Reading Wall Street Journal reporter Gary Fields’ “point that a family making slightly over $250,000 doesn’t necessarily feel all that ‘rich’ when it comes to facing a tax hike from Barack Obama,” Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress, 4/17/09) dubs his story “The Not-So-Compelling Plight of the Somewhat Rich” and notes that “what the story doesn’t do is put this issue in the appropriate context of what an increase in the marginal rate really implies”:
If you raise taxes on “people making over $250,000,” that means an increase only in the 250,001st dollar and onward. It’s not, in other words, as if a guy earning $249,999 and a guy earning $250,001 will be paying radically different amounts of taxes. In other words, though if you’re earning $5 million a year, Obama’s plan really will saddle you with a big tax increase, a person who’s earning $260,000 and feels that he’s facing a basically middle-class economic situation is only going to be facing a very small tax increase. And however much our $260,000 a year guy may feel not so rich, surely he can agree that $260,000 is a lot more than $130,000 or $65,000, so it’s hardly absurd that he might pay a slightly higher rate.
After writing that, “even if you grant the premise of the story there’s no actual problem here,” Yglesias goes on to suggest ideas no career-minded corporate reporter would dare print:
That said, I wouldn’t have a problem with launching a new, slightly higher rate, starting at $500,000 and a higher one starting at $1 million and another at $2 million another at $4 million another at $8 million and another at $16 million. I don’t see any reason to think that the progressivity of the scale should max out at $250,000 when obviously there’s a huge difference between someone earning that much money and someone earning 10 times that amount.
While big media generally are terrified at the thought of such policies, a Gallup poll from this April 6-9 has 60 percent of respondents considering that “upper-income people” are “paying too little” federal taxes. (Fully 67 percent said the same of “Corporations.”)
For more on corporate media having difficulty with the concept of marginal tax rates, see FAIR Action Alert: “CBS Cheats on Tax Coverage” (9/22/08).
That’s pretty goddamn depressing to see that only 3/5s of respondents think well-off persons are not paying their fair share of taxes, and only 2/3s think that of corps … when every shred of evidence would lead a reasonable person to come to that conclusion.
But that’s the power of the (cor)press, innit?
The TMR (Top Marginal income tax Rate) was 91% for the thirteen years from 1950-1963, acclaimed as the most prosperous years in our history, inclding robust business and a strong middle class. Needless to say the sky did not fall.
Now it;s 32% and look.
To raise it even to 75% is a joke and a travesty which would only prolong the misery in this country caused by the astronomical weakth inequity – which is more than ten times that of other civilized countries. Add to that the 50% more that we pay for health insurance, which, with a Single Payer System (Medicare for all, HR676) paid for by raising the TMR to Eisenhower’s 91%, would solve ALL our problems.
Of course to get that done politically would mean solving our other problems, like corporate domination and absolute negation of Democracy. I really did think this President, with a numerically empowered Congress, was willing to do what has to be done. He could still do it. There are at LEAST three ways to get bills passed in the Senate with 50 votes. That he WON’T do it, is the culmination of the total destruction and demise of America.
But then it was inevitable that, exactly as the U.S.S.R. failed by trying to isolate and implement only ONE of the two elements necessary for a successful society and economy, Totalitarian Socialism; the US has failed irrevocably by trying ONLY the other of the two necessary elements – “Free Market” Capitalism, a corporate plutarchy. Nothing can regain either Democracy or domestic employment from the runaway capitalism and greed that has dominated all legislation. We failed to admit that there are some Industries (Health Care, Utilities/energy, Banking, Insurance, and in general, TBTF size,) that MUST NOT BE ALLOWED FOR PRIVATE PROFIT.