Posted on 10/23/2017 6:45:46 AM PDT by SkyPilot
The Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee — engaged in a high-pressure, high-stakes tax policy rewrite — are currently exploring not cutting the income tax rate for people who earn $1 million or more per year.
Right now, the marginal tax rate for anyone who makes $418,000 or more per year is 39.6 percent. The Republicans' opening gambit — secretly negotiated for months, and endorsed by Trump — would have cut the highest tax rate to 35 percent. But now, House Republicans' thinking has changed. Under their current thinking, people who earn between $418,000 and $999,999 will be in a lower tax bracket. But those earning $1 million or more will not.
Keep reading 273 words
Opting to keep taxing million-dollar-earners at the current 39.6 percent-rate will help stem the deficit increase from tax cuts for corporations and the middle class.
Caveat: The million dollar bracket plans haven't been finalized and could change this week, as committee Republicans finalize their tax bill during meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Potential blowback: If the Committee Republicans ultimately decide not to cut the income tax rate for million-dollar-earners, much of the Republican donor class and Reaganomics community (including anti-tax activist Grover Norquist) will feel betrayed.
"I understand compromise, but why compromise with the sin of envy?" Norquist told us. "This isn't the dumbest idea I have ever heard of. But it is in the top 20."
Norquist argues this won't placate Democrats — who inevitably will charge that Trump's tax overhaul is just designed to help the rich — but will alienate conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at axios.com ...
I’m sure the forces which hate America will cooperate and become our best friends.
Before we get off on a tangent about the liberal P man, I never did see any quote of a source that said the majority of wealth is inherited, as opposed to earned. Did you provide this earlier and I just missed it?
I cannot find that exact quote but am sure I saw it. I will look more after I eat my soup.
We could just trust our eyes and look at the landscape of wealth and the means the wealthy use to keep it.
Bingo! the decline of our economy tracks right along with the delcine of MMA(mining, ag and manufacturing)
The people who hate America, who hate the Republic, who hate limited constitutional government are mostly here, and they promote the welfare/warfare state. The real flesh and blood enemies overseas, at least those with actual means to hurt us, and who haven’t been created by the Deep State, are few.
The tired old neocon lines about hating us for our freedoms are now thankfully rejected as being the absolute unadulterated BS that they are.
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If that won’t cool the economy, nothing will!
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>> “So Trump and others want to continue to punish the “rich,” in other words, the successful businessmen and businesswomen who work hard, put in long hours, create all the jobs, and make the economy work.” <<
In a nut shell....
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“We could just trust our eyes and look at the landscape of wealth and the means the wealthy use to keep it.”
The first boy reference in my mind is the annual Forbes list of wealthiest people. I believe it was 30-something percent inherited their wealth.
Everyone should use every legal means to keep their wealth. It is their wealth, not the people’s wealth.
I follow the same path as the rich to build wealth: invest for cash flow, work for assets and not a paycheck, create value for more people and be richer, use the tax code for businesses.
Anyone can do this. Few want to. They want security instead. They are paid the least as a result.
You don’t understand.
The inputs from those areas have been declining in producing things not that the economy has declined because they are less and less of the economy.
We are using less and less of these inputs for many reasons. The most striking is the gradual de-materializing of a product. How many trees did it cost to produce a book vs the ebook? How much labor goes into making a watch when there is a phone that tells you the time. The computer itself has been reduced from machines which fill a room to one weighing a pound or so and which can do millions of things more.
Paul Ryan: C-U-C-K.
After all, the rich are eeeeeeeeevil. Only the middle class deserves to keep more of their own money.
They should have never had a 3rd bracket in the first place. Only 12 and 25, and in my view, the 12 should cover all income subject to FICA, which is over $100K.
Or rather, the first roughly $100K or so.
Some super managers and visionairies can attain the Wealthy level but rarely do someone outside that class. Those Forbes covered were generally from the former. The numbers from the 1600 Mega Rich would be different. That number does not include the income of family foundations which preserve the wealth and where there is a huge capital invested.
Today many/most of these are pushing in the wrong direction and undermining the nation. And setting up trusts to increase the pass-through of income. See Ted Kennedy.
At some level, in a democracy, the wide inequality of wealth and income will produce a catastrophe.
“The wealthy are wealthy primary because of income from inherited capital.”
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Not so. Approximately 1,700 people in American become millionaires on a daily basis.
www.factretriever.com/millionaire-facts has an article entitled, “29 Valuable Facts about Millionaires,” by Karin Lehnardt, Senior Writer.
Among the highlights.....
In the United States, approximately 7% of households are millionaires.
A 2010 study argues that millionaires (those in the top 1% of earners) pay approximately 40% of all taxes in the United States.
According to the book “The Millionaire Next Door,” only 20% of millionaires inherited their wealth. The other 80% earned their cash on their own.
The preferred car of millionaires is a Ford. Cadillacs are second and Lincolns are third. Many millionaires avoid high-priced cars in favor or a more economical set of wheels because cars are investments with little return.
Only 20% of millionaires are retirees. Around 80% still go to work.
The average millionaire goes bankrupt at least 3.5 times.
Most modern American millionaires today (about 80%) are first-generation millionaires. Usually the fortune they build will dissipate by the second or third generation.
Most American millionaires are manager-owners of businesses.
Half of all millionaires are self-employed or own a business. Around 80% of millionaires are college graduates.
In the year 1900, there were only 5,000 millionaires in the U.S. In 2000, there were more than five million. Before the 2008 crash, there were 9.2 million American households worth $1 million or more.
If the Republicans are going to join the democrats in the demonization of the so-called rich, then they truly are the Uniparty. How does punishing the people who create most of the jobs and make the country work help the economy?
Case in point....I live in Maine. Back in 1990, when Bill Clinton, Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, et al pushed through the “luxury tax,” it including a tax on new yachts.
“Rich” people, instead of buying new yachts in America, either bought new yachts overseas or used yachts at home. Many small shipyards here in Maine suffered, and laid off many workers. It wasn’t the “rich” who suffered, it was the men with young families who formerly worked in the shipyards who suffered.
As for the “super-rich” like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Paul Allen, Pierre Odiymar (founder of eBay), Jeff Bezos, etc., most of their wealth is in the form of stock they own in their respective companies.
Inequality is caused by the federal government devouring the substance of employees, burdening the country with debt, devaluing their currency, artificially keeping interest rates low, etc. It has always been this way.
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....
This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance.
And this is the tendency of all human governments.
A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man.
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson
Mixing morality with politics does not go anywhere.
This is a political issue and has nothing to do with “fairness.”
Stabbing somebody in the back is a hard way to do a transfusion!
We are exporting raw materials and importing finished goods like a third world country. Hence HUGE trade deficits. It’s embarrassing.
American labor is too expensive to make most of the piddly crap we import from China. We are not importing any finished products other than textiles.
Automobiles and other finished goods are often produced by foreign manufacturers which have plants here.
Once a product becomes cheap enough it is going to be produced elsewhere. It is an indisputable fact of capitalist life.
Our role in the world economy is to create and produce NEW products. The rest of the world then catches up.
Hopefully the emphasis of Trump on petroleum and coal will see a positive impact on the Balance of trade.
With floating exchange rates there is no such thing as a Balance of Payments deficit or surplus. Gold is not used to settle accounts anymore. As long as the rest of the world is willing to accept dollars it means it has confidence in the US economy. We’re trading dollars for products which is not harmful economically.
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As one goes up the economic ladder the share of a wealthy persons income from labor steadily diminishes as part of their TOTAL income (income from labor + income from capital).
When the top 0.1% is reached the income from capital begins to be greater than the income from labor among the MEGA Rich the upper levels 70% of their total income is from capital. Some may work as 48% of income from work goes to the top 10% but inherited capital becomes the major determinant of their total income.
This has to be the case since 20-25% of National income is turned over by inheritance every year. Some of the millionaires you mentioned become millionaires because of inheritance.
The Super-managers with huge salaries can become millionaires fairly quickly but they do not reach the highest level.
My problem is that the last time there was such a huge discrepancy we got FDR. What would be the result if a demagogue like Huey Long arises with a “Share the Wealth” program?
There is little to argue about in your post but I am looking to the future. We know that economics takes a back seat to politics in a democracy. Something will have to give at some point.
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