When the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior
on Wall Street drove this country into the deepest recession
since the 1930s, the largest financial institutions in the
United States took every advantage of being American. They
just loved their country - and the willingness of the
American people to provide them with the largest bailout in
world history. In 2008, Congress approved a $700 billion
gift to Wall Street. Another $16 trillion in virtually zero
interest loans and other financial assistance came from the
Federal Reserve. America. What a great country.
But just two years later, as soon as these giant financial
institutions started making record-breaking profits again,
they suddenly lost their love for their native country. At a
time when the nation was suffering from a huge deficit,
largely created by the recession that Wall Street caused,
the major financial institutions did everything they could
to avoid paying American taxes by establishing shell
corporations in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.
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A Choice For Corporate America: Are You With America Or The Cayman Islands - 0 views
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In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis. On and on it goes. Wall Street banks and large companies love America when they need corporate welfare. But when it comes to paying American taxes or American wages, they want nothing to do with this country. That has got to change.
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Offshore tax abuse is not just limited to Wall Street. Each and every year corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in U.S. taxes by sheltering their income offshore. Pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Pfizer have fought to make it illegal for the American people to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and Europe. But, during tax season, Eli Lilly and Pfizer shift drug patents and profits to the Netherlands and other offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
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Apple wants all of the advantages of being an American company, but it doesn't want to pay American taxes or American wages. It creates the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, and iTunes in the United States, but manufactures most of its products in China so it doesn't have to pay American wages. Then it shifts most of its profits to Ireland, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Without such maneuvers, Apple's federal tax bill in the United States would have been $2.4 billion higher in 2011.
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This tax avoidance does not just reduce the revenue that we need to pay for education, healthcare, roads, and environmental protection, it is also costing us millions of American jobs. Today, companies are using these same tax schemes to lower their tax bills by shipping American jobs and factories abroad. These tax breaks have contributed to the loss of more than 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and the closure of more than 56,000 factories since 2000. That also has got to change. At a time when we have a $16.5 trillion national debt; at a time when roughly one-quarter of the largest corporations in America are paying no federal income taxes; and at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high; it is past time for Wall Street and corporate America to pay their fair share. That's what the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act (S.250) that I have introduced with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) is all about.
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We have a much better idea. Wall Street and the largest corporations in the country must begin to pay their fair share of taxes. They must not be able to continue hiding their profits offshore and shipping American jobs overseas to avoid taxes. Here's the simple truth. You can't be an American company only when you want a massive bailout from the American people. You have also got to be an American company, and pay your fair share of taxes, as we struggle with the deficit and adequate funding for the needs of the American people. If Wall Street and corporate America don't agree, the next time they need a bailout let them go to the Cayman Islands, let them go to Bermuda, let them go to the Bahamas and let them ask those countries for corporate welfare.
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shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Nov 14
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Luxembourg: a tax haven by any other name? | nsnbc international - 0 views
nsnbc.me/...luxembourg-tax-haven-name
tax-evasion Luxembourg DG-Competition EC PricewaterhouseCoopers
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The revelations that global and multinational businesses have been brokering “secret” tax deals with Luxembourg to avoid paying taxes in their home countries, may be the first time an entire country has been implicated in tax avoidance collusion. A cache of leaked agreements uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) appears to show that major companies have used the tiny EU state to dramatically cut their tax liabilities.
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The ICIJ’s six-month investigation claims to have found household companies such as Aviva, HSBC, E-on, Tyco, Pepsi, IKEA and Deutsche Bank were among those which had taken advantage of legal tax avoidance schemes in Luxembourg. Luxembourg is routinely named as a tax haven on many of the world’s authoritative lists of tax havens, including the one compiled by me and my two co-authors, Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux. But Luxembourg has managed to remain “under the radar” not least because its politicians and bankers have been denying for years that it is, or ever was, a tax haven. The revelations suggest Luxembourg has been playing a double game. Luxembourg has been quick to comply with new regulations proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EU. In 2011, the OECD global forum on transparency and exchange of information commended Luxembourg for introducing new rules governing banking information or information protected by secrecy rules.
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But at the same time, the revelations show that 340 well-known foreign companies have entered into secret agreements with the Luxembourg authorities, brokered by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. To take a random example that applies for many of these companies, the ICIJ have a letter to the Luxembourg tax administration written on a PwC letterhead, where FedEx lays down its plan to set up a limited liability company as a tax resident in Luxembourg – so subject in principle to Luxembourg’s corporate income tax. The letter then provides details of a proposed shareholding arrangement that will ensure, I quote, that “neither that Fedex SCS nor its shareholders will be subject to corporate income tax, Municipal Business Tax and Net Wealth tax in Luxembourg”. The letter implies that Luxembourg will serve in effect as a tax haven for Fedex.
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There have been a number of other highly publicised tax evasion and avoidance cases recently. For instance, many cases in the US involved branches or even key individuals working in branches of well-known Swiss and Israeli banks in the US, including UBS, Credit Swiss or Bank Leumi, or alternatively branches of American banks in Switzerland. But these tended to involve private firms. The Swiss government professed to have had no knowledge of such activities. Indeed, Swiss law prohibited Swiss banks, whether domestic or international, from providing any information on their clients to the Swiss state. This is a scandal with a difference. The leaked PricewaterhouseCoopers books imply there has been systemic collusion between companies from all over the world and the Luxembourg authorities in flagrant contravention of EU rules. The documents suggest that preferential tax treatments were guaranteed to these companies prior to their incorporation in Luxembourg.
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This is the first case of suspected collusion between a government and a foreign firm in tax avoidance matters that I am aware of. In that sense, the current scandal places Luxembourg on par with Greece whose officials allegedly provided misleading data on Greek national debt to the Commission. More embarrassingly, all this took place during the time when the current president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, served as the prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995-2013. It is difficult to imagine that the prime minister of such a small state was unaware such deals were taking place. There is a difference between the court of law and the court of public opinion. But we know from recent cases that the EU Commission has tended to follow the court of public opinion with criminal investigations of its own, as was the case of Amazon. It is likely that the Commission will now investigate these leaks and may impose fines on Luxembourg. I doubt Juncker can ride this one out.
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Woo-hoo! The IRS and Congress will be interested in this one too. Now if someone would kindly send the docs to Wikileaks, the nations of the world can prosecute companies for tax evasion. But this time, would you all, pretty please, prosecute some human beings too and no settlements without at least a couple of years behind bars?
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Truth Attack - Attorney Tom Cryer - 2 views
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.. Restore Economic Freedom .... Rediscover your constitutional rights ..... Unwind the Income Tax behemoth In 2006, Attorney Tommy Cryer was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for two counts of tax evasion. In July of 2007, the IRS reduced the charges to willful failure to file income tax returns. He went to trial and was unanimously acquitted by the jury. This issue is NOT about "paying your fair" share on April 15th. This is a legal issue that involves more lies by "our" government. excerpt: Dare to look behind the Wizard's curtain and you'll discover the "Great and Powerful Income Tax" is a monumental fraud. Cleverly built over decades amid the swamp of a single misunderstood word ("income") not to mention boxcars of false data heaped on school children, what your "income" actually IS -- as guaranteed by the US Constitution -- and what you think it is, are two separate things. Read on as Attorney Tom Cryer delivers you out of the IRS catecombs, toward a deeper appreciation of your own cherished freedoms and economic rights. The US Constitution prohibits any direct tax upon your labor or property. When federal agencies are allowed to operate above the law only then can you be ruled by fear, intimidation and force. The Fed uses money stolen through income tax to buy legislators and bring states in line. Thus the Fed, not you nor your state representatives, rules. Your state has been reduced, once again, to a colony of a distant and indifferent government, and YOU ARE NOT FREE! Finally, third, and perhaps even more importantly, the power to tax is the power to destroy. If the federal government can tax one freedom, it can tax all of our freedoms. If we permit them to tax our most precious and fragile assets, if all we have is kept only by the consent of the government-then we are at its mercy and YOU ARE NOT FREE!
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Rand Paul's Tea Party Response: Full Text - 0 views
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With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.
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America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.
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Outstanding statement about what made America great, an dhow are government is destroying that greatness. This is the full Text of Sen. Rand Paul's Tea Party Response to Obama's State of the Union Address: I speak to you tonight from Washington, D.C. The state of our economy is tenuous but our people remain the greatest example of freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. For the first time in history, men and women were guaranteed a chance to succeed based NOT on who your parents were but on your own initiative and desire to work. We are in danger, though, of forgetting what made us great. The President seems to think the country can continue to borrow $50,000 per second. The President believes that we should just squeeze more money out of those who are working. The path we are on is not sustainable, but few in Congress or in this Administration seem to recognize that their actions are endangering the prosperity of this great nation. Ronald Reagan said, government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem. Tonight, the President told the nation he disagrees. President Obama believes government is the solution: More government, more taxes, more debt. What the President fails to grasp is that the American system that rewards hard work is what made America so prosperous. What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations. He described a limited government that largely did not interfere with individuals and their pursuit of happiness. All that we are, all that we wish to be is now threatened by the notion that you can have something for nothing, that you can have your cake and ea
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Americans on Wrong Side of Income Gap Run Out of Means to Cope - 0 views
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“We’ve exhausted our coping mechanisms,” said Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “They weren’t sustainable.” The result has been a downsizing of expectations. By almost two to one — 64 percent to 33 percent — Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, according to the latest Bloomberg National Poll. The lack of faith is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year, with close to three-quarters in the Dec. 6-9 survey saying the economy is unfair.
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The diminished expectations have implications for the economy. Workers are clinging to their jobs as prospects fade for higher-paying employment. Households are socking away more money and charging less on credit cards. And young adults are living with their parents longer rather than venturing out on their own. In the meantime, record-high stock prices are enriching wealthier Americans, exacerbating polarization and bringing income inequality to the political forefront. Even independent government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve have been dragged into the debate.
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“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” Obama said in a Dec. 4 speech in Washington. “This is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American.” Democratic lawmakers also intend to press next year for a higher minimum wage to tackle the yawning gap between rich and poor, Durbin said. Republicans aren’t ceding the issue. “The American dream is certainly more in doubt than in decades,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said in response to Obama’s speech. “But after more than five years in office, the president has no one to blame but himself.”
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Income inequality has been rising more or less steadily since the mid-1970s. The Gini coefficient, a broad-based measure of inequality, stood at a record high last year, according to Census Bureau data dating back 46 years.
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Women who became unemployed during the recession and its aftermath have been slower to find new positions. Among women losing jobs they’d held for at least three years between January 2009 and the end of 2011, 50 percent were re-employed by the start of 2012, while the share for men was 61 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in February. Households turned to stepped-up borrowing to help make ends meet, until that avenue was shut off by the collapse of house prices. About 10.8 million homeowners still owed more money on their mortgages than their properties were worth in the third quarter, according to Seattle-based Zillow Inc. The fallout has made many Americans less inclined to take risks. The quits rate — the proportion of Americans in the workforce who voluntarily left their jobs — stood at 1.7 percent in October. While that’s up from 1.5 percent a year earlier, it’s below the 2.2 percent average for 2006, the year house prices started falling, government data show.
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“The middle has really collapsed,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former chief economist at the Labor Department in Washington. Even those with college degrees are having trouble keeping up, he said. While they earn more than those with less schooling, they’ve seen no real wage growth in recent years. The median income of men 25 years of age and older with a bachelor’s degree was $56,656 last year, 10 percent less than in 2007 after taking account of inflation, according to Census data.
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It’s the richest of the rich who are reaping the most benefit as an increasingly interconnected and technologically sophisticated world puts a premium on those perceived to have the highest skills — a phenomenon dubbed “winner take all” by Cornell University Professor Robert Frank. Government policies also play a role. The Treasury Department, for instance, taxes capital gains racked up by the wealthy on the sale of shares, bonds and other assets at about half the rate of ordinary income. The top 1 percent captured 95 percent of the gains in incomes in the first three years of the recovery, based on analysis of tax returns by Saez. Those less well-off, meanwhile, are running out of ways to cope. The percentage of working-age women who are in the labor force steadily climbed from a post-World War II low of 32 percent to a peak of 60.3 percent in April 2000, fueling a jump in dual-income households and helping Americans deal with slow wage growth for a while. Since the recession ended, the workforce participation rate for women has been in decline, echoing a longer-running trend among men. November data showed 57 percent of women in the labor force and 69.4 percent of men.
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The disparity has widened since the recovery began in mid-2009. The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income last year than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution made at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show. Economists have posited a variety of explanations for the growing differences in incomes. Manufacturing companies moved once high-paying jobs abroad, to China and elsewhere. Technological advances led to the loss of clerical and office work, especially relating to routine tasks. The decline of unions — 11.3 percent of workers were represented in 2012 compared with 20.1 percent in 1983 — has advantaged bosses at the expense of their employees.
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Millennials — adults aged 18 to 32 — are still slow to set out on their own more than four years after the recession ended, according to an Oct. 18 report by the Pew Research Center in Washington. Just over one in three head their own households, close to a 38-year low set in 2010. Obama has proposed a raft of policies to attack the widening wage gap — from simplifying the tax code and increasing exports to enhancing worker training and boosting pre-kindergarten education. Yet in a divided Washington he hasn’t made much progress pushing them through. The president’s renewed focus on income inequality has more to do with politics than policy, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a self-described center- right institute in Washington.
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“It’s great politics to demagogue income distribution and complain about the rich getting ahead and the poor falling behind,” said Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director. “The substance of what he’s actually done doesn’t match the enormity of the problem as he’s portrayed it.”
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The wage-gap debate has reverberated to other parts of Washington, as the SEC published a rule Sept. 18 that would compel public companies to reveal pay ratios between chief executives and their employees. While businesses have decried the requirement as overreach, some investors welcome the data as a way to help assess a company’s health.
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Across companies in the S&P 500, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg in April. The Fed also has been caught up in the debate over growing income disparities. Lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether its bond-buying policy, called quantitative easing, has benefited the rich at the expense of those less well-off by boosting prices of stocks and other assets.
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The S&P 500 stock index has risen 29 percent in 2013. The richest third of U.S. households account for 89 percent of all equities ownership, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
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Janet Yellen, nominated to take over as Fed chairman next year, defended the central bank’s actions at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Nov. 14. “The policies we’ve undertaken have been meant to generate a robust recovery,” Yellen told the committee. The growing calls for action to reduce income inequality have translated into a national push for a higher minimum wage. Fast-food workers in 100 cities took to the streets Dec. 5 to demand a $15 hourly salary.
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Monetary policy of, by, and for banksters continues in the U.S. One irony is that banksters press for transition to an all digital currency so that savers can be penalized, a blatant "trickle-up"economic policy, whilst also pressing for more bank bailouts, wielding the thoroughly-discredited "trickle down" economic theory. But "trickle down" theory, in the context of bank bailouts, has not successfully trickled down and the only beneficiaries have been the few Americans who can still invest in the stock market, paying the highest dividends to the wealthiest among us. Has their ever been a time when the stock market's behavior has been so divorced from the well-being of the middle and lower economic classes? I doubt there has been at least in the last 50 years. Where would we be if the bank bail-out trillions had instead been mailed as checks to the middle and lower economic classes? "Trickle up" works and that is what built the American economy to its peak in inflation-adjusted dollars -- an affluent middle class. But do not expect leadership from Washington, D.C. in correcting income inquequality; only political rhetoric and a fight over extension of unemployment benefits, now lapsed. "According to the World Bank, the GINI coefficient "measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution." Therefore it is used as an indication of income inequality within countries. ... In the late 2000s, Chile had the highest GINI coefficient, after taxes and transfers, among OECD member countries. The United States, Turkey and Mexico came right before it. At the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway led the ranking with the lowest levels of income inequality." http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/11944-wealth-distribution-income-inequality.html#ixzz2pGpv4xGZ Higher minimum wages? How about instead abolishing the Feder
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Higher Taxes are Coming. Head for Your Bunkers. | Mogambo Guru - 0 views
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Then numbers are staggering: excerpt: Well, if there is such a thing as the hypothetical "rational economic man," then this "sell everything!" scenario is exactly what will happen because taxes of all kinds, including the all-important income taxes and capital gains taxes, are going to all go up by - hold onto your hats! - almost a third or more next year! Right now, the marginal income tax rates are 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%, which is the range of six different tax rates for the few people that make enough money to actually pay any federal income taxes, which seems like such a quaint anachronism these days because more people receive money from the government than people who pay the government, which explains why the budget deficit this year - alone! - is $1.4 trillion or so, and when including the inevitable supplemental appropriations throughout the year, will surely be near staggering $2 trillion, bringing total federal government spending to almost $5 trillion, whereas all the business and personal income taxes collected for the whole year is less than $1.5 trillion!
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Jan 12
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Arthur B. Laffer: Class Warfare and the Buffett Rule - WSJ.com - 0 views
online.wsj.com/...3462304577138961587258988.html
Warren-Margarttaville-Buffett Arthur-Laffer Class-Warfare Tax-the-Rich Obammunism
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Reagan economist Arthur Laffer eviscerates the phony socialist investor Warren Buffett. Totally!!!! Beautifully done too. The phony Buffett is fully exposed, and numbers are staggering. You gotta love this! excerpt: The "Buffett Rule" would not tax the vast majority of his shielded income, including either his unrealized capital gains, which are currently taxed at zero percent, or charitable contributions, which are tax deductible. If the "Buffett Rule" were applied as President Obama proposes, then Mr. Buffett's federal tax bill would have been $14.4 million, rather than the $6.9 million he actually paid. As a fraction of his true income, his effective tax rate would only have risen from 6/100ths of 1% to 12/100ths of 1%. Mr. Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation goes to the heart of my critique of his public call for higher tax rates on the rich. Just look at the second contractual condition for his ongoing pledge to the Gates Foundation: "The foundation must continue to satisfy the legal requirements qualifying Warren's gift as charitable, exempt from gift or other taxes." In other words, if his gift weren't tax sheltered he wouldn't give it. So much for "shared sacrifice." Incidentally, I'm not the first to question Mr. Buffett's commitment to "shared sacrifice" in balancing the federal budget. In a 2007 CNBC interview, when asked why he shelters his money through tax-free strategies rather than writing big checks to Uncle Sam, Mr. Buffett responded: "I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government." So Mr. Buffett thinks he and his family can put their money to better use than the government can. I guess he's really not so different from the rest of us after all.
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Harvey Golub: My Response To Buffett And Obama - WSJ.com - 1 views
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Harvey is CEO of American Express: This is his rant and it's awesome! ......... Over the years, I have paid a significant portion of my income to the various federal, state and local jurisdictions in which I have lived, and I deeply resent that President Obama has decided that I don't need all the money I've not paid in taxes over the years, or that I should leave less for my children and grandchildren and give more to him to spend as he thinks fit. I also resent that Warren Buffett and others who have created massive wealth for themselves think I'm "coddled" because they believe they should pay more in taxes. I certainly don't feel "coddled" because these various governments have not imposed a higher income tax. After all, I did earn it. Others could pay higher taxes if they choose. They could voluntarily write a check or they could advocate that their gifts to foundations should be made with after-tax dollars and not be deductible. They could also pay higher taxes if they were not allowed to set up foundations to avoid capital gains and estate taxes. What gets me most upset is two other things about this argument: the unfair way taxes are collected, and the violation of the implicit social contract between me and my government that my taxes will be spent-effectively and efficiently-on purposes that support the general needs of the country. Before you call me greedy, make sure you operate fairly on both fronts.
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Arthur B. Laffer: Unemployment Benefits Aren't Stimulus - WSJ.com - 0 views
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Since late 2007 the federal government has spent somewhere around $3.6 trillion to stimulate the economy. That is a lot of money. My suggestion would have been to take all $3.6 trillion and declare a federal tax holiday for 18 months. No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all, which would have reduced federal revenues by $2.4 trillion annually. Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound?
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A First Look at the Book "The Liberty Amendments", by Mark Levin - Tea Party Command Ce... - 0 views
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Excellent youtube interview! "Mark Levin has just published his much-anticipated book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic. Three of his eleven proposed Constitutional amendments appear below, and a Sean Hannity interview of Levin appears at the bottom of this post. Levin's book is centered around the Constitution's Article V (aka "Article 5″). That article specifies two methods for amending the Constitution. Just briefly - In the first method of creating amendments, Congress proposes and the States dispose. In the second method of creating amendments, the States propose and the States dispose. The second method has never been used successfully, although there have been many attempts. It is that second method that the Founders provided as a remedy for an overreaching federal government. In the second method, neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Supreme Court have any voting or veto authority whatsoever. The states are in full control. Period. It is, by design, the ultimate override for an over-spending, over-taxing, over-regulating, and increasingly dictatorial and lawless federal government. Clearly, its time has come. In that second method, Congress has at most a mere ministerial role. Of course Congress is very protective of its power, and could, through delay and inaction, attempt to convert their mere ministerial role into a de facto veto power, halting any attempt for a state-driven amendment action. Apparently Congress has done exactly that many times, acting in bad faith and contrary to the Framers' spirit and intent for Article V which is clearly expressed in the Federalist Papers. Legal scholars have been trying to find a way around the federal government's intransigence, so far with little success. Now more than ever, it is time for We the People to bring the power of Article V to the center ring of American politics. That starts with awareness, and Levin's book will br
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shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 10
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How Tax Day Became Payday | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - 0 views
blog.heritage.org/...bell-how-tax-day-became-payday
heritage-foundation tax-and-spend obammunism financial-collapse
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Ok, this goes into the must read category. I don't however agree with the proposed solution. There's no mention that governments must stop spending money they don't have. Stop the borrowing. Cut the spending. Cut payroll, pension and healthcare spending. Privatize. Return Federal assets to the States, and let them handle the leasing and privatization. Flatten the tax code. Eliminate corporate and unearned (investment) income taxes. When this country came out of WWII, there was great apprehension that the great depression would simply pick up where it left off. These concerns led to a break with the Hoover-Roosevelt big and bigger government - tax and spend approach. Congress moved to cut taxes and level the margins. Depression over. excerpt: Today the Federal government is carrying an even bigger debt per GDP than the cost of WWII had left us with! The out of control spending has to stop. For just over half of all Americans today is Tax Day. But for the other half it is just another day on the calendar. That's because they pay no federal income taxes. The old saying goes "you can't get something for nothing." But these "non-payers" receive government services and benefits without chipping in.
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The Election Choice: Socialism or Capitalism - The Tax Policy differences between Obam... - 0 views
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In sum, Mr. Obama is proposing to use the tax code to substantially redistribute income -- raising tax rates on a minority of taxpayers to finance tax credits and direct income supplements to millions of others. How much revenue his higher rates would raise depends on how much less those high-earners would work, or how much they would change their practices to shelter their income from those higher rates. By contrast, Mr. McCain is proposing some kind of tax reduction for most Americans who pay taxes. He says he would finance those cuts by reducing the rate of growth in federal spending.
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We're Not Broke: Congress -Here's $400 Billion In New Annual Revenue « SpeakEasy - 0 views
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Congress has blown holes in our tax code, losing hundreds of billions in revenue. Worse, lawmakers have averted their eyes as corporate lobbyists drill new tax loopholes and extract new corporate welfare subsidies.
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Other huge global companies such as Verizon, Boeing, ExxonMobil, and Bank of America also pay no taxes.
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They pretend to earn their profits offshore and then report their paper losses here in the United States–so they don’t have to pay the IRS a dime.
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f U.S. millionaires and billionaires paid taxes based on 1961 tax rules, we would have raised an additional $231 billion in federal revenue this year.
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By reversing years of tax giveaways to America’s rich and the corporations that enrich them, Congress could raise trillions in revenue. We could fund the public structures that safeguard our families and our future.
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a modest financial transaction tax on the transfers of stock, currency, and speculative investments that do little to strengthen the real economy
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reduce corporate tax dodging by closing overseas tax havens and requiring companies to pay U.S. taxes on the profits they actually earn in this country. This could generate as much as $100 billion a year.
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new top tax rates on households with annual incomes over $1 million, which could generate another $100 billion a year.
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a progressive estate tax on fortunes over $5 million, with higher rates on billionaire estates. That would generate $45 billion a year.
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aking all four of these straightforward steps could raise a total of approximately $400 billion per year.
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Senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where I direct the Program on Inequality and the Common Good (www.ips-dc.org/inequality). Co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good (www.wealthforcommongood.org). Co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. Co-author with Mary Wright of The Moral Measure of the Economy.
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Professor Hoppe's new book: "The Competition of Crooks") | The God That Failed - 0 views
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And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
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The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long run.
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That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation.
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And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
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the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.:
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In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation – that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government “welfare assistance”, subsidies and monopolistic privileges.
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book’s thesis is that the government is a monopolist of ultimate justice and law enforcement and that every monopoly is always bad from the perspective of the consumer – in this case the citizen. Your alternative solution is a private law society.
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I can only go to a state court of law, staffed by judges who themselves are paid from taxes to enforce government regulations.
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In a private law society, if we had such a conflict, we would instead approach arbitrators who are independent of both parties, and who are competing with other arbitrators for voluntarily paying customers.
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We would not use an inherently biased judge working for and paid directly by the state, who is therefore partisan, but rather a neutral third party, to adjudicate the normal human legal conflicts arising between existing and recognized property rights and private contract law.
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My income from my work is my property (not the state’s) and the restaurant is my property (not the state’s).
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Therefore, any government-imposed tax upon me or use restrictions upon my property (such as a smoking ban) would therefore be judged unlawful, as robbery and expropriation.
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the state is nothing but a “great band of robbers,” a mafia, only a much larger, more overwhelming and dangerous one.
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“there’s absolutely no reason in any case why the state should have anything at all to do with the production of money.”
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More paper money doesn’t make a society richer overall. It’s just more paper. But every new piece of printed paper reduces the purchasing power of all the other previously-existing paper bills
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these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.
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in a competitive environment, a better kind of money would be produced. Why? Because there’ll always be a demand for means of exchange.
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Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward. Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism". Good stuff. Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po
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shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 16
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Stopping America's Federal Debt Explosion by Martin Feldstein - Project Syndicate - 0 views
www.project-syndicate.org/...on-by-martin-feldstein-2016-02
martin-feldstein National-debt Banksters
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A decade ago, the federal debt was just 35% of GDP. It is now more than double that and projected to reach 86% in 2016. But that’s just the beginning. The annual budget deficit projected for 2016 is 5% of GDP. If it stays at that level, the debt ratio would eventually rise to 125%.
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The high and rising level of the national debt hurts the US economy in many ways. Paying the interest requires higher federal taxes or a larger budget deficit. In 2016, the interest on the national debt is equal to nearly 16% of the revenue from personal income tax. By 2026, the projected interest on the national debt will equal more than 31% of this revenue, even if interest rates rise as slowly as the CBO projects.
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the time will come when the US will have to pay the interest by exporting more goods and services than it imports. And boosting net exports will require a weaker dollar to make US products more attractive to foreign buyers and foreign goods more expensive to US buyers, implying a loss in Americans’ standard of living.
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Increased borrowing by the federal government also means crowding out the private sector. Lower borrowing and capital investment by firms reduces future productivity growth and growth in real incomes.
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Federal taxes now take 18.3% of GDP and are projected to remain at that level for the next decade, unless tax rules or rates are changed. The rate structure for personal taxation has changed over the past 30 years, with the top tax rate rising from 28% in 1986 to more than 40% now. The corporate rate of 35% is already the highest in the industrial world.
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"CAMBRIDGE - The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just delivered the bad news that the national debt is now rising faster than GDP and heading toward ratios that we usually associate with Italy or Spain. That confirms my view that the fiscal deficit is the most serious long-term economic problem facing US policymakers. A decade ago, the federal debt was just 35% of GDP. It is now more than double that and projected to reach 86% in 2016. But that's just the beginning. The annual budget deficit projected for 2016 is 5% of GDP. If it stays at that level, the debt ratio would eventually rise to 125%. Support Project Syndicate's mission Project Syndicate needs your help to provide readers everywhere equal access to the ideas and debates shaping their lives. LEARN MORE Even that projection assumes that interest rates on the national debt will rise slowly, averaging less than 3.5% in 2026. But if the US debt ratio really is on the fast track to triple-digit levels, investors in the US and abroad may rightly fear that the government has lost control of the budget process. With debt exploding, foreign bondholders could begin to worry that the US will find a way to reduce its real value by stoking inflation or imposing a withholding tax on all government bond interest. In that case, investors will insist on a risk premium: higher interest rates on Treasury debt. Higher interest rates, in turn, would increase the deficit - and thus the future level of the debt ratio - even more. The high and rising level of the national debt hurts the US economy in many ways. Paying the interest requires higher federal taxes or a larger budget deficit. In 2016, the interest on the national debt is equal to nearly 16% of the revenue from personal income tax. By 2026, the projected interest on the national debt will equal more than 31% of this revenue, even if interest rates rise as slowly as the CBO projects. Foreign investors now own more than half of net government debt, and
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shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Oct 11
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The Divider vs. the Thinker - WSJ.com - 0 views
online.wsj.com/...3554104577002262150454258.html
Banksters Paul-Ryan Obammunism Peggy-Noonan WSJ The-American-Idea
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There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
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It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job.
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It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
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Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich.
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"the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
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Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them.
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But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis.
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"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"
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The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless."
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The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
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Peggy Noonan writes about Paul Ryan's "The American Idea" speech he recently gave at the heritage Foundation. It's a beautifully written summary that goes right to the heart of the matter: the ruling elites have been enriching themselves, feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and crony capitalism. Washington DC is corrupt and rotten to the core, and the hand maiden of Banksters, Global Corporatist, Big Unions, and Big Bearucracy. One things for sure. Congressman Paul Ryan is a brilliant thinker aho believes in the great promise he calls "The American Idea". Funny how, as the presidential primary race rolls on, my hopeful attention is being drawn towards four men: Herman Cain, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul and Marco Rubio. Herman unfortunately is soft on Banksters, totally unaware and oblivious to the need to take back the currency, and end the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. I also have some difficulties with the "revenue neutral" aspects of his 999 plan. We need less government, not more. The private sector needs to keep more money, not less. Too bad because everything else about Herman excites me. Especially his authentic, from the heart love of America, American exceptionalism and opportunity, and the founders truly unique "American Idea". Ron Paul has an awesome "American Recovery" plan. Awesome. But his remarks on terrorism and foreign policy stray far from his usual reliance on the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. He's right about the connection between global corporatism and the never ending militarism they push. But he's dead ass wrong about our enemies and their intentions. And that's scary. If RP had stuck to the Constitution and 10th Amendment, i would fully support him. If it's not an enumerated power, it belongs to the States and individual citizens. End of story. Marco Rubio is awesome in the same way Herman is. He connects with a special authenticity that screams the principles and val
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Arthur Laffer: Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse - WSJ.com - 1 views
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People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.
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26 top American corporations paid no federal income tax from '08 to '12 - re... - 0 views
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Twenty-six of the most powerful American corporations – such as Boeing, General Electric, and Verizon – paid no federal income tax from 2008 to 2012, according to a new report detailing how Fortune 500 companies exploit tax breaks and loopholes. The report, conducted by public advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), focuses on the 288 companies in the Fortune 500 that registered consistent profit every year from 2008 to 2012. Those 288 profitable corporations paid an “effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over the five-year period — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate,” CTJ states. One-third, or 93, of the analyzed companies paid an effective tax rate below 10 percent in that timespan, CTJ found.
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Nearly half of US households escape fed income tax - Yahoo! Finance - 0 views
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Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.