tax cuts

While Americans keep seeing their wages go down, the big business CEO's are getting even fatter wallets:

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.

The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay.

Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. Base salaries in 2009 showed a median increase of around 2%, and annual cash compensation increased just over 1.5%. The troubled stock markets took their toll, and added together CEO pay declined for the third year, though the decrease was marginal, less than three-tenths of a percent. The decline in the wider economy in 2007, 2008 and 2009 far outstripped the decline in CEO pay.

$145 million a year? How in the world can anyone survive on such a puny amount????

You know what I think? We should give these people even bigger tax cuts!

Nick Hanauer, a very successful venture capitalist, has a must read OpEd in Bloomberg News. In it he explains the very fundamentals of economics:

I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.
It is mathematically impossible to invest enough in our economy and our country to sustain the middle class (our customers) without taxing the top 1 percent at reasonable levels again. Shifting the burden from the 99 percent to the 1 percent is the surest and best way to get our consumer-based economy rolling again.

A new report by the Congressional Budgeting Office finds the following:

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

• 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
• 65 percent for the next 19 percent,
• Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
• 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

Actually the bottom 20% hasn’t even kept up with cost of living and inflation. And why does the #OWS movement matter? Take a look at this in graph form, which shows the percentage of income after federal taxes and transfers:

During the period of this study the White House was mostly controlled by the Republican Party. The 2007 data also show the results of the Bush tax cuts, which benefited the top earners far more than anyone else.

If more Americans would take the time to look at the actual numbers instead of listening to talking heads then maybe they would realize that their financial hardship is because of the taxcuts our leaders love giving the rich. We constantly hear the Republican presidential field and Republican leaders say that tax cuts to the corporations and richest Americans will spark job growth, but the fact remains that this dismal job market occurred under these type of tax cuts. The last time we were even close to this the only solution was to raise taxes on this percentile. The President who decided to do that was Ronald Reagan.

I have been tied up the last several days helping my sister get her new house ready so I am a little behind the news. Today I find out the wingnuts have decided to launch their own response to Occupy Wall Street, a movement called the 53%. These are Republicans against the 47% of Americans that make too little to actually have to pay income tax. Today Steve Benen brought up the most interesting point about this group:

There are all kinds of problems with the right’s approach here, including the fact that they seem to want to increase working-class taxes and also seem entirely unaware of the fact that it was Republican tax cuts that pushed so many out of income-tax eligibility in the first place.

In a rapidly growing "movement" on the right we now see Republicans going against their own policies and beliefs. First off they want to raise taxes in the middle of a recession, but only on those that will stimulate demand. We already know that Republicans fail big time in basic economics. They have no comprehension that increased demand means a need for more supply. When you need more supply you need people to make that product and that boils down to hiring. Nope, Republicans believe that if business owners have more money they will just hire and put out product regardless if they are moving inventory or not.

But the biggest thing Benen points out is that the right is now against the Bush tax cuts. That's exactly what created the 47%. So why is the right now so against the tax cuts they championed just months ago? It sounds like another case of partisanship before country or even logic if you ask me. It also sounds like the minions of the right are following the cult leaders out there. Drink thy Kool Aid little tools and don't whine if you win and your taxes go up - that's what you are now fighting for!

People who believe the Republicans want to turn this economy around are sadly mistaken:

The concern arises as numerous top Republicans react coldly to the prospect of temporarily reducing the payroll tax burden on employers and employees -- to juice the economy before federal spending draws down in the years ahead.

Traditionally, and particularly in tough economic times, this and a handful of other stimulative policies have enjoyed bipartisan support. But with the outcome of the 2012 election likely to hinge on the nation's economic trajectory, the GOP is mysteriously rethinking those positions. And Democrats are starting to note of the suspicious timing.

Got that? The Republicans are opposing tax cuts because it might hurt their chances in the elections next year. This is another case of "party before country" and anyone supporting Republicans should be ashamed of that fact.

Of course the Republicans don't deserve all the blame on this. What they are doing is just playing the new system of politics that has been created in this country. Politics has become a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry and by default any politician isn't a good sportsman. They will lie, cheat and steal to come out on top. The biggest failure this highlights is that of the free market, especially when it filters down into our elections.

As Americans scramble today to file their taxes, the GOP is looking for more ways to make that burden even higher on average Americans. Take Tea Party darling and habitual liar Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin. Taking a page from the elder Bush’s campaign, he vowed to never increase taxes. Of course that pledge only applies to the rich:

Yet in his newly proposed budget, now-governor Walker appears to have already broken this pledge. While the budget would lower taxes overall — it includes $83.3 million in tax cuts “primarily for businesses and investors” — it would make up for lost revenue by eliminating tax credits and exemptions that primarily benefit the poor and even some in the middle class.

Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — finds that this would amount to a $49.9 million tax increase on people who receive these credits over the next two years:

Does this sound familiar? Well it should. This type of plan is basically what got past last week in the House, a plan authored by another Wisconsinite – Paul Ryan. Ryan’s plan calls for lowering the tax rate on the rich, while maintaining the current income levels of the federal government. He wants to do all that by also eliminating tax deductions for the poor and middle class.

I am so sick of hearing Republicans like John Boehner say they are there to “represent the people”. Bullshit! They are there to represent special interest. If it was the other way around then they would listen to poll results like this:

Raising taxes on the rich beats out cuts to defense spending, Medicare or Social Security as U.S. adults' top preference on how to close the deficit, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll.

Sixty-one percent of Americans said that increasing taxes to the wealthy should be the first step toward balancing the budget.

Yet the Republicans were willing to let tax cuts for the middle and lower class expire in order to protect tax cuts for the top 2% of this country. The Republicans are nothing but the whores of the ultra-rich.

In a time where the big discussion is rather or not we should extend tax cuts to the top 2% of earners in the country, this is what’s happening:

The poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent during 2009 from 13.2 percent the previous year as household income stayed flat and the number of people without health insurance reached its highest level since such data has been collected, the government announced Thursday.

The first year of Barack Obama's presidency started with 700,000 people losing their jobs each month and sensational reports of formerly middle-class families crowding tent cities across the country. The tent cities, it turned out, were there before the recession started, but the rise in poverty was real: For working age people between 18 and 64, 2009 saw the highest poverty rate -- 12.9 percent -- since 1965.

Remember all the crap about “redistribution of wealth” from the 2008 campaign? Well it’s still going on, but not in the way Republicans portrayed it.