Apparently, for Judd Gregg, no amount of income inequality can be too great. The Federal Reserve has the dual mission of controlling inflation and keeping unemployment low. I wish someone had the mission of limiting the inequality in wealth. I mean, we do do some of these types of calculations. One example is the formula for dispensing federal money to the various school districts. We don’t allow one school district to get billions of dollars while another cannot afford textbooks. The system is still skewed and some schools can’t afford books, but we prevent it from getting absurdly out of whack. About the only tool we have for preventing an aristocracy from emerging is the Estate Tax, but too many people hope to one day be part of the aristocracy so…
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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For some reason I rarely see the historical argument being made for the estate tax, which is too bad. As you say, the whole point of it, going back almost to the founding fathers, was to stop the formation of an English-style landed hereditary aristocracy.
Looking at families like the Waltons, though, we may be a generation or so too late now.
As you know, BooMan, tax policy only began during the Clinton administration. Gregg is merely pointing out that top tax rates are at historic highs, for as far back as we have written records. Did you know that Gerald Ford used to pay military contracts with the pelts of squirrels he caught on the White House grounds?
It’s not just the ideological blinders; it’s the lying, the continual need to lie, lie about everything all the time.
Gregg knows that only the tip-top rate on standard income has returned to Clinton-era levels; all other income rates have remained at the Bush tax cut levels. And then there’s the oodles of 21st-century loopholes on investment and other income, and all the corporate loopholes created in recent years that Exxon and others drive their tanker trucks through every day. And the successful rent-seeking by Wal-Mart and other corporate mercenaries that ream State and local taxpayers, as those jurisdictions enjoy some short-term sales tax revenue only to see the money move out the back door because of those shitty, shitty jobs the taxpayer subsidizes by paying for the workers’ health care and food stamps and WIC and other base needs, not luxuries.
We’ve got a revenue problem and a spending problem, both of which are exacerbated by the modern GOP’s unquenchable desire to yank away real investments in and support for the workforce of the middle class. And this ass was Obama’s first choice to be the Commerce Secretary. Oh, I’m so glad he wasn’t.