Posted on 11/22/2012 11:09:46 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Consider this headline from a Reuters article in The Huffington Post: "Raising Taxes on Rich Won't Hurt Economic Growth, CBO Says." But the first paragraph refutes the headline: "Allowing income tax rates to rise for wealthy Americans would not hurt U.S. economic growth much (emphasis added) in 2013 ..." The CBO did not say, as the headline suggests, that raising taxes on the rich has no negative economic effect. In fact, the CBO actually said that extending the Bush-era rates for all would increase economic growth by 1.5 percent. If, however, the Bush era rates expired for the rich -- but were retained for everybody else -- economic growth would still increase, but by 1.25 percent.
In other words, raising taxes would result in less economic activity, not more. Herein lies the key to understanding why the left wants higher taxes for "the rich." To the rich-should-pay-more crowd, the question of whether raising taxes hurts economic growth is less important than the issue of "fairness."
Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, in 2008, was asked why he insisted on pushing a capital gains tax increase given that, historically, higher capital gains rates meant less revenue:
ABC News' Charlie Gibson: "You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, 'I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was 28 percent.' It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling if you went to 28 percent. But actually Bill Clinton in 1997 signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
Then-Sen. Obama: "Right."
Gibson: "And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent."
Obama agreed, "Right."
"And in each instance," Gibson continued, "when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Obama explained: "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness (emphasis added). We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year -- $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair. And what I want is not oppressive taxation. I want businesses to thrive, and I want people to be rewarded for their success. But what I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair."
Years earlier, in 1998, the then-state senator told a Loyola University audience: "The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some (wealth) redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot."
The then-Democratic nominee Obama told Fox's Bill O'Reilly that wealth redistribution was the neighborly thing to do. "If I can afford it," said Obama, "what's the big deal for me to say, 'I'm going to pay a little bit more'? That is neighborliness." And a month before the 2008 election, Obama explained to "Joe the Plumber" that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
In a 2001 Chicago radio interview, then-state Sen. Obama said: "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth (emphasis added), and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. ... One of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community-organizing activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change -- and in some ways we still suffer from that."
Investor's Business Daily says raising taxes on the top 2 percent figures to bring in annually about $34 billion. Others put the number at twice that. Either way, it is a tiny fraction of the $1.1 trillion annual deficit. And an Ernst & Young study says this would cost 700,000 jobs. So raising taxes on the rich a) brings in a small amount of money and b) reduces, not increases, economic activity.
Why increase taxes on the rich at all? Answer: It's a matter of "fairness."
Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing American union, describes the economic philosophy of the left: If raising taxes on "the rich" hurts the economy, that is an acceptable price. "Western Europe," says Stern, "as much as we used to make fun of it, has made different trade-offs which may have ended with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality."
Any questions?
The dirty secret is there are a lot of people that want the economy to fail, having everyone else being miserable makes them happy.
President Cloward-Piven’s only goal is to “overwhelm the system” so he can replace it with a peoples’ paradise.
Let them OWN it and orce them to EAT it!
EBT & SNAP for everyone!
We need to out cloward and piven the cloward and piveners....
It wasn't put like this in the communist manifesto but it was expressed many times in their writings.
Research the damage done by the luxury tax in the 1990 tax reform bill the Bush 41 signed.
They understood that if you magically transferred the wealth from the rich to the poor, the rich would get it all back within a few years.....so eliminating them permanently was the only way to solve that problem.......The Bolsheviks understood this as well during "The Red Terror":
"Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror."
- Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka
Collectivism does not concern itself with the health of an economy or the wellbeing of people. It concerns itself with the consolidation of the machine.
And the CBO said obummercare was going to save billions.
The economy will contract in DIRECT proportion to the amount removed...and then, to add insult to injury, there will be the multiplier affect which means that a downward spiral in economic activity will have been created (i.e. the downward spiral will have momentum).
Anyone who really believes this is an idiot, pure and simple.
More trash that ideas won’t work from “Pharaoh-Bamma, just Tax the Rich.”
Progressives are not about helping the poor. They are about destroying the successful, prosperous, productive. They are attempting to conform the world to their dark, empty, ugly souls.
Au, contraire!
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They are about replacing the current elite with themselves, on the backs of the poor. Using the poor to do their bidding is their means to gaining power.
Although ultimately of course whether a new company continues growing and creates self-sustaining jobs is a function of customers’ ability and willingness to pay for the company’s products, not the entrepreneur or the investor capital. What good are the tax breaks if they just go straight into the bank (where it either sits and earns interest) or get invested overseas or in companies that already have strong demand to sell products and create jobs ?
The company’s customers are who buy the company’s products that in turn creates the need for the employees to produce, sell, and service those products. If those customers go broke by tax policies that reward “the 1%” at the expense of everyone else, the demand for the company’s products will collapse. And the jobs will disappear, regardless of what the entrepreneur does.
If (((car or home) or anything else)If (anything left over on a part-time job salary))
All secondary to Democrat Mandatory Health Insurance
...and not ! (able to afford that 18 year old that wants on your insurance plan until 26)...
Whenever the Democrats chime up with “tax the rich”, the only rebuttal should be that
“Hating and hurting other people won’t make their life any better. Democrats have long hated and tried to hurt people for their race, for their religion, and for just about every other reason. But it never, ever, either takes away their pain, or improves their lives in any way.
“So Democrats, stop hating people, stop trying to hurt people. Government can’t make your life any better, only you can. You could hate and kill every other person in the world, and you would still be miserable inside. They are not the problem. You are. But you can change yourself, even if you can’t change the world. Stop hating, stop trying to hurt people.”
John went on to explain, “You are either right or you are wrong. If you are right and they are going to fail with their current approach, then you should be able to articulate where the design is going to fail. Use that to help them fail as quickly as possible so that they can learn the lesson and restart on the right path. You are saying that the design won’t scale so make sure everyone agrees what the scale requirements are and then arrange to have them prove that their design can meet those goals ASAP (make it one of the first coding goals). One of two things are going to be the case: 1) it scales in which case you’ve learned something and it is a good thing that you didn’t get them to change or 2) it doesn’t scale in which case they are going to have to change their approach. At that point they might take your approach or they might pick another but one way or the other, it is going to meet the scalability requirement that we’ve all agreed to.” That was a career-changing conversation for me. John was giving me my first lesson in “our job is to engineer encounters with reality”.
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