Guest Post by Jake Johnson
According to an analysis released today, the country’s 735 billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by 62% over the past two years while worker earnings have grown just 10%.
An analysis released today shows that the country’s 735 billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by 62% over the past two years while worker earnings have grown just 10%, modest gains eaten away by the rising costs of food, housing and other necessities.
According to new calculations by Oxfam America, U.S. billionaires now own a combined $4.7 trillion in wealth, much of which goes completely untaxed. As ProPublica recently found in an examination of data from the Internal Revenue Service — an agency that disproportionately targets the poor — the 25 richest people in the U.S. paid a true tax rate of just 3.4% from 2014 to 2018.
“The billionaire wealth explosion in this country comes at a time of historic inflation hitting working families, compounded by the expiration of critical social safety nets put in place at the start of the pandemic to protect America’s most vulnerable,” said Gina Cummings, vice president of advocacy alliances and policy at Oxfam America.
“The impact on real people is devastating, leading countless families to slip into poverty,” Cummings added. “The ongoing failure of our nation’s leaders to implement a more equitable tax system is a stain on democracy.”
Oxfam’s new analysis estimates that a series of tax proposals that have been introduced in Congress but have yet to pass would bring in $252 billion in additional federal revenue each year.
The version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda that the House passed in November would cost just $175 billion per year over the next decade.
That legislation, which includes clean energy investments and an extension of the poverty-slashing child tax credit boost, is effectively dead in the Senate due to the opposition of every Republican as well as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Both Manchin and Sinema have pushed back on Democrats’ efforts to hike taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Oxfam notes that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) wealth tax proposal would yield $113 billion in federal revenue just from billionaires in 2022, enough to fund an extension of the lapsed child tax credit boost, affordable child care, and soon-to-expire free school lunch waivers.
Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) plan to tax billionaires’ unrealized capital gains, meanwhile, would raise $56 billion a year on average.
That new revenue, according to Oxfam, “would more than cover paid sick leave ($10 billion), family medical leave ($20 billion) as well as affordable child care to allow more mothers and caregivers to return to work by absorbing the crushing cost of care for young families ($24 billion).”
“While the pandemic grinds on, it is shocking to realize, and accept, that three-quarters of low-wage workers do not have access to paid sick leave,” said Cummings. “It needs to be said that a vastly disproportionate share of these workers are women and people of color, making this a civil rights issue. This is not just morally unacceptable, it’s dangerous for everyone. We can fix this with a small tax on those who have billions to spare.”
The aid group noted that another $63 billion could be raised by implementing a global minimum tax on multinational corporations, a proposal that the Biden administration and the leaders of more than 130 other countries have backed.
But huge obstacles remain in the way of final approval of the tax, given that the legislatures of individual nations have to approve it.
Oxfam found that “the $63 billion a year in corporate tax revenue could allow the U.S. to invest in climate finance, including tax credits for clean energy ($11.4 billion) and cutting carbon emissions with tax credits for consumers and companies ($32 billion); and fund critical public health needs, including funding global Covid health needs ($5 billion), covering the uninsured for Covid vaccines and testing ($1.5 billion), expanding Medicare for hearing ($8.9 billion), and closing the Medicaid gap ($6 billion).”
“We reject the narrative that this country cannot afford to invest in a better world: protect the planet, feed hungry children, ensure child care costs do not wipe out a family’s earnings, guarantee that hourly workers receive paid leave for illness or the birth of a child,” Cummings said today.
“The American people have been told a lie,” Cummings continued. “They are paying their fair share to keep this country running. It’s time for our nation’s billionaires and giant corporations to contribute their fair share of taxes to support the very people who have provided the labor that has allowed them to enjoy record profits and excess wealth.”
Later on Monday, Oxfam America is planning to join activists from Americans for Tax Fairness, MoveOn, and Daily Kos in delivering petition signatures from more than 500,000 U.S. taxpayers expressing opposition to the glaring inequities of the country’s tax system.
“As everyday Americans continue to struggle during the ongoing pandemic, taxes on the rich remain shamefully low and billionaires have seen their wealth skyrocket,” Carolyn Fiddler, communications director for Daily Kos, said in a statement. “We call on Congress and President Biden to hold billionaires and the wealthy accountable.”
Originally published by Common Dreams.
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Falsely-framed argument. No one should pay taxes, including corporations, which only have revenue from consumers, who would have to pay any taxes a corporation would be levied. Government is strictly a consumer, producing no self-sustaining value (and causing immeasurable harm to humanity). It is the idiot bastard child in need of life support in perpetuity – which means we abolish the state instantly, merely by starving it – starting immediately. End the state. Shutter the Federal Reserve. Abolish taxation forever. Defend the border. Trade freely with anyone who plays straight.
Rube, I agree with part of your position, however right at the end, you sink your own ship. “Defend the border.” Yes, I couldn’t agree more. However if we “Abolish taxation forever” how do we defend the border? Not to mention the things only government can do practically, like roads, national defense (including the borders), and other real infrastructure (not the myriad social programs and welfare the Democrats promote.)
I anticipated that response. We nee .gov for nothing – not roads, not defense, not schooling. Via free markets in defense:
https://mises.org/library/myth-national-defense-essays-theory-and-history-security-production
And let insurers employ mercenaries to guard international shipping lanes. Cost of doing business.
Word salad about something they created.
Who wrote the tax codes? Who passed the bills into law? What kind of moron wouldn’t use the existing laws to their advantage?
If every single effort, article, advocacy group, agitator and protestor pushed for the repeal of the income tax, you could probably get 90%+ of the American people behind it. You literally could not lose on that issue and then the rest of this would be moot.
And if we have enough money to hand out a billion dollars a week to Zelensky, then we definitely have enough to repeal the income tax.
Of course none of this is true in any sense anyway. Taxes aren’t what fund our liabilities and obligations, debt is. Taxes are how you remind people who runs this town, it’s a protection racket so they don’t kidnap you and steal everything you own.
^^ +1000 ^^
What a load of shit. When you finally dig down, they are comparing taxes paid to capital gains. No one pays tax on capital gains until they are realised (except Americans living overseas, who do actually pay capital gains tax before they are realised – an absolute abomination).
How would every homeowner like it if the despicable left taxed them each year on unrealised capital gains on their homes? And what if the value drops after the tax has been paid?
Tar and feathering is too good for these fucks.
I saw this article and knew it was BS, but then I thought to myself – “what would get LLPOH fired up and loaded for bear”. That’s why I posted it.
I am too predictable.
The question has been asked, but if you tax unrealized capital gains, do you also reduce tax for unrealized capital losses..you know, like 80% of Americans will see in their mutual fund and stock investments this year? Tax unrealized gains, and that has to include reduction for unrealized losses. Big revenue in good times, no revenue in bad. Of course current office holders want this, so they can look good today. They they retire on full salary and benefits, while the next guy in office is there when the stock market balloon bursts. You know, it’s Clinton and Bush.
And any tax the congress says is for the rich only, has always included the top 50% of the middle class and retirees. If you’re going to have hundreds of welfare programs for the poor, then why not have a simple flat tax on all income. No deductions, no loopholes (which the congress always allows and always benefits from). You pay 10% of all income–wages, capital gains, all income. So that guy making $20,000 a year pays $2,000. They guy making $25 million a year pays $2.5 million.
There is also the itty bitty little issue is where does the cash come from? If a persons house goes up say $200k, do they actually have $30k or whatever laying around just to pay an unrealised capital gain? They might have to sell their house to pay tax on a gain not yet realised.
Unrealized capital gains tax is a wet dream. I doubt they could ever get that passed for many of the reasons you point out.
The Supreme Court already ruled taxing unrealized gains was unconstitutional in 1920, Eisner vs Macomber.
This may be the vehicle that is used to pack the court though.
They do. And sometimes it does.
It’s called property tax. And it isn’t endorsed only by “the despicable left”, but also the despicable right, and the despicable middle.
I’m certainly not seeing republicOns lower property taxes in Texas. They control state offices and the legislature yet blow smoke on the subject…just one more time Charlie Brown, vote for me, “I promise this time”.
Some has to do with high school football stadiums. Football is King in Texas. Seems though with the enlargement of Texas high school football playoffs, more teams “making the playoffs”, more games equating to more revenues, this might possibly help lower some taxes. Nah. Revenues go toward enlarging the beast of the King. We Texans loves us some football don’t you know?
At one time former Governor Ann Richards, a demontoad , touted the lottery system as providing revenues for public school funding, the largest portion of Texas property taxes, reducing the albatross of property taxation. And the crowd yelled, “yeah”. Nah. Who knows where that dough goes. A hunch, the gambling interests that run the thing.
Most of these individuals are the scum of the earth. However, If you can buck the tax system with out breaking the law, more power to ya! IMHO
Once the union is restored(ya right!) Only the states will be able to tax it’s citizens and the fed will tax the states based on per capita and gross revenue. If your state is out of control on taxation, leave to one that isn’t. sort of a self regulating process(circa 1865). Maybe?
Here is the real STAIN on the former American Republic…with a new fence all around it…they know what is coming…because their fiat Ponzi scam is nearing implosion.
Each one of those bollards runs in the neighborhood of 3K, plus installation, so maybe 6K each. Add to that the cost of it being a government bid, plus unions, I bet their expenditures on that defensive system around each federal reserve building in the country has got to be in the tens of millions.
Looks like they’re expecting to meet a need.
Walls can be used to keep things in as well
Stain on stain. An excavator, an archaeologist, & a museum curator walk into a bar…
Art, Time, and the Madness of the Old
The writer, like the oyster, is motivated by affront. It is the indignities, or perhaps abuse, enjoyed in childhood that shock creativity into operation in those with that potential. Creativity may also be engendered as a response to nonpersonal affronts: to confusion, for example, or wonder.
I do not mean wonder at the world’s beauty, but rather, at its absurdity, cruelty, or injustice. This is very different from compassion, which is sympathy for suffering.
Art has nothing to do with compassion. It is much closer to cruelty, as it has no conscience. The artistic impulse is, in a literal sense, *excited* by wrong. Just as the oyster is excited by irritation.
The talentless seem to feel a “sense of wonder at the beauty of the world.” Such may give us, at its uttermost best, the anodyne of Robert Frost but not the poetry of Yeats.
The talentless, moved by nature, photograph the sunset, attempting to apostrophize the work of a previous creator. But the “wonder” of the actual artist is, consciously or unconsciously, an effort to metabolize some upset or disarrangement. The result, art, is a rearrangement of experience & perception into a new phenomenon. It is not intended to “express” anything.
For if the artist’s condition & intention could be reduced (by him or by the audience) to a definitive *meaning*, the product may be propaganda, or entertainment, but it can’t be art. Was Chagall trying to remind us that goats fly?
The search for meaning in art is close to the search for “closure” in human relationships, or in analysis or therapy: all depend on a predetermined conclusion & engage in a supposed train of investigation to lead the participants to it.
Now, the talentless, unaware that they lack talent, have always tried to co-opt it or explain it away. Critics, museum curators, & so on have open to them, should they accept it, a career in derogation. It is not that the inmates have taken over the asylum but that they’ve been removed from that position.
Artists are freaks. This means not that they are, in any way, substandard but that we are *anomalies,* random mutations thrown off by the same gene pool that produces schizophrenia & perfect eye-hand coordination.
One million chimpanzees at one million typewriters could not create the work of Shakespeare, because, probability aside, why would they wish to?
But the artist has no choice.
Samuel Beckett was the greatest dramatist since Shakespeare. See “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” *The Unnamable.*
None of the rewards of art are greater than the peace of that brief moment between the completion of a task & the reception of the next command. We all ask, or want to ask, “How did it feel?” But interviews & biographies *must* be fictions; for, again, like psychoanalysis, they start with an unstated premise (art can be explained by reference to consciously understood experiences – “I wrote the *1812 Overture* because I heard a cannon”) & fill in the blanks to gratify the self or to appease, confuse, or impress an interrogator.
Like you, I receive letters, texts, & so on, to respond to which would be a burden. I also get books & plays sent for my opinion. The second is an imposition, but because I imposed similarly, when young, upon the successful, I feel bound to respond. I feel bound, but, increasingly, I shirk that duty.
Now, we all know the inspired dodge of moving the offending requests from this pile to that. After a while they lose their potency in transit. But then the sender may, & usually does, ask if we received the communication. What can one do then? One may lie & say, “I never gotr it,” in which case they’ll resend it & the trauma begins again.
One may respond to the request & get it over with, cursing the sender & the fact of one’s birth. Or one may not respond *at all.*
This last has the benefit of creating in one a moment of retribution, but the defect of inflicting discomfort, pain, or humiliation upon the sender.
None of the alternatives are good, & one must choose among them. Recently, however, it occurred to me that time has come to my aid.
As we age, we become circumspect in inquiring about the situation of others. Where once we inquired after the spouse, asking a person in his forties was likely to reveal they are divorced. Asking one in his sixties, “How are you?” may produce a torrent of unfortunate medical information.
But – & here is the beauty part – one in his eighties asked about a spouse may respond that she is dead. So, decade by decade, we learn *not* to ask the pregnant question. It’s a common observation, & not of much use *except to me.* For I realized that I need not respond to *any* trying communications, because the sender might conclude that I had died. That is putting an understanding of time to good use.
So much for time. What is the use for art? It has *no* use. No more than a sunset. But today I was driving past a famous art museum & saw a banner advertising “Art for a More Just World.” Art has no chance of making the world “more just” than politics has of making it more beautiful. Who is to say what is just? The courts, according to the law. Are they unjust? Of course. As are all human endeavors.
The inspired curators mean that they are presenting confections *communicating the idea* that this or that group suffers & that this or that solution is obvious & would be adopted save for the cruelty of this or that other group. But, though it paid the rent of the curators, & perhaps saved the soi-disant artists from getting a job, who among the viewers benefitted? Answer: *all* of them, for they attended as a performance of righteousness.
Art has no purpose, but it has a use. The oyster cannot use the pearl; observers may admire its beauty, but that does not allow them to understand the pearl, beauty, or the oyster.
The museum banner irritated me, or, better, piqued my now constant state of irritation. The Yiddish proverb has it that an old woman in the house is a blessing, whereas an old man in the house is a curse.
As Mr. Yeats had it,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell,
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad
Recessional: The Death of Free Speech & the Cost of a Free Lunch ~ David Mamet