Well a great black river a man had found
So he put all his money in a hole in the ground
And sent a big steel arm drivin' down down down
Man now I live on the streets of Houston town
Packed up my wife and kids when winter came along
And we headed down south with just spit and a song
But they said "Sorry son it's gone gone gone"
Well there's men hunkered down by the railroad tracks
The Elkhorn Special blowin' my hair back
Tents pitched on the highway in the dirty moonlight
And I don't know where I'm gonna sleep tonight
Parked in the lumberyard freezin' our asses off
My kids in the back seat got a graveyard cough
Well I'm sleepin' up in front with my wife
Billy club tappin' on the windshield in the middle of the night
Says "Move along man move along"
Well big limousine long shiny and black
You don't look ahead you don't look back
How many times can you get up after you've been hit?
Well I swear if I could spare the spit
I'd lay one on your shiny chrome
And send you on your way back home
So if you're gonna leave your town where the north wind blow
To go on down where that sweet soda river flow
Well you better think twice on it Jack
You're better off buyin' a shotgun dead off the rack
You ain't gonna find nothin' down here friend
Except seeds blowin' up the highway in the south wind
Movin' on movin' on it's gone gone it's all gone
Showing posts with label war on the poor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on the poor. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, February 02, 2006
What if the Top One Percent Owned More than 1/2 of all Corporate Assets?
This is not a future scenario, folks. Already happened. And we wonder why we have no control over our government?
Read more here about its effects.
Progress Action Now commentary
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/national/29rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
January 29, 2006
Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highest-income Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital.
In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.
In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars.
For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991. These declines ranged from 12.7 percent for those on the 96th to 99th rungs on the income ladder to 57 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans, who made less than $16,300 and together owned 0.6 percent of corporate wealth in 2003, down from 1.4 percent in 1991.
The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded, as were gains from noncorporate assets such as personal residences.
This technique for measuring wealth has long been used in standard economic studies, though critics have challenged that tradition.
Among them is Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation in Washington, which favors eliminating most taxes on capital and teaches that an unintended consequence of the corporate income tax is depressed wage rates. Mr. Entin said the report's approach was so flawed that the data were useless.
He said reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains may have prompted wealthy investors to sell profitable investments. That would show up in tax data as increased wealth that year, even though the increase may have built up over decades.
Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.
The White House said it did not believe that the 2003 tax cuts had much influence on wealth shares. It also said that since wealth is transitory for many people, a more important issue is how incomes and wealth are influenced by the quality of education.
"We want to lift all incomes and wealth," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap."
"The president thinks we need to close the income gap, and he has talked about ways in which we can do that," especially through education, Mr. Duffy said.
The data showing increased concentration of corporate wealth were posted last month on the Congressional Budget Office Web site. Isaac Shapiro, associate director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, spotted the information last week and wrote a report analyzing it.
Mr. Shapiro said the figures added to the center's "concerns over the increasingly regressive effects" of the reduced tax rates on capital. Continuing those rates will "exacerbate the long-term trend toward growing income inequality," he wrote.
The center, which studies how government affects the poor and supports policies that it believes help alleviate poverty, opposes Mr. Bush's tax policies.
The center plans to release its own report on Monday that questions the wisdom of continuing the reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains, saying the Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that the benefits flow directly to a relatively few Americans.
Read more here about its effects.
Progress Action Now commentary
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/national/29rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
January 29, 2006
Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highest-income Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital.
In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.
In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars.
For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991. These declines ranged from 12.7 percent for those on the 96th to 99th rungs on the income ladder to 57 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans, who made less than $16,300 and together owned 0.6 percent of corporate wealth in 2003, down from 1.4 percent in 1991.
The analysis did not measure wealth directly. It looked at taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and rents. Income from securities owned by retirement plans and endowments was excluded, as were gains from noncorporate assets such as personal residences.
This technique for measuring wealth has long been used in standard economic studies, though critics have challenged that tradition.
Among them is Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation in Washington, which favors eliminating most taxes on capital and teaches that an unintended consequence of the corporate income tax is depressed wage rates. Mr. Entin said the report's approach was so flawed that the data were useless.
He said reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains may have prompted wealthy investors to sell profitable investments. That would show up in tax data as increased wealth that year, even though the increase may have built up over decades.
Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.
The White House said it did not believe that the 2003 tax cuts had much influence on wealth shares. It also said that since wealth is transitory for many people, a more important issue is how incomes and wealth are influenced by the quality of education.
"We want to lift all incomes and wealth," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap."
"The president thinks we need to close the income gap, and he has talked about ways in which we can do that," especially through education, Mr. Duffy said.
The data showing increased concentration of corporate wealth were posted last month on the Congressional Budget Office Web site. Isaac Shapiro, associate director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, spotted the information last week and wrote a report analyzing it.
Mr. Shapiro said the figures added to the center's "concerns over the increasingly regressive effects" of the reduced tax rates on capital. Continuing those rates will "exacerbate the long-term trend toward growing income inequality," he wrote.
The center, which studies how government affects the poor and supports policies that it believes help alleviate poverty, opposes Mr. Bush's tax policies.
The center plans to release its own report on Monday that questions the wisdom of continuing the reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains, saying the Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that the benefits flow directly to a relatively few Americans.
Monday, December 19, 2005
On Charity-Super Rich Not So Generous
Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
David Cay Johnston, a reporter for the New York Times, has been reporting on income taxes and related issues for decades. Here is his latest. This article points out why we cannot rely on "trickle down" charity to take care of the needs of the most vulnerable of us.
The tax nuts, those who want to abolish all taxes, claim that the needs of the less fortunate will be taken care of by the private charity sector. That has never been the case, and it is not the case now, even in these days of spendthrift giveways to the ultra rich on the part of a government gone insane. Charitable giving has actually dropped as a percentage of income among the rich since the tax cuts took effect.
The proliferation of non-profit organizations is the privatization of what should be government functions. I am not complaining, mind you, that we have non-profit organizations, but rather, that the government uses them to shirk its ministerial duties.
I strongly recommend a sober and well-researched book by Johnston: Perfectly Legal.
December 19, 2005
Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Working-age Americans who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year are two to six times more generous in the share of their investment assets that they give to charity than those Americans who make more than $10 million, a pioneering study of federal tax data shows.
The least generous of all working-age Americans in 2003, the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service data is available, were among the young and prosperous - the 285 taxpayers age 35 and under who made more than $10 million - and the 18,600 taxpayers making $500,000 to $1 million. The top group had on average $101 million of investment assets while the other group had on average $2.4 million of investment assets.
On average these two groups made charitable gifts equal to 0.4 percent of their assets, while people the same age who made $50,000 to $100,000 gave gifts equal to more than 2.5 percent of their investment assets, six times that of their far wealthier peers.
Go to Original--Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
David Cay Johnston, a reporter for the New York Times, has been reporting on income taxes and related issues for decades. Here is his latest. This article points out why we cannot rely on "trickle down" charity to take care of the needs of the most vulnerable of us.
The tax nuts, those who want to abolish all taxes, claim that the needs of the less fortunate will be taken care of by the private charity sector. That has never been the case, and it is not the case now, even in these days of spendthrift giveways to the ultra rich on the part of a government gone insane. Charitable giving has actually dropped as a percentage of income among the rich since the tax cuts took effect.
The proliferation of non-profit organizations is the privatization of what should be government functions. I am not complaining, mind you, that we have non-profit organizations, but rather, that the government uses them to shirk its ministerial duties.
I strongly recommend a sober and well-researched book by Johnston: Perfectly Legal.
December 19, 2005
Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Working-age Americans who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year are two to six times more generous in the share of their investment assets that they give to charity than those Americans who make more than $10 million, a pioneering study of federal tax data shows.
The least generous of all working-age Americans in 2003, the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service data is available, were among the young and prosperous - the 285 taxpayers age 35 and under who made more than $10 million - and the 18,600 taxpayers making $500,000 to $1 million. The top group had on average $101 million of investment assets while the other group had on average $2.4 million of investment assets.
On average these two groups made charitable gifts equal to 0.4 percent of their assets, while people the same age who made $50,000 to $100,000 gave gifts equal to more than 2.5 percent of their investment assets, six times that of their far wealthier peers.
Go to Original--Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
On Tax Breaks
You cannot help poor people by giving rich people money. I have never heard one person who got a tax break say, "Oh my gosh! Now I can put my neighbor to work."
The fact is: 35 years ago, corporate tax revenues amounted to about 50% of the total income tax revenues each year. Now, its about 5%. And all of the Bush tax breaks are not permanent yet.
They claim that they only want to pay their fair share. Looks to me like they think their fair share is a big fat zero.
I keep making a proposal to every tax resister I meet, on the right and the left. People on the right seem uncomfortable about it.
There's how it goes. We give the flat tax people their flat tax, regressive and punitive to the less well off as it is. The catch is: taxpayers get to check a box that states whether they want their taxes to go to the military or social programs and infrastructure.
I think its a great idea. I think that if implemented, we would see some REAL political action. People could vote with their money.
The fact is: 35 years ago, corporate tax revenues amounted to about 50% of the total income tax revenues each year. Now, its about 5%. And all of the Bush tax breaks are not permanent yet.
They claim that they only want to pay their fair share. Looks to me like they think their fair share is a big fat zero.
I keep making a proposal to every tax resister I meet, on the right and the left. People on the right seem uncomfortable about it.
There's how it goes. We give the flat tax people their flat tax, regressive and punitive to the less well off as it is. The catch is: taxpayers get to check a box that states whether they want their taxes to go to the military or social programs and infrastructure.
I think its a great idea. I think that if implemented, we would see some REAL political action. People could vote with their money.
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