Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Never afford alone.

Editor,

A working stiff who makes $1,500 in his IRA in a good year should not have that profit taxed away, and in fact a lower tax rate on capital gains in her or his case does incentivize investment.

But a Wall Street sharpie who makes $1.5 billion gambling in the derivatives markets is gaming the system when he pays only 15% on his winnings.

Obviously, capital gains below a certain amount, say $15,000 a year, should be taxed at 15% or something comparable to encourage average people to save and also to help us keep most of the profits our small investments yield.

It's the same story with taxes in general.

One-percenters and their mendacious politician friends wield the specter of "your" taxes going up when sensible policy is to keep taxes on modest incomes low to encourage saving and spending on goods and services but tax large incomes liberally to fund the myriad services that only a government can provide and individual people, even rich people, could never afford alone.

Re: "The 1% and That 15%" (1/19/2012)

1 comment:

Appledorf For President said...

Bill:

I was just reading the comment left on your last post. Like you, I think corporatists are evil blood sucking leeches. But, even worse are crony capitalists who take taxpayer money or tax deductible contributions to enrich themselves. I mistakenly drank the Mozilla potion. I thought Mitchell Baker was a righteous babe. I was very wrong. She is taking $12,000 an hour from Mozilla in compensation. That money comes from well meaning individuals -99%ers, if you will. That is disgraceful. You should add this group of thieves to your list of targets for criticism.