According to the ProPublica report, when the super-rich do pay something in income taxes, their true tax rate is far lower than that of the typical working class household, with a median income of $70,000. For instance, between 2006 and 2018, while Bezos’ wealth surged by over $120 billion, he paid, on average, $1.09 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth. But over the same period, the median American household paid $160 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth—paying more in taxes than it gained in wealth.
Biden to Harris: Disaster 1 to Disaster 2
That “President” Biden is an unmitigated disaster as our chief executive is so painfully apparent to everyone that it hardly seems necessary to point it out. Nonetheless, just briefly consider:
Catastrophic Governance
His policies -- anti-energy, anti-business, anti-military, anti-America First -- have wrecked the economy, driven gas to over $3.00/gallon, given us the absolute worst illegal immigration crisis in our history, and bankrupted the country. In a warped way, it’s kind of impressive that he’s done that in only a bit over four months.
Leadership Vacuum
No one believes Biden is calling the shots. He’s totally malleable to behind-the-scenes operatives, acting in a confused, unknowing fog, reading as best he can from the teleprompter, and hiding behind his weird “I’ll get in trouble if I answer any more of your questions” excuse.
Made America Weak Internationally
The ayatollahs from Iran, Russia’s Putin, and Xi Jinping of Communist China are licking their chops at the prospect of having their way with poor ‘ol Joe.
Family Corruption
Has there ever been a “First Family” with anywhere near the decades-long, indisputable record of dishonesty, financial misdealings, and outright graft that even approaches that of the Bidens?
Diminished Mental Capacity
For those among this readership who have a compromised older family member, it isn’t merely the grotesquely obvious signs of dementia that mark Biden as severely limited. It’s the more subtle behaviors that betray his overwhelming incapacity. A clear example occurred just recently when the ever-admiring and forever-excusing liberal media caught up with Biden as he was eating an ice cream cone. Breathlessly shouting out, “What flavor?” the media proceeded to float a softball his way, asking if there was any possibility that the Republicans might compromise with him on his infrastructure proposal.
That Biden (pre-coached, no doubt) predictably belittled the Republicans is not the point. The issue for those who have the experience with elders is the manner in which Biden was eating his ice cream cone: the tentative little bites and the way in which he seemed so preoccupied and protective of his treat, in an almost childlike way. It’s tough to put into exact words, but anyone with a badly slipping elder family member or friend recognizes this demeanor. Biden is well past even the vaguest pretense of mental competence.
This brings us to Kamala Harris. For these and other reasons, the Democrats will ditch Biden for Harris when they believe Biden has outlived his usefulness and feel that a Harris presidency can be leveraged for maximum political advantage. But other than transparently boasting that Harris is the country’s first female president, how would a Harris administration benefit the country? It won’t.
In modern times (since, say, 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon), there has never been a vice-president or vice-presidential candidate more ideologically radical and more singularly unqualified to be president than Kamala Harris. Cabot Lodge, Miller, LBJ, Muskie, Shriver, Dole, Mondale, Ferraro, Bentsen, Kemp, Gore, Lieberman, Edwards, Palin, Ryan, Kaine, and Pence all had their strengths and shortcomings, but each one was a serious, experienced politician who was qualified to be president if the need arose.
The mainstream liberal media would be quick to say that GHW Bush’s VP -- Dan Quayle -- was not qualified presidential material. As they are wont to do, the liberal media jumped all over his totally inconsequential “potatoe vs. potato” spelling controversy and lined up against him when he opposed the TV show Murphy Brown’s character’s decision to have an out-of-wedlock child. How dare he have the temerity to question the moral decision that the distinguished and sophisticated liberal icon Candice Bergen would bring to a mass television audience? Conservatives will rightly point out that while Quayle had a penchant for saying inopportune things, he was not the ideological extremist that Harris is, nor was he beholden to the farthest reaches of his party the way Harris is and he certainly was not the inexpert, experiential lightweight that Harris is.
With her constant situationally inappropriate hyenalike cackling, her astonishingly unserious, wild proclamations about matters of critical national import (such as her preposterous assertion that “climate change” is a root cause of illegal immigration), and her bizarre narcissistic need for self-promotion as evidenced by her passing out “Kamala Harris” cookies to reporters, it is clear that Harris is nothing more than a hastily cobbled together collection of progressive checked boxes: Person of Color? Check. Female? Check. Victim of discrimination? Check. Radical ideology? Check.
Yet these boxes remain distressingly unchecked:
- Detailed understanding of economics and taxation
- Job creator
- Successful manager in the “take no prisoners” private sector
- Scientific/technical expertise
- Awareness of American and world history.
- Knowledge of military strategy, hardware, and weaponry
To be fair, not all great presidents check every single box. But every passable president checks at least a few of them. Harris comes up totally empty.
Exactly when the Democrats will decide to discard Biden like three-day-old bread remains to be seen. Perhaps it will be after the Democrats have passed all the extreme legislation and executive orders they feel they can get away with. That would make some sense: get as many radical policies in place as possible, have them fall on Biden, then get rid of Biden in order to distance and inoculate Harris from Republican attack for those policies in 2024.
The flaw in this thinking is Harris’s incredible weakness and unsuitability for the job of commander-in-chief. Her leadership tenure would be a total catastrophe for America. She’ll be far more concerned with satisfying woke obligations than acting in the country’s interests as a whole. America under a Harris administration will be more divided and polarized along racial, gender, and ideological fault lines than ever before.
The Republicans had better get this entire election integrity/fraud situation resolved by the 2022 midterms. Every thinking person knows that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 presidential election. His term has been the absolute fiasco for America that people feared it would be. A President Harris will be even worse. If she “wins” in 2024, the negative consequences for the country will likely be permanent and irreversible. That is the very definition of “disaster.”
Nolte: Failed Bidenomics Threatens to Return Us to Jimmy Carter’s 1970s
Writing in the New York Post, Charles Gasparino warns, “The Biden administration keeps insisting inflation is ‘transient,’ but there are now real signs that inflation is here and possibly for the long haul.”
“Thursday’s consumer price index increase of 5 percent year-on-year — its highest level in 13 years — is the latest and most visible piece of evidence that this scourge is making a comeback,” he adds.
The most important point he makes is this: “Inflation is a regressive tax that hits hardest at working-class and poor Americans.”
Inflation brutalizes the working class and poor, as do spiking energy prices, which are included in inflation measures, but also cause much of it. It’s not only the cost of electricity and topping your gas tank; it’s the cost of manufacturing and, most especially, transporting all the goods and services we purchase.
So it’s vital to focus on energy costs, not only for the reasons above, but also because His Fraudulency Joe Biden is waging war on oil, specifically America’s status as an energy-independent exporter.
The reasons for this crippling inflation are not difficult to discern. Because the federal government is paying millions of Americans not to work (even though the country’s reopening), an artificial labor shortage is artificially inflating wages, which increases the cost of everything else. On top of that, the federal government is pouring trillions and trillions of dollars into the economy, which is now totally unnecessary, as Gasparino points out. With the country finally reopening, the economy will grow just fine on its own without all this cheap money, which creates inflation.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, Yeah, but wages are increasing. How is that a bad thing?
Well, what good are higher wages if inflation eats it all up. Earnings are actually down in this country and have been for five months.
What’s so fascinating about all of this is that as Biden barrels America’s economic train towards its inevitable wreck, none of the above is debatable. It not like we have experts who will argue massive government spending, artificially high wages, and zero percent interest rates won’t produce inflation. Of course, they will. And yet, out of one side of his racist mouth, Biden insists this inflation we’ve not seen since the 2008 crash (which was also caused by the government meddling in the economy by way of Fannie and Freddie) is “transient,” while out of the other side of his racist mouth, he continues to call for a trillion — with a “T” — government spending plans.
Inflation is sure not going to be “transient” if you keep the tidal waves of cheap money rolling in.
Inflation might actually be “transient” if the administration ceases the policies causing it, but it won’t. Even with our massive labor shortage, the boosted federal unemployment benefits will march on into September. This makes zero sense.
As someone who grew up in the 1970s, who turned 14 a few months after the decade ended, there were many fabulous things about that decade. Americans had finally had enough of the pompous, self-important 1960s and had themselves a blast. Of course, the civil rights movement (which I, of course, excluded from the category of “pompous, self-important”) brought a country closer together that was, at long last, ready just to have a good time. Goodbye Joan Baez, hello Led Zeppelin. Goodbye protest songs, hello rock n’ roll, and disco. Goodbye Woodstock, hello Studio 54.
It was one of the freest decades in American history, maybe the freest. I’d gladly pay six bucks for a gallon of gas and four bucks for a loaf of bread if it brought back All in the Family, Blazing Saddles, Saturday Night Fever, Blondie, Warhol, a proudly sexist James Bond, R-rated T&A, John Belushi, roller derby, George Carlin, and the great American ability to collectively laugh at ourselves and, most especially, our sacred cows. But that’s me… The cost of inflation on struggling Americans, those who live on the margins, is brutal and oftentimes crippling. It’s just not worth it, and it doesn’t have to happen — unless His Fraudulency wants it to.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here
After Inflation Earnings of Americans Have Declined in Every Month of the Biden Presidency
The real earnings of American workers fell for the fifth consecutive month in May as inflation erased all of the month’s wage gains and more.
Real average hourly earnings for working Americans fell 0.1 percent in May compared with April, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Thursday show.
This decline in real earnings occurred even though average hourly earnings increased as employers scrambled to fill open positions. What happened was that these wage gains were more than offset by the increase of 0.6 percent in the Consumer Price Index. So Americans were paid more but those gains were swamped by inflation.
Average weekly real earnings fell as well, dropping to $334.09 from $335.60, even though there was no change in the average hours worked.
The wage decline was even more pronounced for workers the government describes as “production and nonsupervisory employees”—in other words, not the bosses. These workers saw a 0.2 percent decline in May because their 0.4 percent wage increase was overwhelmed by the rise in prices.
Real average weekly earnings for these employees fell 0.4 percent over the month due to the change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.3 percent in average weekly hours.
This was the fifth consecutive month in which inflation-adjusted hourly earnings fell and the fourth in which weekly earnings fell. As a result, after inflation earnings of Americans have declined in every month in which Joe Biden has been president. This is the longest consecutive string of monthly real earnings declines in records going back to 2007, matching the five month decline seen last year at height of pandemic lockdowns.
US cost of living surges while wages stagnate
An unprecedented rise in prices for necessities is making it increasingly difficult for workers in the United States and internationally to make ends meet.
The cost of basic commodities such as used vehicles, food, furniture, clothes, plane tickets, recreational goods, insurance and alcohol have all risen. The surge in prices drove the US inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), to a 13-year high of 5 percent in May, up from 4.2 percent the previous month.
The CPI jumped 0.6 percent last month, marking the fourth significant monthly increase in a row. Record prices for used vehicles, driven by a shortage of raw materials, accounted for approximately one-third of the overall increase in May. Prices climbed 7.3 percent after a 10 percent increase in April. The Manheim used car index hit 203 in May, which represents a 48.2 percent increase in used car prices over the last year.
Energy has also been a big driver of inflation, with prices soaring over 29 percent in the past year. For example, a gallon of regular gas currently costs an average of $3.10 nationwide, after the price fell under $2.00 per gallon after the pandemic hit.
Globally, housing prices have experienced the fastest growth rate since 2006, when home prices peaked amid the US housing bubble. According to the Knight Frank Global House Price Index, the average home price across 56 countries and territories rose 7.3 percent in the year to March 2021. Thirteen countries registered double-digit increases, with developing nations comprising most of the top-ten.
With a 32 percent year-over-year increase, Turkey saw the largest price increase. New Zealand and Luxembourg followed with 22.1 percent and 16.6 percent increases, respectively. The US experienced the fifth-largest increase as housing prices climbed 13.2 percent in the year to March.
Grocery prices rose by 0.4 percent in May and are expected to continue rising for some time. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported world food prices rose by 40 percent over the past year, including a rise of 4.8 percent since April. The United Nations World Food Program warned the increase in food prices is driving food insecurity, with 270 million people suffering from acute malnutrition or worse across 79 countries.
Rents in the US, which account for the single largest expense for most workers, rose 0.2 percent in May, the largest increase in over a year. Rents have gone up 1.8 percent in the last year. Economists state rent prices have risen slowly partly because of moratoriums on evictions. However, it is unclear what will happen to prices when the restrictions expire.
According to an American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) report, prescription drug prices increased at twice the US inflation rate in 2020. Although widely used brand-name prescription drugs saw their slowest annual price increase in 2020, the AARP reported the 2.9 percent increase in medication costs is still twice the country’s general inflation rate of 1.3 percent. The findings showed insurance-negotiated prices of 260 brand-name prescription drugs have increased, on average, faster than general inflation every year since 2006.
Workers are seeing their purchasing power decline at the same time essential goods are becoming more expensive.
Writing for The Hill, economic historian Dr. Tyler Goodspeed calculated real wages for US workers have declined every month in the last year, eroded by significant month-over-month increases in overall consumer prices.
The high rate of inflation completely erases the nominal increases in hourly earning within the last year. According to data provided by the United States Department of Labor, average hourly earnings rose from $29.74 to $30.33 from May 2020 to May 2021, a nominal increase of less than 2 percent. With a year-to-year inflation rate of 5 percent, this means workers have seen their real wages decline by more than 3 percent within the past year.
Last month’s jobs report and the broad surge in the cost of living indicate growing hardship among workers in the US, despite President Joe Biden’s claim that the report represented “great news” about the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Labor Department reported US employers added 559,000 jobs in May, missing the 650,000 analysts predicted. May’s shortfall marked the second row in a month job gains missed expectations. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate declined 0.3 percentage points to 5.8 percent, the lowest since companies began mass layoffs in March 2020.
Even with these gains, the US economy has 7.6 million fewer workers compared to the February 2020 pre-pandemic level. So far, the US has only recovered 14.7 million, or 65 percent, of the 22.4 million jobs lost last spring.
The Biden Administration and corporate media claimed the distribution of vaccines would accelerate economic recovery, but 53,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force, ticking the participation rate down from 61.7 percent to 61.6 percent despite 48 of 50 states reopening or having completely reopened.
While everything is becoming more expensive for workers, those who own stock and other property are becoming ever wealthier.
The S&P 500 rose to an all-time high on Thursday, climbing nearly 0.5 percent to a record closing high of 4,239.18. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 19.10 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 34,466.24, while the Nasdaq Composite gained about 0.8 percent to 14,020.33.
Corporate lobbyists and the Republican Party have wailed vociferously that the federal supplemental unemployment benefits were encouraging workers to remain idle instead of taking jobs. The reality is workers are facing numerous challenges, including an ongoing pandemic which continues to sicken thousands and kill an average of 400 people every day in the US, concerns over child care and the need for higher-paying jobs. According to the Labor Department, about 4 million US workers quit their jobs in April to search for better pay.
The rapid rise in inflation will lead to an intensification of the class struggle as workers demand higher wages to ensure they can make ends meet. This is already being seen in the actions of nearly 3,000 Volvo workers in Dublin, Virginia, who have twice rejected sellout contracts pushed by the UAW and corporate management and are currently on their second strike in as many months, as well as the 1,100 coal miners on strike at Warrior Met in northwest Alabama who are demanding the restoration of wages lost over the last six years.
Worries About Big Ticket Item Inflation Hit Worse Level Since 1982
The last time Americans were this unhappy about prices of big-ticket purchases was 1982, when the Federal Reserve was fighting a war against double-digit inflation.
The University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment showed U.S. consumers more concerned with higher prices of appliances, houses, and cars than anytime in 39 years, according to the survey’s chief economist Richard Curtin.
The survey records spontaneous mentions of prices of these major purchases and subtracts comments about higher prices from comments about lower prices. The difference has plummeted this year, indicating a huge imbalance in the comments due to a much larger volume of comments on higher prices.
“Spontaneous references to market prices for homes, vehicles, and household durables fell to their worst level since the all-time record in November 1974,” Curtin said. “These unfavorable perceptions of market prices reduced overall buying attitudes for vehicles and homes to their lowest point since 1982.”
Curtin said concern over prices of these categories was especially high among the top-third of earners. These consumers are responsible for more than half of retail sales.
The price of used cars rose by 7.3 percent in May, following a 10 percent gain in April. Home prices have hit record highs. Appliance prices are up 12.3 percent from a year ago, according to the most recent report on the Consumer Price Index.
Despite the worsening of this measure, overall consumer expectations moderated in the first weeks of June. The preliminary June survey showed expectations for inflation declining a bit from May, both in the one-year forecast and the five-year forecast. Even with the decline, however, expectations for the next year remain at their highest point in a decade.
Consumer sentiment improved in early June, the survey showed. The index rose to 86.4, up from 82.9 at the end of May. That was better than expected. But the gain was mostly due to increases in the experience and expectations of upper and middle income households, raising doubts about whether the Biden administration’s policies are benefiting lower-income households.
Both the current condition measure and the expectations gauge rose in early June.
“Consumer sentiment rose in early June, recouping two-thirds of May’s loss,” Curtin said. “The early June gain was mainly among middle and upper income households and for future economic prospects rather than current conditions.”
In early June, the government reported that businesses posted a record number of job openings in April, almost a million more than they had a month before. Not surprisingly, a record-high share of consumers anticipates unemployment to keep falling.
“Stronger growth in the national economy was anticipated, with an all-time record number of consumers anticipating a net decline in unemployment,” Curtin said.
Focus Group: Few Voters Believe U.S. Economy Is ‘Booming’ amid Rising Inflation
A focus group indicated Thursday only 3 of 13 voters said they felt the U.S. economy is “booming” amid rising inflation concerns.
The focus group by Engagious/Schlesinger and first reported by Axios suggested the other ten respondents “expressed fear of an impending crash following the injection of federal stimulus money during the pandemic.”
The focus group also found the following two results:
- Eight of the 13 voters said they are apprehensive about inflation in their area, citing costs going up in a number of sectors, including groceries, gas, oil and real estate.
- 10 of the 13 voters are worried about the national debt. They fear tax hikes and believe that Social Security is at stake.
The concern of inflation, which hurts the poorest Americans by making the few dollars they possess worthless in terms of purchasing power, comes as the Consumer Price Index jumped five percent in May from a year ago, the fastest rise since 2008.
The index is used to measure a basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households and is correlated with inflation.
Some economic analysts worry inflation could go on for longer than expected because of the combination of very low interest rates, pent up consumer demand for goods and services, a particularly large budget deficit, and the release of excess savings built up by stimulus payments.
To distract from the increase of price for household goods, Axios reported the White House is “more interested in touting the lowest level of jobless claims during the pandemic, with 376,000 people filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week.”
In consideration of the employment rate, some of the respondents in the focus group spoke to their decision to become employed instead of relying on government subsidies or unemployment benefits.
“It was really tempting to say ‘no,’ because I made more from unemployment than I do from my part-time job,” Kelli V. stated as respondent number one.
“I know a couple people who didn’t lose their jobs but were talking about how they wish they could. They were hoping they would get laid off (to collect unemployment),” Holly, respondent number two, said.
On May 14, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asked Republican governors to opt out of the federal programs in a letter to entice people back into the labor force and off the dole.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRECIOUS TO THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY THAN BANKSTERS WITH BRIBES AND BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS. THESE ARE THE CLOWNS WHO ELECT OUR WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINAL PRESIDENTS NOW!
IRS data shows: US billionaires’ true tax rate far lower than that of workers
On June 8, ProPublica published the first in a projected series of articles documenting the massive scale of legally sanctioned tax evasion carried out by America’s ever-expanding class of billionaires. The article, based on an exhaustive study of leaked Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, focuses on the period from 2014 through 2018. It demonstrates that in the course of those five years, the 25 richest Americans paid federal taxes on their increased wealth at a far lower rate than the typical US household.
The report also cites tax data on billionaire oligarchs such as Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg going back to the first decade of the current century, showing that they paid little or no taxes regardless of which big business party—Democrats or Republicans—occupied the White House. It explains as well that even were the Biden administration to carry out its promised increases in income tax rates for the rich, the impact on the vast fortunes of today’s robber barons would be minimal.
The authors state that in determining the increased wealth of America’s “top 0.001 percent,” they included not simply their salaries, which in many cases comprise only a small share of their actual income, but also “investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.”
The result, they note, demolishes “the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.” They continue: “The IRS records show that the wealthiest can—perfectly legally—pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.”
ProPublica’s revelations provide insight into how the capitalist system and its various state institutions and rigged legal system promote a parasitic financial aristocracy that lives in a world apart from the rest of humanity. Unlike workers, who depend on their wages to survive and pay the full income tax rate, the ultra-wealthy avoid taxes by obtaining massive loans from banks, borrowing against the value of their ever growing and artificially inflated assets, such as stocks and real estate, which are not taxable until they are sold.
In order to calculate what ProPublica terms the “true tax rate” of the 25 richest Americans, the report compares how much in taxes these individuals paid over a given period to how much their wealth grew, using wealth estimates published by Forbes magazine.
Between 2014 and 2018, Forbes estimated that these 25 people saw their wealth increase collectively by $401 billion. The documents obtained by ProPublica show that these same individuals collectively paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes over the same time period, for a true tax rate of only 3.4 percent. By contrast, ProPublica found that between 2014 and 2018, a typical US worker in his or her 40s experienced a net wealth expansion of about $65,000. That same worker’s tax bills “were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.”
Over that same period, according to ProPublica, Warren Buffett’s wealth increased by $24.3 billion, but the Berkshire Hathaway mogul paid only $23.7 million in taxes, resulting in a true tax rate of 0.10 percent.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ wealth soared by a staggering $99 billion, but he paid just $973 million in taxes, yielding a true tax rate of less than 1 percent.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is another “pandemic profiteer.” He saw his wealth skyrocket this past year, in part by violating a state-ordered shutdown and illegally restarting production at the Fremont, California, Tesla factory, leading to hundreds of coronavirus infections. Between 2014 and 2018 his wealth grew by $13.9 billion, while he paid $455 million in taxes, resulting in a true tax rate of 3.27 percent.
The reporting confirms the Marxist analysis of the capitalist state, described in the Communist Manifesto as “… a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The various loopholes and tax avoidance schemes employed by the ruling class are legal, have been for decades, and will continue to be so under Biden or any other Democratic administration.
As then-candidate Joe Biden assured wealthy donors at a Manhattan campaign fundraising event in January 2019, should he become president, “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.” Nearly six months into his presidency, Biden has kept his promises to his wealthy benefactors, as evinced by his recent retreat from his proposal to raise corporate taxes by a few percentage points.
Among other facts included in the ProPublica report:
- Bezos, the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011. In 2011, despite his overall wealth holding steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return in which he claimed to have lost money. The IRS not only approved the billionaire’s tax return, it granted him a $4,000 tax credit for his children!
- Musk, now the second richest person in the world, did not pay any federal income taxes in 2018.
- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as billionaire investors Carl Icahn and George Soros, have also had years when they paid nothing in federal income taxes. Soros, worth an estimated $8.6 billion as of March 2021, paid no federal income taxes for three years in a row.
According to the ProPublica report, when the super-rich do pay something in income taxes, their true tax rate is far lower than that of the typical working class household, with a median income of $70,000. For instance, between 2006 and 2018, while Bezos’ wealth surged by over $120 billion, he paid, on average, $1.09 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth. But over the same period, the median American household paid $160 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth—paying more in taxes than it gained in wealth.
Overall, ProPublica found that the richest 25 Americans pay a far lower income tax rate, an average of 15.8 percent of adjusted gross income, than do many workers, once taxes for Social Security and Medicare are included. To highlight the point, ProPublica found that by the end of 2018, the 25 richest Americans were worth $1.1 trillion and collectively paid a federal tax bill of $1.9 billion.
The $1.1 trillion in collective wealth hoarded by 25 people equals the combined annual wages of roughly 14.3 million American workers, who in 2018 paid $143 billion in federal taxes, or over 75 times more than the billionaires.
On Tuesday, in response to a reporter’s question about the ProPublica report, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had nothing to say about its damning content. Instead, she threatened criminal prosecution of those who leaked the IRS documents to ProPublica.
“Any unauthorized disclosure of confidential government information by a person of access is illegal and we take this very seriously,” said Psaki. She added that the IRS commissioner has referred the matter to investigators and that the FBI and Justice Department would also be investigating.
Facebook to Expand Remote Work to All Employees – But May Reduce Pay
Social media giant Facebook recently stated that it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic if their job can be performed out of the office. The company will consider reducing pay for employees that move to areas with lower cost of living than Silicon Valley.
Bloomberg reports that tech giant Facebook Inc. recently stated that it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic if their job can be done away from the office, but it will reduce their pay if they move to an area with a lower cost of living.
From June 15, any Facebook employee will be able to request to work from home, Facebook said in a statement. If those employees choose to move to a lower-cost region, their salaries will be adjusted accordingly and they will be encouraged to return to the office at times for team-building purposes.
Facebook stated that it will be more flexible for employees expected to return to the office. “Guidance is to be in the office at least half the time,” the company said. Facebook also plans to open most of its U.S.-based offices to at least 50 percent capacity by early September and aims to fully reopen in October.
Until the end of 2021, Facebook will allow employees to work as many as 20 business days from another location away from their home area, the company stated. Facebook has more than 60,000 workers according to regulatory filings published in March. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that he believes remote workers could make up as much as 50 percent of Facebook’s workforce in the next five to 10 years.
“As part of my commitment to remote and hybrid work, I plan to spend as much as half of the next year working remotely,” Zuckerberg told employees on Wednesday. “I’ve found that working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work.
“I’ll be in the office a lot too, and I’m structuring my schedule to keep a good rhythm with our leadership team, as well as for planning and other key milestones,” Zuckerberg added. “I’m looking forward to getting to see a lot of you in our offices again soon.”
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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