(no subject)

[gwydion]

A big part of the tax inequality is the law dramatically lowering taxes on investment dividends. Generally folks with a million plus a year incomes have huge investment portfolios that are no longer being taxed the way income from work is. Similarly, there is a cap on social security tax so that the wealthy pay in a lower percentage of their wages. It's how someone like Romney is taxed at 14% while someone like Bill Maher is in the high twenties. I do not think it is logical that when I was teaching I was making subsistence wages, but taxed at about 25% when you include payroll taxes and the like, while Romney and his billions are taxed at 14%.

I absolutely don't want to return to the social policies of the 1950's, but I would love to see a return to Eisenhower tax policies.

What is often missing is the opportunity cost of the Republican plans. Instead of sucking all this money out of the economy to help the wealthy, we could be doing things like actually properly funding public schools and subsidizing college educations, all of which is a huge investment in the future of the country. 21st century economies need lots of educated tech sector types innovating and inventing. Yes, you get the occasional self taught genius, but what you really need are large numbers of trained folks to do the high tech jobs, basic science research, engineering, and the like. Similarly, we could be giving everyone first world health care instead of reserving that for 10% of the population, thus increasing productivity of workers. We could be building infrastructure that could carry us through another century of growth. Instead, we are getting nothing back as a country from all these hand outs to the wealthy, which is what the lower rates for capital gains really is. Every dollar of tax cuts for the wealthy is only worth .30 in terms of economic growth,because that goes to savings on or off shore. Things like Social secutiry and unemployment benefits are worth 1.30 in terms of growth because they have a multiplier throughout the economy. Things like hiring teachers, construction workers, etc are worth about 1.20 in economic growth, plus you get the longer term benefits of better education, and bridges that don't collapse during rush hour.

The policies I advocate are practical. Before a modern sanitation and public health system, you had periodic epidemic disease. The life expectancy for a family in the city used to be three generations. (That is, the grandparents move to the city and the family dies out with the grandchildren because the survival rate due to disease was so low). It is in everyone's best interest that we have vaccinations; access to a full course of anti-biotics for diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis; clean water free of things like parasites, polio, and cholera; EPA regulations limiting toxins and carcinogens, etc.. These benefits are both humanitarian and economic. Healthier people can work harder longer. I likely lost several decades off my working life because it took me almost a decade to get anyone willing to treat my tumor colony and I couldn't afford the medication to slow rapid degeneration from my genetic ailments. During those extra decades I could have been doing things like paying taxes and paying off my student loans. It would have been cheaper for the state to provide me early cancer treatment and meds instead of waiting until I became permanently disabled. This sort of thing is more common than you think. Similar, it costs about $40,000 a year per homeless person to provide services if you include things like ER visits. Section 8 housing, EBT, and medicaid for each of those people would be cheaper, but we choose not to fund the cheaper, earlier interventions. We choose to drastically underfund public schools, the foster care system, etc., and the Republicans keep targeting Head Start even though we know it's one of the best ways to improve lifetime academic performance and lower the drop out rate. We know lower class sizes (18 or fewer children per class) are not only educationally ideal, but are the best thing after head start that we can do to improve academic achievement and lower drop out rate, but we keep doing class sizes of 35-40 in public schools because we don't want to pay to hire those teachers, build the extra classrooms, etc.. By not paying for decent schools, enough foster care, head Start, etc., we are wasting a huge about of human potential and ensuring that a whole lot more of those kids won't ever make it out of poverty, will end up in prison, long term unemployed, etc.. Again, it's not only the humane thing to do, it's cheaper in the long run to have the at risk population becoming productive tax payers than have them in generational poverty.