Ammunition against Right-Wingers Who Advocate Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

[Lydia Leftcoast]

can be found in Response #7 to Paul Krugman's 12/31/10 op-ed in the New York Times. It is a long response, but I think it really punches holes in the right-wing arguments. Here are a couple of excerpts:
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"7.
David Underwood
Citrus heights, CA

The Republicans were able to convince the public, that ending the Bush tax cuts would cause the wealthy to take their money out of circulation, and it would kill jobs. They were fed a constant stream of propaganda, that the higher tax would cause small businesses to cut back due to loss of income.

(snip)
If one takes the effort to read the proxy statements of just about every corporation in the U.S. they will see that the major compensation for executives comes in the form of stock options. In many cases, as much as 10:1, in stock value vs. Salary. Many CEOs, of major corporations have salaries of $1 or $2 million, and the rest is in stock options. Then these executives can exercise their options in a year or two at most. If they then sell them at market price, the get capital gains, which is taxed at $15%, if they keep the and collect dividends, they get taxes at 15%. That is what the Bush tax cuts did. (snip)

The Wealthy that have managed to receive this largess are not creators of wealth, they are money harvesters. No one has yet explained how the economic engineering by wall street brought about any increase in the country's economy. It did not build consumer goods. It did not contribute to the modernization of industry, or contribute to the general welfare. What it did was line the pockets of some very sophisticated money managers, who, even after the bankruptcy of their investment banks, walked away with more money than most people make in several lifetimes. Yet, the public allowed these money harvesters to get by with 15% tax rates, even while castigating the government for baling out the banks.
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http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31krugman.html?sort=recommended

I love the phrase that I bolded above: "The Wealthy have managed to receive this largess are not creators of wealth, they are money harvesters."

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[kentuck]

1. Excellent point that needs to be made over and over.

These people do not create jobs or anything. They harvest money. That's it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Yes, that and the apparently little-known fact (among ordinary Americans)

that paying employee wages and benefits actually REDUCES a company's taxes.

[kentuck]

4. Yep..

Don't give away too many trade secrets, Lydia. :-)

[Exultant Democracy]

6. Give the rich a tax break and they tax it home, raise their taxes and they invest in america.

[dkf]

3. Compensation that is recorded as capital gains needs to get treated as income.

This is such an obvious loophole. Really they should get taxed as income when they receive their shares then taxed as capital gains when they sell it.

[freshwest]

5. Our language has failed us.

One still has to attack their philosophy with strong words, but those words won't be allowed on THEIR media which they pay to promote their doublespeak.

They call themselves 'producers' while they get bonuses for devouring industries from their cronies.

And they call the rest of the population 'parasites' when they've reduced working people to penury and death.

They've claimed they are 'defending civilization' by going to war in far away land and call their victims and our people 'savages.'

These people hide behind the paper of ownership of the sources of all wealth that come from the Earth, which gave it to them with little cost. That ownership was obtained by many means, lethal and otherwise.

They've oppressed those who produced their wealth for them and used chicanery to keep them from rising up to threaten their big lie.

'Money harvesters' is much too mild a term, they are the 'parasites' and their methods of gaining wealth through pollution, wars and other killing means prove they are the 'savages' running the show.

Fell off soap box... Ow...

[msongs]

7. which prominent non-right winger politician recently also advocated tax cuts 4 wealthy lol nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. One or more of the Blue Dogs?

:shrug:

[DCKit]

9. "Where are the jobs?"

For those in 'Murka, "Where's the jobs?"

These tax cuts have been in place for ten years. The same ten years we've been losing jobs.

[DCKit]

10. And, really, what do the Banksters or Wall St. grifters produce? Nothing.

Too true, they "harvest" money.

They are parasites.