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A new poll by those natural bedfellows 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair offers some fodder for discussion.
In this month’s poll—the first in a series—we note that the populists are out in force. Or, rather, are inside and answering their phones. Of all those polled, more than half said, Yeah, sure, go right ahead and raise taxes to 50 percent or higher on the very wealthiest; 43 percent said they would consider becoming “Wal-Mart patients” (that is, they would take advantage if the chain offered basic health-care services); and, speaking of Wal-Mart, 48 percent felt that the chain “best symbolizes America today.” True, some of those people might have meant that cynically. (But only a cynic would really think that.)
What do you think – are we really ready to roll back Reagan’s tax cuts, or is this just some recession-era ephemera?
8 Comments
I think America’s ready. But the real question is, do the Dems have the guts to try?
Yep, that is the question.
Hey! That’s fine, but we need to roll back W’s morally indefensible tax cuts for the wealthy as well.
The Reagan tax cuts came with strings: A lot of deduction cuts.
I think we should leave the tax rates alone. After all the lowest 50% of incomes pay only 3% of the taxes so it appears the wealthy are paying their share already.
Maybe we should stop spending so much. We’ve never tried that before.
That’s crap. It’s not a question of the sum of taxes paid by the upper 50%. The question is how much do people in various brackets pay. It’s quite well known that the percent of income Warren Buffett pays in taxes is less than the percent his Secretary pays. He knows that’s unfair and he’s said so. What’s wrong with you that you can’t see the truth of something that as plain as the nose on your face?
Wait a second… The rich pay taxes? Only a few “honest” rich people pay taxes and don’t complain. That’s a TINY number…
Stop spending? Sure bring everybody home, close all our overseas bases and cut Military spending by HALF.
It would have been cheaper to give Americans making less than $250,000 a year all the bank bailout money, that would have pushed this country out of recession in a hurry.
How many people would have paid off cc debt? Bought solar panels, tankless water heaters, new cars, vacations, etc. Look what giving the banks has done? Largely NOTHING.
People that say shhh like this aren’t thinking clearly. There many cuts we can make in spending and most of it is related to Imperialism or protecting the richest 5% of the nation…
The US ran just fine at its previous tax level, the problem was by the time Carter was elected the true cost of ‘Nam came calling….
We have a critical problem in this country: wealth is subverting domocracy and wrecking the economy. The gap between the wealthiest 5% and the rest of us is wider than it has been in more than a century. When this happens anywhere in the world, economies go into decline and democracies degenerate into banana republics.
In this country, the richest 5% have so much money that they have nothing to spend it on but buying up the media, buying up politicians and judges, fighting hobby wars like Iraq, and gambling with their hedge funds. Not only do they NOT pay their share of taxes, they make the rest of us pay extra to cover their gambling losses and then lend us the money to do so at fat interest, while cutting wages and benefits and systematically defunding public institutions like schools.
Campaign finance reform has foundered on the ludicrous claim that money is speech. So the only way to get the money out of politics and get politicians who will restore economic justice in this country is to make sure that the rich have less money to play with. We understood that at the start of the twentieth century when we reigned in the robber barons with inheritance taxes, income taxes, and labor laws.
Inheritance should be essentially taxed out of existence. Every man and woman should make his or her own way. Otherwise free-enterprise capitalism can’t work. Let real innovators and go-getters get rich, not their degenerate off-spring. Hereditary wealth means hereditary power, aristocracy, which is anathema to American values.
Income tax was originally targeted exclusively at the very rich. The aim was the defense of democracy, not some notion of “fair shares”. Historically, income tax rates have been above 90% for the very wealthiest. I believe that the highest rates ever were under the bright-Red Socialist Dwight Eisenhower during the Korean War. They should be at least as high now, given the far greater problems facing us.
Long-term capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. Short-term windfalls, speculative gains, and gambling income should be automtically taxed at the highest rate.
Finally, we know that financial speculation has consumed far too much of the country’s wealth and distorted its economy. We need national usury laws to limit interest earnings to a few percentage points above the Federal rate.
At one point during the war Roosevelt had higher rates than Eisenhower. But you’re right that Eisenhower had 90% marginal tax rates. Of course, Eisenhower was a patriotic American, and he thought that paying taxes was one of the obligations of citizenship.