General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe “Fiscal Cliff” Scam to Maintain Low Tax Rates on the Rich
There are two highly related major purposes behind all the fiscal cliff nonsense were hearing these days from our mainstream corporate owned news media: They want to scare us so bad that we agree to permanent cuts in the social safety net programs that built up and sustained a healthy middle class in our country for so many decades; and, most important, they want to maintain or even reduce the current historically very low tax rates that the wealthy currently pay.
How, one might ask, do they intend use the scare of rising national debt to induce us to maintain their current low tax rates or even reduce them further? Thats easy. They simply claim, against all historical precedence and common sense, that raising taxes on the wealthy will hurt our precarious economy and cause more job loss. They have a million different ways of saying and rationalizing this nonsense. For example, a typical statement on this subject comes from Forbes.com, which says that if we raise taxes on the wealthy we will lose the value that billionaire's contributions would have made to the economic life of the community.
To examine the validity of such statements, all one needs to do is examine a graph that simultaneously plots income inequality and top marginal tax rates over time. The two superimposed charts below show respectively: 1) the relationship of income inequality to the two worst economic catastrophes of our history the Great Depression of the 1930s and our current recession; and 2) how top marginal tax rates for the wealthy have varied over time.
The first chart plots income inequality, measured as the ratio between the average income of the top 0.01% of U.S. families, compared to the bottom 90%. The most important thing to note about this chart is that just preceding the great stock market crash of 1929, which plunged us into the Great Depression, and again preceding the great recession of 2008 (in which we are still mired), the inequality ratio hit peak levels. The second chart shows that income inequality plotted over time is inversely proportional to top marginal tax rates.
Just prior to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 that led to the Great Depression, top marginal tax rates were very low, at 25%. President Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a vast conglomeration of social safety net and job creating programs, controls on powerful and wealthy corporations to prevent them from trampling over ordinary people in their quests for profits, and rising tax rates on the wealthy, which reached over 90% by the late 1940s, and remained at high historical levels until the Reagan presidency beginning of the 1980s.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman describes the economic boom that coincided with the very high taxes on the wealthy, in terms of median family income: Beginning in 1947, when accurate statistics on this issue first became available, with the top marginal tax rate approaching 90%, median family income rose steadily (in 2005 dollars) from $22,499 in 1947 to more than double that, $47,173 by 1980. Then, for the next 25 years, except for some moderate growth during the Clinton years, there was almost no growth in median income at all, which rose only to $56,194 by 2005 (85% of that growth accounted for during the Clinton years). Krugman refers to this period as "the greatest sustained economic boom in U.S. history".
All this should be enough by itself to shut up all the yapping about the benefits of reducing and the dangers of raising tax rates on the wealthy. But if not, consider where the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have gotten us. In the face of the economic disaster that followed several years of massive tax cuts for the rich, how gullible do you have to be to continue to believe that tax cuts for the rich are good for our economy?
What the right wing Fiscal Cliff mongers really want
All this right wing scare about the so-called Fiscal Cliff is pure hypocrisy. The Democratic Party should call them on it. George Zornick explains what the so-called Fiscal Cliff is really about:
But whats important to understand what every press account of these meetings should note is that theyre not, in practice, proposing any sacrifice from their companies in particular nor their industries in general.
Key planks of their proposals include a lower corporate tax rate even though many of these companies pay little or no corporate taxes as it is. Then theres a territorial tax system, which would allow corporations that have profits parked overseas to bring them back home without paying any taxes
FDRs attitude towards great concentrations of wealth
President Roosevelt did not feel that there was anything sacred about people piling up vast economic fortunes during times when so many other people were starving or homeless. He did not see that phenomenon as something that propelled our economy. In fact he saw it as a big part of the problem, something that prevented other people from obtaining their fair share of our nations resources. This is what he had to say on the subject at the 1936 Democratic National Convention:
There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship
Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise
FDR also believed that the enormous income inequality that existed at the time was deleterious to democracy itself:
For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
The Wall Street Fiscal Cliff scam
Richard Escow, writing for Campaign for Americas Future, cogently summarizes Wall Streets Fiscal Cliff scam:
Why? Theyre not experts in economic policy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many of them got where they are by persuading people to buy overpriced crap thats bad for them Think of it as Wall Streets latest scam. If you liked toxic investments and the 2008 financial crisis, youll love their deficit deal.
The list of Fix the Debt CEOs includes executives from Wall Streets largest and most notorious bad actors. These banks have committed serial fraud and gotten away with no criminal penalties and only nominal fines fines paid by shareholders, and not the misbehaving bankers themselves
Blankfeins institution (Goldman Sachs) paid the largest SEC fine in history for fraudulently deceiving investors about mortgage-backed securities which it sold while knowing full well that these securities were toxic a fact it concealed from its clients. The list of deceived investors includes many of the large pension funds that provide financial security to working Americans when they retire. Now that Wall Streets struck these private-sector funds, theyre targeting public retirement programs too.
What we need to do
Former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, explains the situation: He begins by saying:
Then he goes on to explain what Democrats need to do: Do not allow cuts to social safety net programs that have historically created and helped maintain our middle class. Immediately after the Bush tax cuts expire, put forth programs to lower tax rates on the middle class and create jobs by investing in our nations future in such areas as education, improvements in our crumbling infrastructure, and an energy policy based on alternatives to the fossil fuels that are destroying our planet.
See if Republicans in Congress dare to obstruct legislation to decrease taxes on the middle class. See if they dare to obstruct legislation to create jobs in the midst of the longest sustained era of job loss or anemic job growth since the Great Depression. Democrats failed to do this adequately when they controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the two year period beginning in January 2009. They paid for that failure in the mid-term elections of 2010, with a Republican landslide that resulted in a Republican majority in the House of Representatives that still remains today. When Democrats dont fight for the interests of those who elect them they pay a high price. Lets not let that happen again.
Avalux
(35,015 posts)And with the MSM falling in line to promote the fiscal cliff scare tactic, they think they'll succeed in convincing us we must agree to take SS and Medicare cuts.
All we can do is hope that the American people don't fall for it, and Obama and Dems stand tough. They certainly aren't going to stop.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)This has been going on for a very long time, in different guises:
The message has always been the same: Gut Social Security and Medicare. Shrink government. And absurdly, reduce tax rates for millionaires and corporations in the name of deficit reduction.
Lets be clear: This crowd doesnt really care about deficits. It never has. Its an anti-tax group which pursues its goals by fighting to downsize government programs and reform the Internal Revenue code. Its natural allies are the Republican Party, the nations mega-corporations, and billionaires.
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20121203/fix-the-debt-finally-shows-its-true-billionaire-funded-anti-tax-colors
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)the current deficits are unsustainable for example adding a trillion per year to the national debt has an ultimate limit that type of spending will ultimately destroy the entire economy.
femrap
(13,418 posts)would tax the rich we could create lower deficits. It takes REVENUES! And the only folks with revenues are RICH people.
And what is causing all of these deficits? Could it be PENTAGON SPENDING???????? That's where most of the money goes: Death and Destruction. Stop it. I don't think we're making any friends by killing women and children in other countries, do you?
Where is FDR when we need him...he looked into the Corporate Machine and said, "I welcome your hatred."
I just want to watch the 2 Big 2 Fail fall. Then can we use Bitcoins?
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)that you get by taking the upper income earners back to the 39 percent Clinton tax rates will nick the deficit by about 80 billion a year, this is impossible math if we continue to run deficits of 1.2 trillion this tiny tax increase means nothing. Personally I think both parties understand this and this posturing is going to ensure that all of the tax rates for all 100 percent of those that pay taxes goes back to the Clinton tax rates that in fact would raise enought to at least cut the deficit in half but it will hurt the lower income people and middle class the most, i.e., I would have to cut out something if my taxes go up 5 percent as I am barely making it now, if I am the micro scale than seen on the macro this will definately hurt the economy.
As for the DOD Yes sure Sequestration is a good start but again the more you take out of DOD the more jobs go away defense contractors, Civil service and active duty cuts all result in more people on the unemployment line, applying for EBT, Food Stamps and section 8 housing..... and all that money is added back to the deficit...
In any event I think we are going to get royally screwed one way or another and on top of that they will ultimately raise the SS and Medicare retirement age and probably force us all to pay more out of our checks for the Affordable Care Act....
Of course cut back far enough and raise taxes enough and you will eventually be able to bring the deficit down yeah broken on the backs of the middleclass and poor, something that I VOTED against...
Keeping my eyes open...
Peace!
jcgadfly
(1,638 posts)Let's go back to Reagan (50%) or Eisenhower (90%) and still cut spending we don't need like defense and subsidies for wildly profitable companies.
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)would actually fix the problem I say 70 percent with a cap on defense spending increases and a purge of about 20 percent of the DOD budget than we extend the S.S. Cap to max income levels that solves S.S. deficits and finally we pool more people into a single payer medical system and Medicare can go away because everyone will be on the single payer for life.
These really are simple fixes the only downside is that the rich, CEO's, business owners etc will try to pass the costs of their increased taxes onto the consumers there has to be some protection for us.
femrap
(13,418 posts)back in history, how the hell did this country 'survive' Eisenhower's Tax Rates????
I'm sick of the rich. Seriously. The top 2%....I'd make them 'Special People' and give them a SURTAX immediately. They have enjoyed ALL the gains in income for the past decade!!!!
Working people got nothing....and they worked. The rich just sat around and collected non-working money like Capital Gains and Dividends. They're LAZY and most couldn't create a job beyond that of a Maid.
It probably doesn't matter....we're toast anyway.
I just hoping Mother Nature levels the playing field. After all the rich can't survive by eating money. And everyone in every town knows where they live. Always on the hills (if there are any of them) and on the east side of town (usually) so they don't have to drive with the sun in their eyes when/if they do go to/from the business area of town.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)did quite a bit more than sit around and collect money.
They manipulated our financial system to that effect, in the process throwing our economy into the worst tailspin since the Great Depression. I think it's very important for people to understand that.
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)of the rules of capitalism, nothing will ever change until you change those rules.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)The actively worked to change the rules to rig the game to their advantage, to the detriment of almost everyone else.
And in many instance they went well beyond the rules. Many of them should be criminally charged and prosecuted, but that is not a priority of our government.
femrap
(13,418 posts)agree with you completely. And none of them are in jail....or even paying retribution.
I could puke.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)around six percent of the GDP is in the hole. If only most Americans had such a situation with their personal budgets!
But let's forget that for a moment. Let's instead say that it is indeed a good idea to get rid of some 4+ trillions of dollars being spent by the Federal Government over the next ten years.
Then let's remind ourselves and our law makers that MOST IMPORTANTLY - Social Security is its own damn fund! And currently is supposed to be showing some 2.1 Trillions of dollars as surplus. (The fact remains that perhaps this money has been "borrowed" for any of a number of projects, going all the way back to the Vietnam War.)
But in any case, if Congress borrowed against it, they should admit it and replenish the Social Security fund - and quit pretending, like my Blue Dog Congressman does, that Social Security is contributing to the deficit. it isn't.
Here are two separate ways to reduce the deficit by 2.1 trillion apiece, while leaving the Social Security fund untampered with.
One - immediately end the wars. Period. Savings= 2.1 trillions of dollars.
Two: end the Bush era Tax cuts that Obama extended. Immediate savings= 2.1 trillions of dollars.
Total savings of above: 4.2 trillions of dollars!
Now to accomplish number two - the President and Dems in Congress don't need to do a damn thing.
Pete DeFazio, Democrat Congressman from Oregon, already pointed this out last week. If nothing is done, the Bush era, Obama-extended tax cuts for the Upper Two Percent END on Dec 31st. So we don't even have to worry that the President's "negotiating" skills will be needed.
If those two ideas aren't good enough - here is my final offer. The Bernie Sanders-insisted upon Audit of the Federal Reserve showed that the man Obama re-appointed to the Federal Reserve, one Ben Bernanke, has "loaned out" some 15 to 16 trillions of dollars to his buddies in Big Financial Companies around the world. These monies aren't even considered in the Deficit Discussions, because the way the Fed is handled is very simple - Bernanke can do what he wants to do, and it isn't supposed to affect anyone at all. Bernanke even told the public this during one of the interviews that "Sixty Minutes" undertook a year or two back.
But experts now say that of these 15 to 16 trillions of dollars, some 4.7 trillions will never ever be repaid. So how about the president sitting down in his cozy Oval Office and signing an Executive Order that simply captures these monies from the bank accounts where they are nestled. Our government officials have done this to various other bank accounts, such as Bin Laden's. And even to some national bank accounts. (I believe we have even impounded monies from the state of Iran. And Libya.) So there is precedent.
I doubt that Obama would have the cajones to do this. But it really is most unfair that it come out of the Social Security funds, as those are monies that we and our employers have paid in. In my case, I have been paying into the fund for some 40 years.
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)Your numbers are flawed the wars cost around 1.2 trillion over ten years not per year and the tax cuts if they all ended for every level would net about 400Billion per year so you get 500 Billion or so but our defict is 1.2 trillion for the last 4 years, plus you have to imagine what kind of impact that incresing everyones taxes by 5 percent some like me who would have to cut something elese back on my narrow budget on a macro scale that would hurt the economy, if you tood the DOD 600B per year budget and slashed it in half you would still have a huge amount of government contractors and civil service and military out of jobs who would than go and apply for their EBT, Foodstamps, Section 8 housing, etc, etc those welfare funds dumped back into the defict thru a deficit in social security.
I will have to study on your final solution because I had not heard about the money that Bernanke screwed us out of.... and as far as recapturing wealth I am in total agreement but Obama will never do that and not enough Democrats in the Senate or House would support it.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Posted are wrong.
That is where I got them from.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)Most economists do not agree at all that our current deficits are unsustainable. What is unsustainable is a depressed economy with constantly expanding income inequality, high unemployment, rising poverty rates, etc.
The threat of our current deficits is a manufactured threat by right wing zealots who want to lower their tax rates and cut the social programs that so many Americans need.
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)exceeds its revenue it is only a matter of time before the interest that it pays on that money goes up as the interest rate climbs it will eat up more and more of the existing revenue, my estimate is that about 25 Trillion in debt will push us over that edge.
This country has not amassed this amount of debt per year for this amount of time... the only thing that compares in WWII. It is only a matter of time before something gives out, now you can argue that it would be fine because we could rebuild from the collapse and those hurt would really only be the super rich but it is uncharted water.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)not whether our current budget deficit can be sustained indefinitely. And most economists believe that our depressed economy is a far greater threat now than our budget deficit. This is what Paul Krugman had to say about it:
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20121126/why-deficit-mongering-is-b-s-krugman-edition
rtassi
(629 posts)He could come out in say in his eloquent style ... that this cliff business is just more bullshit .. but he is playing the spin game too!
Avalux
(35,015 posts)I hate it, I really want him to call bullshit exactly what it is and don't know why he isn't, unless he's saving it for when we go over the imaginary cliff. A girl can hope.
rtassi
(629 posts)as if it actually exists ... so I don't know .... I like your take on it better then mine ...
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Last edited Mon Dec 10, 2012, 08:40 PM - Edit history (1)
add: The dems had t he 60 votes for about 50 days.
The republicans controlled the Senate the rest of the time with the filibuster
Pryderi
(6,772 posts)Pryderi
(6,772 posts)NewYorkTaxPayer
(27 posts)Can you link to the site you pulled that from?
Time for change
(13,714 posts)The article is called "Plutocracy Reborn -- Re-creating the Gap that Gave us the Great Depression". But I think you need a subscription to The Nation in order to access the article.
http://www.thenation.com/article/plutocracy-reborn
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)but the situation that is left over becomes one of how the rich recoup their loses. The bottom line is that the rich are not altruistic if they were a simple please donate in times of crisis in order to lower the governments burden would suffice. The ultra rich ultimately find a way to break it off on the middle class.They are afterall rich not stupid.
Now the next tier which I would argue are the not so rich businesses making 250K - 1M per year that is not really rich after you pull out the payroll and overhead and reinvestment those businesses do not end up being rich, if we do not protect those businesses than the owners usually must revert to passing costs on to consumers or reducing their workforces. If the increase cost of business is due to taxation and regulation that is spread to every business owner than the rules of competative marketplace pricing no longer apply and so in the end the consumers of those goods and services will be the ones that pay more.
go west young man
(4,856 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)They have to create an emergency because they know the only time they'll get what they want - yet more money siphoned upstream to the wealthy away from the poor and middle class - is to say there's an emergency and "we have to do extreme things in extreme circumstances." They don't care about democracy. They know people will vote against it, so they look for ways to avoid democracy (I'm looking at you Rick Snyder) and push through whatever they want however they can.
The best defence is to not fall for their lies. Just don't buy it.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)No deal is far better than a bad deal. January 2nd is the tarting point.
kentuck
(111,098 posts)will only create further decline.
aandegoons
(473 posts)I just don't get the whole negotiation thing. The tax rates are already gone the cuts already made. Why add more misery on the poor and working class of America... Just to ease up on the rich again????
I will just keep thinking this whole thing is a good cop bad cop set up.
Oh I am so mad and disappointed.
Time for change
(13,714 posts)they know that we are badly misinformed. Our communications media is largely monopolized by a small number of very wealthy corporations and individuals.
I also believe that a disproportionate percentage of the super wealthy are people who care about very little but their own wealth and power. Most governments throughout history have been set up imperfectly, so that power is susceptable to being seized by unprincipled people. It takes a lot of vigilance on the part of a nation's people to keep the balance of power equitable and fair. We have to a large degree lost that vigilance, and we are bombarded daily by propaganda meant to maintain and even worsen the status quo.
Initech
(100,079 posts)Hey Obama - you were elected in a huge landslide over Moneybags McGee, it's time to stop compromising and throw these greedy wealth addicted assholes off the cliff!!