call me Roy, July 11 at 11:45 pm,

The rich must pay their fair share for the benefit they receive from communal resources and from the U.S. Economy.

The frame of soaking the rich implies that those who have greater privilege, greater wealth, and receive greater benefit from communal resources of the United States as a nation and from the U.S. Economy are not obligated to pay for their greater use and benefit from communal resources of the United States as a nation and the U.S. Economy; this is simply untrue and must be rejected as a false frame.

Over the period of my life, I have had people explain the “System of Privatized Capitalism” as a system where the smarter, the privatized capitalists, take advantage of the dumber, the citizens whose consumption generates the capital and the benefit of privatized capitalism; this relationship must end, and privatized capitalism must be held accountable and made to pay its fair share for benefit received from communal resources of the United States as a nation and the U.S. Economy.

The time for Corporate Welfare and Plunder has existed from the advent of privatized capitalism in Britain, and it is time for a change————it is time for an end to privatized capitalism’s dependence upon Corporate Welfare, and private capitalism’s continuance of policies and practices of Commercial Plunder that squander the communal resources of the American Populace for private benefit.

It is time for social capital and social capitalism; capitalism for the greater good, rather than privatized capitalism for the greater greed .

We have a new privileged class in America. We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.
It’s a part of a very large question the nation’s got to face, Who serves whom here? Is the public sector—as some of us have always thought—there to serve the rest of society? Or is it the other way around?
First are the very real financial obligations imposed by their salaries, health benefits and—especially—their traditional, defined-benefit pension plans, which have been sweetened over the years in many states by legislators eager for the support of politically-powerful unions. This is particularly true in the northern and western states that allow public workers to organize. A recent study from the Pew Center on the States found that states are short $1 trillion toward the $3.35 trillion in pension, health care and other retirement benefits states have promised their current and retired workers, the product of a combination of political decisions and the recent recession.
California, however, remains ground zero for pension fights, as the seat of both the nation’s highest-profile budget crises and some of its most powerful public unions. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been fighting them since he took office, and they have handed him his most stinging political defeats. He failed in 2003 and 2004 to attack pension costs through the legislature, then in 2005 backed ballot initiatives to shift public workers to a 401(k)-style pension system, to cap spending and to roll back teachers’ tenure. But he was forced to drop the pension measure amid claims it would cut death benefits for police widows, and lost the other measures in an expensive, bruising political fight that was the worst defeat of his tenure.
Now, though, Schwarzenegger – in his final months as governor– is gearing up for what he views as a final, climactic battle over public sector pensions. And he told POLITICO in an interview that he feels the time is now ripe for elements of the fight he lost five years earlier.
“The atmosphere has changed,” Schwarzenegger said. “People understand that they have to lay off their workers or they don’t have the money for their family. What they don’t like is when there is a certain group that doesn’t like to make the sacrifices.”
Schwarzenegger said he “will not sign” a budget without pension reform.

This year, one can inherit $10 billion dollars and pay zero in taxes. If one travels Europe and earns $200,000 from the stock market, he pays only a 15% rate because that is not income, it is a “capital gain.” Yet if he works 60 hours a week as an emergency room doctor, he must pay FICA 7.65% plus self-employed FICA 7.65% and a wage tax of 35%.

With Garbage like this, Marcus should be writing for
the Rich Man,s Bible (WSJ) The first person she bad
mouths is A Union Leader, She apparently is not old
enough to remember that it was the Unions in this
country that created the Middle Class.  I am guessing
that her patron Saint would be Ronnie The Ray-gun, as
it were He that was instrumental in the demise of our
once effective labor organisations. 

76, 86, 90% tax rates sound like a lot of taxes that
the rich and greedy supposedly paid in years gone by.
But that was after they had claimed everything under
the Sun as an deduction, and that was on many things
that the Working People could only dream of owning.

Warren Buffet says that he pays less of a percentage
of his income then his Secretary does. So whom should
we believe, A Shill for the Republican view of just
compensation for workers, or, the Rich Man himself.
If Marcus makes more then the man that picks up my
Garbage, than she makes more then she is worth to me.
I can do without her biased view of the plight of the
American Worker, but, need on A personal basis my
garbage to be removed on a continual schedule.

American Labor has not had a meaningful raise in this
Country for well over 30 years, while the Rich have
made so much Money they need to hire people to show
them how to spend it all.

Since all of us little people paid for the “bailouts”, I suppose we’ll be made to pay for keeping the rich wealthy.

I cannot stand this woman and am very pleased to discover the comments contain far more intelligence than anything she writes. I second “Please go away.”

Soak the rich? How about the signs spray-painted on walls in New York City in the 1980s?

EAT THE RICH

jrundin, July 9 at 12:39 pm,

“Soaking the Rich” is a false frame.

As a result of Nixon from the time of Goldwater through Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and to the present with Glen Beck and his ilk, the Rich have been on Corporate Welfare; ——— How is it that Corporate Welfare recipients can be the ones getting soaked, rather than the ones doing the soaking??

You know, I just reread my comments below.

They were intemperate and unfair and personal. I apologize.

I don’t agree with Ruth Marcus’ opinions, which seem to come from someone who could not imagine ever being at the receiving end of a recession or depression—like almost all the people I see doing the news on TV and writing columns in the major newspapers. But that’s the nature of the unresponsive ruling class of cossetted rentiers that lives around Washington these days. What’s worse is they always seem eager to prescribe pain to others—sorts of pain they are sure they will never experience themselves—to prove their seriousness. What am I to expect? It’s like Versailles before the deluge.

Attacks on Social Security? Social Security has not added one red dime to the deficit in its history, and is so structured not to. It pays for itself and even has a surplus. It’s arguably the most successful program run by the government. The right has been itching to kill Social Security for decades, and now that their schemes have caused us to run up huge deficits, they’re ready to pounce. Now if Marcus is for stealing the Social Security trust fund to finance eternal war and tax cuts for the rich, she should just lay that out right now. By the way, our country had a more solid middle class when the wealthy were more highly taxed.

And for all her complaining about Greece, it’s a joke to think that the median standard of living in the U.S. comes up to that in the E.U. these days. If Europe’s got problems, I’d trade them any day of the week for ours. (Not to mention that it was U.S. Banks who facilitated the current Greek financial problems.)

Time to start storing up canned goods. The people who rule us do not have our interests at heart and never will, I think.

I think that if you want to know the sources of Marcus’ right-wing rhetoric, you need to follow the career of her husband, Jon Leibowitz.

What’s wrong with some of these articles on Truthdig?  As I get to know this site
better, I realize that a number of writers produce a great deal of schizoid material. One day they can analyze issues in a seemingly coherent and realistic way, and the next time they don’t make any sense at all. This might not matter that much if the problems at hand were not as severe as they are.  Half the time these people don’t appear to know their subject very well and, worse yet, they are unable to distinguish simple truths from lies. They just seem to follow the sad existing political culture which is a perpetually spinning treadmill that remains in the same place while things collapse all around.

Before you start suggesting that my retirement benefits somehow are unsustainable, do examine the obscene retirement plans of those in the military. They work like twenty years and then can collect pensions while working second careers. Puh-leaze! This is sexist worship of violent males!

(I do hope you landed yourself one of those, Ruth!)

I’ve been working my ass off for decades, and now the sycophantic press is trying to tell me that there’s no money for my retirement.

But cut the military? Unthinkable!

It is amazing and obscene, that this piece of blatant bullshitting crap, and obfuscating of numbers is peddled as a serious article.
Ruth Marcus is nothing but a mouth-piece of the super rich.
For a starter roll back the obscene tax cuts for the super wealthy introduced by W Bush.
Second, immediately introduce taxes on Wall St. speculative and short term transactions before eliminating all that casino behaviour and schemes to let Wall St. return to its original function of finacing the real economy and Main St. instead of stealing from them.
Third, stop offshoring jobs and keep the tax paying jobs here.
But I know that will never happen with things the way they currently are.!

Hum…? Ruth. No supporters yet.

Your faulty analysis has been evident to all. Are you unaware of the correlation between tax rates for the wealthiest, and the economic health of the “Lower Classes”? You clearly record the most “fair” period in our recent history, without mentioning what the actual tax rates were. Did you forget to mention it, or do you need to become better informed?

It seems that neoliberals find it difficult to admit that their theories, and promises, have been proven to be hollow, by the numbers. I can understand why neoliberals would also wish to ignore the economic collapse; it is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?

All this talk about entitlements; which economic class is it that has an unwarranted sense of entitlement?

When facts, logic, reason, history and morality become irrelevant - - we get
fairy tales written by idiots.

All this is just an old magicians trick is to take the attention off what one hand is
doing by waving the other.  While everyone’s attention is distracted by what the
rich pay in income taxes or Social Security taxes the inheritance tax has gone to
zero.  This is always been the real goal of wealthy.  Terms like “death tax” come
about, as though the dead could write checks.  Don’t want to pay higher income
tax?  Fine raise import tariffs (the country was financed by this until WW1). 
Restore the inheritance tax on a progressive scale.  Eliminate all the tax breaks for
taking jobs out of the country and quit blaming the unemployed for things they
cannot control.

Such an exceptionally incompetent presentation really demands correction:

1.  So middle-quintile household income increased nearly 100% from 1947 to 1973 (that’s what ‘nearly doubled’ means, Ruth), while top-quintile income increased ‘only’ 85%:  this difference is supposed to be worth prattling about?

2.  Raising the top two tax rates to 72.4 and 76.8 percent would be ‘insane’?  Given that the average top rate in the 1950s was over 90%, the average top rate in the 1960s was over 80%, and the average top rate in the 1970s was over 70%, I think not.  And don’t trot out that tired claim that such top-bracket rates stifle economic growth:  in those three decades of 70% - 90% top-bracket rates our economy grew by 41%, 51%, and 37%, respectively, while in the ‘80s (when the top rate fell from 70% in 1980 to 28% in 1986 and averaged 48% overall) we grew only 38%, we grew 40% in the ‘90s with a top rate averaging 37%, and we grew a mere 32% (April estimate) in the past decade with top rates averaging 36%.

So raising top-bracket rates to 70% - 80% until we get our fiscal house back in order is far from unprecedented and entirely reasonable to contemplate - after which we could reduce them back to around 50% to avoid the disastrous cuts that helped get us where we are today.  Of course, if we’re willing to make more fundamental changes to reduce waste (think REAL health-insurance reform to save around $400 billion annually by eliminating the overheads created by our private for-profit health insurance industry, plus similar savings in defense expenditures), far less drastic changes to the tax code would be necessary.

3.  Are you truly ignorant of the fact that Social Security is solvent without any changes whatsoever through 2037?  Probably more like forever, actually, given that the 2037 exhaustion date for its trust fund (at which point benefits would decrease by about 25% if no changes had been made) depends upon extremely conservative projections for economic growth:  1.9% annually vs. the historical average of 3.6%.  If we only manage 2.7% annual growth full benefits will continue with no system changes long past 2037, and if we unexpectedly fall below that growth rate over the next decade or so raising the income cap back to its TRADITIONAL level of 90% of earnings (it has been allowed to fall recently) will solve the problem.

Do try to get this through your head:  no ‘fix’ is needed for Social Security any time soon, and quite possible ever.  It has no ‘shortfall’.  It cannot, by definition (i.e., by law:  see http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html) affect the budget, the deficit, or the national debt.  It just isn’t part of the subject that you’re purportedly discussing here.

4.  Those ‘out-sized’ benefits you’re talking about were just one part of the overall employment contracts negotiated - and often were offered in lieu of competitive pay rates (that’s the way such contracts are hammered out).  They’re agreed-upon deferred compensation, not unearned ‘bennies’ to be cut whenever convenient.

The rich are those who benefited from the misguided policies of the past three decades while the rest of us suffered under them, so asking the rich to bear the load of righting things is entirely reasonable - especially given that they DO have the resources to do so.  They’re also the ones best-positioned to effect the long-needed changes in national policy that could mitigate that load:  let them do so if they’d like to avoid a return to the highly-effective tax policies of the ‘50s through the ‘70s.

A shining example of the sloppy thinking, logical fallacies, and statistical
voodoo conscripted into an ideological firewall. 

The ‘70’s was the decade in which Keynesian economics gave way to
neoliberalism. This was a concerted effort to seize control of labor, and by the
time of the Reagan administration, the diminished power and earnings ability
of organized labor was a fait accompli.

With labor being offshored for the next three decades, the viability of social
security was put in jeopardy, since the system relies on a specific ratio of
workers to SS recipients. The answer to social security is more people working,
not more taxes. But most manufacturing jobs have left this country, and will
never come back.

The solution to the problem is social capital and Socialized Capitalism.

Private capital and Privatized Capitalism has always been and will continue to be a parasite upon social capital that expects to be brought back to life as a zombie subsequent to its cyclical death, so that it can continue to be a parasite upon social capital and social capital assets.

If there is ever to be a solution to the American Aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class pulling their own weight without being parasites upon the American Populace, the 70% majority Common Population, it will come from social capital and Socialized Capitalism that will make all of the population of the United States small investors in Socialized Capitalism, and relegate Privatized Capitalism and private capital to a position of competition with social capital and Socialized Capitalism for whatever market share Privatized Capitalism can sustain WITHOUT Corporate Welfare.

Note the year 1973. Nixon’s tax cut. But that cut was made into Eisenhower’s tax increase for the rich of 90%. Please, let’s get back to the reality of it all.

I’m unclear on why raising the social security cap is “Soaking the Rich”.  I’m by far the wealthiest of my (very large) extended family.  All my relatives pay 6.4% of their income to Social Security.  And I pay less, because I make well over $106,400.  The more I earn, the less percentage I pay.  I’ll agree that taxing the top few at such absurdly high percentages may become a disincentive (though maybe that’s not such a bad thing!), but to claim that elimination of the FICA cap is anything but fair seems like an odd definition of “fair” to me…

I would be more interested in how these people became so rich in the first place, but that would need your tax system to be made a great deal fairer; it would also help reduce, quite substantially, the proliferation of millionaires and multimillionaires and give working people a chance to pay a smaller share of the tax burden. These working people do not, in most cases, have the benefit of creative accountants to reduce their tax returns.

I hate this woman.  I hate everything she writes.

Since when has this country EVER soaked the rich?  This country is about protecting the rich.

Don’t worry about your little nest egg, Marcus.  No one is coming to get it.

Besides, what is with all the right wing posts lately?  Down the deficit by stopping unemployment!  Don’t take from the rich!  How in the world did you lose your job a the WSJ?

In the systematic, somewhat covert, tranfer of wealth to the upper crust (trickle up, though the viaduct of laissez-faire finance), control of upwards of 90+ percent of the nation’s discretionary assets merits an honest review of where responsibility lies.

Andrew Carnegie once said, “Wealth is responsibiliy.” I really do not see that ethic, with the exception of Bill Gates and a few others, in vogue these days.

I do plainly see, the contrary, i.e., a rapacious Social Darwinism founded upon money for the sake of money with an utter disregard for any higher ideal. Sorry, rich folks, I’m not impressed with hollow rhetoric and its concommitant commercial propaganda leading the tender middle of the economic demographic, with your back-burner philosophy, down an unsustainable path. These days wealth, obviously, does not equate to leadership, but rather “take the money and run.”

This nation should, by all accounts, be the “shining light upon the hill” that Reagan imagined. Globalization has obfuscated our avowed aims. For instance, where is the “Smart Grid”.

To the consolidated wealth sector, I say unto you. “G.O.Y.A.” Get off your ass!

One would have to run the numbers to know if increased taxes on the wealthy would have a significant impact on the deficit.  That may not be the relevant issue.  I’ve not heard anyone counter the claim that taxes on the wealthy have become much less progressive since the Reagan administration. Indeed, wasn’t that the central idea behind supply side economics? Tax cuts for the wealthy?  In the interest of simple fairness progressive taxes should be raised on the wealthy.  A concept favored by the majority of economists and the father of capitalism, Adam Smith in his book, The Wealth of Nations.

Dhamma3,

You raise an important issue.  We have just seen how an overemphasis on the financial sector in the economy is not good for our country’s health.

A lower tax rate on capital gains compared to “ordinary” income tilts the balance of incentives more toward the financial industry and away from other sectors.

As our brightest workers shift their attention away from science and technology toward the mathematics of finance, we outsource more and more of our productive economy to other countries.

It is time we see the connection between tax and economic policy to the ills of our economy.

Failure to “soak the rich” is at the root of many of our problems.  It is not the solution as Ronald Reagan would have had us believe.

So what does Ruth Marcus propose? I see no suggested solutions from her.  The low rate of Capital gains taxes are an important part of the equation, which is relatively low. Much of the wealth of the wealthy is in stocks and bonds, so just looking at the tax rate is not seeing the whole picture.  But I should say, I am not wonk, so if wrong hope to be corrected with true facts.

Really dumb post.

When the problem in the economy is inadequate demand, Ruth Marcus would have the public employees give up some of their benefits which would be perfectly affordable when the economy recovers.

The government needs to be the counterbalance in the economy to the private sector.  When the private sector gets overheated, the government needs to pull back (not cut taxes).

When the private sector is in the doldrums, the government needs to stimulate the economy (not cut entitlements so as to add to the problems).