The Nature of Things

This is the week that our income taxes were due and it was a week when we got a vivid example of our taxes at work.  As a society, we like to complain about our taxes, but the truth is that the U.S. has some of the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. Personally, I've never begrudged paying taxes. I see them as a part of the social contract that binds us together, as the price of all the goods and services I receive from the government, and paying them is part of my patriotic duty as a citizen. If you feel disposed to grouse about your taxes, just keep this image in mind. Perhaps it may make you think twice.

So Salon.com did a survey of the Forbes 400 , the richest people in the country, billionaires all.  They asked them if they would willingly pay more taxes to help the country get out of its economic slump and on the way to prosperity.  Most of the 400 declined to respond to the survey.  Three unhesitatingly said no, they would not pay more taxes. Among these three was Charles Koch of the infamous Koch Brothers - no surprise there. One respondent gave an ambivalent "maybe" reply. And eight of the 400 stated that they would be willing to pay more taxes to help the country.  These eight were Todd Wagner, Leon Cooperman, Mark Cuban, James Simons, George Soros, Herbert Simon, John Arnold, and, of course, Warren Buffett.  We'll call them the "Patriotic Eight" for paying taxes is, in fact, a patriotic duty, no less than picking up a weapon and going to war when your country needs defending. As that champion of the middle class, Elizabeth Warren, has pointed out, no o...

Sunday, in The New York Times , the super-rich chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, had an op-ed piece entitled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich."   The point of his piece was that the super-rich in this country have gotten that way because of coddling by the government and favorable tax policies that have allowed them to keep more of their income than the ordinary people who work for a living. He believes this is unfair and that the super-rich should contribute to the country's coffers in proportion to the advantages they hold because of our government policies. The op-ed received a lot of notice and comment.  It was reported on in other news outlets around the country including our local Houston Chronicle and the comments there were about what one would expect from the Chronicle's regular commenters.   They were along the lines of, "If he wants to pay more taxes, why doesn't he just write a check? Why does he have to impose his v...

Eugene Robinson is an imminently sensible, clear-thinking fellow.  He writes opinion columns for the Washington Post and sometimes appears on MSNBC as a commentator.  Last year he won a Pulitzer for his opinion columns.  Today, in the Post, his column tackles the seemingly intransigent (if you listen to the politicians) national deficit and with a few keystrokes of his word processor, he puts it all to rights. As Robinson points out, it is evident to anyone who is paying attention that the federal government cannot continue indefinitely spending at a rate of 25 percent of the gross domestic product while taking in revenue that equals less than 15 percent of GDP.   Even a mediocre mathematician can see that this is unsustainable.  It is clear that, with the great needs that exist in our society from failing infrastructure to inadequate health care and education, it is ridiculous for this government to have one of the lowest tax rates among the industriali...

Among the industrialized countries of the world, there are at least twenty-six with higher tax rates than the United States . Most of them also have a more equitable standard of living ranging from their richest to their poorest citizens, as well as a stronger safety net to catch citizens who, for whatever reason, fall upon hard times. And most of them have infrastructures in good repair, some of them absolutely state of the art when it comes to mass transit and moving people safely from one place to another. The state of the infrastructure in this country is an embarrassment and is getting worse day by day, and where is the money to reverse that trend? Looking at individual tax rates in this country, on this 2011 Tax Day, the effective tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers is 17%. 17%!!! And there are those who say that they should get further tax cuts. Meanwhile, the government is drowning in red ink. The situation could be helped immensely with even a slight increase in t...

Happy Tax Day! Only it actually isn't Tax Day this year. Because of a holiday celebrated in the District of Columbia, all taxpayers get an automatic extension on the due date of their taxes until Monday, April 18. In my household, though, we don't need no stinking extension! We paid our taxes on the traditional Tax Day, today. Didn't even wait until 11:59 P.M. as we have in some years. I do consider it a patriotic duty to pay the taxes that I owe, which is why I so deeply resent those who use every excuse and every loophole to wriggle out of fulfilling that duty. My observation is that, generally speaking, such people are a lot more wealthy and a lot more able to pay their fair share of taxes than my household, which sharpens my resentment even more. Because of this, I was very happy and a little surprised this week to read about the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength . This is a group of some of the wealthiest Americans who came together last year during the...

A story that received attention from some news organizations in the last few days was all about how General Electric Corporation paid zero income tax in the past year. It would be bad enough if this were an isolated instance and if most multi-billion dollar corporations in America paid their fair share of taxes. It is not an isolated instance. Corporations such as Bank of America, Boeing, and Citigroup , to name just three, join the rolls of tax laggards. They, too, paid no taxes, in spite of the fact that they had record profits. And there are many, many others who take advantage of tax loopholes to reduce their tax liability to nothing. That is the real scandal here. It is not that these corporations are necessarily doing anything illegal. I'm sure they have the very best legal and tax advice that money can buy and that those advisers have made sure that they remain within the letter of the law. The scandal is that there are so many loopholes written into the tax laws, o...

Congress comes back into session next week and among the first things to be considered will be whether to extend the so-called Bush tax cuts. The question before the House - and the Senate - will be whether to extend all the tax cuts past December 31, 2010, including the extra added reductions for the very rich who have taxable income of $250,000 or above, or whether to eliminate those extra reductions in taxes for the rich and just keep the middle-class tax cuts. As usual, the Republicans have drawn their line in the sand in defense of the very rich and are insisting that they will refuse to compromise on the issue. The Democrats want to continue the middle-class tax cuts and let those for the very rich expire, but the White House has been distressingly wishy-washy on the issue. I fail to see what is so difficult about this for the president and his staff. Mr. Obama has said that he wants to keep the middle-class cuts and that the additional cuts for the rich are just too expensi...

I've been away from the news of the world for a couple of days, thinking about other things. It was a nice respite. But back to the world of politics. I see that our politicians are still wrangling over taxes, specifically the so-called Bush tax cuts, and that the Republicans' new buzzword is "uncertainty." Every Republican you see on TV or hear on radio uses that word in practically every sentence. Uncertainty bad! Furthermore, uncertainty equals Obama. They claim that the economy isn't growing and recovering faster (from the ditch they drove it into) because businesses are "uncertain" about their taxes. They don't know whether they will have to pay more taxes because the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire as the law presently requires. President Obama and most Democrats want to extend the tax cuts that apply to the middle class but they want the ones that apply to people and businesses earning more than $250,000 a year in taxable income...

Do you ever wonder if certain people in government have even a basic understanding of budgeting? That is, the amount of money that comes in minus the amount of money that is paid out equals either surplus or deficit. In the case of government, the money that comes in is otherwise known as taxes so the budgeting formula can be stated very succinctly, thusly: Taxes - Expenditures = Surplus/(Deficit) You would think that anyone who has made it to the halls of Congress as an elected representative of the people would at least understand that very basic concept, but apparently, you would be wrong. Exhibit number one of this fallacy is Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona. This is what he said on Fox News Sunday yesterday: "You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased s...

There is a meme that is perpetuated by every conservative organization, think tank, pundit, and man in the street in this country. That meme states that we are a heavily and unjustly taxed people. That meme is a total falsehood. In fact, ours is one of the lower taxed countries among western nations. Any member of the tea party movement, meanwhile, knows and will be glad to tell you in a very loud voice that taxes have been raised since Barack Obama became president. The fact that this, too, is totally false will never stand in the way of a true teabagger rant. In fact, taxes for most Americans were lowered in 2009. In actuality a USA Today analysis shows that taxes in 2009 were the lowest they had been since 1950 when Harry S. Truman was president. Yes, he was a Democrat, too. So much for the Republicans' constant harping about how taxes are always higher under a Democratic president. The USA Today story stated in part: Federal, state and local taxes — including income, pr...