Patriotic Millionaires on carried interest
Once again the Patriotic Millionaires are speaking out on a prescient issue. Their voice is important because as successful millionaires their voice carries added weight. A voice saying the government should expect more of them is not altruistic but realistic.
A new op-ed written by Patriotic Millionaires Chair Morris Pearl slams Donald Trump’s new tax plan.
Disappointingly, the true winners of candidate Trump’s tax plan are multinational corporations and wealthy taxpayers, including Trump, his offspring, and me.
Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, Trump slashes the top tax rate by more than one-third. Members of the top 1 percent would receive an average $184,000 tax cut every year. Taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent would get an average annual tax cut of just $250.
In a gift to wealthy friends and his own family, Trump proposes eliminating the federal estate tax, which applies to estates worth more than $5.4 million ($10.8 million for a couple). This change alone will give at least a $20 million tax windfall to families like the Trumps. American families without a $10.8 million estate will get nothing — except the bill to make up for the lost revenue (about $269 billion from 2016-2025).
Donald Trump has been campaigning as a populist. He was the Bernie Sanders of the right. He has been appealing to groups that economically would be traditional Democrats by seemingly castigating a system that has afforded the rich tax breaks and giveaways on the backs of the poor and the middle-class. He claimed he would have policies so successful that it would make America great again.
Unfortunately all Trump proposes in his official tax plan is the failed trickle-down policy on steroids. Why on steroids? Morris Pearl explains a part of it this way.
Trump tells global corporations to come home, but gives a whopping $400 billion tax break to existing tax dodgers who have parked $2 trillion offshore. Instead of requiring them to pay the 35 percent (less foreign taxes paid) that they currently owe to the American people, he only asks them for 10 percent. So instead of demanding they pay the $600 billion they owe, Trump is only asking these multinational tax dodgers for about $200 billion and letting them pocket the rest. I would not call that “the art of the deal” for small businesses and domestic corporations that are paying their fair share.
Instead of “Making America Great Again,” a Trump tax plan would further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few people, including Mr. Trump himself. As former President Carter recently pointed out, our political system is now “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
The entire article is worth a read.
It is imperative that more people of means speak out. The notion of makers and takers must be expelled from the country’s lexicon. All working people are an important cog in keeping a vibrant economy. Every job is a necessary job in our economy. As such no working person should be disparaged. We must have a society where every working person has the ability to have a livable income by our society’s laws.
Every society will have its loafers. However if investments are made in civics and other programs detailing what type of citizens make a good functioning economy and democracy, loafers would be minimal.
Likewise it should be taught that ones worth is not defined by current society’s values which misplaces wealth on many who provide the least. Worth most be redefined in a manner that is reality based.
Here is a thought about worth. If Donald Trump and a struggling farmer is stranded for 6 months in the fields of Iowa, who would you partner with? Who is more worthy? The titans of finance have redefined an economic system that hides real people’s worth behind a pieces of paper they control, a representation of capital, a stock. And right now they are scared they are being found out and are fighting and misinforming at all cost.
The Patriotic Millionaires are doing their part. They are not get much media coverage. Help give them the coverage to help educate and inform America. Share the information through all your social media and email platforms.
WAKE UP AMERICA.