tax rates

The Pete Buttigieg Memorial Wine Cave Club. Members shown celebrating their early freedom from Social Security taxes.by Thomas NeuburgerIt's February 20. Why are people with million-dollar salaries celebrating? Because as of yesterday, they stopped having to pay for Social Security. That's right.

Billionaires freaked when there was talk about eliminating them. But no one was talking about guillotines or firing squads-- just more equitable tax plans. That's what Bernie proposed, what AOC proposed and what Elizabeth Warren proposed.

The United States is often criticized for its citizens’ “love affair with the automobile.” It was roundly criticized when its president withdrew the US from the highly vaunted Paris Climate Accords.
Europeans are often perceived to look on the actions of Americans complaining over the high price of gasoline as somehow immoral. However, Americans do not usually go destroying things and setting fires in the streets over high fuel prices. In fact, no one does that.
Do they?

The orthodoxy that dominates today’s Republican Party — and the ranks of “business-friendly” Democrats — rests on a simple approach to economic policy. Let’s be nice, this orthodoxy holds, to rich people.
Let’s be particularly nice at tax time. Let’s keep taxes on rich people, conservatives advise us, as low as possible. High taxes on high incomes, they argue, discourage entrepreneurship. No one with a great idea for a new business enterprise is going to start that business, their argument goes, if Uncle Sam is just going to tax away the rewards that a new business could bring.

Former Wall Street Executive, now Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, gets on an elevator after speaking with reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in New York. (AP/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump unveiled his latest giveaway to corporations and the ultra-wealthy on Wednesday, with a tax plan that would, according to one analyst, “personally help Trump enormously.”