Tag Archives: politics of envy

Obama: ending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy is about math, not envy

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“Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans or do we want to keep investing in everything else? We can’t do both.” — President Obama in Las Vegas on Thursday

“Well, the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice. Right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should.” — Bill Gates in an interview with the BBC Wednesday

“President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision.” — Mitt Romney

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” — Elizabeth Warren

The math / the “envy:”

According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, the average tax cuts received by the richest 1 percent of Americans under the Republican candidates plans would be 270 times as large as the cut received by the middle class (via: Think Progress):

The share of tax cuts going to the richest one percent of Americans under these plans would range from over a third to almost half. The average tax cuts received by the richest one percent would be up to 270 times as large as the average tax cut received by middle-income Americans.

Using a current policy baseline, millions of middle class families would see a tax increase under Romney’s plan.

Romney’s income is 12 times higher than Obama’s, yet Romney paid half of Obama’s tax rate

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The numbers on the ‘Politics of Envy’ –

  • Obama: income – $1.8 million, tax paid $454,000 (25 percent)
  • Romney: income – $21.7 million, tax paid $3 million (13.8 percent)

According to 2010 tax returns (PDF) released by the White House, the president paid $454,000 in federal taxes on $1.8 million earned — or about 25 percent of his gross income. Over the same time period, Romney paid about $3 million in federal taxes on gross income of $21.7 million, a rate of about 13.8 percent. Estimates released by the campaign showed that Romney expected to pay $3.2 million in taxes for 2011 on $20.9 million income, an effective 15.4 percent rate. – Romney earned 12 times more than Obama, had nearly half the tax rate

Politics of envy though.


image: BobCesca

Mitt Romney’s message to the poor and middle class

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Here’s what Mitt thinks:

image: christianbaled

“Again, the point here is not that Romney did something wrong by paying the low rates current tax law lavishes on people like him. It is, instead, that in an election campaign that will be in part about issues of inequality, the likely GOP candidate is a living, breathing, coupon-clipping example of how favorable our system is to the very rich; and he also happens to be advocating policies that would greatly benefit people like him, while hurting the poor and the middle class.

PS: Yes, my tax rate is a lot higher than Romney’s. And I support policies that would raise it further.”

— Paul Krugman on Romney’s Taxes 

via: randomactsofchaos

Related: 

Six fast facts on Romney’s low, low taxes and big, big income

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Think Progress: 6 Facts About Mitt Romney’s Taxes/ Lack Thereof

  1. Romney paid a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans, at 13.9 percent.
  2. Romney makes more in a day than the average American makes in a year, and becomes a 1 percenter every week.
  3. Romney likely paid $0 in payroll taxes.
  4. Romney has accounts in countries notorious for tax dodging, like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands.
  5. Romney and Gingrich’s tax plans would slash Romney’s taxes in half.
  6. Romney needs four lawyers, including the former IRS commissioner to defend his tax plan.

via: think-progress

…

Note: #5 — Newt’s taxes would be slashed also.

Romney’s tax return release: too little, too late?

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Josh Marshall thinks the reality of Mitt’s tax rate and income, combined with being forced into releasing his returns, are very bad news for his campaign:

“My quick take on this is that there’s a lot here that’s fairly damaging for Romney in political terms, largely for the reasons I set forth earlier in this post. Beyond that there’s a lesson about the consequences of losing control of events. For a man running for president in 2012 it’s damaging stuff. But now everything in these documents comes with a preface that reads “We really wanted to keep this secret. But that didn’t work out.”

 

Mitt’s tax returns and the politics of envy (we’re all envious about his effective tax rate)

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Pages and pages are devoted to foreign entities in which Romney is invested. Many are located in places like Luxembourg, Ireland and the Cayman Islands, all famous tax havens. None shows much income. “These entities are not evading one dime of taxes.” — Brad Malt, Romney’s trustee

“I will not apologize for success.” The Huffington Post

Bowing to increasing political pressure to provide more detail about his vast wealth, the former private equity executive released tax returns indicating he and his wife, Ann, paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010. They expect to pay a 15.4 percent rate when they file their returns for 2011.

Wow, his taxes will GO UP from 13.9 percent to 15.4 percent? No wonder Mitt wants even more tax cuts for the wealthy / himself. If he paid 13.9 percent in 2010, I wonder what effective tax rate he paid in prior years…

Romney’s tax rate is below that of most wage-earning Americans because most of his income, as outlined in more than 500 pages of tax documents, flows from capital gains on investments.

Under the U.S. tax code, capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, compared with a top tax rate of 35 percent for wage earners.

Wage earners are disposable plebeians. That’s why we pay a higher effective tax rate on our incomes.

[...] Romney’s campaign officials stressed that his tax rate is based mostly on income from investments that are held in a blind trust. Romney’s holdings include an undisclosed amount in funds based in the Grand Cayman Islands and other overseas entities.

Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans – along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney – were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes.

Sure. Of course that has to be SAID. We’ll never know, one way or the other. Can you imagine how many “Romneybot, Inc.” accountants, campaign managers, and public relations personnel worked 24/7 to give us the return that was released today?

They also stressed that Romney, whose holdings are in three blind trusts, makes no decisions as to how his money is invested.

Hahaha, you see? Mitt doesn’t know how his $250 million is managed or in which foreign accounts in the Caymans and Switzerland it’s hidden! He just spends it! Trust him.

What’s a Blind trust? It’s a trust in which the fiduciaries, namely the trustees or those who have been given power of attorney, have full discretion over the assets, and the trust beneficiaries have no knowledge of the holdings of the trust and no right to intervene in their handling. Blind trusts are generally used when a settlor (sometimes called a trustor or donor) wishes to keep the beneficiary unaware of the specific assets in the trust, such as to avoid conflict of interest between the beneficiary and the investments. Politicians or others in sensitive positions often place their personal assets (including investment income) into blind trusts, to avoid public scrutiny and accusations of conflicts of interest when they direct government funds to the private sector. — Wikipedia

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who is calling for raising taxes on high-income Americans, said he blames Congress, not Romney, for the governor’s tax rate. “It’s the wrong policy to have,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu in an interview yesterday. “He’s not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don’t fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that’s about half what the average person in my office pays.” —  Warren Buffett speaking about capital gains tax rates vs. earned income tax rates

Related: 

Bill Maher on Mitt Romney: What would you rather do: help poor people or have money in your mouth?!

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Bill Maher discusses why people hate Mitt Romney (the first video begins at his comments about Romney and the second video is the rest):


…

Maher:

You know, venture capitalists are not creators. They’re business men who find weak companies and prey on them. And Mitt can’t understand why anyone would ever question capitalism, no matter how feral it gets. “What? We found a wounded animal and we ate it!” 

When asked about wealth distribution and income inequality, Mitt said, “It’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms.” Quiet rooms? Why? It’s a wealth gap not anal warts. 

No wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it out loud — the most recent payroll data came in this week and the median annual income for an American is $26,353 a year. Or as Mitt calls it — a rounding error. At one of the debates Mitt said, “I won’t try and define who’s rich and who’s not rich, I want everybody to be rich.” Cue the morons in the audience clapping their hands like seals at a Seaworld getting a bucket of chum. 

Well I can define who’s rich and who’s not: who’s rich is Mitt Romney and who’s not is someone making $26,000 a year…

Mitt Romney’s “politics of envy” (i.e. bottom to top income redistribution via tax laws)

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It’s only class warfare if the riff-raff complains.

Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet

Andy Rosenthal gets a bit of a laugh out of Mitt Romney’s insistence that the only reason anyone would talk about inequality is the “politics of envy”, and that if the subject is discussed at all, it should only be in “quiet rooms”.

Indeed. Because there’s no way anyone who isn’t motivated by envy could be interested in and possibly concerned about [the above image].

Trickle-down economics has now become shut-your-trap economics.

source: ryking

If only the little people (you and I) could afford lobbyists to get Congress to write tax laws that enriched our personal quintiles! And here’s some more Romney-goodness for America! Via Think Progress:

Republican presidential candidate Romney’s plan for federal taxation begins with a hefty portion of Bush-era tax policy: Permanently extend all the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, including those that mainly benefit the extremely wealthy. Then Romney layers on a heaping batch of new tax cuts for the rich, including a full repeal of the estate tax—which is currently paid by only the richest 0.14 percent of estates—and a massive corporate tax cut.

The result is a tax code that asks even less of the rich than George W. Bush’s did.

Romney’s plan also gives nearly 60 percent of its benefit to the richest 1 percent of Americans, while preserving the loopholes that let the wealthy pay less than middle class families.

Romney constantly claims that he’s “not worried about rich people,” and that his tax plan is “focused” on the middle class. In fact, he’s absurdly claimed that he’s not proposing any tax cuts for the wealthy at all. But as it turns out, he would lavish even more tax breaks onto the rich than did George Bush, even after Bush’s tax cuts were a significant factor leading to today’s large budget deficits.

Read more…

Does ANYONE believe Romney, the King of Bain, is running for any other reason that to enrich himself and his cronies even further? Anyone? And does anyone believe that for Mitt Romney, a quarter-billion dollar fortune is enough?

But watch: the rightwing base will fall in lockstep in November and vote for Willard — and, at the same time, against their own best interests. ODS is a terrible disease. These people really do hate Obama more than they respect themselves.

GOP tax plans: tax cut for richest 1 percent would be 270 times as large as middle class tax cut

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Think Progress reports,

According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, the average tax cuts received by the richest 1 percent of Americans under the Republican plans would be 270 times as large as the cut received by the middle class:

The share of tax cuts going to the richest one percent of Americans under these plans would range from over a third to almost half. The average tax cuts received by the richest one percent would be up to 270 times as large as the average tax cut received by middle-income Americans.

Perry wins the award with a tax cut for the richest 1 percent that is 270 times larger than his middle class tax cut, while Gingrich’s is 190 times larger. Santorum and Romney pull up the rear with tax cuts for the rich that are 100 times larger than the cuts for the middle class, while CTJ did not analyze Jon Huntsman or Ron Paul’s plans. (CTJ uses a current law baseline, rather than a current policy baseline, to calculate its cuts. Using a current policy baseline, millions of middle class families would see a tax increase under Romney’s plan.)

If you don’t think that’s “fair,” well… you’re probably just jealous. But can we discuss these kinds of “envy-producing” tax policies and income inequalities? Sure, in quiet rooms, using your inside voice, please:

MATT LAUER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?

MITT ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.