Flat Tax a Flat-Out Fraud
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on October 31st, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Flat Tax a Flat-Out Fraud
Robert Reich, San Francisco Chronicle
The so-called flat tax is all the rage among Republican presidential hopefuls. Herman Cain was the first. Now, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have come up with their own flat-tax proposals.The flat tax is a fraud. It raises taxes on the poor and lowers them on the rich.The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Cain's flat-tax plan (the only one that's been set out in any detail) would lower the after-tax incomes of poor households (incomes below $30,000) by 16 to 20 percent.
“Lord of Flies” in Zuccotti Park
Michael Goodwin, New York Post
They’re railing against freeloaders and ex-cons for stealing their stuff and spoiling their utopia. They’re squabbling with each other over money and power. The weather is turning frightful and a cumbersome bureaucracy of their own making is strangling their spontaneity.Their invasion is costing downtown Manhattan businesses and residents a boatload of money. But watching the Occupy Wall Street vagabonds bang their heads against the laws of human nature — that’s priceless!
The Pentagon vs. the Welfare State
Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
WASHINGTON — We shouldn't gut defense. A central question of our budget debates is how much we allow growing social spending to crowd out the military and, in effect, force the United States into a dangerous, slow-motion disarmament.People who see military cuts as an easy way to reduce budget deficits forget that this has already occurred. From the late 1980s to 2010, America's armed forces dropped from 2.1 million men and women to about 1.4 million. The downsizing — the “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War — was not undone by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….