Friday, December 13, 2019

TRUMP'S FASCIST APPROACH TO AMERICA'S HOMELESS TRAGEDY AS HE SECRETLY WORKS WITH PELOSI FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS

THESE FILTHY POLS CAN'T OPEN THEIR CORRUPT MOUTHS WITHOUT SAYING AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY! GIVE OUR ILLEGALS AMNESTY SO THEY CAN BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILIES AND SIGN UP FOR WELFARE!

“The figures show that the majority of California's growth will be in the Latino population, said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at USC, adding that "68% of the growth this decade will be Latino, 75% next and 80% after that.

"When we hear stories about the homelessness in California and elsewhere, why don't we hear how illegal aliens contribute to the problem?  They take jobs and affordable housing, yet instead of discouraging illegal aliens from breaking the law, politicians encourage them to come by lavishing free stuff on them with confiscated dollars from this and future generations."  JACK HELLNER

 “Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.”  JOHN BINDER




A man walks past a homeless encampment of colorful tents beneath the smooth concrete wall of a freeway overpass.



Over 500,000 people experience homelessness on any given night in the U.S., but “housing first” policies have reduced chronic homelessness over the last decade.
 Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images


Trump’s new homeless czar a ‘real-life horror,’ say housing advocates


Robert Marbut’s polarizing methodology goes against the “housing first” approach that has worked in many U.S. cities.
Over 500,000 people experience homelessness on any given night in the U.S., but “housing first” policies have reduced chronic homelessness over the last decade. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Today’s confirmation of a polarizing private housing consultant as the Trump administration’s federal homelessness czar has advocates worried that years of progress could be undone in what has become a growing crisis for many U.S. cities.
Robert Marbut was appointed last week as director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), a position that collaborates on homelessness policy with 19 key agencies. His appointment was quickly condemned by housing advocates, including the national nonprofit Invisible People, which described Marbut’s past work as “real-life horror.”
Marbut’s confirmation represents a “serious setback in our country’s efforts to end homelessness,” said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in a statement. “Dr. Marbut espouses dehumanizing and ineffective methods that are based on neither empirical evidence nor best practice.”
Established in 1987, the Council’s purpose is to coordinate homelessness services across a wide range of departments, including housing, veterans’ affairs, and public health. “It is difficult to overstate the Council’s importance, or the immense responsibility to sustain and advance its progress,” said Nan Roman, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in a statement. “This work has been neither political nor partisan. Rather, it has been strategic, evidence-based, and informed by the best practices in ending homelessness, including Housing First approaches.”
Marbut’s career has been marked by controversy. Thirteen years ago, after a four-year stint as a San Antonio city councilmember, Marbut oversaw the development of a shelter model for the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents fled to Texas cities. The downtown facility named Haven for Hope—which calls itself a “transformational campus,” not a shelter—has been praised by state leaders and now accommodates 1,500 people as well as a wide range of services, 24 hours a day.
However, access to the 1,000 beds must be earned. People entering the shelter must sleep on mats in an outdoor courtyard and can only move inside after participating in services like job training, education, and substance abuse counseling. Breaking rules like missing curfew can mean getting demoted back to the courtyard.
Due to his work in San Antonio, Marbut became a paid consultant for cities across the U.S. attempting to tackle their own homelessness crises—while taking increasingly unorthodox approaches. As described in a 2015 Huffington Post profile, Marbut embedded with the local homeless population in Daytona Beach, Florida, by dressing up in disguise and living on the streets for several days in order to create a series of recommendations for city leaders.
But like the policies at Haven for Hope, the recommendations that Marbut has made go counter to the approach of advocates working in those cities, many of whom have publicly disagreed with his methods.
Marbut does not adhere to the “housing first” philosophy embraced by most U.S. cities, which aim to place people experiencing homelessness into stable, supportive housing before working to address any medical, financial, or substance abuse issues. This method is not only proven to help people stay housed, as it’s easier to tackle other issues once someone has a safe, stable place to sleep, but it also saves cities money by avoiding costly public expenditures for emergency care.
Instead, Marbut has recommended that cities stop giving out foodcriminalize sidewalk sleeping, and force homeless residents who want services to move into city-operated facilities in large temporary structures that advocates have equated to jails.
As he told the Huffington Post in 2015, “I believe in Housing Fourth.”
“He believes that people are homeless because they are in some way deficient and need fixing—and he proposes warehousing them with mandatory services until they can prove they are ‘ready’ for housing,” said Yentel, in a lengthy thread on Twitter condemning the pick.
As of the morning of December 10, over 75 members of Congress had signed a letter calling for heads of the 19 agencies to oppose the nomination.
An estimated 552,830 people experience homelessness on any given night in the U.S., according to federal point-in-time data published in December 2018. The Trump administration has not yet released data for 2019.
Although the number of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. has gone down overall during the past decade, the number has crept up again in the two years Trump has been in office. In particular, sharper increases in homelessness are being observed in large cities, particularly on the West Coast, thanks to stagnant wages and growing wealth inequality, which advocates say calls for a more nuanced approach. In Los Angeles, for example, 53 percent of people who became homeless for the first time cited economic hardship as the reason, including being priced out of increasingly expensive living situations.
After high-profile presidential visits to San Francisco and Los Angeles in September, Trump administration officials confirmed they were planning a major federal homelessness initiative. An anonymous official told the Washington Post that those solutions may include “razing existing tent camps for the homeless, creating new temporary facilities, and refurbishing existing government facilities,” according to the paper.
report issued by the White House after the visits alarmed homelessness advocates, who criticized it for using data, terminology, and studies that are widely considered to be outdated—and strikingly similar to Marbut’s philosophies.
Marbut’s methodology also mirrors past comments by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has said housing for homeless residents should not be “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’” Carson has moved to end some federal homelessness programs, including protections for transgender residents.
Last year, a new coalition of U.S. mayors and business leaders, Mayors & CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment, was formed to put homelessness back on the national agenda as vital sources of funding, including certain grants and other subsidies, have vanished under Carson’s leadership.
The coalition is calling on the federal government to create public-private partnerships with developers to incentivize building more affordable housing. Under Marbut’s leadership, however, building housing would not be a priority.
Advocates, as well as state and city legislators, are wary about Marbut’s appointment in light of a looming federal court decision. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to announce this week if it will take on Martin v. City of Boise, one of the key cases addressing the criminalization of homelessness. In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case that homeless residents have the right to sleep on a street or sidewalk if accessible indoor accommodations are not provided by the city.
Last month, Obama-appointed USICH director Matthew Doherty was forced out by Trump officials in what’s being called an attempt to make what has been considered a bipartisan position into a politically aligned role. Doherty has since accepted a role with California as an advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsom on the state’s homelessness response.
“We are concerned... that Doherty’s forced resignation and that Marbut’s appointment is related to recent White House rhetoric that dehumanizes and degrades people experiencing homelessness and that calls for ‘sweeps’ of homeless encampments,” a statement on Marbut’s appointment from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

Facing Homeless Crisis, New York Aims for 1,000 New Apartments a Year

A law would mandate that affordable-housing projects built with city assistance must have 15 percent of the apartments reserved for the homeless.

By Nikita Stewart, Jeffery C. Mays and Matthew Haag 

BLOG: NYC MAYOR BILL de BLASIO IS AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS AND MORE “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS

As New York City grapples with record numbers of homeless people, Mayor Bill de Blasio has faced deepening criticism that his plan to create more affordable housing, a signature effort of his administration, has done little to help people move from shelters into stable homes.

In an effort to address the shortfall, city officials have agreed to force developers of designated affordable-housing projects to set aside 15 percent of the units for the homeless.

The requirement will be the centerpiece of a bill that the City Council is expected to pass next week, and represents one of the city’s most ambitious efforts in a decade to address the dearth of housing for homeless people.

The legislation, which applies to rental buildings with more than 40 units, could add roughly 1,000 new apartments for the homeless a year, almost doubling the 1,300 apartments that are currently under development.

Many other cities require these so-called set-asides for the lowest-income households. Boston, for instance, requires that city-funded developments with at least 10 rental units reserve 10 percent for homeless families. But there does not appear to be another mandate on the scale proposed under the legislation in New York.

The measure pending before the City Council is the culmination of a long effort to push Mr. de Blasio to redraw his housing plan to address a homeless crisis that has shown no signs of abating. About 79,000 people now live in New York’s shelters or streets, up from about 64,000 people the year before Mr. de Blasio took office.

The mayor’s plan, which seeks to create or preserve 300,000 apartments, includes a goal of designating at least 15,000 units for homeless people.

Because Mr. de Blasio’s plan applies to the overall total, and not specific developments, homeless set-asides have tended to be clustered in poorer neighborhoods, particularly in the Bronx.

The Council’s plan would impose a hard mandate on individual developers on a project-by-project basis, potentially spreading such housing into neighborhoods that have had the political muscle to resist it.

Editors’ Picks

The legislation, which has the support of 34 Council members as well as the mayor and the public advocate, Jumaane D. Williams, would take effect in July 2020.

“We have a homelessness crisis in New York City, and we have to start getting aggressive or we are never going to fix it,” said Corey Johnson, the Democratic speaker of the City Council and a likely mayoral candidate in 2021, when Mr. de Blasio concludes his final term as mayor.

Nonetheless, New York’s effort still falls short of the original bill’s language, which sought to apply the 15 percent set aside to a wider range of residential buildings.

The bill’s sponsor, Rafael Salamanca Jr., a councilman from the Bronx, said his goal was to increase set-asides for homeless people, yet make sure such reserved housing was integrated into all neighborhoods across the city.

“This is hope. We are giving homeless families hope,” Mr. Salamanca said. “This is about fair share. Some districts are looking down on families who have had bad luck.”

Mr. de Blasio’s administration argues that it has recently begun requiring more set-asides. About 9 percent of the units the city has financed so far are reserved for homeless people, higher than the original 5 percent goal.

“This agreement will ensure it’s written into law that future administrations continue the progress we’ve made,” said Jane Meyer, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Blasio. “Homeless New Yorkers can rest assured we’re doing all we can to put a safe and stable roof over their heads.”

Still more than half of the projects included in the mayor’s plan for low-income people have no homeless set-asides, according to an analysis by the Coalition for the Homeless.

The largest share of newly opened units where homeless people have been placed has been in the Bronx, about 37 percent, according to city data requested by The New York Times. About 55 percent of the new construction projects financed for extremely low-income people are in the Bronx.

Mr. Salamanca’s involvement in the bill can be traced to a confrontation last year between a homeless woman, Nathylin Flowers Adesegun, and Mr. de Blasio. Ms. Adesegun, who lives in a shelter in Queens and was active in homeless issues, asked the mayor at the Brooklyn gym that he attends why his housing plan did not include more units for homeless people. In a moment caught on video, the mayor smirked, declined to talk and walked away.

Ms. Adesegun and advocates for the homeless continued to protest Mr. de Blasio and urged Council members to take legislative action, eventually working with Mr. Salamanca.

In interviews, developers of affordable housing in New York City acknowledged that they held a crucial role in helping reduce the city’s homeless population.

But the developers, who agreed to discuss the legislation only on the condition of anonymity, suggested that it made more sense to place housing for the homeless close to other city social services. They favored a framework that gave the city the right to tweak the percentages in each residential project.

“The flexibility is very important,” one developer said. “There is no question that the city should be doing as much as possible for the formerly homeless, but it is difficult to legislate that every single building have a 15 percent set-aside when there are not services to go along with that 15 percent.”

The Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s main lobbying arm, echoed the developers’ concerns about social services.

“A robust set of services is essential once housing is provided,” said Basha Gerhards, the group’s vice president of policy and planning. “We join with advocates across the city to ask that the mayor and the Council put forward a plan that truly provides for this.”

Mr. de Blasio has repeatedly said that he favored a measure of flexibility in his housing plan, consistently urging that it should help those with a range of incomes.

“Affordable housing initiatives cannot just be for the lowest income folks,” the mayor said in a radio interview in September. “There has to be a place for work force housing and middle-class housing as well.”

In 2017, Mr. de Blasio announced a homeless strategy that called for the opening of 90 shelters and improved social services. But the administration has opened only 30 new shelters, and the efforts have not driven down the number of people who seek refuge in them.

Other strategies have been more successful.

The city has provided free legal assistance to tenants facing eviction, resulting in evictions dropping by a third between 2013 and 2018. With new rental assistance voucher programs, the city has moved about 111,000 people out of shelters and has prevented about 22,000 people from entering them in the first place.

But the rental assistance vouchers are not a panacea; recipients have complained about poor housing stock and the length of time it takes to find landlords that accept the vouchers.

The new apartments at Villa Gardens in the Bronx are a vivid example of the mayor’s vision. Tenants who move in next year will have plenty of light from their floor-to-ceiling windows, a rooftop recreation area and easy access to the elevated train that rumbles past the building.

All 52 apartments will go to low- and middle-income renters; none are set aside for the homeless.

Javon Ford, a 28-year-old restaurant porter who lives in a shelter nearby, said he has a housing voucher worth $1,303 a month, and has been looking for an apartment. He said he had entered lotteries for city-financed units like the ones in Villa Gardens, but was turned down twice.

“The system, it’s just made for you to fail,” he said.

Ivy Faison and her husband, Kevin, had been living in a shelter for about four years when they won a lottery last year for a unit in a building that had been set aside for the homeless in East New York, Brooklyn.

Ms. Faison, 60, cried as she remembered that her husband, who had trouble walking and illnesses that caused seizures, finally had comfortable surroundings. Mr. Faison died of heart disease in August.

She remembered the day they first saw the apartment in the building, which received $6.5 million in city financing. “I just kissed my floors, and I said, ‘Thank you, heavenly Father, so much,’” she said.

Susan Beachy contributed research.

Nikita Stewart covers social services with a focus on New York City Hall. She has previously worked at The Washington Post, The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, The Journal News in Westchester County and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. @kitastew

Jeffery C. Mays is a reporter on the Metro Desk who covers politics with a focus on New York City Hall. A native of Brooklyn, he is a graduate of Columbia University. @JeffCMays

Matthew Haag covers the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He previously was a general assignment and breaking news reporter at The Times and worked as an education reporter at The Dallas

A law would mandate that affordable-housing projects built with city assistance must have 15 percent of the apartments reserved for the homeless.





De Blasio Deports Thousands of Homeless Families Across America

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 10: A homeless person eats on a side walk near Time Square on December 10, 2019 in New York City. The controversial program, Special One-Time Assistance, or SOTA, sends homeless families to lower cost communities across the nation. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)
Jeenah Moon/Getty Images
3:31

Cities across the United States are grappling with large homeless populations, but New York City decided to deal with the problem by relocating those sleeping in the streets or in shelters to other American cities.
The New York Post reported that city records show that homeless people have been sent to 373 American cities.
The Post also reported that since the program started in 2017, New York has relocated 5,074 families, or 12,482 people, to other areas in the city, the state, and around the country.
Cities selected for homeless relocation include several in New Jersey and Georgia, according the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
A New York City program that relocates its homeless to other cities around the country is drawing fire from Marietta leaders who say they learned it was happening from a newspaper article.
Marietta city councilmembers say they want answers about how New York runs its Special One-Time Assistance program, which provides one year’s rent for eligible clients to relocate within the city, other New York state cities or other states.
The program is the subject of a lawsuit filed Dec. 1 by the city of Newark, New Jersey, which is one of the destination cities for New York’s homeless. The lawsuit argues the program pressures desperate homeless to accept substandard housing conditions and that slumlords benefit from the city’s program that pays for a year’s rent with no checks on the living conditions.
AJC reported that Marietta City Councilwoman Michelle Cooper Kelly said she was “astonished” when she read of the NYC program in the Post.
The Post reported on the extent of the program across the country:
From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.
City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families who once lived in city shelters decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.
The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800. Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions. 
Sade Collington, her husband, and two children returned to a Bronx shelter after being relocated to an East Orange, New Jersey, apartment that lacked water, heat, or electricity.
“It was completely unlivable,” said Collington, who added she planned to sue the city.
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"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."


Bloomberg - Tax the Poor for Their Own Good

Here's why a leftist billionaire is wasting his money running for president.
 
Larry Elder

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.


THESE FILTHY POLS CAN'T OPEN THEIR CORRUPT MOUTHS WITHOUT SAYING AMNESTY! AMNESTY! AMNESTY! GIVE OUR ILLEGALS AMNESTY SO THEY CAN BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILIES AND SIGN UP FOR WELFARE!

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