Weekend Reading

The Tax-The-Rich Movement Keeps Growing
The Hypocrisy Of Trump's Job Claims
California High-Speed Rail And The American Infrastructure Tragedy, Explained
The Global Con Hidden In Trump's Tax Reform Law, Revealed
Lots Of Presidential Candidates Talk A Good Talk. Look At Their Records Instead.
Bill And Melinda Gates And The Problem Of The "Good Billionaire"
How Republicans Bought Their Own Tax Cut Snake Oil
Trump's War On California
The CIA's Masterful Use Of Fake News

If Only We Could All Be As Out Of Touch As The Mega-Wealthy

Bill Gates Has Some Harsh Words for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Tax Plan

Bill Gates says he’s fine with the idea of higher taxes for the rich, but plans like the one being championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which target the top income brackets, are too extreme—and could encourage the wealthy to hide their money in offshore accounts.

“I believe U.S. tax rates can be more progressive. Now, you finally have some politicians who are so extreme that I’d say, ‘No, that’s even beyond,'” Gates said. “You do start to create tax dodging and disincentives, and an incentive to have the income show up in other countries and things. But we can be more progressive without really threatening income generation—what you have left to decide how to spread around.”

First of all, the wealthy already hide their money offshore and dodge taxes.

High tax rates, such as those proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, led to a single breadwinner being able to provide for a family - a car, a home, a college education, etc.

Ever since the Reagan revolution, of tax cuts and deregulation, households with multiple workers can barely get by.  Tax rates aren't a disincentive to create wealth.  They are a mechanism to correct the greedy urges of those whom control the means of production.

Since we can't count on the Walmarts, Amazons, Kochs and all the other greedy oligarchs to do what's right and pay their employees a living wage, to provide retirement and health care to their employees, and to pay a fair share of taxes to help the infrastructure that their businesses and we all depend on, we need to tax them.

Trickle down doesn't work.  It hasn't worked.  Taxes are the only way of giving workers back income that they helped to produce and/or putting it toward more public goods.       

The Robot That Takes Your Job Should Pay Taxes, Says Bill Gates

Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment. 

It’s a striking position from the world’s richest man and a self-described techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in artificial-intelligence technology. 

In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it. 

“You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed” of automation, Gates argues. That’s because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it’s important to be able to manage that displacement. “You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once,” Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them. [source]

Weekend Reading

How The Oligarchs Took Over America

Ravitch Answers Gates

Return Of The Free Lunch Party

Tax Cuts Myths: Fact Checking The Showdown

The Uncertainty Myth

Three Reasons To Relax - A Bit - About The Deficit

U.S. Health Care Costs Since 1980

We Have A Retirement-Security Problem

What Good Is Wall Street?