General Electric and Verizon executives assert in recent op-eds that they do-too pay their fair share of taxes in America, but Citizens for Tax Justice tells us why they're wrong. Verizon's CEO claims his corporation payed a 35% tax rate in 2015, but we know Verizon has actually paid about 12% to our government over the last 15 years. General Electric's CEO swears that GE pays "billions" of dollars in taxes, but that's essentially a scare number -- "billions" out of many, many more billions in profits simply isn't as impressive as he'd like you to think.
Lynn Stuart Parramore, writing at TruthOut, says "The Biggest Threat to the 99% Isn't the 1%, It's the 0.1%," and I'm glad someone else is saying it. The top 1% tax bracket starts at around $350,000, after all, and folks making $350,000 annually are doing pretty well, but they're certainly not "in the club," as it were. "The one percent" is a spiffy idea, made to catch the elbow of folks having a lot on their minds. But a lot of Ms. Parramore's descriptions of the 0.1% life can catch those elbows just as easily.
Courtney Baleister, writing at Wired, tells us the supermarket is a "terrible way to get food," and that "app-fueled services" can help kill it. The theoretical ease with which we can all communicate now should help us cut out a lot of the middlemen that separate us from farmers -- and that would help us demolish the big ag food model -- but even the best of the services described (I vote for Quinciple, though you may prefer Farmigo) depend on buying and storing in bulk, which is the main reason the supermarket model needs to be supplanted. I'll stick with farmers' markets and my CSA share.
From the "Because It's Good to Be Reminded" file: Ted Cruz says he can get 5% GDP growth through tax cuts alone. His supporters (like Arthur Laffer, why is anyone still having him on TV?) like to tell you that President Reagan got 7% GDP growth in 1984, without reminding you that he signed massive tax increases into law in 1982 and 1984, and the economy has hardly seen 4% growth in GDP since then -- indeed, GDP growth has averaged less than 2% since 2000. And we routinely had 4% GDP growth in the 1960s, when (perhaps not coincidentally) top tax rates were much, much higher than they are now. Hate to pile on, but how did those Bush Mobb tax cuts work out?
Finally, Adam Johnson, writing for FAIR, tabulates the "liberal" media's "Ten Laziest Takes of Election Season 2016." Your mileage may vary on the ordering (Jesus Mary and Joseph how I hate the Tone Police!), but definitely the "liberal" media's habit of lumping the obviously-dissimilar-even-if-they-share-some-and-I-do-mean-some-supporters Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump together should be near the top. It's like they think symmetry equals fairness or something.
Comments