Tag Archive for ‘taxes’

The Tax Rate Racket

The flap over whether to extend present tax rates for the rich finds its center in a cultural proposition: Liberals, including rich liberals, either don’t like the rich or feel obliged to pretend they don’t.

A Nation Starting (Maybe) to Turn

A nation of 300 million souls—richest and most powerful in the world, for all its messes and perturbations—needs a turning radius wide as the future. But you know what—realization precedes intellectual assent, which precedes needed action. There’s much to be hopeful about as the nation goes in for its electoral physical.

The Panic of 2011

If you’re old or sick and have a lot of money, I suggest taking a trip out of the country, away from your heirs, until January 1, 2011. And don’t tell them where you’re going. On that date, the death tax for rich folks goes from the current 0 percent to 55 percent. So your heirs will get less than half of what they would have if you went to the Great Walmart in the Sky a day earlier.

Is This How Democracy Ends?

“I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.

“These days, I wonder if this country is even governable.”

Tax-Cut Time

It’s jobs, jobs, jobs now for the Obama team, rather than health care, health care, health care. You have to call it progress, particularly if you’re jobless, or fearful of becoming so at a time when 17 million Americans are either non- or underemployed.