An Unsustainable Free Ride for the Wealthy

Let's start out by talking about a flat tax. At one point, a flat tax was all the rage among conservatives. For many, it's still a fave. When someone on the right talks about "simplifying the tax code," what they really mean is flattening the tax rate. If everyone paid the same percentage and there were very few deductions, everything would be "fairer," they argue. People making a lot of money are "punished for success" by being pushed into a higher tax bracket. Never mind that this "punishment" doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent, since the total number of US millionaires is expected to double by 2020, as the income inequality between the wealthy and everyone else grows at an astonishing clip. The wealthy are gluttons for this particular punishment, apparently.

Now, keep a flat tax -- the conservative favorite -- in mind while you read this quote from an op-ed by Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world.

Last year my federal tax bill -- the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf -- was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income -- and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine -- most likely by a lot.

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Stealing America Right From Under Our Noses

"Yes, 'there's class warfare, all right,' warns Warren Buffett. 'But it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.'"

That quote, much beloved by liberals concerned with economic justice, opens a piece at MarketWatch by Paul B. Farrell. Farrell then goes on to agree with Buffett and take the argument further; there's a "new American Civil War between the rich and the rest." Buffett, the billionaire investment capitalist behind Berkshire Hathaway, issued his warning in a New York Times op-ed back in 2006. It was true then, but it's much truer now. Led by gains at the state level, Republicans are moving to strip the poor and the middle class of things they've paid for with their tax dollars or worked for at their state jobs, then take all that money and give it to the wealthy.

But that's only the start. Writes Farrell:

Not just the 16 new GOP governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and across America fighting for new powers. Others include: Chamber of Commerce billionaires, Koch brothers, Forbes 400, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform -- which now has 97% of House Republicans and 85% of the GOP Senators signed on his "no new taxes" pledge -- the Tea Party and Reaganomics ideologues.

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