Next Up: a "Flat Tax" for the Rich

[georgephillip]

Subtitled: "The Endless Thanksgiving" Michael Hudson chronicles the regressive tax shift off wealth onto wage earner beginning with the 1982 Greenspan Commission ploy "of moving the cost of Social Security and Medicare out of the general budget (where it would have to be financed by taxpayers in the higher brackets) onto the bottom of the scale..."

The former Wall Street Economist and current professor at UMKC then pulls out his short-term crystal ball:

"The danger the United States faces today is that the government debt crisis scheduled to hit Congress next spring (when Republicans are threatening to vote against raising the federal debt limit as the government deficit soars) will provide an opportunity for the wealthy to give a coup de grace on what is left of progressive taxation in this country.

"A flat tax on wage income and consumer sales would 'free' the rentiers from taxes on their property.

"All governments have to levy taxes – that is, they have to tax somebody.

"Naturally, the super-rich would like this tax to be shifted off their shoulders onto those who have to work for a living.

"In diametric opposition to Adam Smith and other putative 'founding fathers' of 'free market' neoliberalism, the super-rich want to shift taxes off 'free lunch' economic rent – off interest, dividends, rents and capital gains – onto wage-earners."

"This tax shift already has been underway for the past thirty years.

" It has doubled the proportion of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rents and capital gains) enjoyed by the wealthiest 1 per cent, from a reported one-third in 1979 to an estimated two-thirds of the U.S. total today.

Look for a "fiscal 9/11" around Mothers Day with Alan Simpson headlining as "tax cutter" rather than "tax shifter."

Think Obama will fold?

 

[Oddball]

Gubmint apparatchiks can't tax their way out of their overspending problem.

 

[georgephillip]

Do you favor "user fees" over "taxation"?

"Instead of being treated as 'entitlements' paid by the highest tax brackets, it is treated as 'user fees' by employees with a cut-off (currently about $102,000) for higher-income earners.

"The pre-saved 'Social Security fund' was invested in Treasury bills and then lent to the government – enabling it to cut taxes on the higher brackets.

"'Social Security and Medicare' became a euphemism for giving the government enough 'forced saving' of labor so that the Treasury could cut taxes on the higher income and wealth brackets.'"

Flat Tax

 

[Oddball]

I prefer controlling and cutting spending.

 

[georgephillip]

Would anyone pay taxes in your America?

If so, would your system of taxation fall more heavily on "earned" or "unearned" income?

 

[boedicca]

Why should the government place a value judgment on sources of income?

A low flat tax for everyone combined with shrinking the size of government would benefit everyone except for the blood sucking parasite who feed off of the government picking winners and losers.

 

[editec]

Subtitled: "The Endless Thanksgiving" Michael Hudson chronicles the regressive tax shift off wealth onto wage earner beginning with the 1982 Greenspan Commission ploy "of moving the cost of Social Security and Medicare out of the general budget (where it would have to be financed by taxpayers in the higher brackets) onto the bottom of the scale..."

Yup. And the largest single tax increase ever imposed on the middle class happened on Ronal Reagan's watch/

The former Wall Street Economist and current professor at UMKC then pulls out his short-term crystal ball:

"The danger the United States faces today is that the government debt crisis scheduled to hit Congress next spring (when Republicans are threatening to vote against raising the federal debt limit as the government deficit soars) will provide an opportunity for the wealthy to give a coup de grace on what is left of progressive taxation in this country.

"A flat tax on wage income and consumer sales would 'free' the rentiers from taxes on their property.

Yup, that's the idea -- to give the INVESTOR CLASS a tax free way to make money.

"All governments have to levy taxes – that is, they have to tax somebody.

"Naturally, the super-rich would like this tax to be shifted off their shoulders onto those who have to work for a living.

Naturally.

"In diametric opposition to Adam Smith and other putative 'founding fathers' of 'free market' neoliberalism, the super-rich want to shift taxes off 'free lunch' economic rent – off interest, dividends, rents and capital gains – onto wage-earners."

Que surprise, huh?

"This tax shift already has been underway for the past thirty years.

Yes.
​

" It has doubled the proportion of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rents and capital gains) enjoyed by the wealthiest 1 per cent, from a reported one-third in 1979 to an estimated two-thirds of the U.S. total today.

Look for a "fiscal 9/11" around Mothers Day with Alan Simpson headlining as "tax cutter" rather than "tax shifter."

Think Obama will fold?

Will he have any choice?

All he can do is veto a bill.

You don't imagine that the DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS are going to change this, do you?

They are the same people who (working in conjunction with the Republicans) created this system.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

I prefer controlling and cutting spending.

....As-long-as those spending-cuts impact everyone (else), but you........right?



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWMgEp4QlvQ[/ame]​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Why should the government place a value judgment on sources of income?

A low flat tax for everyone combined with shrinking the size of government would benefit everyone except for the blood sucking parasite who feed off of the government picking winners and losers.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....so, dividends (from investments) are considered the Holy Grail of income.....and, the 1%ers have some kind o' Divine Right NOT to pay taxes, on them, huh???

Lemme guess....that's in The Good Book somewhere, right?

​

 

[georgephillip]

Why should the government place a value judgment on sources of income?

A low flat tax for everyone combined with shrinking the size of government would benefit everyone except for the blood sucking parasite who feed off of the government picking winners and losers.

Why should the FIRE sector get a free lunch from those who work for a living?

Can you name a more obnoxious "blood sucking parasite" than Goldman Sachs (the Pentagon, possibly)?

"The flat tax is supposed to be accompanied by a European-style regressive value-added tax (VAT). By taxing 'value,' it essentially falls on labor – as in 'the labor theory of value.'

"The tax does not fall on 'empty' pricing in excess of value – what the classical economists termed 'economic rent,' that element of price (and income) that has no counterpart in actual cost of production (ultimately reducible to labor) but is a pure free lunch: land rent, monopoly rent, interest and other financial fees, and insurance premiums.

"This economic rent is the major return to wealth.

"It is grounded in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector."

Flat Tax

 

[Oddball]

I prefer controlling and cutting spending.

....As-long-as those spending-cuts impact everyone (else), but you........right?



[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWMgEp4QlvQ[/ame]​

Wrong, yet again, dickless.

I have few, if any, expectations that gubmint will or should lavish the "benefit" of the largess upon me.

 

[georgephillip]

What expectations do you have for Obama's Deficit Commission?

"Meanwhile in America the Obama administration has managed to come up with a Deficit Commission whose members want to pay for the multi-trillion dollar wars that are enriching the military/security complex and the multi-trillion dollar bailouts of the financial system by reducing annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security, raising the retirement age to 69, ending the mortgage interest deduction, ending the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, imposing a 6.5 per cent federal sales tax, while cutting the top tax rate for the rich."

What benefits do the tax shifters have in store for you?

The Stench...Economic Decay

 

[Sallow]

We could probably cut the military budget in half...or by 2/3rds..and still be able to more then protect our homeland.

Invasions? Well we couldn't do that so easily anymore.

 

[boedicca]

It's time for a refresher in Hauser's Law:

Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this "Hauser's Law."

Over this period there have been more than 30 major changes in the tax code including personal income tax rates, corporate tax rates, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, investment tax credits, depreciation schedules, Social Security taxes, and the number of tax brackets among others. Yet during this period, federal government tax collections as a share of GDP have moved within a narrow band of just under 19% of GDP.

Why? Higher taxes discourage the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurship. When tax rates are raised, taxpayers are encouraged to shift, hide and underreport income. Taxpayers divert their effort from pro-growth productive investments to seeking tax shelters, tax havens and tax exempt investments. This behavior tends to dampen economic growth and job creation. Lower taxes increase the incentives to work, produce, save and invest, thereby encouraging capital formation and jobs. Taxpayers have less incentive to shelter and shift income....

W. Kurt Hauser: There's No Escaping Hauser's Law - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608104575217870728420184.html


Lower and simpler taxes will create a climate favorable for economic growth. Punitive high taxes on The Rich will just result in a smaller pie.

 

[georgephillip]

It's time for a refresher in Hauser's Law:

Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this "Hauser's Law."

Over this period there have been more than 30 major changes in the tax code including personal income tax rates, corporate tax rates, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, investment tax credits, depreciation schedules, Social Security taxes, and the number of tax brackets among others. Yet during this period, federal government tax collections as a share of GDP have moved within a narrow band of just under 19% of GDP.

Why? Higher taxes discourage the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurship. When tax rates are raised, taxpayers are encouraged to shift, hide and underreport income. Taxpayers divert their effort from pro-growth productive investments to seeking tax shelters, tax havens and tax exempt investments. This behavior tends to dampen economic growth and job creation. Lower taxes increase the incentives to work, produce, save and invest, thereby encouraging capital formation and jobs. Taxpayers have less incentive to shelter and shift income....

W. Kurt Hauser: There's No Escaping Hauser's Law - WSJ.com

David Ranson: The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend - WSJ.com


Lower and simpler taxes will create a climate favorable for economic growth. Punitive high taxes on The Rich will just result in a smaller pie.

"In other words, the Obama tax increases are targeted at those who are largely responsible for capital formation.

Capital formation is the life blood for job creation.

"As jobs are created, more people pay income, Social Security and Medicare taxes.

"As the economy grows, corporate income tax receipts grow. Rising corporate profits provide an underpinning to the stock market, so capital gain and dividend tax collections increase.

"A pro-growth, low marginal personal tax rate stimulates capital formation and GDP, which triggers a higher level of tax receipts for the other sources of government revenue."

Capital formation isn't being used for job creation today to the same extent as 1993.

It's more likely to be spent in the Wall Street Casino.

W. Kurt Hauser

 

[georgephillip]

We could probably cut the military budget in half...or by 2/3rds..and still be able to more then protect our homeland.

Invasions? Well we couldn't do that so easily anymore.

Could we use the Pentagon to build high speed freight/ passenger rail lines AND universal high speed fiber optic internet from Maine to Maui?

In other words, is Unemployment a National Security issue?

If we bring the troops home, shouldn't we have jobs waiting?

 

[onecut39]

It's time for a refresher in Hauser's Law:

Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this "Hauser's Law."

Over this period there have been more than 30 major changes in the tax code including personal income tax rates, corporate tax rates, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, investment tax credits, depreciation schedules, Social Security taxes, and the number of tax brackets among others. Yet during this period, federal government tax collections as a share of GDP have moved within a narrow band of just under 19% of GDP.

Why? Higher taxes discourage the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurship. When tax rates are raised, taxpayers are encouraged to shift, hide and underreport income. Taxpayers divert their effort from pro-growth productive investments to seeking tax shelters, tax havens and tax exempt investments. This behavior tends to dampen economic growth and job creation. Lower taxes increase the incentives to work, produce, save and invest, thereby encouraging capital formation and jobs. Taxpayers have less incentive to shelter and shift income....

W. Kurt Hauser: There's No Escaping Hauser's Law - WSJ.com

David Ranson: The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend - WSJ.com


Lower and simpler taxes will create a climate favorable for economic growth. Punitive high taxes on The Rich will just result in a smaller pie.

"In other words, the Obama tax increases are targeted at those who are largely responsible for capital formation.

Capital formation is the life blood for job creation.

"As jobs are created, more people pay income, Social Security and Medicare taxes.

"As the economy grows, corporate income tax receipts grow. Rising corporate profits provide an underpinning to the stock market, so capital gain and dividend tax collections increase.

"A pro-growth, low marginal personal tax rate stimulates capital formation and GDP, which triggers a higher level of tax receipts for the other sources of government revenue."

Capital formation isn't being used for job creation today to the same extent as 1993.

It's more likely to be spent in the Wall Street Casino.

It would be nice if you could forgo the conservative economic pep talk and supply just a few little snippets of fact.

There is little evidence that tax cuts spur economic activity. Were that true the Bush years would have brought us boom times. Instead we got a recession and damn near an economic collapse. Economic activity was as great or greater when we had a 90% marginal rate.

ExxonMoblie made about 19 billion in profits and paid not one single dime in Federal taxes.

But lets keep doing that. Maybe someday it will turn out right?

 

[thereisnospoon]

Subtitled: "The Endless Thanksgiving" Michael Hudson chronicles the regressive tax shift off wealth onto wage earner beginning with the 1982 Greenspan Commission ploy "of moving the cost of Social Security and Medicare out of the general budget (where it would have to be financed by taxpayers in the higher brackets) onto the bottom of the scale..."

The former Wall Street Economist and current professor at UMKC then pulls out his short-term crystal ball:

"The danger the United States faces today is that the government debt crisis scheduled to hit Congress next spring (when Republicans are threatening to vote against raising the federal debt limit as the government deficit soars) will provide an opportunity for the wealthy to give a coup de grace on what is left of progressive taxation in this country.

"A flat tax on wage income and consumer sales would 'free' the rentiers from taxes on their property.

"All governments have to levy taxes – that is, they have to tax somebody.

"Naturally, the super-rich would like this tax to be shifted off their shoulders onto those who have to work for a living.

"In diametric opposition to Adam Smith and other putative 'founding fathers' of 'free market' neoliberalism, the super-rich want to shift taxes off 'free lunch' economic rent – off interest, dividends, rents and capital gains – onto wage-earners."

"This tax shift already has been underway for the past thirty years.

" It has doubled the proportion of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rents and capital gains) enjoyed by the wealthiest 1 per cent, from a reported one-third in 1979 to an estimated two-thirds of the U.S. total today.

Look for a "fiscal 9/11" around Mothers Day with Alan Simpson headlining as "tax cutter" rather than "tax shifter."

Think Obama will fold?

Hudson? Again?..Sheesh.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Do you favor "user fees" over "taxation"?

"Instead of being treated as 'entitlements' paid by the highest tax brackets, it is treated as 'user fees' by employees with a cut-off (currently about $102,000) for higher-income earners.

"The pre-saved 'Social Security fund' was invested in Treasury bills and then lent to the government – enabling it to cut taxes on the higher brackets.

"'Social Security and Medicare' became a euphemism for giving the government enough 'forced saving' of labor so that the Treasury could cut taxes on the higher income and wealth brackets.'"

Flat Tax

No. The federal government raided the SS Trust fund and used it for , creative accounting and spend it on other stuff.
It was easy. Take the money and use it elsewhere. No one ever thought the PONZI scheme that is SS would ever run out of poor idiots( us workers) to contribute to it.
The system is broken and is about to be broke.
This story has been repeated in state after state that looted their pension funds to cover insane overspending. Now states such as California and New Jersey cannot pay their government employee benefits. Brilliant!

 

[boedicca]

It's time for a refresher in Hauser's Law:

Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have averaged just under 19% regardless of the top marginal personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate has been as high as 92% (1952-53) and as low as 28% (1988-90). This observation was first reported in an op-ed I wrote for this newspaper in March 1993. A wit later dubbed this "Hauser's Law."

Over this period there have been more than 30 major changes in the tax code including personal income tax rates, corporate tax rates, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, investment tax credits, depreciation schedules, Social Security taxes, and the number of tax brackets among others. Yet during this period, federal government tax collections as a share of GDP have moved within a narrow band of just under 19% of GDP.

Why? Higher taxes discourage the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurship. When tax rates are raised, taxpayers are encouraged to shift, hide and underreport income. Taxpayers divert their effort from pro-growth productive investments to seeking tax shelters, tax havens and tax exempt investments. This behavior tends to dampen economic growth and job creation. Lower taxes increase the incentives to work, produce, save and invest, thereby encouraging capital formation and jobs. Taxpayers have less incentive to shelter and shift income....

W. Kurt Hauser: There's No Escaping Hauser's Law - WSJ.com

David Ranson: The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend - WSJ.com


Lower and simpler taxes will create a climate favorable for economic growth. Punitive high taxes on The Rich will just result in a smaller pie.

"In other words, the Obama tax increases are targeted at those who are largely responsible for capital formation.

Capital formation is the life blood for job creation.

"As jobs are created, more people pay income, Social Security and Medicare taxes.

"As the economy grows, corporate income tax receipts grow. Rising corporate profits provide an underpinning to the stock market, so capital gain and dividend tax collections increase.

"A pro-growth, low marginal personal tax rate stimulates capital formation and GDP, which triggers a higher level of tax receipts for the other sources of government revenue."

Capital formation isn't being used for job creation today to the same extent as 1993.

It's more likely to be spent in the Wall Street Casino.

It would be nice if you could forgo the conservative economic pep talk and supply just a few little snippets of fact.

There is little evidence that tax cuts spur economic activity. Were that true the Bush years would have brought us boom times. Instead we got a recession and damn near an economic collapse. Economic activity was as great or greater when we had a 90% marginal rate.

ExxonMoblie made about 19 billion in profits and paid not one single dime in Federal taxes.

But lets keep doing that. Maybe someday it will turn out right?

You are wrong. There is plenty of evidence that tax cuts spur economic growth.

Look again.