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On taxes, this is what the greedy rich are complaining about.
How Obama’s tax hikes would really impact the rich, in three easy charts
By Greg Sargent
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Finally, the third chart shows clearly that only the top one percent and the top 0.1 percent would see their rates rise modestly under Obama’s policies from Clinton-era rates:
Under Clinton, the top 1 percent paid 33.4 percent; under Bush it paid 29.8 percent; and under Obama it would go back up to 35.3 percent, less than two points than under Clinton.
Meanwhile, under Clinton, the top 0.1 percent paid 36.9 percent; under Bush it paid 32.8 percent; and under Obama it would go back up to 39.7 percent. By contrast, every other group would be paying lower rates under Obama’s proposals than under Clinton. (A table detailing these numbers is right here.)
It’s true that the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent would be paying more. But the significance of those hikes shrivel dramatically when you consider how much better these folks have fared over time than everyone else has. The highest end hikes shrivel in the context of the towering size of their after-tax incomes — and the degree to which they dwarf those of everyone else, something that has increased dramatically in recent years.
- more -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/how-obamas-tax-hikes-will-really-impact-the-rich-in-three-easy-charts/2011/03/03/gIQAmbbLIL_blog.html
By Greg Sargent
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Finally, the third chart shows clearly that only the top one percent and the top 0.1 percent would see their rates rise modestly under Obama’s policies from Clinton-era rates:
Under Clinton, the top 1 percent paid 33.4 percent; under Bush it paid 29.8 percent; and under Obama it would go back up to 35.3 percent, less than two points than under Clinton.
Meanwhile, under Clinton, the top 0.1 percent paid 36.9 percent; under Bush it paid 32.8 percent; and under Obama it would go back up to 39.7 percent. By contrast, every other group would be paying lower rates under Obama’s proposals than under Clinton. (A table detailing these numbers is right here.)
It’s true that the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent would be paying more. But the significance of those hikes shrivel dramatically when you consider how much better these folks have fared over time than everyone else has. The highest end hikes shrivel in the context of the towering size of their after-tax incomes — and the degree to which they dwarf those of everyone else, something that has increased dramatically in recent years.
- more -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/how-obamas-tax-hikes-will-really-impact-the-rich-in-three-easy-charts/2011/03/03/gIQAmbbLIL_blog.html
Charts showing the history on the capital gains rate and the Obama administration's proposal:
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9. Tax preferences for capital gains are costly.
The preferential tax treatment of capital gains adds billions of dollars to deficits. Even small steps to minimize it could contribute significantly to deficit reduction.
Letting the capital gains rate return in 2013 to 20 percent for couples with adjusted gross incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers), as the Administration has proposed, would save about $36 billion over ten years. That’s more than the projected budget over the same period for the Food and Drug Administration, which (among other things) helps ensure that foods and medicines are safe.
- more -
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3798
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9. Tax preferences for capital gains are costly.
The preferential tax treatment of capital gains adds billions of dollars to deficits. Even small steps to minimize it could contribute significantly to deficit reduction.
Letting the capital gains rate return in 2013 to 20 percent for couples with adjusted gross incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers), as the Administration has proposed, would save about $36 billion over ten years. That’s more than the projected budget over the same period for the Food and Drug Administration, which (among other things) helps ensure that foods and medicines are safe.
- more -
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3798
So President Obama's capital gains proposal only returns to the lower Clinton rate.
Note the chart on the regressive nature of the Bush tax cuts.
Now here is a chart that shows the impact of the Bush tax cuts.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/
Note the rise in upper income from 2001 to 2007. The net worth of lower-income families actually fell during that period, and that of middle-income families actually slowed.
More interesting is the fact that in 2010, when lower- and middle income families crashed (back to 1983 levels), upper income families were still ahead of where they were in 2001.
Yet the greedy are up in arms.
Romney Tax Returns Show Strategy for Moving Money to Kids
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021207249
16 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Why does a corporation create a job?
Isn't it because they want to make more money? What else motivates them?
Isn't it because they want to make more money? What else motivates them?
...ask you to obfuscate. I asked what greed, this:
...has to do with job creation?
There is a big difference between creating jobs and greed for the sake of greed.
He’s No Averell Harriman
Fred Kaplan has what I think is the best take so far on Romneyshambles:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/hes-no-averell-harriman/
Fred Kaplan has what I think is the best take so far on Romneyshambles:
The thing that Krauthammer doesn’t get is that Romney is not the sort of businessman—that his brand of capitalism is not the sort of enterprise—that requires even the most elementary understanding of diplomacy, courtesy, or sensitivity to other people’s values, lives, or perceptions.
The American capitalists-turned-statesmen of an earlier generation—Douglas Dillon, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze—took risks, built institutions, helped rebuild postwar Europe, befriended their foreign counterparts: in short, they cultivated an internationalist sensibility at their core. Whatever you think of their politics or Cold War policies generally (and there is much to criticize), financiers formed an American political elite in that era because finance (through the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the IMF, and so forth) was so often the vehicle of American expansionism.
By contrast, private-equity firms, such as Bain Capital, where Romney made his fortune, tend to view their client companies as cash cows, susceptible to cookie-cutter formulas from which the firms’ partners reap lavish fees, almost regardless of the outcome. Their ends and means breed an insularity, a sense of entitlement, a disposition to view all the world’s entities through a single prism and to appraise them along a single scale.
The American capitalists-turned-statesmen of an earlier generation—Douglas Dillon, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John McCloy, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze—took risks, built institutions, helped rebuild postwar Europe, befriended their foreign counterparts: in short, they cultivated an internationalist sensibility at their core. Whatever you think of their politics or Cold War policies generally (and there is much to criticize), financiers formed an American political elite in that era because finance (through the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the IMF, and so forth) was so often the vehicle of American expansionism.
By contrast, private-equity firms, such as Bain Capital, where Romney made his fortune, tend to view their client companies as cash cows, susceptible to cookie-cutter formulas from which the firms’ partners reap lavish fees, almost regardless of the outcome. Their ends and means breed an insularity, a sense of entitlement, a disposition to view all the world’s entities through a single prism and to appraise them along a single scale.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/hes-no-averell-harriman/
It would help if people stop conflating the actions of self-serving assholes with job creation.
