Analysis: Obama Tax Deal A Big Gift For America's Rich

[Elmore Furth]

Source: Reuters

More than 40,000 ultra-rich Americans may have another reason to celebrate the holiday season if President Barack Obama's latest estate tax proposals are passed by Congress.

Obama struck an agreement on Monday with congressional leaders on a range of tax issues, including cutting the estate tax to 35 percent and raising the individual exemption to $5 million. The estate tax, which expired this year, is due to return in 2011 at 55 percent with a $1 million exemption.

If the compromise proposal is passed, roughly 40,700 families will avoid an estimated $23.2 billion of estate taxes next year, according to the Urban-Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center. Around 3,500 families would pay an estimated $11.2 billion in estate taxes.

"They're making the estate tax weaker than it has been for more than seven decades. This is a real mistake," said Lee Farris, who follows estate taxes for United for a Fair Economy, a group advocating progressive tax policy. "Obama also puts himself in a bad position to negotiate the tax in two years."



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/12/07/us/politics/politics-us-obama-estatetax.html?ref=politics

[FrenchieCat]

1. hahahaha!

Strange how Reuters/NYT ain't talking about the 98% who's taxes would increase by AT LEAST 5% in January without this compromise, if not likely more! Nor discuss the zero estate taxes folks have been paying......when what he did raised it to 35%!

Guess what is always most important to the NYT and Reuters is the top 2 percent!

We can be so fucking stupid.....folks really truly are. :argh:

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Just stop it.

The Times has said plenty about what working Americans will get in exchange for their cash to the rich.

What they haven't covered yet, to my knowledge, is Obama's whopping lie yesterday that Social Security was not started for retirees. This Republican lie will be used as a pretext to slash Social Security.

[donheld]

3. "Guess what is always most important to the NYT and Reuters is the top 2 percent!"

Wow, just like your friend Barack Obama.

[FrenchieCat]

5. That's where you are wrong. The President looked out for 98% of us.......

you're blaming him for the 2% that the Republicans cared about.
It was called a compromise for a reason.

The Senate just tried to pass a bill to make the middle class tax cuts
permanent, AND COULDN'T FUCKING DO IT! So why do you think Obama could
all of the sudden, without compromise, get it passed?

Perhaps your beef should be with those Democrats and the Republicans
who voted against that bill....If you even know who they rae....
unless you just enjoy going after the President that much more
instead, because blaming just one fellow is so much less work!

[donheld]

8. Bullshit It was a cave just as always.

[Donnachaidh]

13. mighty convenient that the unemployed SUDDENLY became an issue

When the 99ers couldn't get this Admin to piss on THEM if they were on fire in front of the WH. :sarcasm:

And they weren't included in this GIFT to elites, either.

[jtuck004]

4. Well, 30 million unemployed or underemployed people won't get diddly

No, I take that back. 2 million new claims will get 99 weeks of unemployment added to their first 28, an average of about $300 dollars a week, for an average loss of 3/4 of their income for perhaps years. The wealthy get to keep a hundred something billion dollars.

But the unemployed, even though they want to work, need to work, get no jobs program, no investment in infrastructure or updates to manufacturing that would lead to good paying jobs, and since their states are going bankrupt there will be less fire and police protection, less teachers. Over 40 million people on food stamps, a record, celebrated by a record high in the stock market - oh yeah, they weren't invited to the party. Our nation loses out on the investment that could be made by people paying their fair share.
And lest we forget, none of these people will be adding to any retirement plan, some will even be taking funds out of theirs to feed their children. Today about 1/3 of those who retire subsist on a rather meager check from Social Security as their ONLY income. Wonder how many that will be in 10 years...

But lets look on the bright side. We know the wealthy won't invest for the long term, they proved that by not doing so with the same tax cuts they have had for the past 10 years. They don't invest, no one invests, until there is demand. But perhaps some of the wealthy will add additions to one of their 2 or 3 homes, hire some maids or home health care workers to take care of nanna. 'Course, there probably won't be enough of those minimum wage jobs to offset the loss of the $60K jobs that our cities and towns were built on. And just maybe the rich folk will be directed to a place where they can hire undocumented workers. No insurance, so they can just dump them off at the emergency room when they get sick or hurt. Sure hope those stay open - gonna be hard with those taxes they depend on going down.

Stupid doesn't begin to describe it. Cruel, tragic, desperate, insane...now we're getting somewhere, eh?

[FrenchieCat]

9. Yep.....he couldn't do what you wanted done......

solve the unemployment problem all by his lonesome.
I'm sure he wished that he could have.


Must be easy to blame one person for everything.
Kind of like a one stop shop. Must be neat and tidy!

[jtuck004]

11. Yea, I remember him being on television telling the nation that

we had the biggest crisis in jobs in our history, that we had to concentrate on that, that shoveling trillions if dollars to his appointees business associates in the investement banks or billions to big pharma and the insurance companies, all of whom contributed heavily to his campaign, while we went from 8% unemployment to nearly 10%, and 35 million uninsured to 50 million, was going to have to take a back seat to him mugging for cameras and complaining that people just didn't appreciate all he'd done for them...oh wait,

It didn't happen that way.

And I don't waste my time blaming him, nor making false premises to pad my case. I work on solutions, don't have any time for people who just make excuses.

[hfojvt]

6. last year I made about $30,000

$15,000 was tax free capital gains thanks to the Bush tax cuts. I returned my entire refund, a whopping $600, to the Obama government. Why not? The interest rates on savings accounts is ridiculously low so why not help America to borrow a little bit less from China. I was prepared to do the same thing every year as long as Obama or another Democrat was President. You know "ask not what your country can do for you ..."

This year I am asking for it all back. I no longer support the Obama administration. I personally do not need another $400 in tax cuts. It doesn't appreciably improve my life. It just changes my savings account from $15,000 to $15,400. Big whoop. Yet the continued Amazon-like flow into the pockets of the rich really IS doing tremendous damage to the country where I live.

If there is anybody who is being fucking stupid, I think it is Barack Hussein Obama. I got an email from OFA at 9:02 today. I watched the video, told him I felt betrayed in the comments, and unsubscribed from OFA.

[FrenchieCat]

7. You are so pure and principled! I admire that!

But 98% of the rest of us don't have your luxury,
of earning $15,000 while sleeping....

But keep worrying about that 2 percent.....
they appreciate being the center of your universe,
and that it is because of them and Republicans,
that you have decided to withhold your support for this President.

[hfojvt]

10. I don't normally make that either

It just happened that I sold some land that I bought in 1987. I didn't really want to sell it, but the property taxes had tripled. My plan was to put it for sale and the go back to the assessor and say "you valued it too high".

And no, it is because of him, because he refused to fight for my side and now has chosen to fight against me. When I was born, the bottom 50% made more income than the top 1%. Thanks to Reaganomics, that is no longer true. Obama sorta promised to battle against Reaganomics, but now because of Republican opposition, he has embraced it further. Moving us every closer to a 2026 that looks like the chart here.

http://www.koch2congress.com/5.html

[eridani]

12. I don't give a rat's ass. My lousy $60/year can go to pay off the deficit for all I care n/t

[Kablooie]

14. Maybe Obama can run as the Republican candidate in 2012!