The House Ways and Means committee is beginning to debate whether to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of this year.
There will be the usual carping about how this would hurt the economy, punish the successful, kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. But some of the geese think it's a good idea.
It's not surprising that 60 percent of all Americans support raising taxes on households with incomes over $250,000, according Quinnipiac University poll.
What's curious is some of the people who will pay these higher taxes also agree. The Quinnipiac poll reveals that 64 percent of those with incomes over $250,000 support the tax hike. This is echoed by the unusual voices of retired CEOs, current business leaders and small business owners, many of them affiliated with Wealth for the Common Good, a network concerned about tax fairness that I co-founded.
They don't sound like they're fomenting class warfare. If anything, they are waxing poetic and patriotic.
"I hope Congress has the courage to let my tax cut expire," wrote Gene Mulligan, an investment manager from Alexandria, Va., in a syndicated column. "Our nation has built a remarkable marketplace for enterprise and wealth creation. Taxes paid for the public investments in research, education, infrastructure and technology that made this possible. They paid for law enforcement and orderly marketplaces. These public investments buoyed my personal opportunities and wealth. I am certain they have done the same for millions of other Americans."
Arul Menezes, a principal architect at Microsoft, wrote in an op-ed for that was published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer that the meritocratic system and infrastructure that made his entrepreneurial success possible is eroding. "Our investment as citizens in our collective "commons" lays the foundation for our individual wealth and success. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized and healthy society. Those of us who have disproportionately benefited from public investments have a responsibility to pay back our society so that others can have similar opportunities."
Edgar Bronfman, the retired Chairman of Seagrams, who pushed the conversation along with an article in HuffPost said, "In the midst of an economic crisis, Americans are aware of who gets bailed out and who doesn't. The economy needs everyone's optimism, initiative, and resolve to get through bad times together. For the past eight years the wealthy have gotten wealthier. Now it's our turn to pay the piper and help build a more moral America."
More than 300 higher income taxpayers have signed a public petition calling on Congress and President Obama to let the tax cuts expire. These include Bernard Rapoport, Chairman Emeritus, American Income Life Insurance Co.; Chuck Denny, Jr., retired CEO, ADC Communications; John Steel, attorney and former mayor of Telluride, Colo.; Paul Grundy, IBM Corporation's Global Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation; and Julie Johnson, Managing Director, Fresh Pond Capital.
A signer to the petition, Todd B. Achilles, Managing Member of Balius Ventures LLC, said, "It is fundamental to our American values that we have a strong meritocracy which provides equality of opportunity to all Americans. Ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to be successful and pursue their dreams means ensuring that each and every American contributes appropriately to the nation's well-being."
According to a new report from Wealth for the Common Good, Shifting Responsibility, the wealthy have received massive tax cuts not just under President George W. Bush, but for decades before. Since 1960, the share of household income that middle class households paid in federal taxes has increased slightly, from 15.9 to 16.1 percent. But America's wealthiest taxpayers have seen their tax outlays, as a share of income, drop by almost half. The top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with incomes starting at $2 million, saw the share of income paid in federal taxes decline from 60 to 33.6 percent between 1960 and 2004.
During President Bush's eight years in office, Congress expanded tax cuts to Americans with incomes over $250,000. We had to add another $700 billion to the national debt to cover them.
"It's time to rebalance the tax code," said Ken Lewis, retired President of Lasco Shipping Company. "If we extend the Bush tax cuts for people of my income level, it will add an estimated $826 billion over the next decade. This would be very irresponsible. In my global travels, I've seen that societies that do not have functioning and fair tax systems have lower standards of living, poorer public services and less economic mobility and opportunity."
It's not the perspective we hear everyday. It is heartening that there are geese who want to make sure the next generation can also lay golden eggs.
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The lower two -- 10% and 15% -- should be raised to 17%.
The top four -- 25%, 30%, 33, and 35% -- should be lowered to 17%.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that in just 8 years, my money would be blown on a needless war, on countless private contracts that cost taxpayers far more than under government control, and on uber-rich corporations and individuals who would use it to destroy millions of good jobs and wreck the financial system, leaving the declining incomes of 95% of Americans so much less than projected for the most productive workforce in the world that Social Security fell behind once again. Agencies that I expected to serve me were starved of funds and mandate, as were all areas of research, except health related, in a way that apparently contributed extortionist increases in cost while delivering zero improvement in life expectancy for 15-64 year old's. As if that was not bad enough, the national debt was increased so dramatically that the chance to graciously recover from any downturn was obliterated in advance.
Thank you for reminding me how bitter I am.
Aren't you glad you busted your butt all those years? And people wonder why everything these days seems to be owned by souless multi-national corporations that only want to hire minimum wage workers? Huh, wonder how that happened.....
There is no inheritance tax.
A few states have an inheritance tax, but only a few.
They demand that we follow more of an Adam Smith approach to economics. Yet just like everything else conservatives profess to believe in (Christ, the US constitution, freedom, patriotism) they pervert that for their own benefit as well.
Adam Smith invented taxing the rich progressively
The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.[16]
-Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations
Socai;l programs should be paid for by everyone, not a specific sector of society. You want the rich to pay for defense, trqnsportation, education? Sure, I'll go for it, they benefit jsut as mucha as anyone else. You want the rich to pay for medicaire, medicaid, food stamps, TANF, rent assistance, whatever.....sorry, EVERYBODY should pay SOMETHING for that.
The working and middle classes are pulling their weight.
BTW- What conservatives whine about as social welfare, is among the lowest amount of social programs in the industrialized world. We pay among the lowest in national taxes of capitalized nations and get the least out of our government. Yet conservatives still pretend they are such poor oppressed victims of those mean old big government "Marxists"
Yet still you whine about those mean old people with no fiscal responsibility paying no taxes when many multi-billion dollar corporations pay no federal taxes. ZERO!
I suggest that you educated yourself to reality, economics and history before you shoot your mouth off again!
AND A BIG HONK ON THOSE SO-CALLED US COMPANIES WHICH ONLY PAY 1% TAX GOLDMAN SACHS...OR THOSE WHICH RECEIVED MOST OF THEIR PROFIT IN THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS HONK HONK HONK STUDIOS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANIES!!!!!!!!!!!! OIL COS!!! INSURANCE COS!!!!!!!
HONK HONK HONK!
However, increasing the lower brackets will increase tax revenue.
Politically incorrect to say, but that's the reality.
Additionally, I do not think thesse tax cuts need to be "repealed". They are expiring, no? All that has to be done to increase taxes on the wealthy.....is nothing.
And lastly, what would you propose? The fact that this year almost half of US tax returns will have zero (or evevn negative) tax liability sort of concerns me. If something provided to you costs you nothing, how do you make a value judgement on what the government should and should not do/provide? Its too easy to be an advocate, or worse indifferent, for the government to spend more and more money. And we are still sinking deeper into debt as a nation.
Whenever conservatives hold up charts from Reagan and Bush that they think "proves" their point, what thy ignore is that whenever a conservative president lowers taxes and claims revenue increases, they have also exponentially increased spending.
Conservative pop economics isn't based in reality. Its based in propaganda and ignorance.
Bring it on.
But, we should also raise corporate income taxes too. Up to, at least, 50% or more on corporate incomes greater than $1 million.
Simultaneously, give corporations truly significant tax breaks for investments in U.S. capital investments that are likely to restore American Competitiveness.
And, give corporations truly significant tax breaks for paying for employee techical and college education - so that we can restore American Competitiveness.
Taxing production and labor are the poorest ways to generate revenues, because those burdens get carried through the system. In other words, when we produce something here it gets shipped overseas with the production and labor taxes calculated in, then when it gets to Germeny and gets sold, there is an additional 30% paid on top of that. When something gets made there, the tax system delliberately does not add those tax burdens to the item, so it can actually sell cheaper (no 30% tax for things that are not sold their).
That is some of the reasons why we are not coompetitive.
They are not free market economies any more than our big banks are free market.
if we are to become more competitive then companies must work for the good of American society to develop the people and jobs to benefit the society that they use as customers and for protection.
What is sure is that the so-called "free market" is anything but free to society.