Tag: Reaganomics

America’s Ruinous Monopoly Of Wealth

I should start this homily on inequality by distinguishing income from wealth. Income is your annual wages or salary, as well as your earnings from a business, pension or government benefits such as Social Security, etc.

As the average U.S. worker’s real wages have stagnated for more than a decade, income disparity has become enormous. The bottom 90 percent of us average $30,000 a year, while the top 0.01 percent and 0.001 percent (about 1,400 taxpayers) rake in average annual incomes of $35.1 million and $152 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, even mediocre CEOs pocket many millions a year, and the greediest Wall Street hucksters annually amass more than $1 billion in booty. Until relatively recently, the ethical standard was for workers to gain a proportionate share of the income growth we generate. But in the last dozen years, the rich have been gobbling more and more of the total income pie, so the bottom half of Americans now get only 14 percent.

View the complete November 17 article by Jim Hightower on the National Memo website here.

Trump’s opportunity zones are supposed to help the poor. But billionaire GOP donors cashed in instead

A Trump tax break designed to help impoverished neighborhoods has lined the pockets of wealthy Republican donors. President Trump and congressional Republicans passed new tax legislation in 2017, introducing one provision in particular that was supposed to encourage business owners to invest in poor neighborhoods. Under the code, these communities are labeled opportunity zones, and if a developer builds anything in these zones, they receive a tax break. This reward is for new projects only.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Instead, it appears that former Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) bent the rules for a few of his wealthy friends, ProPublica reported Thursday. Scott, now a senator for the Sunshine State, designated the Rybovich superyacht marina an opportunity zone at the request of owner Wayne Huizenga Jr. Huizenga Jr. is the son of Wayne Huizenga Sr., the late billionaire co-owner of Blockbuster Video and founder of Waste Management.

View the complete November 14 article by Ashleigh Atwell on the Mic.com website here.

Two-Thirds of Americans Say Trump Has Not Helped Them Financially

Trump promised to put more money in people’s pocket. Instead, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’re not better off financially. Meanwhile, manufacturing is in decline and the unemployment rate continues to increase in key states.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’re not better off financially than they were when Trump was elected.

Financial Times: “Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are not better off financially than they were when Donald Trump was elected, casting doubt on whether economic expansion and a record bull market will boost the president’s re-election campaign in 2020. According to a poll of likely voters conducted by the Financial Times and the Peter G Peterson Foundation, 31 percent of Americans say they are now worse off financially than they were at the start of Mr Trump’s presidency. Another 33 per cent say there has been no change in their financial position since Mr Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, while 35 per cent say they are better off.” Continue reading “Two-Thirds of Americans Say Trump Has Not Helped Them Financially”

Falling investment revives attacks against Trump’s tax cuts

The Hill logoThe GOP tax law passed in 2017 was supposed to super charge the economy, but the lack of major impact is spurring critics to renew their attacks against the signature measure from President Trump.

Republicans said the tax law would help the economy through several avenues, including by sending business investment soaring. But just 15 months after it took effect, business investment has actually been contracting, falling 1 percent and 3 percent in the past two quarters.

Republicans who supported the tax law are blaming Trump’s trade war with China as the reason why it failed to have the intended impact.

View the complete November 10 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

Experts: Trump Tax And Trade Policies Slowing Economy

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.

20 Very Rich Americans Demand Higher Taxes On Wealth

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.

Symbol of ’80s Greed Stands to Profit From Trump Tax Break for Poor Areas

New York Times logoRENO, 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.

View the complete October 26 article by Eric Lipton and Jesse Drucker on The New York Times website here.

House Dems take aim at ‘trust fund babies’ with estate tax designed to combat obscene wealth inequality

AlterNet logoCalifornia 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.

No, the economy isn’t working well for all Americans — and a new survey proves it

AlterNet logoPresident 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.