “carried interest” loophole that allows
hedge fund, private equity and real estate speculators (such as Donald Trump)
to pay only 20 percent on their income instead of the normal tax rate, currently
almost twice as high.
This is in line with the legislation as whole. While shifting the
tax code to further redistribute the social wealth from the bottom to the top,
it particularly favors the most parasitic sections of the ruling class, those
engaged in financial manipulation.
In order to promote the fiction that the overhaul is geared to the
“middle class,” the bills include certain tax breaks, such as a doubling of the
standard deduction for taxpayers who do not itemize and an increase in the child
tax credit. However, they also rein in or eliminate existing tax deductions
that benefit working class and middle class households.
This is driven above all by the need to keep the total ten-year
deficit resulting from the legislation to $1.5 trillion. That limit must be met
in order to move the tax overhaul on an expedited basis through the Senate,
where the Republicans have only a 52 to 48 majority, ruling out a filibuster
and enabling passage by a simple majority.
The House bill eliminates the federal tax credit for state and
local income and sales taxes, but continues the write-off for state and local
property taxes, capping it at $10,000. It reduces the existing tax reduction on
mortgage interest payments as well as a tax break on medical expenses. It also
eliminates tax credits for student loan payments and imposes a tax on graduate
student stipends. These measures amount to a tax surcharge on workers, young
people and the elderly to help pay for the tax boondoggle for the rich.
The Senate version calls for a somewhat different package of added
tax burdens for the working class and middle class. It eliminates all state and
local tax deductions but retains the tax credits for mortgage interest, student
loan payments and medical expenses.
The Republicans are resorting to brazen
lying to present the legislation as a boon to “hard-working middle class
Americans.” Typical is an op-ed column published Friday in the Washington Post by Orrin Hatch of Utah, the
chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “For too long, middle-class Americans
have struggled with stagnant wages, sluggish labor markets and economic growth
well below the historic average,” he writes. “It is time to pay attention to
those Americans who have felt left behind in economic stagnation, by providing
tax relief and economic opportunity.”
The line is that corporate America will use the trillions in tax
savings to buy new equipment, build new factories, hire more workers and raise
wages. This ignores the fact that US corporations already have access to cheap
credit, are making bumper profits, and are sitting on trillions of dollars in
cash. It also ignores the past record of tax cuts for big business, whether
under Reagan or George W. Bush, which pushed up stocks and the wealth of the
ruling elite while accelerating the destruction of jobs and working class
living standards. The same lying pretext was used to justify Obama’s bailout of
the banks.
In fact, the extra trillions will be used to buy more and bigger
yachts, private planes, mansions, penthouses, private islands and gated
communities and bribe more politicians to do the bidding of the oligarchs.
One indication of the two-faced character of the Democrats’
opposition is the fact that interest groups backed by Republican billionaires
such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have thus far spent almost $25
million on TV ads to promote the Republican tax plan, while Democratic groups
have spent less than $5 million to oppose the plan.
An updated analysis of the House bill published Wednesday by the
non-partisan tax center spells out in detail how the tax overhaul is designed
to sharply increase the wealth of the richest 5 percent, and especially the
richest 1 percent and 0.1 percent, and vastly increase over the next decade the
concentration of wealth at the very top.
Under the so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” in 2018, taxpayers in
the top 1 percent (with income above $730,000) will receive nearly 21 percent
of the total tax cut, an average of about $37,000, or 2.5 percent of after-tax
income.
Those in the top 5 percent income bracket, and especially the top
1 percent and top 0.1 percent, will get by far the biggest percentage gains in
after-tax income. In other words, if you are among the very rich, the rate of
increase you receive will be far higher than for the lower 95 percent. That
means the plan is designed to widen the gap between the very rich and everybody
else.
In 2018, the top 20 percent of income earners will get 56.6
percent of the total federal tax cut. Within the top 10 percent, the 90-95
percent group will get 7.4 percent of the total, the 95-99 percent group will
receive 14.8 percent, the top 1 percent will get 20.6 percent and the top 0.1
percent will receive 10 percent. In other words, within the richest 10 percent,
the benefits are skewed dramatically to the richest of the rich.
One decade out, by 2027, the transfer of social wealth to the very
rich will be even more pronounced. In 2027, taxpayers in the bottom two
quintiles (those with income less than about $55,000) will see little change in
their taxes, with a tax decrease of $10-$40. Taxpayers in the middle of the
income distribution will see their after-tax incomes increase by only 0.4
percent. Taxpayers in the top 1 percent will receive nearly 50 percent of the
total benefit.
Someone in the top 1 percent will get a break of $52,780. Someone
in the top 0.1 percent will get a tax cut of $278,370.
In total, 12.8 million households will
have a bigger tax bill in 2018 under the law,
including more than three million earning between $48,600 and $86,100. By 2027,
more than 11 million households in this income group will see their tax bills
increase. Overall, by 2027, 47.5 million households, a quarter of the total,
will have a tax increase.
"At the same
time, the tax cuts for big business are fueling the federal deficit, which will
be used by both Democratic and Republican politicians to call for further cuts
in social spending. The February monthly federal deficit hit an all-time high
of $234 billion this year, as a result of a 20 percent drop in corporate tax
revenue. The deficit for the first half of 2019 is projected at $961 billion,
and the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30 is expected to reach
$1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted in the immediate aftermath of the
2008 financial crash."
US Tax Day 2019: Sixty giant corporations pay
zero income tax
Dozens of giant US corporations, including 60 of the Fortune
500, used deductions, credits and other tax loopholes to avoid paying any
federal income tax for 2018, according to an analysis issued by the Institute
on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The report was published April 11, just
in time for the April 15 deadline for most American working people to file
their tax returns.
The 60 companies in the Fortune 500 who paid no federal income
tax had net incomes just from US operations of nearly $80 billion
($79,025,000,000, to be exact). They include such household names as Amazon,
Chevron, Deere, Delta Air Lines, General Motors, Goodyear, Halliburton,
Honeywell, IBM, Eli Lilly, Netflix, Occidental Petroleum, Prudential Financial
and US Steel.
Meanwhile, millions of moderate-income families are finding that
their income taxes have either increased or their expected tax refunds have
evaporated because of restrictions on the itemization of tax deductions, the
imposition of a $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions and a cut in the
mortgage interest deduction.
Nearly all of the 60 companies that paid no taxes qualified to
receive a refund from the US Treasury, although most will not collect a check,
instead using the credit to offset future taxes. But whatever the bookkeeping
process, American taxpayers are effectively paying money to them, despite their vast
profits. The biggest refunds include those going to Prudential, $346 million
(added to its $1.44 billion in profits); Duke Energy, a whopping $647 million
(added to $3.02 billion in profits); and Deere, $268 million (added to $2.15
billion in profits).
Among the report’s most outrageous findings:
Amazon more than zeroed-out its
tax bill on $10.8 billion in profits, making use of accelerated depreciation
deductions on equipment as well as favorable tax treatment of stock-based
compensation for executives like CEO Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the
world. The stock compensation deduction alone was worth $1 billion. Amazon will
actually show a credit of $129 million from the US Treasury, not paying one
cent in federal income taxes.
IBM is another corporate giant
that has gamed the tax system by shifting earnings to its foreign operations to
escape US taxation. The company reported worldwide profits of $8.7 billion, but
only $500 million in the United States. It will reap a $342 million credit from
the Treasury.
Delta Airlines accumulated
$17.1 billion in federal pre-tax net losses as of 2010, partly as a consequence
of a protracted crisis of the airline industry, partly as a result of the 2008
Wall Street crash. It has used these losses as well as the accelerated
depreciation credit for purchase of new planes to “dramatically reduce their
tax rates,” according to the ITEP report, receiving a credit of $187 million in
2018 despite net profits of more than $5 billion. According to Delta’s chief
financial officer, the actual tax rate the company expects to pay going forward
is between 10 and 13 percent, far below what a typical Delta worker pays on his
or her income.
EOG Resources, a renamed
remnant of Enron, perpetrator of the biggest corporate fraud in American
history, can collect $304 million from US taxpayers on top of $4.07 billion in
profits.
For one company, the federal tax refund would actually exceed
net profits. Gannett made a $7 million profit, while showing
an additional $11 million credit from the Treasury, giving the newspaper
publishing giant an effective tax rate of negative 164 percent.
IBM’s tax rate was a negative 68 percent, while software maker
Activision Blizzard and construction company AECOM Technology both posted
effective tax rates of negative 51 percent.
Sixteen of the 60 companies made more than a billion dollars in
net income on their US operations, to say nothing of foreign subsidiaries. Oil
and gas producers and utilities comprised more than one-third of the total, led
by Chevron and Occidental among the oil companies, and DTE Energy, American
Electric Power, Duke Energy and Dominion Resources among the utilities.
The 60 companies profited enormously because the Trump tax cut
bill cut the basic rate for corporations from 35 percent to 21 percent, while
not eliminating the loopholes they had previously used to keep their taxes low.
They had the best of both worlds, paying lower rates while still enjoying
loopholes.
Overall, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, an arm of
Congress, the cut in the corporate tax rate alone will pump $1.35 trillion into
the pockets of the corporations over the next 10 years. For this year alone,
corporate taxes have been cut by 31 percent.
For the 60 companies in the ITEP report, “Instead of paying
$16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires,
these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a
$20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year.”
This figure by itself is an irrefutable answer to all the bogus
claims—made to workers in every part of the United States—that there is “no
money” to pay for needed social programs, for wage and benefit increases, or to
hire additional workers to reduce overwork and understaffing. The $20.7 billion
would pay for a $7,000 bonus to every public school teacher in America.
The bonanza that these 60 corporations are enjoying is three
times the amount that Trump proposes to cut from the budget of the Department
of Education. It is 10 times the total amount budgeted for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, which provides services for more than 2 million Native Americans. It
is nearly 20 times the budget of the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, which conducts workplace safety inspections.
The ITEP report, issued by a group with close ties to the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, warns of the
explosive political consequences of the corporate plundering of the Treasury.
“The specter of big corporations avoiding all income taxes on billions in
profits sends a strong and corrosive signal to Americans: that the tax system
is stacked against them, in favor of corporations and the wealthiest
Americans,” the report says.
At the same time, the tax cuts for big business are fueling the
federal deficit, which will be used by both Democratic and Republican
politicians to call for further cuts in social spending. The February monthly
federal deficit hit an all-time high of $234 billion this year, as a result of
a 20 percent drop in corporate tax revenue. The deficit for the first half of
2019 is projected at $961 billion, and the deficit for the fiscal year ending
September 30 is expected to reach $1.1 trillion, as bad as the deficits posted
in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.
The number of U.S. companies paying zero federal taxes DOUBLED when
Trump's tax plan took effect in 2018
·
60 large companies managed to escape 2018
taxes under Trump's new plan
·
Many of those corporations actually received
tax rebates totaling $4.3 billion
·
The businesses include: Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, JetBlue Airways, IBM, General Motors, Goodyear, Eli
Lilly and United States Steel
·
The result is a $20.7 billion budget hole
that is adding to America's federal debt
President Donald
Trump's tax policy doubled the number of highly
profitable companies that were able to avoid paying any federal taxes in 2018,
according to a new report.
Amazon, Netflix,
Chevron, Delta Airlines, IBM, General Motors and Eli Lilly were among those who
managed to escape taxes for last year, according to the study by the
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
'Instead
of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate
requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing
a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year,' the report says.
The
Washington, D.C. think tank analyzed America's 560 largest publicly held
companies, finding that 60 of them paid nothing in taxes for last year – double
the average of roughly 30 companies that got away scot-free each year from
2008-2015.
Republicans
in Congress pushed through the tax law signed by Trump in 2017, and its
policies favoring the richest Americans and most valuable U.S. companies took
effect in 2018.
Scroll down for the full list of companies and rebates
+2
·
This graph illustrates the amount of money that 60 of America's largest
companies were billed for taxes last year - along with the actual money they
ended up getting back instead of having to pay. Source: Institute on
Taxation and Economic Policy
The
change cut the tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and allowed companies to
take advantage of deductions, tax credits and rebates. That change alone is
projected to save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next decade, according
to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
'We
know that there's this pretty glaring contrast between what the proponents of
this tax law promised back in 2017 and what it's delivering now,' lead
author Matthew Gardner told DailyMail.com.
'The
whole argument was that the reason companies were avoiding taxes is because tax
rates are so high,' he added. 'What we're seeing is that isn't coming to
pass.'
Collectively, the 60 companies that avoided
all taxes last year managed 'to zero out their federal income taxes on $79
billion in U.S. pretax income,' according to the study, which was first
reported on by the Center for Public Integrity and
NBC News.
For
example, the John Deer farm equipment company earned $2.15 billion before
taxes, yet owed no U.S. taxes and used deductions and credits to extract $268
million from the federal government.
Nationally,
corporate tax revenues decreased 31 percent in 2018 to $204 billion.
'This
was a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in
U.S. history,' wrote Gardner, a senior fellow for the Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy, in the report.
We know that there's this pretty
glaring contrast between what the proponents of this tax law promised back in
2017 and what it's delivering now.
-Matthew Gardner, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
Trump
had said that the corporate tax cut would pay for itself by sparking a business
boom that would create more jobs, thus generating growing income tax revenues
for the nation.
That
reality hasn't emerged. Instead the nation's budget deficit is higher than it's
ever been in this nation's history.
That's
despite Trump's campaign promise to eliminate the $19.9 trillion national debt
in eight years. So far it has ballooned 41.8 percent in the first four months
of the 2019 fiscal year (which runs October 1 – September 30.
The
Government Accountability Office announced in April that the 'federal
government's current fiscal path … (is) unsustainable.'
Presidential
economic adviser Larry Kudlow has said that 'economic growth' has 'paid for a
good chunk' of the tax cuts, and that the budget's outlook is 'not as bad' as
it's perceived.
+2
·
This table lists the amount of money that 60 of America's largest
companies were billed for taxes last year - along with the actual money they
ended up getting back instead of having to pay. Source: Institute on
Taxation and Economic Policy
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