Kudos to Ross Douthat for his rebuttal to David Brooks on Piketty. Now, who will rebut Douthat about recent tax-policy history?
It turns out that Paul Krugman is not the only NYT columnist/blogger who reads Angry Bear. Ross Douthat does, too!
Okay, seriously: Douthat’s delicate-ballet filleting of Brooks’s take on Piketty is priceless.
Now, maybe someone can fillet Douthat’s take on tax-rate increases for “Americans making (or inheriting) in the $100,000-$500,000 range,” which, he says, “is a demographic, it should be noted, that’s proven much more successful at resisting tax increases in the age of Obama than have the true plutocrats above them.”
Hmm. You’d almost think it was the Republicans rather than Obama and the congressional Democrats who tried to restore to Clinton-era levels the Bush-era tax cuts for people in the $250,000-$500,000 range, and estate taxes, and that Obama and the congressional Dems put a halt to it. Unless, that is, you have no familiarity with the psychology term “projection.” Or you just have a short memory.
This did happen in the age of Obama, though, so I guess it’s fine to suggest falsely that it was Obama’s choice. Obama orchestrated Republican obstructionism. Who knew?
And that Republican threat last December to shut down the government again, before finally acceding to some part of Obama’s tax-rate increases? Or am I confused, and it actually was the other way around?
Elsewhere in his post, Douthat says the Democrats won’t propose higher tax rates on people in that income bracket because, if they do, people in that bracket won’t vote for them. I guess he’s surveyed the many millions of people in that bracket who voted for Obama in 2012 despite his tax-increase proposals, and learned that they’ve had a change of heart since the election.
Douthat is too silly and uniformed for words.
To the extent that Obama spelled out his plan for Social Security ‘reform’ during his campaign it was to extend FICA to people with COVERED EARNINGS above $250k. And nowhere in that proposal was there any explicit discussion of changing COVERED EARNINGS to include the earnings on capital that constitute the vast, vast bulk of the earnings of actual plutocrats. That is taken at face value the Obama Social Security proposal would have imposed an immediate 12.4% effective marginal tax increase on and ONLY ON the population that Douhat insists have been getting a free pass.
Note that this would have been IN ADDITION to restoring the 33% rate to much of this income for regular tax purposes by full repeal of the Bush tax cuts. That is Candidate Obama would (if all proposals had been accepted) raised marginal taxes on almost everyone in the $250-500k bracket to a full 45.5%.
I don’t know whether this ‘fillets’ Ross or not. But it explains a little while I would cut away the ‘Dout’ in his name and replace it with the more ftting ‘Ass’.
(Because ‘Douche-bag’ is vaguely homophobic, while if the ‘Ass-hat’ fits then Ross should wear it).
Income inequality increased under Obama, because we’re in a deep depression, where unemployment and underemployment remains high.
Also, there are up to 50 million immigrants from dirt poor countries (a small proportion of them are highly skilled and educated), which, of course, increased income inequality.
I’ve explained before, raising the minimum wage, e.g. doubling it, would raise the general price level much less than the rise in the minimum wage.
Real income for low income workers would rise more than fall for high income workers, through higher prices (and productivity would increase and other production costs would decrease).
Taxes have become more progressive under Obama. For example, according to the CBO: “Top 40% Paid 106.2% of Income Taxes; Bottom 40% Paid -9.1%, Got Average of $18,950 in ‘Transfers’”
Raising corporate taxes, or other taxes on production, may just raise prices, to offset the taxes, which would hurt low income Americans the most.
If taxes are too high, there may be undesirable effects, including more spending to avoid taxes, disincentives to work (particularly, by the more skilled), taking less risk to expand the economy, to create output and employment, etc..
Strangely enough, I have never seen any disincentive to work on highly skilled people because of taxes. People say this because it sounds good, and taken to ridiculous levels(100%) it would certainly be true. Course this has never happened and never will happen.
Ranks right up there with the unlinked(and maybe true) claim that ” “Top 40% Paid 106.2% of Income Taxes”.
Of course something like that is true. You cannot tax people into poverty. But somehow it is a great sound byte for people that pay attention to silly things.
“Income inequality increased under Obama, because we’re in a deep depression, where unemployment and underemployment remains high.”
This is why you are a troll.
Of course what you say is true. But of course what you say totally ignores the history in the US of income inequality. If you are going to talk about it honestly, you shouldn’t even mention Obama. But you can’t help yourself. Geez, to make matters worse you actually mention the Great Recession. Here take a look at an ongoing pattern which bears an incredible amount of correlation with the adoption of your personal ideology by economic neanderthals.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3629
When you channel the Brookses, Douthats. Mankiws and Kudlows of the world, you really need to check your work.
EMichael, are you saying, for example, Tiger Woods, didn’t move to Florida, because of differences in state taxes, or sports players don’t pick teams based on state taxes?
If they do, it seems, taxes cause drastic behavior.
And, you say: “If you are going to talk about it (income inequality) honestly, you shouldn’t even mention Obama.”
Well, doesn’t Obama talk about that often, including when he had a 60 vote Senate and the House, and what are the results?
Umm, talking about the problem does not infer that Obama caused the problem.
You could not be more wrong about Tiger Woods. Taxes had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Notice how you have not heard from Mickelson since his outburst about half his income going to taxes? There is a reason why these guys have big time accounting firms.
Tell me, how long did Obama have this so called 60 vote Senate?
And explain to me how an Independent Senator who appeared at the RNC convention and endorsed John McCain for President counts as a Democrat?
Tiger Woods admits he left California because of high tax rates after rival Phil Mickelson apologizes for saying he may quit West Coast
January 23, 2013
“Tiger Woods said today that the reason he left California in the mid-Nineties was because the state’s taxes were too high.
The golfer spoke at a press conference on Tuesday about his decision to move to Florida in 1996.”
Speaking at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, California, Woods said: ‘I moved out of here back in ’96 for that reason.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266830/Tiger-Woods-admits-left-California-tax-rates.html
And, when you cite an article that ignores 90% of economics, you’ll get a skewed result. For example, the U.S. had much less competition, until the 1970s, because of the destruction of Europe and Japan in WWII, and the subsequent rebuilding. So, the U.S. could afford to be much less efficient. Also, there wasn’t massive immigration from poor countries, until the 1960s. Moreover, increasingly larger trade deficits, after 1980, subtract from GDP growth. If you compare U.S. living standards today (although they’ve been generally stagnant over the past few years) to the 1970s, they’re much higher (see an episode of “Kojak” and compare living, labor, and environmental standards). Of course, increased regulation in many U.S. industries have driven up prices and reduced real wages, along with slowing output and employment.
The problem I have with that part of Douthat’s post is that he’s deliberately misrepresenting a fact, Bruce. He knows full well that Obama tried hard to raise income taxes on incomes above $250,000; that the Republicans repeatedly blocked those attempts; and that when a budget deal finally was struck late last year, the Republicans gave in and allowed an income tax increase on incomes of–what, is it? more that $400,000 for individuals, and more than $450,000 for couples?–only in order to avoid another government shutdown, which they knew from what happened last Oct. would not be good for them politically.
We’re deep into an era in which lying and other forms of bald sleaze by even the most venerable of American institutions is simply par for the course. So-called white-shoe law firms, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, huge banks, etc., etc., etc., casually employ this as standard operating procedure. And this now routinely includes regular columnists for the New York Times and Washington Post.
I’ll grant that, in this instance, Douthat was posting a blog post, not publishing a column. And I doubt that NYT blog posts are filtered through editors; there are typos in that blog post (“ave,” instead of “have,” for example) that and editor probably would have noticed and corrected. But David Brooks, for a really long time, would publish bald falsehoods in his NYT column; the Times editors seem finally to be reining that in. And in light of that in-your-face misrepresentation of fact in that blog post of Douthat’s, I suspect that Douthat does that in his columns too. (I rarely read his columns, so I can’t say for sure.)
I don’t know why opinion pieces in such news outlets as the NYT and the Washington Post (where Kathleen Parker, among others, are very, very loose with their representations of fact) pass muster with editors when they contain misstatements of fact that the editors surely recognize as inaccurate.
Yeah, Woods is a trustworthy kind of guy.
Using athletes to make a point is beyond silly, but you have a habit of injecting these straw men(see the topic change you just pulled) into every conversation.
Here, knock yourself out with the “truth” of Woods coming to the defense of a fellow player who made an ass of himself:
http://taxfoundation.org/article/californias-state-and-local-tax-burden
Take your “Kojak” bs and stick it with the other Heritage Foundation garbage.
Hey, you got air conditioning? Washer? Dryer?
geez
Makes as much sense as your trade deficit bs. I wonder why that happened and continues to happen? Think policy had anything to do with that?
The ratio of pentagon spending to the defict increased under the Obama adminstration to 135% this year.
A figure unmatch in the world civilized or otherwise.
In the case of national {guaranteed profits for Lockheed] security and international meddling we could have had Mc Cain with the same outcomes!
Or figure out some math on the net effects of “low tax” states on high incomes.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/08/dwight_howard_taxes_pay_cut_once_taxes_are_taken_into_account.html
“In the case of national {guaranteed profits for Lockheed] security and international meddling we could have had Mc Cain with the same outcomes!”
C’mon, get serious, Ilsm.
“Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Friday lamented the lack of a military option for the United States in Ukraine against Russia and criticized President Obama for thinking the Cold War is over.
During a segment on MSNBC, McCain said that the Obama administration does’t understand Russian President Vladimir Putin. “They have been near delusional in thinking that the Cold War was over,” McCain said referring to Obama officials. “Maybe the president thinks the Cold War is over but Vladimir Putin doesn’t and that’s what this is all about.”
Later in the interview, when host Andrea Mitchell asked if there is a military option for the U.S. in Ukraine, the Arizona Republican sounded despondent. “I’d love to tell you that there is Andrea, but frankly I do not see it,” he said, adding, “I wish that there were. … I do not see a military option and it’s tragic.”
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/03/07/3378371/mccain-military-option-ukraine/
“Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said the failure to revise the withdrawal timetable and leave a small U.S. force behind is what he called a sad example of political expediency supplanting military necessity.
“It will have serious negative consequences for the stability of Iraq and the national security interests of the United States,” McCain said.”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/politics/defense-hearing/
“Even before he was caught playing poker on his iPhone at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had already sent a message: Anything less than an extensive aerial assault on the Syrian regime by American forces would be an unacceptable approach to the conflict in the Middle East. This was hardly surprising. Over the last two decades, McCain has rarely missed an opportunity to call for the escalation of an international conflict. Since the mid-1990s, he’s pushed for regime change in more than a half-dozen countries—occasionally with disastrous consequences.
Here’s a quick review of McCain’s eagerness for military action and foreign entanglements.”