Taxes

A tax-the-rich bombshell has dropped in the presidential race. The French presidential race. But this bombshell’s blast will almost certainly reverberate elsewhere. Maybe even in the United States.

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President Obama has proposed a specific new minimum tax rate for millionaires. Should America's rich feel angry or relieved? We check the IRS tax data archives for an answer.

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President Obama put American manufacturing literally at the front and center of his State of the Union speech. American manufacturing was at the front of the speech and at the center of a "blueprint" for bringing back jobs and strengthening our economy. By placing manufacturing front and center he has taken this conversation further than any President before him. more »

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Mitt Romney's ultra-low tax rate on his ultra-high income is reviving questions about the breaks and perks that the wealthiest of the 1% receive from the rest of us. One of these is a special low tax rate for investments -- as if anyone needed special tax incentives to induce them to make a bundle.

High Incomes At The Top more »

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Today's swaggering rich are increasingly stuffing their dollars into investments that do America's 99 percent not one whit of good.

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Today's super rich can't turn tin into gold. But they can get Uncle Sam to loan them free money. At the expense, of course, of America's bottom 99 percent.

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Verizon needs to open a call center, which means a few new low-paying jobs. They get local governments bidding against each other, offering all kinds of tax breaks if only they'll bring those jobs there. Before the bidding war these jobs will be in the economy somewhere, but local schools, police, etc. will be funded. more »

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Watch this interview on taxes. Watch how fast the argument against taxing the wealthy turns into an argument against democracy. more »

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Thanks to a hit piece by one of those Beltway pseudo-"bipartisans" we can now state conclusively what many of us have long suspected: Occupy Wall Street speaks for the American majority. We've got the polling numbers to prove it. We now know where the real center lies.

It's easy to understand why people like Douglas Schoen are lining up to attack OWS. It shines a spotlight on their cardboard centrism - that think-tank designed, artificially-inseminated, vat-grown corporate ideology so widely rejected by the public at large. OWS represents the real American consensus, and that has them running scared.

But Schoen's Wall Street Journal editorial falls so far short of the mark that it elicits only a soft sense of pity. It illustrates nothing except the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of those out-of-step Democrats who sell themselves to conservatism under the 'centrist' or 'Third Way' banner.

Oh, wait. It also provides enough data to undermine his entire argument - and possibly his entire ideology. more »

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A long time ago, in an historical America, lawmakers determined a progressive tax code to be the fairest and most logical for all.

The legislators asked more of those who had benefitted most from the advantages America provides. They asked less of those who benefitted least. more »

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