Another American Revolution Needed

The United States has 13 of the world's top 20 billionaires. 

Let's stop pretending welfare, social programs, minimum wage, retirement plans, etc. are the true American budgetary issues. Living wages, health care, and pension plans are NOT the problem.

It's the fact that we've allowed a privileged few to avoid paying their fair share whilst amassing grotesque fortunes. 

It's time to start taxing these kings and queens and return the United States to a shared prosperity instead of the current plutocracy.

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How To Solve (Mostly) All Our Problems

 TAX THE RICH!!!

And, by "rich", I mean millionaires. Which, for the U.S., is about 9% of the entire population. This isn't a call for increased taxation on low-income, working families, or the middle-class. It's a call to tax those that have clawed, cheated, and stolen the wealth and productivity gains of the past few decades. No, not all millionaires have clawed, cheated, and stolen. But those who have clawed, cheated and stolen, and who have bought politicians to get legislation and tax laws in their favor, need to be taxed more.

Income has been steadily redistributed upward since the 1980s. Millionaires are reaping more and more of the gains of workers. This is not sustainable. It's time to reverse this. Tax the rich! 

Bernie

Income Tax Around The World

The U.S. is not a high-tax country. Our wages are low. We have extreme income inequality. And, our infrastructure is crumbling. Yet, we keep voting dipshits into office whom continue to cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations. 

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Any Democrat Will Do 2020

So many good candidates and good ideas.  Hopefully the Democratic Party can coalesce into a strong, coherent platform with unwavering candidates for President and Vice President.

Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Apple too

With Estate Tax on Nation's Richest, Bernie Sanders' "For the 99.8% Act" Applauded for Targeting "Tyranny of Plutocracy"

The Democratic Party Wants to Make Climate Policy Exciting

The Green New Deal, explained

Cory Booker’s plan to fight wealth inequality: give poor kids money

Proposal to impose a progressive annual wealth tax on American households with net worth (sum of all assets net of debts) above $50 million

Sen. Sanders’ College for All Act

Sanders Files Bill to Strengthen, Expand Social Security

Bernie Sanders's new Medicare-for-all plan, explained

Two senators are proposing national rent relief bills. Here’s why it matters

Warren Proposes Universal Child Care Plan Funded by Wealth Tax

Ending the War on Marijuana

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.       

Weekend Reading

Fed's Evans Questions March Toward Higher Interest Rates
America's Middle Class Is Vanishing. Nearly Half Of Workers Earn Less Than $30,000
A Historian Makes The Case Against Billionaires
Scientists Have Established A Link Between Brain Damage And Religious Fundamentalism
How Past Income Tax Rate Cuts On The Wealthy Affected The Economy
The Economics Of Soaking The Rich
How Marginal Tax Rates Actually Work, Explained With A Cartoon
The "Skills Gap" Was A Lie
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Floating A 70 Percent Top Tax Rate - Here's The Research That Backs Her Up

Income Inequality

Trump's Tax Cuts: Reshaping The Economy For The Worse.

We're beginning to see how this giveaway to the rich will destabilize markets, increase deficits/debt, increase borrowing costs, cause a reduction in services and/or an increase in other taxes or fees.

The money has to come from somewhere. This is a society we are running here, people. Polices, road, bridges, air, water, schools, hospitals, buses, trains, airports ... paying for it is the bedrock of living in a society. 

If our current society has benefited a select few with the means to own yachts, jets, multiple homes and on and on, those select few can afford to return the favor to society by paying more in taxes to help the society continue to thrive and flourish. 

We cannot continue to poison the planet and pretend it's going to work out for the better. Continual deregulation only helps polluters and financial swindlers. We cannot continue to believe the mythology that is supply-side economics. Since, Republicans dropped this turd of an idea on society in the late 70s, early 80s, income inequality has risen, workers' rights have declined and wages have stagnated. Power to the people? More like, power taken from the people.

So sad to see a helpless country strong-armed by the will of such ignorance, led by a blow-dried, burnt, slovenly buffoon. 

For Further Reading.

Are Trump's tax cuts backfiring on Wall Street?

TRUMP'S TAX CUTS, FEAR OF EXPLODING DEFICITS AND THE TRUTH ABOUT THE U.S. NATIONAL DEBT

“IT’S A PONZI SCHEME”: WALL STREET FEARS TRUMP’S DERANGED TAX PLAN COULD KICK OFF ECONOMIC EUTHANASIA

How the Trump Tax Cuts Would Reshape (and/or Break) Our Economy

U.S. tax plan could cause sugar high, then economic slump

How The Federal Reserve Could Rain On Trump’s Tax Cut Parade

Tax Cuts, Growth and Debt

IMF chief warns Trump's tax cuts could destabilise global economy

The U.S. Is NOT Overtaxed!

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For Further Reading:

Sorry America, Your Taxes Aren’t High

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]

Under Sanders, Income & Jobs Would Soar

Under Sanders, income and jobs would soar, economist says

If Sanders became president -- and was able to push his plan through Congress -- median household income would be $82,200 by 2026, far higher than the $59,300 projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

In addition, poverty would plummet to a record low 6%, as opposed to the CBO's forecast of 13.9%. The U.S. economy would grow by 5.3% per year, instead of 2.1%, and the nation's $1.3 trillion deficit would turn into a large surplus by Sanders' second term... 

"Like the New Deal of the 1930s, Senator Sanders' program is designed to do more than merely increase economic activity," Friedman writes. It will "promote a more just prosperity, broadly-based with a narrowing of economy inequality." ... 

Friedman, however, argues that Sanders' plan would be more stimulative because it is pouring money into the economy, as opposed to cutting taxes. Several of Sanders' proposals -- such as spending $1 trillion on infrastructure -- will happen in the first few years of his administration.

The Bigger-Is-Better Racket

Since Reaganomics began eviscerating the middle class, mergers and a bigger-is-better attitude has dominated our development and economic thinking. Economies of scale were going to trickle down riches on each and every one of us.

But, it turns out, much of this was just merely oligopoly power solidifying itself. Big companies became too big to fail, and the wages of most workers stagnated.

In our haste to believe that all we'd learned from the Great Depression was wrong, we marched ahead cutting taxes, cutting regulation, getting government out of the way of all-knowing business. Zoning laws changed and development intensified.

The small mom-and-pops, which were the hubs of smaller communities throughout the nation, were inefficient and antiquated. Travel patterns were changed. The off-ramp economy was the path to prosperity. A new automobile-dominated society was deemed superior. Big boxes and one-stop shopping were supposed to transform daily life, for all, for the better.

But what happens when the oligopoly changes the lifestyle in a community, only to desert it years later?

First, the traffic to-and-from these megaplexes disrupts as much as it invigorates:

Traffic and noise depress property values in nearby neighborhoods. More traffic in- creases the cost of local government services, such as road maintenance and police. [source]

Many of these big boxes also use their size and strength to avoid taxation:

As one example, take Walmart, the largest among them, which looks for tax loopholes wherever it can find them. “For every kind of tax that a retail company would normally pay or remit to support public services, Walmart has engineered an aggressive scheme to pay less and keep more,” found a 2011 report by the non-profit research organization Good Jobs First. These include using its fleet of lawyers to systematically challenge its property tax assessments, and gimmicks such as deducting rent payments made to itself through captive real estate investment trusts. Good Jobs First calculated that these tactics cost state and local governments more than $400 million a year in lost revenue, and concluded, “Walmart may be more of a fiscal burden than a benefit to many of the communities in which it operates.”

Much of the cost for the employees at these big boxes is placed upon the locality and the state:

Large numbers of big-box employees rely on Medicaid, food stamps, and other public assistance programs to get by. Several states have reported that their Medicaid rolls are now swollen with su- perstore workers. In 2005, for example, Massachusetts disclosed that some 9,500 Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Target em- ployees and dependents were receiving publicly-funded health care at an annual cost to taxpayers of over $12 million.

Perhaps most disturbing, researchers at Penn State University, after controlling for other factors that influence poverty, found that counties that gained Wal-Mart stores during the 1990s fared worse in terms of family poverty rates than those that did not. [source]

It's also been found that these big boxes hurt the local job market:

As these businesses are forced to down- size or close, the resulting job losses typi- cally equal or exceed the number of new jobs created by the big-box store.This was recently shown in a large-scale study con- ducted by Univ. of California economist David Nuemark and his colleagues at the Public Policy Institute of California. The study examined 3,094 counties across the U.S., tracking the arrival of Wal-Mart stores between 1977 and 2002.

The study found that the opening of a Wal- Mart led to a net loss of 150 retail jobs on average, suggesting that each Wal-Mart em- ployee replaces approximately 1.4 workers at other stores.

And when they leave, they typically leave blight behind. As the Institute for Local Self-Reliance discovered:

These stores tend to remain vacant because retailers often continue paying rent or take other steps to block competitors from occupy- ing the site. Clauses in many big-box lease agreements forbid property owners from leas- ing the building to another company without the original tenant's approval.

They come to town, change the traffic flow and the character of the place, they push many of the costs of their employees onto the locality and the state, they avoid their fair share of taxes, they pocket a financial windfall, and then they leave town.

When it comes to economic development, place-making and community, bigger isn't always better.

For Further Reading:

Walmart: It Came, It Conquered, Now It's Packing Up & Leaving
The Perils Of Walmart Dependence
Big, Empty Boxes
Impact of Big-Box Stores on Taxes and Public Costs

Underfunding Tarnishes Milwaukee County Parks

The Journal Sentinel reported, Neglect tarnishes county jewel Boerner Botanical Gardens. Saying Boerner Botantical Garden is "neglected" implies malicious intent. As if the Parks administration is aiming to hinder and tarnish Boerner.

As with almost every other issue facing modern society, this, too, is a taxation issue. Just as diminishing taxation (of corporations and the wealthy) has led to increasing income inequality and crumbling infrastructure, declining funding has restrained park maintenance and upkeep.

The article talks of "limited staff...a dramatic drop since 2003 in the number of hours worked by seasonal staff at Boerner, declining from more than 26,000 hours in 2003 to 7,000 in 2014, according to the audit."

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It's awfully tough to overcome losing almost 20,000 hours of work each year.

As a Public Policy Forum report discovered:

The county’s financial commitment to parks, recreation and culture was two-thirds of what it was in the 1970s, after adjusting for inflation. Spending for these functions peaked in 1975 at $77 million and reached a low point of $43 million 20 years later.

In current dollars, tax levy support for parks was $30.6 million in 2000, less than half the $65.8 million in 1975. The tax levy supported 47% of park spending in 2000, down from 78% in the 1980s. The difference was made up by other sources of revenue, including privatized park functions and increased user fees. This outside revenue nearly doubled between 1975 and 2000, to more than $16 million.

As we can see from a study done by the Trust For Public Land, Milwaukee County Parks spending per resident is below the median ($73) of the 50 largest cities. Milwaukee spends $71 per resident. Detroit, the lowest, only spends $10. The highest, Washington D.C., spends $287 per resident.

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It's also very tough to uphold certain standards with a comparatively low and declining budget.

The title of the article should have been Underfunding Tarnishes Milwaukee County Parks.

The IRS

Inherited Wealth & The Value Of Work

Episode 346 by billmaher56

Scott Walker: Even Worse Than You Thought

Walker Ends State Funding For Bike Program
Bicycling And The Economy
Walker's Budget Reduces Historic Tax Credits
Measuring Economic Impacts Of Historic Preservation
Scott Walker Says He'll Sign Fast-Tracked Right-To-Work Bill
Right-To-Work 101
Scott Walker Embraced By Voodoo Economists
The GOP: Still The Party Of Stupid
The Walker Economic Record
Scott Walker Will Have A Hard Time Explaining His Economic Record If He Runs For President 
What Fox Won't Tell You About Scott Walker's Economic Record
Walker Budget Again Declines Federal Money For Medicaid Expansion And Defers Debt Principal Payment To Balance Books
How Not To Interview Scott Walker About His Weak Economic Record
Walker's Budget Expands School Vouchers, Holds Line On Taxes
Vouchers Don't Work: Evidence From Milwaukee
How Could Walker Refuse Incredible Deal?
Walker's Budget Borrows Big
Walker Takes Milwaukee County To Brink Of Bankruptcy
Walker Proposes $300 Million Cut To UW System
Reckless Proposal To Gut UW From Gov. Scott Walker
State Shortfall Could Be $928 Million Over Next 2 1/2 Years
Wisconsin Officials Call Scott Walker's Budget 'Nonsensical'

Thursday Reading

Taxing The Rich

See Yourself Where The Tax Breaks Go

Labor Union Decline Main Cause Of Rising Corporate Profits

One Walmart's Low Wages Could Cost Taxpayers $900,000 Per Year

CBO Study Shows Tax Breaks Favor The Rich

Only A Third Of Charitable Contributions Go To The Poor

Welfare For The Wealthy

U.S. 10-Year Bonds Yields In Perspective

Medicaid Expansion Denial Will Cost States Billions

The Fed, Inequality And Accounting Identities

Tax Changes For 2013

[source, h/t The Big Picture]

Tax Collections At Historically Low Levels

The federal government is only collecting 17% of GDP as tax revenue, a historically low level.

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