Forbes Blogger Defends Green Taxes As …
World's Richest Demands Cutting Wages
| Incredible how money distorts thinking but a blogger on Forbes gets a lot right. We trim, blend, and append three 2012 stories from: (1) BBC, Spt 5, on a magnate by D. Kennedy; (2) Forbes, Spt 3, on Greens by PJ Reilly (a registered Green); and (3) Vimeo, Spt 4, on taxing rent by S.R. Reed. |
by Duncan Kennedy, by Peter .J Reilly, and by Stephen R. Reed
- Gina Rinehart Calls for Australian Wage Cut
Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart has criticised her country's economic performance and said Africans willing to work for $2 a day should be an inspiration.
Ms Rinehart is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second, and her views have been dismissed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
JJS: From the richest woman who’s against equitable distribution to a revenue policy that the often richest man, who’s argued for at least more equitable distribution than we now endure, might like, proposed by the US Greens (which once included myself).
Will Warren Buffett Be Endorsing Jill Stein For President?
If you are forward looking though it is worth considering what third parties are considering. Their proposals have a way of working their way into the mainstream over the long run. It does look like under the Green Party, Warren Buffett would stop complaining about not paying enough taxes.
Here is are the specific proposal (several are not very specific) in the section of the Green Party’s platform labeled “Fair Taxation” along with my [annotations in italics].
1. Cut taxes for wage-workers
Exempt people earning less than $25,000 per year and families earning less than $50,000 per year (adjusted for inflation) from the federal and state income taxes.
2. Fair taxes for corporations and the wealthy
End corporate welfare, such as the bailouts for Wall Street, the big banks, and the automobile industry; subsidies for agribusiness, Export-Import Bank loan guarantees; tax abatements for big box stores; the tax loophole for “carried interest” from private equity and hedge fund managers; tax deductibility for advertising and business entertainment; offshore tax avoidance schemes; giveaways for new sports stadiums and casinos. Impose a financial transaction tax on trades of stocks, bonds, currency, derivatives, and other financial instruments; many traders would move else where. Block financial transactions with tax havens, to stop tax evasion. Decrease the $1 million home value cap on the mortgage interest tax deduction for federal income taxes. Restore the estate tax. Apply Social Security and Medicare taxes to investment income and to all levels of income, not merely the first $106,800 earned. Oppose the privatization of Social Security. Enact a wealth tax of 0.5% per year on an individual’s assets over $5 million.
3. Eco-taxes to help save the planet
Carbon taxes should be applied as far upstream as possible, preferably when possession of the carbon-bearing fuel passes from extraction (for example, coal mine; oil wellhead or tanker; gas wellhead). Eliminate tax subsidies for the oil, gas, coal, nuclear and timber and mining industries. Shift from taxing income and payroll to taxing natural resource extraction, use, waste, and pollution. Enact a system of Community Ground Rent/Land Value Taxation that distinguishes between the socially and privately created wealth of land. [Talk about a blast from the past. This is Henry George's single tax from Progress and Poverty published in 1879.]
4. Taxes for a better, healthier USA
Simplify the tax code. Make it transparent, understandable and resistant to the machinations of powerful corporate and wealthy interests. Raise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, soda pop and other junk food. [This is OK as long as there is a Mountain Dew exception.]
JJS: The US Greens finally reinstated the tax on socially-generated rents (which it had when my friends and I put it there and which most global Green Parties have had forever). Yet with a better understanding of economies, they’d see that most of the other taxes would not necessary or useful once society recovered all the rents it generated. Some of the benefits of such recovery are explained by an ex-mayor.
Ex-Mayor Stephen Reed Favors a Tax
Former mayor Stephen R. Reed of Harrisburg while addressing the Council of Georgist Organizations this past August said, “The role that land value tax played in revitalizing Harrisburg, plus other economic development meas ...” Mayor Steven Reed's full videotaped speech is now posted on Vimeo: To watch .
JJS: Because you love to own land or love Earth in general, it’s easier to see public recovery of land rent as a local issue, which it can be, but it can be a global issue, too, when the global community recovers rents for orbits to rents for Antarctic mineral. When we leave rents on the table, somebody captures them for themselves, which creates class and political insiders. When we recover and share rents, we not only preclude such nonsense but also empower ourselves to cut the workweek, get it back down to what it was in the Stone Age (see Sahlins).
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Editor Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics and helped prepare a course for the UN on geonomics. To take the “Land Rights” course, click here .
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Also see: Wealth gap widens between super rich and rest yet ...
Family farmers worse off despite high prices
For a nation always at war, a surprise |
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