Jan Schakowsky is really one of my favorite elected leaders. I wish she had run for the U.S. Illinois Senate seat in 2010 but she continues to carry the torch in the House. Yesterday, she unveiled a serious proposal to tax the richest people in the country–as a response to the rising rhetorical nonsense coming from voices in both parties that more money has to be cut from the budget to respond to the phony debt and deficit "crisis".
Here’s her proposal:
The Fairness in Taxation Act asks enacts new tax brackets for income starting at $1 million and ends with a $1 billion bracket. The new brackets would be:
* $1-10 million: 45%
* $10-20 million: 46%
* $20-100 million: 47%
* $100 million to $1 billion: 48%
* $1 billion and over: 49%
Right now, all those very rich people are all taxed at a 35 percent rate. Completely insane. And very important as well:
The bill would also tax capital gains and dividend income as ordinary income for those taxpayers with income over $1 million.
It’s not surprising that this comes from Schakowsky–she is the only member of the Catfood Commission who voted against the Commission report and put out a serious, comprehensive counter proposal to the foolishness supported by some Democrats and former labor "leaders". Her counter plan, by the way, included this nugget about Social Security which showed that she apparently understands economics better than The White House:
Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. It has a surplus of $2.5 trillion which will go up to $4 trillion, and without any changes the program can pay out full benefits until 2037. To extend full benefits for the next 75 years, the Schakowsky plan achieves long-term solvency without making any benefit cuts.
As Schakowsky says: [more below the fold]
“In the United States today, the richest 1% owns 34 % of our nation’s wealth – that’s more than the entire bottom 90%, who own just 29% of the country’s wealth. And the top one-hundredth of 1% now makes an average of $27 million per household per year. The average income for the bottom 90% of Americans? $31,244. It’s time for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, which is why I introduced the Fairness in Taxation Act. This isn’t about punishment or revenge. It’s about fairness. It’s about avoiding budget cuts that harm middle class families and those who aspire to it. We can choose to cut education, job creation and health care, or we can choose to ask those who can contribute more to do so.”[emphasis added]
I added the emphasis because I think that it is crucial that we underscore the idea of fairness, not punishment. In my recent book about the phony deficit-debt "crisis", It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: the Scam of the Deficit Crisis, I promote a similar, if somewhat more aggressive, tax plan to what Shakowsky lays out as well as a financial transactions tax on Wall Street–always underscoring that this is not about retribution. As I wrote in the book:
Wall Street can’t make a dime if we don’t have good public schools that turn out kids who go to college and learn skills that they can, then, turn into tools of the financial trade, or if we don’t have transit systems—trains, buses and roads—that are functioning well all the time so workers on Wall Street can get to work, or if our overall societal health is declining because health care systems are so expensive and inefficient that they make for a sicker community.
This tax will help Wall Street. And help America.
That is true about personal income tax rates as well. I suppose we can view all rich people as evil individuals that don’t give a rat’s ass about the country. But, I think it better that we build a public mood and culture that urges people who have reaped a lot of money to see that they cannot function in their lives if they don’t pay a fair share to make sure we have a decent society.
Schakowsky For President–some day…
