I know we often talk about the 99% and the 1%, but it’s not actually so cut and dried. Many of the 99% goose-step with the 1%. Faux Noise sheeple are the operative example there. And a few of the 1% support the 99% in our goal to make our society responsive to the needs of all, not the wants of millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals. One such is Nick Hanauer, a billionaire who says, “Raise my taxes!”
It seems millionaire Nick Hanauer’s recent op-ed on why we need to be taxing the rich in America has, as Steve Benen explained, “caused a stir, and with good reason.”
Political Animal – Raise Nick Hanauer’s Taxes:
If Hanauer’s name doesn’t sound familiar, he’s a very successful venture capitalist, playing a role in the creation of companies like Amazon.com. This week, he took on a standard Republican talking point: the notion that job creation suffers if taxes go up on the rich. Hanauer explained very well why the GOP’s approach is backwards.
I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.
It appears that Hanauer, unlike GOP policymakers, understands supply and demand, and that three decades of concentrating wealth at the top doesn’t create an economic base that ensures broad prosperity. Republicans can keep lavishing more and more money on the rich, but they’ll only spend so much. […]
Hanauer’s advice? Raise his taxes, make public investments, and get some money in the pockets of middle-class consumers.
Digby’s take on this rings true: “This is a person who really doesn’t want to kill the golden goose of capitalism but would like to save it. It doesn’t speak well for the future of capitalism that there are so few entrepreneurs like him.”
Damn straight.
Be sure to go read the entire editorial here — Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer.
Hanauer was a guest on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox Business this Wednesday and he did a great job knocking down every one of Cavuto’s arguments and straw men as Cavuto desperately tried to rebut Hanauer’s assertions on why the rich aren’t paying enough in taxes… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>
Here’s the video.
Note how that shameless Republican propagandist, Neil Cavuto squirms in his futile attempt to hide the truth. Faux must have assumed that Hanauer would goose-step, because he’s so rich.
We need more 1 percenters like Hanauer and fewer 99 percenters like Faux Noise sheeple!
18 Responses to “Billionaire: Raise My Taxes!”
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99%’s is a laugh. At least 50% and more have been voting for Republican policies, for over 30 years. If it were true that 99% disagree with those policies (favoring banks and corporations) we would not be in this mess. I wonder how many of the 99%’s got a home loan they knew they could not pay back? How many of the 99%’s voted for Reagan, Bush, or Bush? How many of the 99%’s are unwilling to have their taxes raised to pay off the 15 trillion dollar debt they helped build over the last 29 years? They are unhappy with the situation they caused themselves by supporting those policies. Americans have been complaining about bankers and businesses since 1787, that is nothing new. What’s new is the power bankers and businesses have over every single person in America, and the World. Voters remorse? Sorry I can’t feel for the same people who gave power to these vermin in the first place.
You asked: “How many of the 99%’s are unwilling to have their taxes raised to pay off the 15 trillion dollar debt….”
Turns out that by about a 2-to-1 margin most Americans strongly FAVOR raising THEIR OWN TAXES to reduce the deficit, as documented in poll after poll after poll after poll after poll …
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2368/updated-tax-polls
The only poll that counts, is an actual vote. I’m glad to see after voting for Republicans and their “No New Tax” ideology for decades Americans are coming to reality. We have to tax ourselves to pay our debt. Taxes should be raised on the 1%, and raised at a higher rate than anyone else. The rich did not get all the tax cuts that built a 15 trillion dollar debt, and they should not be the only ones to have their taxes raised to pay America’s debt.
I have said on more that one occasion that I would gladly give up the tax cut I received, if taxes were also raised on the super rich and corporate criminals. 99% is not a laugh. Nobody in their right mind that 99% will vote against Republicans. 99% was never a measure of support. In the article I came right out and said that too many of the 99% are Faux Noise steeple. 99% has always been an estimate of the people harmed by the present inequities in the distribution of wealth.
“useless and poisonous” to society = fits FAUX to a T!
“A different sense of history”? I should say so!
Agree on both.
Blows me away how any sensible person can back what the elitists are doing—problem is people want to think they are part of the elite , instead of the common folk we all really are–
Good point, Phyllis. So many many fooled into waiting for their ship to come in realize too late that all that is coming is a shipwreck.
It’s difficult to hear through the faux noise! Cavuto never allowed him to respond, once the direction of the conversation turned it was obviously unacceptable to him — with such a closed mind – who could have ears to hear – it’s so refreshing to hear the reasoning that Hanauer uses, no wonder he got so far ahead! Loved it when Hanauer intimated that if someone came to his table with the mind-set that Cavuto has he’d be fired! His thinking seems to parallel that of Warren’s.
Good observation. Perhaps he parallels Warren because he actually uses his education.
Increasing their taxes per se under the present tax structure won’t make that much difference. The only way is to reintroduce Glass-Steagall; and to close down the loopholes in the way investment firms such as Berkshire-Hathaway operate. There are too many politicians who profit through the Delaware/Kale loopholes as well. Also I think that investment firms and hedge fund managers need to be taxed on their overall income after reasonable deductions just like the rest of us are; but at a higher tax bracket such as 35%. For instance a hedge fund manager might pay a higher percentage on his annual income than we do; but a hedge fund manager also gets a percentage of the overall fund’s value and he pays maybe 15% on that. That has to change. So do the bailouts of these firms that got us into this mess in the first place; and yet pay no taxes let alone refunding the TARP money to the people even once they are financially stable and showing a profit. One firm that comes to mind is GE.
I don’t want to destroy capitalism but the system we are experiencing today is called Corporatism; the globalistic brainchild of Friedman on steroids. It is capitalism run amok. I don’t want to deny the people who have worked for their money; or are smart enough to play the system for maximum profit; I just want to see the playing field leveled through consistency; transparency and accountability at all levels; as if that will happen but I can hope. Those behind globalism and its Frankenstein offspring Corporatism are responsible for not only genocide; constant wars that lead to droughts, famines and disease but are also responsible for the global enslavement existing or proposed enslavement of the entire planet. These privileged people have a lot to answer for. One would think that we are back in medieval times when the divine right of kings and its nobility class held the majority of the population in thrall through indentured slavery called fealty. It was certainly a principle that was used in the Southland against the sharecroppers. Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.
Welcome Michael! 🙂
Up to a point I agree with you, and if you look back through the pages of this blog you will find me supporting all the proposals you listed. If Adam Smith could look at what we call “capitalism” today, he would need to change his underwear, because fascist plutocratic corporatism embodies everything he opposed. That said, since the super rich and corporations pay a smaller proportion of their income in taxes that they have at any time since 1929, rolling them back to Clinton levels is a plus, in addition to all the other remedies.
Warren Buffett and Nick Hanauer are not the only wealthy folks who want to do what’s right for our country:. Turns out that almost 70% of millionaires want taxes raised on those with $1 million – or more – annual incomes:
And THAT, surprisingly, is from an article in The Capitalist Daily Rag Promoting The Rich to Get Richer … errr, The Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/10/27/most-millionaires-support-warren-buffetts-tax-on-the-rich/?mod=e2tw
Nameless, I thing that a subset of the super rich are willing to spend millions to but the Republican Party (and a few Democrats) to maintain the inequity.
Cavuto’s shorts are too tight and blocking blood supply to his brain. I particularly liked when Hanauer referred to people with attitudes like Cavuto ‘s. He said he would fire them and that they were useless and poisonous to the culture. Amen!!
Clearly Cavuto is out of his depth and grasping for straws by interrupting, talking over Hanauer and with still one minute left, wraps up the interview. Cavuto is a bombastic fool and is a lot like the GOP in Congress — my way or the high way. To his credit, Hanauer stayed the course. I think had it been me instead of Hanauer, I might have stood up and left, but then the Faux Noise sheeple would never have experienced the true ignorance that is Faux Noise.
Nick Hanauer — “That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.”
LOL!!
He certainly went through his whole grab bag in trying to stifle the truth, didn’t he?
Bingo!
I would think that raising taxes on the super rich would be a supported alternative to those that oppose cutting health care and social security.
Sure it is, Paula.