$1.4 billion a year isn't enough for some people

[EV_Ares]

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - There's a move in Congress to force the people who run private-equity firms, some of the highest paid people in this country, to pay their fair share of taxes. You might think that's unremarkable if you haven't noticed how little honesty, consistency and logic are respected in the public discourse these days. Some of the usual suspects, such as Steve Forbes and Larry Kudlow, say the attempt to close a tax loophole for private-equity funds is a "war on wealth." If there is such a war on the wealthy, it's the most ineptly run war since Baghdad fell. The rich are doing fabulously well in this nation, thank you very much.

In this instance those well-known Marxists, Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Charles Grassley of Iowa, don't begrudge the fund managers the billions they earn for taking care of other people's money. It's honest work, and it should be rewarded. But it should also be taxed as money earned from hard work. See full story. Working used to be honored in America, but that was before we remembered that only chumps work. In America, there are two income tax rates: The higher one (35% maximum marginal rate) applies to income that's earned by working. People who empty bed pans, for instance, or those who host loud and foolish television programs, or those who take care of other people's money by figuring out where to invest it. The lower marginal tax rate of 15% maximum applies to income that's earned the smart way: These people let their the money do the work by investing capital in productive uses and letting it grow and grow and grow.

The managers of the private-equity funds have the best compensation deal you've ever heard of. As a management fee, they take 2% of the assets they control right off the top, plus 20% of the profits made from other people's capital that they put to work. It's known as 2-and-20. And it added up to an estimated $14 billion last year for just the top 25 managers.
And because, of a tax loophole that lets them pay taxes as if it were their money that was at risk instead of someone else's, their incomes get an extra 20% bump. They pay a marginal tax rate of just 15% instead of 35%. Call it 2-and-20-and-20.
Nice work if you can get it.

You'd think the 2-and-20 would be enough for anyone. One of these guys earned $1.4 billion last year. But you'd be wrong. They got greedy and decided they wanted all the advantages of being a publicly traded company without any of the disadvantages, such as paying taxes at a corporate rate. They wanted to have their cake and they wanted eat it too and they wanted to take it as a tax deduction. They told the Securities and Exchange Commission that their funds aren't investment companies, which would trigger greater government scrutiny and increased regulation. Instead, they said the funds are "asset management companies" that provide "financial services" to investors. But with the other side of their mouths, these same folk are telling the Internal Revenue Service that the income they get isn't earned from providing financial services to investors, but is actually a capital gain. They don't explain why they should be rewarded for watching other people put their money at risk, but why should they explain that when they have an army of lobbyists and paid pundits and cable business news channels to cry "War on Wealth!!"
Those who oppose closing the loophole claim that raising taxes on the managers would somehow hurt investors in those funds, and would reduce the amount of capital being invested in America. But changing the law wouldn't reduce the return for investors in those funds by a penny. One lobbyist opposing the change even told the Washington Post that regular consumers would be hurt by closing the loophole, because "they shop in stores every day and eat in restaurants every day that might not otherwise be around except for private equity."

So remember, if we don't give a tax break to people who make more than $1 billion a year, you'll starve!
Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/14-billion-year-isnt-enough/story.aspx?guid=%7BDA84F20B%2DA170%2D4A2A%2D8127%2D1B124CF0A912%7D

[Double T]

1. LOL!! Who do these elite filthy rich bastards think they're kidding?

Tax the SOBs accordingly!!

[MatrixEscape]

2. Well, I was thinking ...

That more of us were starting to understand that the anathema to the corporate stronghold on our culture was simply, "You can never get enough of what you don't really need to make you happy!"

Sadly, this is not a predominant truism in world were corporations have the very same rights as we individuals USED to have, (supposedly) and they are allowed to exercise and wield them with as much manpower and money as we are induced to give them. That is, so they can then use them against our best interests, the environment, and the even the very longevity of our species, all creates, and the planet's biosphere itself.

The power and status that corporations hold is just an exponential exaggeration of the Feudal Lords of old, and we are the Serfs who provide them, often unwittingly, with the labor and money to achieve their total domination of the world. If we had, or were to, address that one issue with total determination, (all Communism and Socialism aside) then, something amazing and wonderful could happen for humanity across-the-board.

However, we see that is not the major issue. It sits in the background and lurks and manipulates and controls and creates an insidious, but observable, mono-culture and a Globalism of tyranny as we speak. It has its goals and they are not new. Those goals and the outcome are not ours, but they are inserted into our culture and lifestyles like scalpels under general anesthesia. Cut, buy calculated cut, they remove what is natural and connected in our organisms and replace it with a synthetic, calculated idea, product, drug, or distracting solution to the problems that they are now in charge of creating for us.

If you accept, tacitly, and without question, the domination that corporations-as-people purvey, then no amount of political, philosophical, religious, or personal activism will avert the crimson tide that approaches you and yours. The only sane response to such a bold and functional diversion and insertion into culture by calculated money and media is to see it and stop acting or reacting long enough to find your own true nature and connect as best you can with other, real, human beings who are awake and aware enough to see, hear, and understand what piper is calling you to join him.

The time has come, but thanks to all who have flippantly and ignorantly announced that prematurely, this kind of expression is certainly going to go unheeded. And even if that were true, who wants to know that the time has come, ey? Well, you could save yourself a large amount of worthless effort and focus more directly on the law of your own organism, (and those around you) known as survival. That is far too unpleasant to contemplate, right?

For those who cannot or will not heed that siren, this is merely folly from the fools like me who now only think about recognizing their kindred spirits -- their tribe -- and hoping to form some form of functional, adaptational connections and functional affiliations. We are getting ready for the pains of being reborn from the age of total alienation for which the remedies could always be bought at a price and through allegiance to those who create them. We are doing nothing new. The aboriginals of many lands lived that way for centuries. We are not happy about giving so much up, but we are not foolish enough to believe that many of the problems and frustrations and sorrows we experienced in our old lives were anything more than the heavy, often exploitive and unconscionable price we were encourage to pay along the way. Nothing ever came for free ... we see that now and take it literally and as fact, and with the bitter tears of anyone who has been deceived for an entire lifetime.