at least obama American leads in one thing: highest tax rate

Setanta84 said:

I guess you're not aware that:

1) The both the tax rate on paper and the effective tax rate here is ridiculously low compared to most other advanced industrialized countries.

2) "Business-friendly" tax rates actually lead to gross income inequality and long-term recessions/depressions as a result. See: The last 40 years.

3) The last three "Democratic" administrations have been on your side on these issues.

Click to expand...

Setanta84 said:

We don't have the highest tax rate. That's a lie rich people and their cronies tell low-information voters when they want them to vote against their own interests without directly appealing to identity politics. (The US had tax rates on the rich going into the 90 percentile during the post-war boom, i.e. the richest and most productive period for any country in human history.)

And, if you just bothered to look at the guy's actual policy and budget proposals, you'd see that he actually is as "business-friendlu"/i.e. anti-worker and neoliberal as you'd want.

In most cases, Republican obstructionism has actually led to much more progressive outcomes than what would have happened without it. (Hint: Without the Tea Party doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, you would have seen dramatic, compound cuts to what is left of the New Deal social safety net by now.)

Click to expand...

Setanta84 said:

Yes, yes, I see. I am mistaken.

America's high tax rate is why we have very similar conditions to the last time America led the world in having a regressive tax platform, i.e. 1920s-levels of income inequality, historically high long-term unemployment, and almost all of the wealth in the country in the hands of a few hundred people. (Despite the fact that high taxes would actually extract that wealth and inject it into the economy and result in a wider distribution.)

It all makes sense--or not.

Click to expand...

Setanta84 said:

We don't have the highest tax rate. That's a lie rich people and their cronies tell low-information voters when they want them to vote against their own interests without directly appealing to identity politics. (The US had tax rates on the rich going into the 90 percentile during the post-war boom, i.e. the richest and most productive period for any country in human history.)

And, if you just bothered to look at the guy's actual policy and budget proposals, you'd see that he actually is as "business-friendlu"/i.e. anti-worker and neoliberal as you'd want.

In most cases, Republican obstructionism has actually led to much more progressive outcomes than what would have happened without it. (Hint: Without the Tea Party doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, you would have seen dramatic, compound cuts to what is left of the New Deal social safety net by now.)

Click to expand...

...

It’s a race about whether Illini voters understand fully how much trouble the state is in. Even with Mr. Quinn’s giant tax hike, the state is bleeding cash. It has billions in unpaid bills to vendors — a problem that has persisted for years — and its credit rating is the worst in the nation after a recent round of additional downgrades. There have been 13 downgrades on Illinois bonds since Quinn took over.

The corporate tax rate of 9.5 percent, the fourth highest in the United States, combined with the federal tax rate gives Illinois a business tax exceeding any national corporate income tax in the industrialized world. After the 2011 tax hike, the state had the largest rate of outward migration in the nation. Over the last five years it has been in the bottom ten states in the nation in job growth.

The income-tax rate was 3 percent when Quinn entered office. He raised it to 5 percent and now the teachers’ unions want to raise it again to 7, 8, or 9 percent. They also want to get rid of the state’s constitutional requirement for a flat tax. “If Quinn is reelected,” says Rauner, “taxes are going way up in the next four years.”

Perhaps Illinois voters will wake up to what is happening in neighboring states like Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Reform Republican governors there have been cherry-picking businesses from Chicago and the entire state. “We love it here in Indiana when Illinois raises its taxes,” says Hoosier State governor Mike Pence. When you fly into O’Hare Airport and walk down the terminal, there are massive ads explaining how much more pro-growth Indiana is than Illinois.

Some skeptics say that even if Mr. Rauner wins, he won’t be able to overturn the corrupt machine in Springfield. Don’t be sure about that. If Rauner makes it to the governor’s mansion, he will have a gigantic mandate from voters to turn Springfield upside down and get the finances in order. The big losers will be the teachers’ unions, whose clout will be greatly diminished — it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

“This race is about whether the people of Illinois want a major change in political leadership and direction. We’re headed financially in the direction of Detroit,” he says. After a decade of crime, corruption, cronyism, and credit collapse, God help this once great state if the voters opt for four more years of the same.

Click to expand...

... Obama mocks businesses. And now he’s hauling out an election-year populist whine about “economic patriotism.” He’s attacking companies that merge with foreign businesses and reincorporate in lower-tax foreign countries. It’s called inversion. And Obama wants to stop it in the name of patriotism.

In an interview with my CNBC colleague Steve Liesman, Obama talked about how businesses are ungrateful for “the range of benefits that have helped to build companies, create value, [and] create profits.” He complained that these firms are moving their “technical address simply to avoid paying taxes.”

That sounds a bit like, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

But the issue isn’t avoiding all taxes. If a U.S. business reincorporates overseas it still pays the same record-breaking 35 percent tax rate on its U.S. income. The difference is that it doesn’t pay 35 percent on profits made in foreign countries. That’s the double tax it is trying to avoid.

We are the only nation that has this goofy system. And it reduces after-tax profits and renders our companies less competitive. That’s why nearly $2 trillion in cash from American companies is sitting overseas.

But Obama could turn this around in a blink. He could say, “We need that cash to grow the economy, create more jobs, and yes, to build more infrastructure. So I’m going to grant a small repatriation fee of 5 percent to bring that money back and put it to work at home.”

He could then say, “And to make American business number one, we’re gonna drop the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent — with full cash expensing for new investment –and scrap all other deductions and special credits. In other words, we’re gonna end crony capitalism and corporate welfare, just as I pledged in my 2008 campaign. And that includes the Ex-Im bank. ”

He could then say he understands from numerous studies that 70 percent of the benefits of a corporate tax cut will flow to working wage earners while the rest will flow to lower-priced consumers. And he could add that we’re going to allow pass-through S-corps and LLCs who now pay the personal tax rate to reincorporate and take advantage of the new lower C-corp rates.

And that’s when he could argue that American companies must come home and stay home.

Nobody, including myself, likes the idea of foreign-based inversions or foreign-parked cash. But corporate tax reform is the solution, not corporate punishment.

The president sometimes gives lip service to corporate tax reform. But he never follows through. There have been a dozen good proposals down through the years. But Obama keeps blaming Republicans in Congress, even though he has been completely disengaged from any serious talks about tax reform.

Five years ago Simpson-Bowles had a good corporate tax reform. The president ignored it. Democratic Senator Max Baucus developed a corporate tax-reform package when he was chair of the Senate Finance Committee. It was completely disregarded by the White House. And Republican Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, delivered a comprehensive tax reform that included corporations. It wasn’t perfect, but the White House overlooked that too.

And now it looks like corporate tax reform is dead again this year. The Obama Democrats will try to push through a bill to stop foreign re-incorporations. It will never pass. And they’ll keep trashing business and turning up the flame on the class-warfare burner. Divide the country and bash success. The same old tired themes.

Click to expand...

4est_4est_Gump said:

Transformative Change had a real meaning.



But he wasn't a Socialist.

Click to expand...