THE OOMPA LOOMPAS OF THE RICH, AND THE COMING TAX DEBATE

I've written about this many times. With America's richest class preparing to send their political oompa loompas out to make their tax case (again) it, apparently, needs to be repeated. 

Repealing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of wage earners in America is a no brainer. Courtesy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (via Mother Jones), here's why: 

* WHO'S AFFECTED? Only 1.9% of small businesses are in the two top brackets that would be affected by repealing the Bush tax cuts.  

* WHO'S "REALLY" AFFECTED? About half of that 1.9% aren't really small business owners at all. They're high-income investors who get part of their income from investments in small businesses. So we're down to about 1% of small businesses that would be affected. 

* HOW MUCH ARE THEY REALLY AFFECTED? The top brackets are just that: brackets. When the top rate goes up, it doesn't affect your entire income, just the portion in the top bracket. So if the top rate goes back up from 35% to 39.6%, it only affects the portion of income above approximately $400,000. A small business owner making $500,000 would see an increase of about $5,000. This is a fairly modest amount for someone making a half million dollars, and anything higher than that is hardly a "small" business to begin with.

Here's the interesting point. Moving the tax rate for the highest wage earners up to 39.6% only brings the rates up what they were under President Clinton, when we started running budget surpluses. After Ronald Reagan's first term tax rates on America's top wage earners was still at 50%, which doesn't come close to the 70% rate they were at under President Nixon and the 91% rate they were at under Dwight Eisenhower.  

What do we have to show after more than 30 years of cutting taxes for the rich? Record bailouts and a massive increase in our national debt. 

So here's the short and sweet on this tax debate. 

With only a massive national debt, a collapsed economy, and laggard job creation numbers to show for a failed trickle down policy, the only people who should be supporting the GOP's tax cuts for the rich policies are (1) the rich and (2) the political oompa loompas of the GOP who actually believe that pushing the political agenda of America's richest class makes them part of America's economic elite. They are not. They are political oompa loompas (who the rich mostly see as a bunch of chumps doing their bidding).

Seriously, who besides the rich would want to stand up for the financial fortunes of a group of people who have gotten richer while the rest of America stands in a growing pile of debt that swirls around an economic black hole? 

Raising taxes on America's wealthiest class to 39.6% won't fix our entire budget mess but it's a start ... and a no brainer. 

- Mark 

( Kudos to Robin for the link)