Capital Gains Tax Cuts=Welfare for the Rich

[The Straight Story]

Capital Gains Tax Cuts=Welfare for the Rich

Advocates for shrinking, if not entirely eliminating, the tax on capital gains insist such a move is good for the economy, summing up their position with the slogan “Capital Gains=Better Jobs.”

But for many on the left, the message could be: “Capital Gains Tax Cuts=Welfare for the Rich.”

Capital gains are the profits won by the sale of such non-tangible assets as stocks, bonds and property. According to Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang, writing in The Washington Post, “Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.”

Over the past two decades, Washington has cut the rate on capital gains, first under President Bill Clinton and then under President George W. Bush. It’s now to the point where the richest Americans pay only 15% on long-term investments, while anyone in the middle class earning more than $34,500 a year is paying a higher rate.

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Capital_Gains_Tax_Cuts_Welfare_for_the_Rich_110913

[rfranklin]

1. From the point of view of the ultra wealthy...

They see those dollars as their "hard-earned" money (even though it requires little exertion) and they see it as supremely unfair that the less wealthy are trying to confiscate their money. After all, their children don't use public schools, they don't need social services or Social Security, they have all they need from private sources. They don't use public facilities like airports, traveling instead from private airports on private jets lavishly stocked with gourmet meals provide by catering companies. They don't need Medicare because they have plenty of all-inclusive health insurance. With Blackwater, they probably feel they don't even need the U.S. military. So they don't believe that they owe anything to the U.S. government.

[midnight]

2. Time to re-educate them...

[blindpig]

3. Who cares what they think?

Their wealth is derived from the capitalist method, they are all thieves. The government is their tool and they will not even pay for that. We the working class must pay for our own oppression and that of the working class worldwide.

Fuck that.

[historylovr]

4. Amen! nt

[Claudia Jones]

6. not so at all

I am not sure why any of us would care about the "point of view of the ultra wealthy," for one thing.

What you are describing is an apology for the ultra wealthy that exists only in the imaginations of some deluded working class people, having been planted there by the propagandists for the ultra wealthy.

The government is an essential tool in the hands of the wealthy.

[rfranklin]

8. Not at all...I was merely pointing out the way they think...

which is why the "fair share" argument doesn't work.

[indepat]

5. The Congress and succeeding administrations have thoughtfully crafted the tax codes so those of

Warren Buffet's class, to his dismay and chagrin, will pay a much lower income tax rate on maybe most of their income than do the middle class earning more than $34,500: this is by design with heaps of gleeful and giddy malice of forethought, though depraved and irresponsible beyond belief, reason, and comprehension. The Federal government has borrowed several trillion dollars just to fund this blatant welfare for the uber-wealthy which, imo, is misfeasance of office to such a degree as to be tantamount to a lack of patriotism, if not criminality. :patriot:

[hack89]

7. If you raise the tax, money will simply flow to tax free investments

like municipal bonds - good for towns but not for the treasury.

[rfranklin]

9. Not if they can make a few points more on other investments...

Bankers and others with large amounts to invest will often be enticed by a single percent more.

[hack89]

10. Sure - as long as the capital gains tax is not raised beyond a certain point

there are many here that view raising taxes on the investor class as a well deserved punishment instead of being part of a sound fiscal policy.