So, say you're a writer at Bloomberg, the corporate financier business journal. And you want to tell people that tax cuts for investors are overrated and poisonous to public policy in this time and place. But you know your editors love tax cuts for investors. How to do it, how to do it?
You would write a seemingly, "Oh it's complex. On the one hand, on the other hand" article, but you make sure you quote Emannuel Saez at UC Berkeley, who is a foremost authority on money that goes to rich people in the modern system put in during the Reagan years and perfected in the Clinton years.
And presto, you get this past the editors.
For me, I hate the entire idea of taxing capital gains differently from wages. Investors I see and deal with like the idea of being in power or at the start of something that gets big. That is their kick. The money is less important to them, except when they complain to a media person in the room, as they already have gobs of money--to invest. The person doing back breaking work, the doctor in the ER as the article writer, Ben Steverman, notes, are taxed ultimately at higher percentages on much less money to live on.
Once we begin to understand the process, we ask, where does our money go when the revenue comes in? Well, it first and foremost goes to the maintenance of the Empire, where we feel a need as a nation to bomb other places around the world and wonder why we get blowback. The other place is to look at what Robert Reich looked at when he served in the Clinton administration and what was then sixty billion for corporate welfare. It is now over one hundred billion in gifts to wealthy corporations every single year.
So yes, this article is well worth the read. Bravo to the brave writer who got this past his editor.
