Economy
Related: About this forumStudy: GOP’s Capital Gains Tax Cut Is The Biggest Driver Of Income Inequality
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/03/396949/cap-gains-income-inequality-study/?mobile=ncThe lowering of the capital gains tax, pushed through as part of the Bush tax cut package of 2003, was the biggest driver of income inequality from 1996 to 2006, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service. While the Bush tax cuts as a whole contributed to rising inequality, it was the change in policy toward capital gains which were once taxed at normal income rates but are now taxed at 15 percent for the rich that played the largest role in exploding the income gap. While after-tax income increased by an average of 25 percent for Americans as a whole, lower earners saw a much smaller increase and the top 0.1 percents income, driven by lower capital gains tax rates, nearly doubled, as shown in this chart from Jared Bernstein...
msongs
(67,462 posts)cyclezealot
(4,802 posts)This report referred to was called for by the Majority on the Senate Banking Committee, I believe. Would be the effected committee.? At least the Senate Democrats did not try to have these findings censored . As the story goes, censorship is the result with the Gobbers , when a "Karma runs over one's dogma.' Paul Krugman referred to the Gobbers trying to suppress this report in his last piece centering about Florida's Sen. Rubio saying ,I am not a man of science.'.
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GOP has Congressional Research Service report on taxes buried
https://personalmoneynetwork.com/moneyblog/2012/11/02/congressional-research-service/
Dog Gone at Penigma
(433 posts)and I think as well there should be a tax on the services of executing financial transactions -- a very small one -- THAT could contribute hugely to a balanced budget, even a surplus. We could rebuild and repair our infrastructure, make our educational system competitive again, fund the social safety net -- including caring for our many injured or ill veterans, so fewer would be suicide victims, and start to run a surplus. We could bootstrap renewable / green energy development.
Heck, we could probably cure cancer, and fund other important R&D.
Then, and only after a substantial surplus, and AFTER redressing the wealth and income inequality gap, would tax breaks for the wealthy be in order. Or never -- I could live with never just as well.