Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 52
September 20, 2018
Another Tax Scam for the RichHard to believe, but the Trump...
Another Tax Scam for the Rich
Hard to believe, but the Trump administration is proposing yet another massive tax
windfall for the rich.
It would be to reduce their capital gains taxes. Those
are taxes on the increased value of their stocks and bonds, businesses, and
other valuables, when they sell them. Trump would do this by eliminating
whatever portion of that increased value was due to inflation.
Here are three reasons why reducing capital gains taxes would be another tax scam for the rich.
1. The people who’d get most of the benefits are already richer than ever and pay a lower effective tax rate than they have in decades. An estimated 63 percent
of the benefits of this proposal would go to the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans, while the bottom 80 percent of us would get
only 1 percent of its benefits, according to a University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School analysis.
If anything, Congress should raise capital gains taxes, not lower them. The capital gains tax rate is already lower than the rate on ordinary income. Yet the wealthy now own most of the nation’s assets and enjoy most of the capital gains. In 2016 (the most recent date for which data are available), the richest 10 percent owned 84 percent of the entire stock market.
2. The cost of this change would be a whopping $10
billion a year, for the next 10 years. That’s just about the yearly cost of
funding free lunches for 20 million poor kids. Yet the federal debt is already ballooning. Over ten years, this proposal would increase it by an estimated $100 to $300 billion.
3. Trump and his administration
say they have the power to make this change by themselves without even being
authorized to do so by Congress. Rubbish. Congress has already decided that capital gains taxes
should not be indexed for inflation. That’s why, when the same idea came up
during the George H.W. Bush administration, the Department of Justice’s Office
of Legal Counsel stopped it cold.
It’s another big handout to the wealthy, another huge increase in the
federal deficit, and it’s illegal. Don’t let Trump and his enablers get away
with this tax scam for the rich.
September 16, 2018
The Three Big Lessons We Didn’t Learn from the Economic Crisis
of money gambling with other people’s money, Wall Street nearly...
September 13, 2018
HOW TO BUILD PROGRESSIVE POWEREven in these dark times, I am...
HOW TO BUILD PROGRESSIVE POWER
Even in these dark times, I am confident that we can
defeat Donald Trump and all he stands for. But it will require building a
multiracial, middle, and working class coalition dedicated to renewing our
democracy and creating an economy that works for all, not just the privileged
few. Here’s how:
First: At the heart of this coalition must be deep and abiding
commitment to the democratic principles of political equality, equal
opportunity, and justice for all. These same ideals that animated many of
us—both white and black Americans—to fight for civil rights and voting rights
in the 1960s.
Second: Central to renewing our democracy is getting big money
out of politics. For decades, the wealthy and corporations have flooded our
political system with campaign contributions and lobbying dollars. In turn,
Washington has rewritten the rules of the economy in their favor. This vicious
cycle of money and politics funnels more and more wealth and power to those at
the top.
Third: We have to ensure the economy works for all Americans,
not just the wealthy and corporations. Since the 1980s, the wages and economic
prospects of the typical American have gone nowhere. Nearly 80 percent now live
paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks have grown less secure.
Addressing these economic hardships requires a bold agenda: a
basic income, a jobs guarantee, Medicare-for-All, access to free public
colleges and universities, stronger unions, and worker representation on corporate boards.
Fourth and finally: whether you voted for Bernie or Hillary or
anybody else, we must put aside our differences. If we fail to do this, we are
playing into the hands of those who seek to divide us. Trump and his enablers
will continue to try to divide us, stoking racial divisions, stirring
animosity, and breeding confusion and despair. We must not let them.
We
have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have always been when we
sought to become more perfect than we had been. Together, we can do so
again.
September 10, 2018
Trump’s 4 Biggest Lies about Today’s Economy
Why Kavanaugh Shouldn’t be Confirmed
September 8, 2018
The Dangerous Myth of DeregulationTrump and his appointees are...
The Dangerous Myth of Deregulation
Trump and his appointees are on a binge of deregulation that masks another kind of trickle-down economics, where the gains go to the top and the rest of us bear the risks and losses.
They say getting rid of regulations frees up businesses to be more profitable. Maybe. But regulations also protect you and me — from being harmed, fleeced, shafted, injured, or sickened by corporate products and services.
So when the Trump administration gets rid of regulations, top executives and big investors may make more money, but the rest of us bear more risks and harm.
After heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency has scaled back the way the government decides whether some of the most dangerous chemicals on the market pose health and safety risks. Which may increase the profits of the chemical industry but will leave the rest of us less protected from toxins that can make their way into dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers, shampoos and cosmetics.
Scott Pruitt may be gone from the EPA, but Trump put a former coal executive in his place. Which means the EPA will continue to try to repeal the Clean Power Plan, a regulation that set the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from U.S. power plants. If it’s repealed, wealthy shareholders may do better, but most of us will bear the costs of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and faster climate change.
Trump’s Education Department under Betsy DeVos has stopped investigating for-profit colleges. Which may result in more profits for the for-profits, but leaves many young people and their parents more vulnerable to fraud.
Trump’s Labor Department is reducing the number of workers who are eligible for overtime pay. And it’s proposing to allow teenagers to work long hours in dangerous jobs that child labor laws used to protect them from. Again, more profits for business, more cost and risk for the rest of us.
Trump is weakening banking regulations put in place after the financial crisis of 2008, even rolling back the so-called Volcker Rule that prevented banks from gambling with commercial deposits. The result: More profits for the banks, and more risk on you and me.
Trump’s gang of industry lobbyists and executives who are busy deregulating the same industries they once represented will no doubt do very well when they head back into the private sector.
But the rest of us won’t do well. We may not know for years the extent we’re unprotected – until the next financial collapse, next public health crisis, next upsurge in fraud, or next floods or droughts because the EPA failed to do what it could to slow and reverse climate change.
Don’t fall for it. Trump’s binge of deregulation is just another form of trickle-down economics – where the gains go the top, and nothing trickles down except risks and losses.
September 6, 2018
How You Can Stop
Trump’s Lie MachineTrump is
ramping up his lies...
How You Can Stop
Trump’s Lie Machine
Trump is
ramping up his lies through his three amplifiers: Fox News, his rallies, and
his Twitter account.
His lies
aren’t subject to the filters traditionally applied to presidential statements,
because Trump doesn’t respond to questions
from the mainstream press. He doesn’t meet in public with anyone
who disagrees with him, and he shuns experts.
This
means his lies go out to millions of Americans, unfiltered. So what can you do?
1. First,
boycott Fox News advertisers. Many of Trump’s lies originate with Fox News; Fox
News amplifies the ones that originate with Trump. Trump has even appointed Bill Shine,
the former number two at Fox News, as his deputy chief of staff for
communications. So you
can vote with your wallet and starve the beast. Here’s the link to Fox News’s advertisers.
2. Second,
stop his rallies from becoming free propaganda events rebroadcast by most TV
and radio outlets. If Trump
and his enablers hold a rally in your community, write a letter or op-ed to
your local newspapers calling out his lies and outlining why you oppose his
agenda.
3. Third,
his tweets, also brimming with lies, go out to over 50 million Americans each day. You can
write Twitter and tell it to stop enabling those lies. Twitter defines its mission as
providing a “healthy public conversation.” Let them know that demagoguery isn’t
healthy.
No
democracy can function under a continuous bombardment of unmediated lies.
We’re not
going to get Trump to stop lying but we can at least limit his ability to
amplify those lies. It’s time for all of us to take action and defend the
truth. Now.
September 1, 2018
The Next Crash
of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near
meltdown of...
August 24, 2018
Don’t Just Impeach Trump. Annul His Presidency
is if there’s overwhelming evidence he rigged the 2016 election....
August 23, 2018
UNCHECKED AND UNBALANCED: WHY CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS HAVE...
UNCHECKED AND UNBALANCED: WHY CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS HAVE ABDICATED THEIR RESPONSIBILITY
As long as Republicans control
Congress, Donald Trump’s reckless behavior will go completely unchecked.
Republicans in Congress have become
the Party of Trump, abandoning their self-avowed conservative principles to
enable his agenda:
When Trump attacks the Mueller
investigation they claim it’s not necessary for Congress to protect the
investigators. A group of House Republicans even
took the unheard-of step of filing articles of impeachment against Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — less than 2 weeks after Mueller’s
investigation, the investigation Rosenstein is supervising, issued 12
additional indictments against Russian operatives.
When the Trump administration
separates immigrant children from their families at the border, congressional
Republicans do nothing.
When Trump insults our allies and
cozies up to Vladimir Putin, they take no action to constrain him.
When
Trump personally profits from business deals with foreign governments, they
don’t investigate his conflicts of interest,
ignoring the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
The Framers of the Constitution
never intended for Congress to become a political arm of the president. Before Trump, Congress had exercised its oversight authority to
hold the executive branch accountable, conducting investigations, holding public
hearings. Twice in history, the House has impeached a president
for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
So why have Republicans, who now
control Congress, surrendered their constitutional duty to rein in this
out-of-control president?
It’s not just that Trump has
commandeered the party, making threats against lawmakers who cross him.
Here’s the real reason for the Republicans’ abdication of their Constitutional responsibility: Establishment Republicans and their wealthy donors tolerate Trump’s attacks on our
democracy as long as he gives them massive tax cuts and slashes regulations so they can make even more money.
It is time to hold Trump’s enablers accountable, and vote them out of
office. This November 6th, we can send them packing.
But voter turnout is
everything. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to win a majority of the House, and 2 seats to win a majority of the Senate.
Every
race counts. Every vote matters in order to restore Congress to its
constitutional role of checking the presidency.
Robert B. Reich's Blog
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