Economy and Business
Occupy Your Bank
The First Amendment guarantees the right to “peaceably” assemble. Unfortunately, that right seems to be in some type of Orwellian limbo at the moment. Eighteen cities participated in a conference call about the Occupy movement before they simultaneously cracked down on occupations in their cities, according Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.
Big Banks are Doing Just Fine, Thank You
When grouchy columnists write of the pernicious effects of banks on the economy, we’re generally not referring to your local county bank whose vice-president coaches your son’s Little League team. No, we mean the big guys whose vice-presidents commute to Wall Street from Greenwich, Connecticut and whose kids attend fancy boarding schools.
Thanksgiving on Wall Street
America’s Real Poverty Rate
The Census Bureau recently released a highly-anticipated report suggesting ways to improve the measurement of poverty in America. It found that adjusting for medical expenses, the value of benefits payments, regional differences in the cost of living, and other technical factors raised the poverty rate to 16 percent, up from the official count of 15.1 percent.
Luck Matters
In their unbending opposition to raising a penny more in taxes from even the wealthiest Americans — even in the midst of a government debt crisis and shrinking public budgets — extremist politicians paint all rich people as self-made, entrepreneurial “job creators.” If we ask any more in taxes from such paragons of industry, they argue, we’ll not only crimp the economy, but perversely “punish success.”
The Class War is So Over
Between 1979 and 2007, the after-tax household income of America’s most affluent 1 percent ballooned by 275 percent, while the bottom 20 percent’s income inched up just 18 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more than an entire third of the nation’s wealth, which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.
For the Corporate 1 Percenters, a 50 Percent Tax Discount
Over a quarter century ago, in 1984, the Washington, D.C.-based Citizens for Tax Justice released its first in-depth report on how much America’s top profitable corporations were actually paying in taxes. America’s top companies, this initial study found, were paying only 14.1 percent of their profits in taxes, less than a third of the corporate tax rate then in effect.
Foreign Influence: Inappropriate for Lawmakers Tasked with Shrinking the Deficit
As the dozen members of Congress in the supercommittee strive to agree on a plan to carve at least $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget, lobbyists representing foreign interests are trying to influence them. Since last summer, all 12 of the panel’s members have been contacted by at least one foreign lobbyist. All but two members — Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) — have received campaign contributions from foreign lobbyists, according to Department of Justice records.
Equal Taxation for Wealth and Work
America’s No. 1 problem is sluggish job growth. No. 2 is the explosive growth in the income gap between the favored few and the broad middle class. Fairly taxing income from wealth could make progress on both fronts.
Ask the Columnist: A Primer on Wealth and Taxes
In response to my now famous “the-class-war-is-over-the-rich-guys-won” column, a gentleman from Kentucky writes a rather snarky letter posing several piercing questions that I will now answer.
