Angry Bear's Bruce Webb writes about the corporatist agenda for tax reform, in Leona Helmsley Omnibus Tax Reform Act of 2009, Angry Bear, Apr. 27, 2009. Here's my one-sentence recast:
The recipe for monarchy is one part of each of the following (mixed, according to the comments, with a splattering of tax-advantaged health savings accounts and similar goodies available to the wealthier denizens):
- repeal of the corporate income tax (with rhetoric about "double taxation" and fake concern for the little-guy consumers),
- repeal of the estate tax (with emotional appeals about the "death tax" and fake concern for those poor little businesses and family farms that [don't] get destroyed by having to pay the tax),
- institution of a capital gains preference for investments and dividends (with rhetoric about "double taxation" and fake worries that any tax at all might cause the super-rich to quit investment their wealth [and start hiding it under their mattresses?]), and
- enactment of a Flat Tax (with rhetoric about "efficiency" and fake concern that even the little guy should pay less).
But Webb probably leaves out a critical ingredient--or at least part of the "cooking" process that ensures the desired result--mass media's defense of the privileged class. For a prime example, you can read the April 27 article in the Washington Post that purports to examine how the Obama tax plans (which provide for some rather insubstantial increases of taxes for those with incomes above $250,000--i.e, the upper crusts of society). Read Montgomery & Haynes, Small Businesses Brace for Tax Battle: Under Obama Plan, Some Entrepreneurs' Bills Would Soar, Washington Post, Apr. 27, 2009. Note that the taxpayers picked to elicit our sympathy are a couple with more than $500,000 (half a million) in annual income--taxpayers that even the staff writers admit are "squarely [in] the ranks of the richest Americans". We are supposed to think that it is inappropriate to burden these rich business owners, who currently make about $90,000 in deductible charitable contributions, with additional taxes of about $23,000. (Wonder if any of those deductions are for those nice little percs available only to the rich, like having artsy places named after them or getting tickets to nice Northern Virginia area social events?) Another businessman making about half a million is reported as possibly having $60,000 added to his tax bill (the taxpayer's report of his accountant's estimate). No analysis of what benefits those businesses get from governmental institutions. But we are supposed to empathisize with these employers who would find the downscaling of income from additional taxes "really painful." There's no mention of how much these employers pay their employees in order to reap those profits.
And who else talks in this piece about the wisdom of such tax policies?--"Republicans and business groups" that think taxing the rich will "strike some of the nation's most productive businesses" that have "the greatest capacity for job creation". That is, die hard anti-tax (for the rich) Republicans like Charles Grassley and business associations lobbying for zero corporate taxation,such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or National Foreign Trade Council. The Post doesn't bother to ask--much less research-- the question whether entrepreneurial activity is really located among the rich rather than in very small businesses at the startup stage, or whether it is the small startups hiring and the larger firms "cost cutting" through layoffs.
Only at the end is there word from a business owner who admits he "wouldn't mind" an additional $35,000-$50,000 of taxes, because "we're fortunate to be successful".
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