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How the Ultra-Rich Betray America
By Paul Buchheit on Monday, May 21st, 2012
The betrayals come in many forms. Here are a few of the more outrageous, and destructive, examples: Evasion: Corporations suddenly stopped meeting their tax responsibilities While corporate profits have doubled to $1.9 trillion in less than ten years, the corporate income tax rate, which for thirty years hovered around the 20-25% level, suddenly dropped to 10% after the recession. It has remained there for three years. We are seeing a manifestation of the Shock Doctrine. Corporations are ...
Five Facts That Put America to Shame
By Paul Buchheit on Monday, May 14th, 2012
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education, and financial industries. 1. We’re near the bottom of the developed world in children’s health and safety According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the ...
Why America’s Rich People Are Better Than Everyone Else’s
By Paul Buchheit on Friday, May 11th, 2012
A remarkable story appeared in Newsweek recently, a celebration by author Daniel Gross of America’s re-emergence as the strongest economy and best darn nation in the world. An underlying theme in the article, implicit in the grandiose descriptions of our post-recession growth, is that all American lives must be improving because of the magic of our “resilient and nimble private sector.” The Newsweek reader might have been reminded of the wisdom of Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein: ...
Five Tax Fallacies Invented by the 1 Percent
By Paul Buchheit on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
We hear these claims often, even though they’re entirely false. An analysis of the facts should make that clear. (1) The Rich Pay Almost All the Taxes That’s simply not true. The percentage of total taxes paid by the very rich (the top 1%) is approximately the same as the percentage paid by middle class Americans (the 4th quintile, average income $68,700). Here are the details: Internal Revenue Service figures show that the very rich paid ...
Who Takes the Gold for Tax Avoidance in 2011?
By Paul Buchheit on Friday, April 27th, 2012
This is tax time, or in the case of many big businesses, just another time without taxes. These companies deserve to be recognized. With the help of SEC data and the results of several excellent research studies, PayUpNow.org has selected the ‘winners’ of the 2011 Tax Avoidance Awards. First a review of last year’s results. The top spot went to General Electric, which made pre-tax profits of $44 billion from 2008 to 2010 but received almost $5 ...
The Middle Class Hasn’t Disappeared. It’s Just Sliding Toward the Bottom
By Paul Buchheit on Monday, April 23rd, 2012
It used to be that the average American resided halfway between two extremes: – Steven Schwarzman’s home was being partially replicated in a Park Avenue hall for his gala $5 million 60th birthday party. The guest of honor’s full-length portrait greeted the invitees as they proceeded past rows of orchids and palm trees to the dining area, where they feasted on lobster, filet mignon, baked Alaska, and the finest of wines. Martin Short provided the ...
Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money
By Paul Buchheit on Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
The wealthiest Americans believe they’ve earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they’re the most productive members of society. For the most part they’re wrong. As the facts below will show, they’re not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they’ve taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years. Any one of these five reasons should reinforce the belief that the rich should be paying a LOT more in ...
Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths
By Paul Buchheit on Monday, April 2nd, 2012
With the mainstream media in the hands of the mostly conservative wealthy, it’s difficult for average Americans to learn the truth about critical issues. The following five conservative claims are examples of mythical beliefs that fall apart in the presence of inconvenient facts: 1. Entitlements are the Problem Beyond the fact that we’re ‘entitled’ to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the ...
Great Depression Seems Just Like Yesterday
By Paul Buchheit on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
In March of 1936 U.S. photographer Dorothea Lange, on her way to San Francisco after searching the countryside for Depression-era photos, passed a sign saying “Pea Picker’s Camp” in Nipomo, California. Thinking little of it, she drove on. But a few miles down the road she changed her mind and turned back. Her first encounter in the camp was with a widowed 32-year-old Oklahoma mother of seven who had driven to California looking for work. Now, ...
What’s Worse Than Paying Taxes?
By Paul Buchheit on Monday, March 19th, 2012
The other day I helped my son with his taxes. He was doing them for the first time, after spending a year with his new college degree looking for a job and managing his student loan account. We found out that he would be paying more in federal taxes than a hedge fund manager who made $5 billion. We calculated that he wouldn’t be getting a state refund, because Illinois raised the state tax rate from 3 ...