Krugman - It's Hard to Justify Low Tax Rates on the Rich.

[HughBeaumont]

Didn't see this posted on DU in the search, so .. .

http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Krugman-It-s-hard-to-justify-low-tax-rates-on-2652950.php

The PD printed this one and everyone should read it because it states the painfully obvious in ways that a Fox slobberer will get it:

But the larger question isn't what Mitt Romney's tax returns have to say about Mitt Romney; it's what they have to say about U.S. tax policy. Is there a good reason why the rich should bear a startlingly light tax burden? For they do. If Romney is telling the truth about his taxes, he's actually typical of the very wealthy. Since 1992, the IRS has been releasing income and tax data for the 400 highest-income filers. In 2008, the most recent year available, these filers paid only 18.1 percent of their income in federal income taxes; in 2007, they paid only 16.6 percent. When you bear in mind that the rich pay little either in payroll taxes or in state and local taxes - major burdens on middle-class families - this implies that the top 400 filers faced lower taxes than many ordinary workers.

(snip)

Defenders of low taxes on the rich mainly make two arguments: that low taxes on capital gains are a time-honored principle, and that they are needed to promote economic growth and job creation. Both claims are false.

When you hear about the low taxes of people like Romney, what you need to know is that it wasn't always thus - and the days when the superrich paid much higher taxes weren't that long ago. Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan - yes, Ronald Reagan - signed a tax reform equalizing top rates on earned income and capital gains at 28 percent. The rate rose further, to more than 29 percent, during Bill Clinton's first term.

Low capital gains taxes date only from 1997, when Clinton struck a deal with Republicans in Congress in which he cut taxes on the rich in return for creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program. And today's ultralow rates - the lowest since the days of Herbert Hoover - date only from 2003, when former President George W. Bush rammed both a tax cut on capital gains and a tax cut on dividends through Congress.

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[Skink]

2. They must have figured what better time to run Romney

[Democrats_win]

3. The result for us? Life in America is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

as Thomas Hobbes would say. And after Newt, your children will do nothing but clean up the excrement of the millionaire's sons of Mitt.