Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy."
Bloomberg - Tax the Poor for Their Own Good
Bloomberg - Tax the Poor for Their Own Good
Here's why a leftist billionaire is wasting his money running for president.
Let's examine some of the many reasons why billionaire Michael Bloomberg is wasting his money on his bid to win the Democratic nomination for president.
First, none of the Democratic candidates can win the nomination without the black vote. That means the former New York City mayor needs to pry black voters from former vice president Joe Biden, who owes his front-runner status to the black voters who embrace him, given his eight years as a loyal second-in-command to the extremely popular former President Barack Obama. Bloomberg has his work cut out for him. Consider the recent New York Times op-ed by a Times black columnist, Charles M. Blow, who said, "No black person — or Hispanic person or ally of people of color — should ever even consider voting for Michael Bloomberg in the primary." Blow urged blacks, Hispanics and their "allies" to reject Bloomberg because of his allegedly "racist" stop-and-frisk policy. Bloomberg recently apologized for the policy, after defending it only months ago.
Second, Bloomberg, despite an estimated net worth of over $50 billion, is still an old, white male in a gender/race/ethnicity identity-obsessed party where being an old, white, male presidential candidate — Biden excepted — is an increasingly tough sell. Bloomberg's a determined gun controller, although unlike former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, Bloomberg does not — at least not yet — push a "mandatory buy-back" plan. But, like O'Rouke, Bloomberg never bothers to ask how many Americans defend themselves every year with a firearm.
Third, then-Mayor Bloomberg, even beyond the typical "progressive" Democrat, attempted to take the nanny state to a level that New York state's highest court rejected as an overreach. After placing restrictions on smoking in parks and bars, regulating tanning salons, banning the use of trans fats in restaurants and requiring chain restaurants to post meal calories, Bloomberg attempted to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in some restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses. The liberal New York high court said, "By choosing among competing policy goals, without any legislative delegation or guidance, the Board engaged in law-making and thus infringed upon the legislative jurisdiction of the City Council."
Bloomberg acknowledges that his sugary soda tax would have fallen disproportionately on the poor, who also disproportionately drink sugary drinks, just as cigarette taxes disproportionately fall on the poor who disproportionately smoke cigarettes. But Bloomberg easily justifies it: "Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That's the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don't have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So, I listen to people saying, 'Oh, we don't want to tax the poor.' Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that's why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don't want to do." So the "poor," according to Bloomberg, "can get an education" because they'll "live longer"?
All of this makes Bloomberg the very definition of the "moral busybody" scorned by respected writer C.S. Lewis, who said: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Why not levy taxes on the rich people to deter them from engaging in "unhealthy" behavior? Why not a wealth tax on luxury cars, diamonds, private air travel, five-star hotel suites, McMansions and pricey restaurants, you know, to help the spiritually empty rich curb their unhealthy consumerism? Through minimum wage laws, we forbid employees from earning below a certain amount. So why not a maximum wage law? After all, President Obama said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
As to Bloomberg's argument that the poor need to be coerced into making better, more healthful decisions, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Freedom, by definition, means people can and will make choices others will not like. But to encourage people to make better decisions, one does not rob them of freedom of choice. One uses persuasion, not compulsion.
Good luck, Mr. Bloomberg.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host.
Richest 400 Americans paid lower taxes than
everyone else in 2018
According to an analysis by noted economists Emmanuel Saez and
Gabriel Zucman, previewed this week by New
York Times columnist David Leonhardt, the wealthiest American households
paid a lower tax rate last year than every other income group for the first
time in the country’s history.
Saez and Zucman, both professors at the University of California
Berkeley, detail the phenomenon of declining taxes for the richest Americans in
their soon-to-be released book, The
Triumph of Injustice .
The pair compiled a historical database composed of the tax
payments of households in various income percentiles spanning all the way back
to 1913, when the federal income tax was first implemented. Their research
uncovered that in the 2018 fiscal year the wealthiest 400 Americans paid a
lower tax rate—accounting for federal, state, and local taxes—than anyone else.
The overall tax rate paid by the richest .01 percent was only 23
percent last year, while the bottom half of the population paid 24.2 percent.
This contrasts starkly with the overall tax rates on the wealthy of 70 percent
in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.
The taxes on the wealthy have been in precipitous decline since
the latter half of the 20th century as successive presidential administrations
enacted tax cuts for the rich, suggesting that they would result in economic
prosperity for all. Taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, such as the estate
tax and corporate tax, have been drastically cut and lawyers have been hard at
work on the beliefs of their wealthy patrons planning out the best schemes for
tax avoidance, seeking to drive tax rates as close to zero as possible. The
impetus for the historical tipping point was the Trump Administration’s 2017
tax reform, which was a windfall for the super-rich.
Supported by both the Republican and Democratic Parties, the two
parties of Wall Street, Trump’s tax cuts were specifically designed to transfer
massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite.
The corporate tax rate was permanently slashed from 35 percent
to 21 percent, potentially increasing corporate revenues by more than $6
trillion in the next decade. The bill also reduced the individual federal
income tax rate for the wealthy and included a number of other provisions to
further ease their tax burden.
The story is different for many middle- and working-class
Americans. According to multiple analyses of the 2017 tax reform, 83 percent of
the tax benefits will go to the top 1 percent by 2027, while 53 percent of the
population, or those making less than $75,000 annually, will pay higher taxes.
At the same time, the reform will sharply increase budget deficits and the
national debt, granting the pretense for the further destruction of domestic
social programs.
Furthermore, a majority of Americans are paying higher payroll
taxes, which cover Medicare and Social Security. The tax increased from 2
percent just after World War II, to 6 percent in 1960, to 15.3 percent in 1990,
where it stands today. It has risen to become the largest tax that 62 percent
of American households pay.
The result of the multitude of changes to the US tax system over
the last three-quarters of a century is one that has become less progressive over
time. The 2017 tax reform effectively set up the foundation for a regressive
tax policy where the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the poor.
The implementation of a regressive tax structure has played a
major role in engineering the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the
top that has brought social inequality in America to its highest level since
the 1920s.
According to Leonhardt’s preliminary Times review of The Triumph of Injustice,
Saez and Zucman offer a solution to the current unjust tax system in which the
overall tax rate on the top 1 percent of income earners would rise to 60
percent. The pair claim that the tax increase would bring in approximately $750
billion in taxes. Their tax code also includes a wealth tax and a minimum
global corporate tax of 25 percent, requiring corporations to pay taxes on
profits made in the United States, even if their headquarters are overseas.
In an interview with Leonhardt, Zucman states that history shows
that the US has raised tax rates on the wealthy before so therefore it should
be possible to do so now.
However, the last half century of counterrevolution waged
against the working class makes the parasitic nature of the ruling elite
absolutely clear, and underscores the well-known fact that the US is ruled by
an oligarchy that controls the political system. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who both represent
this oligarchy and bear responsibility for the tax system, will make any effort
to implement Saez and Zucman’s modest proposal.
California
became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became
socialists, but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration
is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
Getty Images
The wealthiest
Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking
analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For the
first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax
rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The
analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower
federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class.
Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which
the Times‘ op-ed columnist David Leonhardt notes is a
combined tax payment of “less than one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23
percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47
percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot
via the New York Times)
The
analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is
less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning
working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic shows.
Leonhardt
writes:
For
middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal
income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t
benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And
they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social
Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat.
[Emphasis added]
The
report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich
and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh
Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned
against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and
open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the
elite.
“The same
consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and
economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade,
open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national
security or for American workers or for American families or for American
principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics
for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,”
Hawley said in an August speech in the
Senate.
That
increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by
economic research showing a rise in servant-class jobs,
strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for working-class
regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class at 15 times
the rate of other Americans.
Census Says U.S.
Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income
inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S.
Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality
known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the
bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top
and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the
first to incorporate
the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-
2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the
wealthy.
the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-
2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the
wealthy.
But the distribution of
income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America
the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted
through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties,
has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics.
Leading candidates for
the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including senators Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders, are promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich
with measures such as taxes on wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states --
California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, plus the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes higher than the national level,
while the reading was lower in 36 states.
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