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ProSense

(116,464 posts) Tue Apr 17, 2012, 09:33 AM Apr 2012

For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start

For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start

By ANNIE LOWREY

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Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have spent the last decade tracking the incomes of the poor, the middle class and the rich in countries across the world. More than anything else, their work shows that the top earners in the United States have taken a bigger and bigger share of overall income over the last three decades, with inequality nearly as acute as it was before the Great Depression.

Known in Washington and the economics profession by the of-course-you-know shorthand “Piketty-Saez,” the two have been denounced on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and won mention in White House budget documents.

Mr. Saez, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the John Bates Clark Medal, an economic laurel considered second only to the Nobel, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship grant. Mr. Piketty, 40, of the Paris School of Economics, has won Le Monde’s prize for best young economist, among other awards.

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“The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality,” Mr. Piketty said, with a degree of wonder. “People say that reducing inequality is radical. I think that tolerating the level of inequality the United States tolerates is radical.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/business/for-economists-saez-and-piketty-the-buffett-rule-is-just-a-start.html

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For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start (Original Post) ProSense Apr 2012 OP

Kick! n/t ProSense Apr 2012 #1

Their proposed solution: 50%-90% (from current 35%) marginal tax rate on the rich. pampango Apr 2012 #2

Which countries have an income tax rate higher than 90%? hughee99 Apr 2012 #3

I thought they meant - higher than our current 35%. At least that's how I took it. n/t pampango Apr 2012 #4

Ah, I thought they meant even higher than even what they were suggesting. hughee99 Apr 2012 #5

ProSense

(116,464 posts)

1. Kick! n/t

Reply to ProSense (Original post)

Tue Apr 17, 2012, 10:13 AM

Apr 2012

pampango

(24,692 posts)

2. Their proposed solution: 50%-90% (from current 35%) marginal tax rate on the rich.

Reply to ProSense (Original post)

Tue Apr 17, 2012, 11:16 AM

Apr 2012

"As much as Mr. Piketty’s and Mr. Saez’s work has informed the national debate over earnings and fairness, their proposed corrective remains far outside the bounds of polite political conversation: much, much higher top marginal tax rates on the rich, up to 50 percent, or 70 percent or even 90 percent, from the current top rate of 35 percent.

Conservatives respond that high tax rates would stifle economic growth, at a minimum, and cause some businesses and high-income workers to flee to other countries. When top American tax rates were much higher, from the 1940s through the 1970s, businesses could not relocate as easily as they can now, say critics of Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez.

But Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez argue that history is on their side: Many countries have higher tax rates — and the United States has had higher tax rates — without stifling growth or encouraging the concentration of income in the hands of the very rich.

“In a way, the United States is becoming like Old Europe, which is very strange in historical perspective,” Mr. Piketty said. “The United States used to be very egalitarian, not just in spirit but in actuality. Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France. And very high taxes on the very rich — that was invented in the United States,” he said."

Here's an article written by Robert Reich in today's Christian Science Monitor on US' income inequality vs. democracy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2012/0417/Income-inequality-highlighted-on-Tax-Day