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Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes thinks the government should give cash handouts to people with the lowest incomes in order to fight income inequality. And he thinks the money should come from higher taxes on wealthy individuals and even big tech companies, like Facebook. Hughes, 34, was one of Facebook’s co-founders, along with Mark Zuckerberg and three of their Harvard classmates, in 2004. He was Facebook’s spokesperson for the company’s first three years, before leaving to finish his Harvard degree and then to work on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a media strategist. He says he's made "half a billion...

California’s swelling budget reserves are approaching a point where the state by law can’t save any more money ‑ but don’t expect a tax rebate. The state is quickly filling up its so-called rainy day fund, the budget stabilization account voters created in 2014 when they passed an initiative that forced lawmakers to save money in flush years. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal puts the state on pace to fill it with $13.5 billion by July 1, 2019, but the milestone could come even sooner. By law, the fund can only hold 10 percent of the state’s projected general fund...

Seattle’s controversial tax on the wealthy failed its first legal test this week after a judge ruled the new ordinance violates state law – but the city isn’t backing down and vows to appeal, setting the stage for a Washington State Supreme Court showdown. King County Superior Court Judge John Ruhl ruled in a Wednesday that Seattle did not have the authority to impose the tax because state law prohibits tax on net income. City Attorney Pete Holmes called the decision “disappointing” but, in a joint statement with Seattle Mayor Tim Burgess, said their goal to eliminate the state’s “over-reliance...

<p>Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to push for a tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for improvements needed to address the crisis engulfing New York City’s subway, city officials said on Sunday, the latest salvo in the battle between Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over who bears responsibility for repairing the deteriorating transit system.</p>

ALBANY, N.Y. — Some of the wealthiest New Yorkers are asking the state to raise their taxes. Eighty people including George Soros, Steven Rockefeller and Abigail Disney wrote to lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying they and other top earners should pay more to support schools, roads, bridges and programs to help poor and homeless residents of the state. "Now is the time to invest in the long-term economic viability of New York," the letter reads. "We need to invest in pathways out of poverty and up the economic ladder for all of our fellow citizens, including strong public...

Donald Trump said on Sunday that taxes for the wealthy should go up but that his tax plans would likely be renegotiated with Congress should he win the U.S. presidency. "For the wealthy I think frankly it is going to go up and, you know what, it really should go up," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told NBC's "Meet the Press." Trump said that he see his current tax plans, which would reduce taxes for the middle class and businesses and increase those for the wealthy, as a negotiating "floor" that may change in dealings with Congress. Latest News Update...

This is called surrendering before the war starts: Conservative commentator and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said Sunday the Republican Party should accept new ideas, including the much-criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy. ***** "It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer." "Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic...

GUTHRIE: Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy? TRUMP: I do. I do – including myself. I do. That was...this morning, in an interview that featured some other controversial statements.  In fairness to Trump, he's been using the "raise taxes on rich people like me" line for months, embracing Obama-style class warfare tax gimmicks like the 'Buffet Rule.'  But raising taxes on anyone, an outcome Trump just re-endorsed, is not what his formal policy agenda proposes.  Just the opposite.  As we've seen on issues such immigration, abortion and foreign policy, Trump routinely makes clear that he isn't familiar with his own positions.  His stances aren't...

Talk about your Hobson's Choice . . . on today's Morning Joe, Nicolle Wallace, citing GOP consultants, suggested that--other than social conservatives--Republicans concerned with foreign policy should consider supporting Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Hillary supporter Harold Ford, Jr. could be heard chiming in with a "well said." Wallace was echoing the argument laid out by Joe Scarborough: that on a range of issues from foreign intervention to Israel, taxing the rich to breaking up the banks, Clinton's positions are closer to those of the GOP establishment than Trump's. But Joe, Nicolle and those Republican consultants are forgetting one overriding...

The chatter continues this morning about Donald Trump’s call for raising taxes on the rich.

Keely Mullen, an organizer for the Million Student March movement, joined Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto on the air Thursday to discuss the movement’s demands for free public college, student debt cancelation and a $15-an-hour minimum wage for student workers. In the awkward 9-minute interview, Cavuto repeatedly cited facts and figures that seemed to fluster the student. When asked who would pick up the tab for the demands she listed, Mullen said, “The 1 percent of people who are hoarding the wealth and causing a catastrophe students are facing.” “If the 1 percent just had their taxes raised a...

House Democrats have unveiled a $3.7 trillion budget plan for next year. It mirrors President Barack Obama’s call for $1.8 trillion in tax increases on wealthier people and corporations over the coming decade but would add almost $6 trillion to the national debt over that time. […] The plan calls for a wave of new spending for infrastructure like roads and bridges and additional funding for education and medical research. It would make modest curbs on the rapid growth of the popular Medicare program. …

Promising to help America’s middle class, President Barack Obama on Monday sent Congress a record $4 trillion budget that would hammer corporate profits overseas and raise taxes on the wealthy while boosting tax credits for families and the working poor. Obama’s budget also would steer hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure of roads and bridges, help provide two years of free community college and reverse the across-the-board, automatic budget cuts that have slammed the Pentagon and nearly every government department. In the face of certain opposition from Republicans, an optimistic Obama hailed a “breakthrough year for...

President Barack Obama’s budget will propose an ambitious six-year, $478 billion public works program of highway, bridge and transit upgrades, half of it financed with a one-time mandatory tax on profits that U.S. companies have amassed overseas, White House officials said. The proposal, one of the main components of the $4 trillion spending plan for the 2016 budget year that Obama will send to Congress on Monday, attempts to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed infrastructure repairs and construction. The tax on accumulated foreign profits would be set at 14 percent and due immediately. Under current law,...

As the old saying goes, there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. Tomorrow night during his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Obama will announce that people paying taxes their entire lives just isn't good enough. The President wants the current 40 percent death tax rate increased to 60 percent. Americans for Tax Reform breaks down the details: 2. Stealth increase in the death tax rate from 40% to nearly 60%. Under current law, when you inherit an asset your basis in the asset is the higher of the fair market value at the...

President wants capital gains rate, bank fees raisedEscalating his battle with congressional Republicans, President Obama will propose $320 billion in higher taxes in his State of the Union address, mostly by raising the rate on capital gains and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families, senior administration officials said Saturday. Mr. Obama also will call on lawmakers to impose a new fee on big banks with more than $50 billion in assets to discourage risky financial investments, a holdover from the Wall Street crisis that is sure to appeal to the president’s liberal base. The money raised would pay for a...

Taxes: Democrats unveiled a plan Monday that — surprise — would boost taxes on the rich. But new IRS data show these soak-the-rich campaigns are based on total falsehoods. 'Our tax code today is stacked in favor of people who make money off of money and against those who make money off of hard work," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said Monday. The plan he announced — which to be sure has no chance of being enacted — would boost taxes on the top 1% and hand out checks to the middle class each...

French economist Thomas Piketty, author of the surprise best-selling Capital in the 21st Century turned down France's top award, the Legion D'Honneur. "I do not think it is the government's role to decide who is honourable", said Piketty. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called it "the most important economics book of the year - and maybe of the decade". Krugman likely says that because he believes in Piketty's socialist solutions to income inequality. Thomas Piketty's Capital Review Piketty's book is a massive 696-page slog. Fortunately, Harvard Business Review offers this synopsis: Piketty’s “Capital,” in a Lot Less than 696 Pages.The...

WASHINGTON - The news media was ecstatic when the government said in January that the economy grew by 3.2 percent in the last three months of 2013. It was convincing proof, they said on the nightly news, that the economy had finally recovered from its chronic lethargy. But according to a revised estimate released Thursday by the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, that 3.2 percent figure was a wild exaggeration. The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of our country's entire economic output, grew no more than 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter -- a pitifully...

European Union nations on Thursday agreed on a sweeping policy to fight tax evasion after tiny Luxembourg dropped its reservations to new rules which render its secretive banking culture more transparent. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel confirmed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders “the willingness of the government to take that road,” a key step to scrap the banking secrecy for foreigners. […] The legislation proposes an EU-wide automatic exchange of data on bank deposits to allow governments to identify and pursue tax evaders with foreign accounts on home soil. Van Rompuy said it would “close down loopholes, promote automatic...