Why are our seniors paying higher taxes on their social security benefits than billionaires pay on stocks?
The IRS released a new report that reveals the staggering amount of money that the top one-thousandth of one percent in America is hoarding. While the top earners in the bottom 50% of Americans only make 36,000 dollars a year – the bottom earners in the top one-thousandth of one percent ‘only make’ over 62 million dollars a year.
Sixty-two million dollars per year is what it takes to be a top one-thousands of one percenter – and those are the poorest of the richest households – on average the top earners make over 160 million dollars a year.
That’s 160 times richer than the average one percenter who only makes about 1.5 million dollars. That’s an obscene concentration of wealth – but that’s not the most outrageous part of the story, because those top earners are paying a lower tax rate than working class Americans and retirees.
The highest tax rate on income taxes in 2014 was 39.6% for households earning over 439,000 dollars – and the majority of American households paid an income tax rate of between 15% and 28%. Those are households of plumbers, bus drivers, doctors, and engineers – the average working Americans who create real wealth for the economy.
Meanwhile the banksters and vulture capitalists - the billionaires who make most of their income by moving money back and forth – pay a maximum rate of 20% of their earnings from the stock market.
How does this happen? Why did Mitt Romney a lower effective tax rate in 2011 than a waitress earning $2.13 an hour?.
It started with the memo that Lewis Powell wrote in 1971 – just a few months before Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court.
In no unclear terms – Powell wrote: “Business must learn the lesson, long ago learned by labor and other self-interest groups. This is the lesson that political power is necessary; that such power must be cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”
And for the last 40 years – business has followed Powell’s advice to a ‘T’: by taking over our education system; purchasing the nation’s newspapers, TV, and radio stations; filling the courts with activist judges; and filling Washington with lobbyists and corporate-owned lawmakers.
And what have they done with that power? They’ve rigged the system against the average American and in favor of themselves. They’ve punched holes in our tax system so that seniors and working Americans can pay a higher tax rate than vulture capitalists and bankers.
