Bill Closes Tax Loophole for the 1%
One of the biggest tax loopholes that helps keep hedge fund managers in the top 1 percent would be closed by new legislation introduced this week by Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.).
Currently, people who manage other people’s money—like 1 percenter Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital—only pay 15 percent tax on the income they receive as compensation, compared with the up-to-35-percent many Americans pay on their income. Says Levin:
There is absolutely no reason why income earned for managing other people’s money shouldn’t be taxed in the same way as income earned teaching or working in a factory. This loophole for years has unfairly enabled some of the highest-paid individuals in the country to sharply reduce their tax bills and it is time to close it once and for all.
The technical term for those earnings is carried interest. In exchange for providing the service of managing their investors’ assets, fund managers often take a portion of a fund’s profits, or a carried interest, usually equal to 20 percent of such profits. When a significant portion of funds profits are long-term capital gains, the carried interest is taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rates. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. Tops Developed World in Income Inequality
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There’s income inequality, and then there’s the United States. New research shows that within the developed world, no nation has seen the income share of the top 1 percent grow faster over the past three decades than the United States.
To qualify for the elite status of 1 percent in annual income, an individual makes somewhere in the mid-$300,000s per year (or way more, like Mitt!).
(H/t to the Institute for Policy Studies.)
Pensions Aren’t the Problem for State Budgets
This is a crosspost by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.
Virtually everyone agrees that our nation faces a retirement security crisis, but the Journal last week published a shameful op-ed calling for the elimination of pensions for nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and others who still have them. Having punched private-sector workers retirement in the gut, these folks won’t be happy until the whole concept of a secure retirement for working Americans is a thing of the past.
The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding. Read the rest of this entry »
Indiana’s Daniels: Opponent of Working People
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Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, represents all too well the sad decline of the national Republican Party. As suggested by the Twitter hashtag #MitchFail, Daniels was an improbably bad choice to represent a party already facing questions about its commitment to the 99 percent. (Feel free to post a message to Daniels at his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/mymanmitchfans .)
In his rebuttal, Daniels had the audacity to claim the mantle of people’s champion—this from the man who said he was against the “right to work” for less before he was pushing it armed with lies and ruthlessly anti-democratic tactics. This from the political party fighting Obama’s plan to address the deficit by raising taxes on retired financiers like Mitt Romney, who pay less in taxes than most firefighters, bricklayers, teachers and nurses.
Inconsistency and numbers not adding up is nothing new for Daniels, who failed miserably as George W. Bush’s budget director for the first 2.5 years of Bush’s presidency, which had massive tax cuts for the rich as its No. 1 domestic priority. And Daniels’ concern for working people is more than a little bit ironic in light of his record as governor of Indiana, which has included taking away the right in 2005 of public employees to collectively bargain.
Today, Daniels has entered the national stage as an angry opponent of workers acting collectively. He may have seemed mild-mannered in a speech well-received by right-wing pundits, but that manner is belied by his efforts to shut down the basic institutions of democracy in Indiana. Daniels, a lame-duck governor who seems to be spending a lot more time thinking about Washington than about getting Hoosiers back to work, ought to follow the lead of President Obama and listen to working people rather than CEOs.
Trumka: Obama Showed He Hears People Not Heard by 1%
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight made clear that he hears the people who aren’t being heard by the 1 percent, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Obama’s speech showed he “listened to the single mom working two jobs to get by, to the out-of-work construction worker, to the retired factory worker, to the student serving coffee to help pay for college.”
By laying out a vision of an America that can create jobs and prosperity for all instead of wealth for the few, Trumka said the president “voiced the aspirations and concerns of those who are too often ignored.”
Obama also made clear that the era of the 1 percent getting rich by looting the economy, rather than creating jobs, is over.
“Now it’s time for Congress to stop standing in the way of rebuilding our country and act,” Trumka said.
President Obama presented Congress a choice, Trumka said, between Obama’s vision of the need to invest to achieve stable, long-term prosperity for all and the vision of presidential candidates squabbling over how much further to cut the taxes of the 1 percent.
Obama “spoke to the confidence of working people that if we are determined and committed, we can revitalize ‘Made in the USA.’ That commitment to American manufacturing, made possible in part by enhanced enforcement of trade laws being violated by China , is welcome news to the too many productive, hard working Americans sitting idle unnecessarily.”
Trumka praised the President’s powerful insistance “on a more humble Wall Street subject to a thorough investigation of the misconduct in the mortgage markets that wrecked our economy,” and applauded the creation of a new mortgage crisis unit to be co-chaired by New York’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman. Read the rest of this entry »
White House: Insource Jobs, Decrease Inequality
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Is it patriotic to ship America’s jobs overseas? President Obama doesn’t think so. He’s right, of course. We live in a globally connected world, but let’s face it: Home-grown corporations must first focus on their own back yards—a novel concept all to many, it seems.
Obama implicitly raised the question yesterday during his Insourcing American Jobs Forum, which featured representatives from more than a dozen large and small businesses that have made decisions to bring jobs to the United States and to increase their investments here.
Pointing to the CEOs in the room, Obama said they ”take pride in hiring people here in America, not just because it’s increasingly the right thing to do for their bottom line, but also because it’s the right thing to do for their workers and for our communities and for our country.
I don’t want America to be a nation that’s primarily known for financial speculation and racking up debt buying stuff from other nations. I want us to be known for making and selling products all over the world stamped with three proud words: “Made in America.” And we can make that happen.
Unemployed Workers Win Jobless Aid Extension
Congress this morning extended for two months unemployment insurance (UI) for America’s jobless workers. Republicans in the House earlier this week had blocked the UI extenstion, but after suffering badly in opinion polling, they announced they’d join with 89 out of 100 senators from both political parties who’d already voted to renew unemployment aid for two months—with no cuts and no strings attached.
Media headlines throughout the week–including the conservative Wall Street Journal–and Republican stalwarts such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), had decried House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) refusal to move the UI bill, which gives a lifeline to 2.8 million jobless Americans who otherwise would lose UI after Dec. 31.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described the victory for jobless Americans as “not a hnndout or a free ride” but “a lifeline.”
In the fight to extend aid for the jobless, the 99 percent went on the offense against 1 percent politicians. And we won. And if working people keep it up, we’ll score more victories and build a better future. Not every time—two steps forward, one step back. But look around. People all across the country are saying our economy and our democracy are out of balance. And they’re winning the public debate.
1% Senators Blocked Consumer Protections for the 99%
Today, obstructionists in the Senate blocked an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Fifty-three senators voted for Cordray, while 45—all Republicans—voted against ending debate on his nomination. Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R) voted for Cordray, and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) voted present.
The new agency, which was created by the Wall Street Transparency and
Accountability Act, is limited in its powers and cannot fully protect
consumers—until a director is confirmed. Which is exactly why 44 Republican senators have no intention of letting any director be confirmed. In May, they signed a letter to President Obama threatening to block any nomination to head the agency.
The 44 GOP senators who would not allow an up-or-down vote on Richard Cordray’s nomination have received millions from Wall Street this year. And they are shameless in admitting their goal is to force “structural changes” that prevent the bureau from doing its job: protecting consumers from Wall Street abuses. This shows just how much Wall Street greed dominates in Washington these days—particularly within the GOP.
Addressing Income Inequality Is a Global Task
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column at L&M Partnership.
Many of us are pleased that the Occupy movement resonates with so many. While not everyone is prepared to join one of the hundreds of encampments that have grown around the country over the past two months, it is not uncommon for mainstream media to recognize that they are articulating widespread public discontent. From MSNBC to the New York Times to many local and online outlets, the media recognize that dominant themes of Occupy—income inequality and the need for good jobs—have become very popular themes.
Just read Paul Krugman in the New York Times every few days, and he lays it out: almost all the wealth created in the United States over the past 30 years has gone to the top 10 percent, with even more going to the top 1 percent, and yet more going to the top one-tenth of one percent. What was once dismissed as the rhetoric of “class warfare” by the mainstream is, today, impossible to avoid. Read the rest of this entry »
DC Union Members Join OWS Marchers from NYC
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| AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and Don Mathis, executive director of the U.S. Community Action Partnership, rallied to support the Occupy movement in McPherson Square. |
Occupy Wall Street marchers arrived in Washington, D.C., today after walking for 10 days from New York City to deliver the message that Congress should stand with the 99 pecent, not the 1 percent.
Despite the abysmal weather, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker led a contingent of union members to McPherson Square to meet the marchers and rally in support.
Holt Baker joined Don Mathis (left), executive director of the U.S. Community Action Partnership, in sending a message to Republican presidential wannabee Newt Gingrinch, who yesterday said Occupy members should “go get a job after you take a bath.” Gingrich, who has attacked mortage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, turns out to have raked in at least $1.6 million while under contract to Freddie.
As Mathis’s sign says:
Hey, Newt! I had a bath today. When will you come clean?
