Free Republic

<p>Wealth inequality around the world is “out of control” and doing particular harm to women, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam warned Monday ahead of the annual gathering of business and political leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.</p>

[snip] Inevitably, the divorce has become fodder for advancing policies unrelated to core issues of marriage, divorce, and fidelity. And in the Age of Ocasio-Cortez—she who has revived the hoary notion of confiscatory tax rates—it was inevitable that some liberal in the media would seize on the divorce as justification for soaking the rich. Enter Ryan Cooper, a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. The actual title of his column: "The real lesson of Jeff Bezos' divorce drama? Soak the rich." Give the guy credit for candor, if not for an understanding of our founding documents or of economics. Cooper claims that...

I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves. […] The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics...

With a few strategic policy proposals, King George encouraged Americans to sign a document that later became known as the “Declaration of Independence”… Indirectly, of course. In the year of 1765, the King of England managed to do the Obama equivalent of signing Obamacare. With a stunning amount of short-sighted arrogance, the Kingly gentleman from England thrust America into a frenzy of anti-English sentiment. (Racist colonists!) On November 1st, in the year 1765, Britain implemented the Stamp Act. Defending the American colonies during the French and Indian War, as well as the Pontiac’s Rebellion (no-one liked Pontiac then either, apparently),...

Can a man who once owned the world's largest sailing yacht claim to be a victim of discrimination? Well, when it comes to Tom Perkins, the answer is yes; although he presented his argument in such a ham-fisted manner, it made Richard Sherman seem like Mister Spock. But, the gist of the Silicon Valley tycoon's concerns shouldn't be ignored or dismissed. In fact, these days anyone pointing out societal trends and movements that threaten established orthodoxy, such as Christianity, or dismantling of capitalism, better not leave room for deliberate misinterpretation; even when you are careful to make finer points, snippets...

LIVE: Deal Reached On Cyprus Bailout Matthew BoeslerMarch 24, 2013The Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers met in Brussels tonight to approve a plan to bail out the Cypriot banking system. The new deal will see uninsured deposits at the country's two largest banks take a substantial haircut, but insured depositors – those with less than 100,000 euros in their bank accounts – will be spared from the one-off "tax" that was being considered just a week ago. Reports of a deal between Cypriot and EU officials being reached prior to the Eurogroup meeting caused the euro and the Australian...

Jean-Marc Ayrault's outburst came after France's best-known actor, Gerard Dépardieu, took up legal residence in a small village just over the border in Belgium, alongside hundreds of other wealthy French nationals seeking lower taxes. "Those who are seeking exile abroad are not those who are scared of becoming poor," the prime minister declared after unveiling sweeping anti-poverty measures to help those hit by the economic crisis. These individuals are leaving "because they want to get even richer," he said. "We cannot fight poverty if those with the most, and sometimes with a lot, do not show solidarity and a bit...

Somewhere, there’s a whiplash lawyer who runs his law office out of a van down by the river who watches the congressional Republicans attempt to negotiate the fiscal cliff crisis and has to turn his head away. John Boehner and his inept coterie of GOP establishment cronies have made every mistake in the book. It’s professionally embarrassing. Frankly, if these hacks were my associates, they’d be on a street corner with signs reading “Will litigate for food.” Congress is famously full of lawyers, but what people don’t understand is that it is really full of bad lawyers. Good lawyers tend...

Wealth advisors say that with capital-gains taxes potentially going to 25 percent from 15 percent, and other possible increases in the dividend tax, estate tax and other taxes, many clients are selling now to save millions in taxes. If the Bush-era tax cuts expire, taxes on capital gains would revert back to its previous rate of 20 percent from its current 15 percent. Another 5 percent may be added from health-care levies and changes in itemized deductions, bringing the rate to 25 percent for many high earners. Taxes on dividends could go from 15 percent to over 43 percent. And...

Pelosi: 'I Don't Want To Pay For It...Surcharge' The Rich For Doctors Visits and Unemployment Benefits http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-on-unemployment-benefits-extension-id-rather-not-pay-for-it/

US president Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a 'Buffett Tax' on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday. Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional super committee expected to seek up to $US3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election, but may not raise much in revenues. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as "a kind of [Alternative Minimum...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're into statistics today and the unemployment statistics are just fascinating in the way that we're being spun. It's as bad as the way we were spun on this debt deal, and the more you look at this debt deal, what a disaster that is. I'm gonna explain why as the program unfolds. This is from the UK Daily Mail. You're not gonna see this in the American media. Speaking of the American media, remember all of those years, the Bush years, the media apparatchiks on TV were trying to talk down the economy and trying to...

Did Barack Obama take Tax 1 in law school? I did, and I remember the first day of classes, when mild mannered Professor Boris Bittker asked a simple question: "What is income?" I was pretty confident I could come up with a quick answer, and so were a lot of other students. By the end of the hour, after Professor Bittker had politely punched huge holes in every student's definition, it was pretty clear that none of us could. Income is a slippery concept -- especially slippery when you're trying to tax it. Which leads me to think that Obama...

Bill Whittle looks at funding the government by taking away all corporate profits, money from those who make above $250k, etc. Eat the Rich

Liberals around the country are learning some hard lessons. They assumed the “rich” would roll over “grin and bear it” and pay higher and higher taxes. They were wrong. A New York billionaire has moved to Florida to escape being “soaked.” Almost certainly others will follow him to other low tax states. A third of Maryland’s millionaires have run away depriving its sticky fingered liberals of over $ 100 million. Liberals are like a little child who sees a ten dollar bill in her mother’s bag and can’t understand why or how Mommy can say “We don’t have any money.”...

This idea that we'll all just grin and bear it has to be proven dead wrong, this year. But what can we do? With only 2% of the population, we can hardly hold big rallies. Even if we did, a march involving $250k+ earners protesting high taxes would only feed into their "greedy bastards who don't want to pay their fair share" rhetoric. So what can we do? Stop paying taxes over $250,000 income. WAIT, I AM NOT A NUT! No, no, stick with me on this. I'm not one of those loony people who argue income taxes are unconstitutional....

Here is a point lost on the soak-the-rich liberals. Did you ever wonder why the states with the highest taxes always seem to have the biggest deficits that have to be "closed" with new, higher taxes? Of course, high spending, which must never be cut, is one reason. But the other is that when all of your producers have moved out and taken their jobs and tax base with them, all you have left is unemployed workers and government programs supporting them, but nobody to pay for it.

Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize this week and that tells you all you have to know about how politicized the award has become. American writers no longer win prizes for literature because they are "no longer mainstream," but Paul Krugman -- well, he hates the Bush Administration! He's one of us. There's more to Krugman's fame, though, than just pandering to European aristocrats. In one of the shallowest intellectual gambits of recent decades, Krugman has been the point man for the bizarre thesis that America has become the "land of inequality." For the last five years Krugman has used...

Kurt Hauser is a San Francisco investment economist who, 15 years ago, published fresh and eye-opening data about the federal tax system. His findings imply that there are draconian constraints on the ability of tax-rate increases to generate fresh revenues. I think his discovery deserves to be called Hauser's Law Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. On this page in 1993, he stated that "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." The chart nearby, updating the evidence to 2007, confirms Hauser's Law....

Seven years ago George bush and the republicans gave a tax cut to the wealthy. We had a recesion and as far as Im concerned we never recovered. I was working as a telemarketeer and my husband was at an assembly plant. In 2001 my husband was laid off after his job was outsourced. Then I lost my job too. My husband now works at Target and I held a job at Burger King. A week ago my job was terminated after buisness wasn't so well. Now were in another recession and Bush wants yet another tax cut? If cutting...