There's not a single state in the country in which the rich pay a higher percentage of their income in state (though not federal) taxes than the poor. According to a state-by-state scorecard from the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), only Washington, D.C. has an equal tax burden for its wealthiest and poorest citizens.
Mitt Romney, who had a resounding victory in last night's Florida primary, also wins the unofficial award for most frightening super PAC. A Federal Election Commission release Tuesday revealed that pro-Romney super PAC "Restoring Our Future" raised over $30 million last year and spent $14 million on campaign ads for the first few crucial primaries. By way of comparison, the super PACs of all the other GOP candidates spent a combined $12 million, and the candidates' campaigns have spent a total of $20.7 million.
Last night in Brussels, the leaders of 25 of the 27 European Union countries agreed to become more like Germany. Not in so many words, of course. There was talk of spurring growth, creating jobs, and liberalizing trade. But at the heart of the pact was the so-called debt brake.
Over at The Washington Post, op-ed editor Fred Hiatt is worried that the political world has stopped being concerned with the federal debt and is instead focused on pet programs:
Mitt Romney would extend all the Bush tax cuts and cut trillions more besides—eliminating taxes on investment income for most Americans, reducing the corporate tax, getting rid of the inheritance tax and more. How would he afford this? Please don’t ask.
We’re witnessing a remarkable shift in China’s relationship to global fashion: once “the world’s factory,” in Asian American fashion scholar Thuy Linh N. Tu’s words, China is now poised to be the world’s mall. While China remains a poor country with an average annual per capita consumption of $2,500 (in contrast, the U.S.
The 2011 fourth quarter GDP numbers released today show a 2.8 percent growth in economic activity, due in part to the increase in spending around the holidays. But, what do GDP numbers really show? A new report from Demos, Beyond GDP, looks at the flaws in our dependence on GDP as the sole measure of progress and highlights important economic and social measures that are not captured by GDP.
Romney’s backers say he did the tough work needed to restructure the economy. Actually, he seized opportunities that the tax, securities, and bankruptcy laws should never have given him.
“Creative destruction” is Mitt Romney’s best defense for his career in private equity and the trail of displaced workers some of his ventures left behind. The idea comes from the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who argued that capitalism generates economic growth through “gales of creative destruction” that sweep away obsolete technologies and products. As Romney’s advocates have it, that’s what his firm, Bain Capital, has advanced—painful economic changes that are essential to a rising standard of living.
If this most recent poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal is any indication, the public is feeling a little better about our economic situation:
[R]esults from the poll, released Wednesday, found voters feeling more positively about the economy and of Mr. Obama’s handling of it. Some 30% believed the country was headed in the right direction, up eight percentage points from a month ago. Some 60% said the country was on the wrong track, down from 69% in December and from 74% in October. […]
The Federal Reserve, in a remarkable acknowledgement of how soft the economy is, has disclosed a vote of its open market committee to keep short term interest rates close to zero for at least three more years—until late 2014. This means that the Fed will keep pumping money into the economy by purchasing bonds at whatever level is required.
President Barack Obama delineated his campaign message in last night's State of the Union address. Positioning himself as a populist alternative to Mitt Romney and the 1 percent, Obama spent the beginning of his speech laying out his economic plan for the year: "We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes," he said. He recommended that the Buffett Rule—which would make it so millionaires can't pay less than 30 percent in taxes—be put in place.
Greece is once again the focal point of efforts to stem the bleeding of investor confidence and save the eurozone. Intense negotiations continue on the precise terms of the restructuring of privately held debt in the struggling Mediterranean country. Agreement is a necessary condition for the approval of a second bailout package from Greece’s eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which, at 130 billion euros or more, will exceed the first one.
Mitt Romney’s newly released tax returns, showing that he paid taxes in 2010 at a rate of just 13.9 percent on income of $21.6 million, should provide ammunition for President Barack Obama’s newly rediscovered populism. Obama is on record supporting a “Buffett Rule,” that the boss should pay at least the same tax rate as the help.
In the watered down economic dialogue of 2012, a flat tax rate rather pitifully passes for the progressive position. Not so long ago, progressives were of the view that the more money you made, the higher your rate should be. The tax schedule should be, well, progressive. The original presidential sponsor of this concept was that Bolshevik, Theodore Roosevelt.
Mitt Romney released his tax returns today, revealing that he made a combined $42.6 million in 2010 and 2011, mostly through capital gains. Because the bulk of his wealth was made through investment, Romney only paid $6.2 million in taxes, which translates into a 13.9 percent tax rate in 2010 and an estimated 15.4 percent rate in 2011. Those rates place him in the same tax bracket as a couple making $70,000 a year.
Thousands of the world’s business and political leaders are all heading to Davos, Switzerland—the home of Thomas Mann's fictional sanatorium—for this year’s five-day World Economic Forum. The euro crisis will be a dominant theme of the conference and Angela Merkel will serve as the keynote speaker. The conference comes as public confidence in world leaders' ability to fix the economic crisis hits a new low.
Yesterday, on the same day that major websites like Wikipedia, Wordpress, Reddit, and Wired went dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Justice Department shut down Megaupload, one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Internet. The site’s seven founders were arrested in New Zealand and are accused of making $175 million in profits while costing copyright holders an estimated $500 million in revenue. They face up to 20 years in prison for violating international copyright laws.
