Pol-Econ

The 352nd wealthiest person in the world

Some noteworthy passages from the NYTimes article:

1. United States tax law allows taxpayers to deduct mortgage interest on one’s homes up to $1.1 million in debt. Households with more than $1 million in income claimed more than $27 billion in such deductions from 2006 to ’09, according to a report this month by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who said some wealthy taxpayers even deducted mortgage interest on their yachts. […]  “This welfare for the well-off — costing billions of dollars a year — is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and i.o.u.’s to be paid off by future generation,” said Coburn.

2. “There’s real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent,” said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “Any taxpayer lucky enough to have appreciated property is usually put to a choice: cash out and pay some tax, or hold the property and risk the vagaries of the market. Only the truly rich can use derivatives to get the best of both worlds — lots of cash and very little risk.”

3. “It’s admirable when people back their charitable impulses up with donations,” said Scott Klinger, tax policy director of the group Business for Shared Prosperity. “But the tax code shouldn’t allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes.”

Taibbi on the erosion of U.S. principles

In this piece, Taibbi writes:

…when we abandoned our principles in order to use force against terrorists and drug dealers, the answer to the question, What are we defending? started to change.

The original answer, ostensibly, was, “We are defending the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the United States, their principles, and everything America stands for.”

Then after a while it became, “We’re defending the current population of the country, but we can’t defend the principles so much anymore, because they weigh us down in the fight against a ruthless enemy who must be stopped at all costs.”

Then finally it became this: “We are defending ourselves, against the citizens who insist on keeping their rights and their principles.”

What happened at UC Davis was the inevitable result of our failure to make sure our government stayed in the business of defending our principles. When we stopped insisting on that relationship with our government, they became something separate from us.

Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts

Taibbi’s piece is here.

Promises Made, and Remade, by Firms in S.E.C. Fraud Cases

An analysis found at least 51 cases in which 19 Wall Street firms were accused of repeatedly breaking laws. (Story is here).

Social Security is not in crisis

Yet another article from the mainstream press on the supposed looming insolvency of social security. As one commenter rightly points out, “Social Security has a $2.5 trillion dollar surplus at the present and can fund itself entirely for the next 25 years and after that it can continue to be solvent simply by raising the income cap modestly.” The so-called social security crisis is a phony crisis, as FAIR has pointed out over and over again and as can be seen in Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot’s Social Security: The Phony Crisis.

Can anyone create jobs?

That’s from the New York Times (11/4/11). One way to create jobs would be to have everyone who’s currently working eight-hour days work four-hour days instead, the thought here being that something like that would mean that everyone would have a job. In doing this, we’d solve a totally fucked-up problem specific to capitalism—some are unemployed while (and because) others are overworked. But implementing the simple solution to that problem requires getting rid of capitalism.

Relevant here is the following couplet from “Hallelujah, I’m a bum!”

Oh why don't you work like other folks do?
How can I get a job when you're holding down two?