On Feb. 10, a day after the company announced the buyback plan, Bobby Kotick, Activision’s chief executive, sold nearly 4 million shares for $180.8 million. The average share price of his sales was 15 percent higher than he would have gotten before the stock rose on the news.
View the complete November 6 article by Gary Putka on The Washington Post website here.
Sparking warnings that the Republican Party is preparing another massive gift for the rich and corporations, the Washington Post reported Thursday that President Donald Trump is “agitating to announce a new tax cut proposal heading into the 2020 election.”
According to the Post, the tax cut discussions are being led by National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, a “Wall Street cheerleader” and fervent believer in the discredited idea of trickle-down economics.
“The early-stage discussions reflect Trump’s desire to refocus the economic narrative amid some signs of a slowing economy,” the Post reported.
Economic growth in the United States slowed to just 1.9 percent in the past three months, far slower than promised Donald Trump made during his 2016 campaign. The sluggish growth is even worse than the second-quarter numbers, when the economy grew at 2 percent, NPR reported on Wednesday.
In his annual budget to Congress, Trump predicted a more robust 3.2 percent growth.
“That’s not going to happen,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, told NPR, adding, “we won’t get a 3-plus percent growth rate for the year.”
View the complete October 31 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.
When the grand vacation homes of Newport Beach were empty on a beautiful Memorial Day weekend, Molly Munger decided it was time for the U.S. to consider taxing wealth.
As her family’s boat moved through the harbor a few years ago, Munger, whose father is a billionaire investor, saw that many of her neighbors’ houses were sitting dark and vacant. She knew why: The owners now controlled enough money to holiday at one of their several other luxury homes. It didn’t sit right, she said.
When the grand vacation homes of Newport Beach were empty on a beautiful Memorial Day weekend, Molly Munger decided it was time for the U.S. to consider taxing wealth.
View the complete October 27 article from the Associated Press on the National Memo website here.
RENO, Nev. — In the 1980s, Michael Milken embodied Wall Street greed. A swashbuckling financier, he was charged with playing a central role in a vast insider-trading scheme and was sent to prisonfor violating federal securities and tax laws. He was an inspiration for the Gordon Gekko character in the film “Wall Street.”
Mr. Milken has spent the intervening decades trying to rehabilitate his reputation through an influential nonprofit think tank, the Milken Institute, devoted to initiatives “that advance prosperity.”
These days, the Milken Institute is a leading proponent of a new federal tax break that was intended to coax wealthy investors to plow money into distressed communities known as “opportunity zones.” The institute’s leaders have helped push senior officials in the Trump administration to make the tax incentive more generous, even though it is under fire for being slanted toward the wealthy.
California Congressman Jimmy Gomez on Friday introduced legislation in the Democrat-controlled U.S. House that aims to address “our country’s rapidly increasing wealth inequality by strengthening the estate tax and ensuring the wealthiest among us pay their fair share.”
“Trust fund babies who have done nothing to earn their wealth besides being born into the right family have no right to pay a lower tax rate on their millions than hard-working Americans do on the income that they work for.”
—Charlie Simmons, Patriotic Millionaires
The For the 99.8% Act would impose a progressive tax on the estates of the richest Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, introduced the companion bill in the Republican-controlled Senate in January.
View the complete October 26 article from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.
President Donald Trump has not hesitated to boast about the state of the U.S. economy, insisting that his policies have brought about an economic miracle (never mind the fact that unemployment was going way down during President Barack Obama’s second term). But two of the Democratic presidential primary candidates who are hoping to unseat Trump in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, have repeatedly stressed that big chunks of the U.S. population are not feeling the economic recovery — and a new survey by the personal finance website WalletHub bears that out.
The United States’ national unemployment rate, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, was 3.7% in August and 3.5% in September. When Obama was a lame duck in December 2016, it was 4.7% compared to 10% in October 2009 during the worst of the Great Recession. So Trump inherited an economy that was in recovery under Obama; he didn’t create an economic miracle single-handedly, contrary to what one often hears on Fox News. Further, unemployment figures don’t tell the whole story, and WalletHub’s survey underscores the fact that millions of Americans are still struggling.
According to WalletHub’s survey, released this week, “78 million Americans” say their finances are a “horror show” — that includes 34% of Millennials and 16% of Baby Boomers. Moreover, 85% of Americans, WalletHub reports, plan on spending less this Halloween compared to Halloween 2018.
View the complete October 25 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.
Almost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a claim that would become famous. He said that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, thanks to the many loopholes and deductions that benefit the wealthy.
His claim sparked a debate about the fairness of the tax system. In the end, the expert consensus was that, whatever Buffett’s specific situation, most wealthy Americans did not actually pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. “Is it the norm?” the fact-checking outfit Politifact asked. “No.”
Time for an update: It’s the norm now.
For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group, according to newly released data.
View the complete October 6 commentary by David Leonhardt on The New York Times website here.
