Last weekend, during the California Democratic Convention in San Diego, presidential candidate John Edwards, like all the candidates (except Barack Obama), held a press conference. The first reporter Edwards called on was San Francisco Bay Guardian executive editor Tim Redmond, who asked Edwards if, as president, he’d consider a special tax on obscenely high incomes.
Edwards actually said he’d consider such a proposal, a response that infuriated the Union-Tribune’s editorial board, which today published an editorial taking issue with Edwards. I could respond myself to the editorial, but I figured I’d let Redmond do the honors. Here’s what he had to say:
“When that left-wing Marxist radical Richard Nixon was in the White House, the very, very rich paid income taxes that reached 70 percent. That high tax, mind you, was only on marginal income; these millionaires still got to keep as much of their first $100,000 or so as the cops, teachers and ditch diggers. But when you make an inordinate amount of money, and society is falling apart from lack of funds for basic social services, it’s not at all crazy to ask the best off among us to pitch in with a larger share of the money they don’t need and will hardly miss.
Nobody who earns half a billion dollars a year needs another dollar. If the government took 50 cents of that dollar, or even a wee bit more, the billionaires wouldn’t miss any meals.
The United States is now the most social stratified society in the industrialized world. The gap between the rich and the poor is at the worst level since 1929. The example that I cited when I asked John Edwards about this is the fact that the top 25 hedge-fund managers in this country made more money in 2006 than it would take to pay all 88,000 New York City public school teachers for three years running.
There’s something wrong with that—and in fact, as we saw back in ‘29, these unfair concentrations of wealth aren’t good for an economy or a society.
Tax policy is one way to even out some of the disparities. That used to be very much in the mainstream of Democratic Party thought. The notion that only one major candidate for the Democratic nomination for president was willing to talk about taxing people who earned an average of more than half a billion dollars a year is astounding.
And the fact that anyone could call that sort of statement dangerous defies belief.
The editorial includes one of the most amazing statements I’ve ever read in an American newspaper:
‘The real victims would be the middle class, who would assume they were right to suspect the rich are to blame for their troubles and so why not just give up.’
Wow. Wow.
For one thing, the rich are to blame for a lot of middle-class troubles. But I’ve never heard anyone suggest that that’s a reason to give up. Actually, it’s good a reason to fight back.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks, Tim.
May 7, 2007 - 1:28 pm at 1:28 pm
Tim’s response was awesome, but I need to glom onto this line from the U-T for a second here:
“Let’s call this toxic idea by its proper name. It’s a tax on performance. It’s a way to punish the high-achievers in our economy in the hopes that we might be able to discourage them from trying so hard and achieving so much.”
Performance? Really? We are to understand that these hedgefund managers are 100,000 times more valuable to the human race, or at least American society, than teachers? I really don’t think so.
No one really understands why Wall Street types make as much as they do. it’s a genuine mystery, since it clearly has nothing to do with supply and demand (there are far more people applying for each opening on Wall Street than for most teaching jobs). Back in 1989, Michael Lewis in “Liar’s Poker” couldn’t figure out why bond traders made so much money. Now it’s hedge fund managers. Please don’t try and tell me the high salaries are merit based. That’s a bunch of baloney.
May 7, 2007 - 1:47 pm at 1:47 pm
Nobody wants me to get going on this one, trust me. But Tim, you’re my hero.
May 7, 2007 - 5:53 pm at 5:53 pm
Eric – Agreed. The whole ‘performance’ spin was just laughable. Then to top it off they use hedge fund managers as the example! Few of these guys can beat an index fund and they’re making half a bil on AVERAGE? And taxing them is supposed to discourage /performance/? Please, please, please, U-T, tell me another!!! Waaaahhaaahahhaaaaa!
May 7, 2007 - 10:13 pm at 10:13 pm
taxes are the worst, there’s too much taxes now, anybody that wants it can get unemployment, I have tons of friends that get money from their parents and unemployment, not that they need it but it’s available, maybe if we didn’t tax the shit out of everybody we’d never have gone to war cause we couldn’t afford to run seven aircraft carriers. taxes aren’t the answer, in the 1970’s england taxed the hell out of all the rich people and so they all moved away, that’s what would happen here.
once you’d tax everybody more than they already are you’d complain that the powers that be are spending your money poorly, and you’d be right.
if you wanna complain about something, complain that the armed services suck up 1/4 of the annual budget and mismanaged healthcare and social security take up 1/2.
since you won’t be the one deciding where the money you wanna take from private citizens goes, try to convince the legislative branch to spend some of the above mentioned money on the programs you care about, if that’s successful, which is doubtful, than your argument is at least justifiable,
that doesn’t include the fact that the people you wanna take money from already pay more taxes in one year than a lower to middle class person would pay in ten.
taxes are the worst.
get rid of three aircraft carriers and use that money to fund stem cell research, get ride of three more and use that money to invest in alternative energy.
if you’ve ever paid more than twenty grand in taxes in one year (and weren’t even close to being a millionaire) you’d hate taxes too.
You falsely assume people that make tons of money hurt people in the process.
yeah it happens but people spend unemployment money on illegal drugs, but just cause some do doesn’t mean we’re gonna punish the whole lot of them.
this is a free society, you can make money anyway you want within the laws agreed upon by our democracy, if you wanna help out the folks that are down and out, make more money
or start a charity, don’t complain that people you’ve never met should forfeit their money cause you think they have too much.
manage the appropriation of funds, don’t steal more money from private citizens and feed it to a a group of people you’d complain about in other conversations about other political issues, politicians don’t spend money the way Mother Teresa or Albert Einstein would. they’re not that caring and they’re not that smart!