Monday, Monday, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee was good.
90/50.
At the height of richest individual taxes and corporate taxes those were the percentages they paid. In the early 1960s there were around ten billionaires in the US, and only 80 thousand individuals were considered millionaires, according to Oregon State University and Census org. Estimates vary, but not wildly.
High tax rates for corporations and the richest individuals didn’t stop Henry Ford from becoming a billionaire, although taxes weren’t so high in his lifetime and some suggest he got away with paying much less than he should, by those day’s standards. Still he paid a considerable amount and dared double his employees’ minimum wage, although opposing high taxes for the rich, of course.
Elon Musk is no Henry Ford, and the number of billionaires is now more than a thousand times higher than it was long after Ford’s death. As for taxation of the rich, we all know where it went: down to zero in too many cases, thanks to loop holes and deductions. And yet we fund them with government subsidies all the time, to the tune of billions of dollars. It seems logical to fix both cases.
Ending subsidies for billionaires alone would save us a ton of money, and combined with a higher tax on the top richest people and corporations would make government able to maintain and improve our social programs to levels higher than any European country. Yet, the boldest mainstream proposals to “tax the rich” are just cosmetic, and the wildest ones proposed by radicals are just unrealistic.
We should take a look at those free radicals as a way to push mainstream thinking out of the fence and their hypocrisy. They tend to do that and it’s why radical thinking is necessary. It both shows us how crazy the world would be and how we can prevent that from happening. Demand the impossible as a condition for realistic change, remember?
Taxing the rich, individuals and corporations, to levels close to those we knew before the 1970s is not a crazy idea; it’s the logical thing to do. So why are we looking for a 2% tax on them, 88/48 percent points below the highest rate once in effect? Could the fact the ones who could make it happen are beholden to those same billionaires and corporations be the reason why? Hmm…
“Taxing the rich” sounds nice, but as long as the rich own those who would tax them it will never happen. Any politician who promises you increasing taxes for the richest among us without telling you they refuse any “donation” from them is lying. Because those are not donations; they are bribes. Until we find people who make their mission in life to end the role private funding of any kind plays in politics there will be no “taxing the rich”.
We are rapidly approaching a recession, possibly a depression, and all those who pay and buy our politicians are about to become hundreds, thousands of times richer because of it. Sounds like great news for those in their pockets, doesn’t it. No substancial change will happen before we get all private money out of politics except a change for the worse. But only for the 90% plus of us. The others will be just dandy. Politicians included.
Resist & Oppose!
