Sun Devil 92
Diamond Member
- Apr 2, 2015
- 32,078
- 11,094
- 1,410
- Banned
- #1
Thom Hartmann: How America Killed Its Middle Class
Not a big fan of Alternet.....but this one makes a statement I think begs a question.
Piketty is right, especially about the importance of high marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes being necessary for the creation of a middle class that includes working-class people. Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their companies or rip off their workers. After all, why take another billion when 91 percent of it just going to be paid in taxes?
This is the main reason why, when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America's middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.
#############################
So, as we continue to let the rich just go nuts...what is it that isn't there to prevent them.
Why does the far right vote to protect the interest of the rich ?
The answer lies, in part, in the fact that the far left is no better. First, they suck off the rich like others.
Next, they won't make a rational case. They need conservatives to join them. And yet they, like some of the assholes on this board, do nothing but antagonize them.
And the rich just eat it up......
######################################
This thread originally got moved to Europe because I led in with an article about the European middle class.
But the comparison is bright as the day is long.
I bash the left.
I bash the right.
Regardless, this is a huge issue in my mind.
Now, if the left starts squawking about how the rich screw them over...I'd ask how they get away with it. They only get away with it because the government protects them.
The right yells...hands off. But this article flies in the face of that.
Not a big fan of Alternet.....but this one makes a statement I think begs a question.
Piketty is right, especially about the importance of high marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes being necessary for the creation of a middle class that includes working-class people. Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their companies or rip off their workers. After all, why take another billion when 91 percent of it just going to be paid in taxes?
This is the main reason why, when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America's middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.
#############################
So, as we continue to let the rich just go nuts...what is it that isn't there to prevent them.
Why does the far right vote to protect the interest of the rich ?
The answer lies, in part, in the fact that the far left is no better. First, they suck off the rich like others.
Next, they won't make a rational case. They need conservatives to join them. And yet they, like some of the assholes on this board, do nothing but antagonize them.
And the rich just eat it up......
######################################
This thread originally got moved to Europe because I led in with an article about the European middle class.
But the comparison is bright as the day is long.
I bash the left.
I bash the right.
Regardless, this is a huge issue in my mind.
Now, if the left starts squawking about how the rich screw them over...I'd ask how they get away with it. They only get away with it because the government protects them.
The right yells...hands off. But this article flies in the face of that.