Browsing articles tagged with " taxes"
Dec 7, 2017

Connect these dots

Act 1: Let’s cut taxes!

Act 2: Look at that terrible deficit!

Act 3: Let’s cut Medicare and Social Security!

Now playing at a circus near you:

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Wednesday that congressional Republicans will aim next year to reduce spending on both federal health care and anti-poverty programs, citing the need to reduce America’s deficit. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said…

Ryan’s remarks add to the growing signs that top Republicans aim to cut government spending next year. Republicans are close to passing a tax bill nonpartisan analysts say would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion over a decade. Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill, and Senate Republicans have cited the need to reduce the national deficit while growing the economy.

“You also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said last week.

Read more here.

Nov 16, 2017

California working

A video from the Labor Center at UC-Berkeley reports on the employment and growth results of progressive state policies in California:

Source: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/california-is-working/

May 9, 2017

“The tapeworm of American economic competitiveness”

Today’s quiz:

  1. What rose from 5% of U.S. GDP in 1960 to 17% today?
  2. What fell from 4% of U.S. GDP in 1960 to 2% today?

Answers:

  1. Health care costs.
  2. Corporate taxes.

Extra credit question: Which one’s a drag on the competitiveness of the U.S. economy?

Here’s Warren Buffett’s answer:

“Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” Mr. Buffett said, using a metaphor he has employed in the past to describe the insidious and parasitic costs of our health care system….

Mr. Buffett is a Democrat, but his business partner, Charles T. Munger, is a Republican — and a rare one who has advocated a single-payer health care system. Under his plan, which Mr. Buffett agrees with, the United States would enact a sort of universal type of coverage for all citizens — perhaps along the lines of the Medicaid system — with an opt-out provision that would allow the wealthy to still get concierge medicine.

Read more here.

Feb 16, 2017

Inequality undermining Social Security

The upward redistribution of income in the U.S. is undermining the nation’s Social Security:

if you’re a millionaire, February 16th is the last day that you will pay into the social security for the entire year. That’s because the Federal payroll tax cap is set at $127,000, so any money made beyond this point, is not subject to taxation that would fund this very crucial Federal social program.

See Real News Network interview with Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research here.

Dec 9, 2016

Taxing inequality in Portland

Portland, Oregon, has instituted a first-ever tax on corporations that pay their CEOs more than 100 times as much as their workers. Econ4’s Doug Smith told the Portland City Council:

“Instead of building a real economy beneficial to all, these unethical pay practices spread outsourcing, offshoring, tax avoidance, downsizing and the substitution of good-paying permanent jobs with temporary, precarious employment.”

Read about it here.

Oct 6, 2016

Offshore shell games

A new report details how companies duck paying their taxes – and free-ride on those of us who do:

Fortune 500 companies are holding nearly $2.5 trillion in accumulated profits offshore for tax purposes.

Read the report here.

See press coverage here and here.

Apr 9, 2016

Funny business

Brought to you by Citizens for Tax Justice:

Read more here.

CTJ

 

 

Oct 18, 2015

Why tax the ultra-wealthy?

Interesting numbers from the New York Times:

The top 1 percent includes about 1.13 million households earning an average income of $2.1 million.

Raising their total tax burden to, say, 40 percent would generate about $157 billion in revenue the first year. Increasing it to 45 percent brings in a whopping $276 billion. Even taking account of state and local taxes, the average household in this group would still take home at least $1 million a year.

If the tax increase were limited to just the 115,000 households in the top 0.1 percent, with an average income of $9.4 million, a 40 percent tax rate would produce $55 billion in extra revenue in its first year.

That would more than cover, for example, the estimated $47 billion cost of eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed, or Mrs. Clinton’s cheaper plan for a debt-free college degree, with money left over to help fund universal prekindergarten.

Read more here.

Nov 21, 2014

Inequality of opportunity

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes:

A rich country with millions of poor people. A country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, but in which a child’s prospects are more dependent on the income and education of his or her parents than in other advanced countries. A country that believes in fair play, but in which the richest often pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than those less well off. A country in which children every day pledge allegiance to the flag, asserting that there is “justice for all,” but in which, increasingly, there is only justice for those who can afford it. These are the contradictions that the United States is gradually and painfully struggling to come to terms with as it begins to comprehend the enormity of the inequalities that mark its society.

Read more here.

Sep 15, 2014

Standard & Poor’s hits impact of inequality on state tax revenues

S&P makes another important connection:

Extending our analysis to public finance, we find that income inequality is undermining the rate of state tax revenue growth.

For the report, see here.

For press coverage, see here.

 

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