ENDING PLUTOCRACY: A 12 STEP PROGRAM.
This is an article in a recent edition of The Nation Magazine dealing with the super rich.
Our forebears battled a superrich class even more entrenched than this one. Now its our turn.
Step 1: Admit we are powerless unless we learn more about how concentrated our nation's wealth has become.
Step 2: Trust in a power greater than CEOs and their buddies.
Step 3: Don't let the tax code enable executive excess.
Step 4: Insist on a searching IRS inventory of super-wealthy wallets.
Step 5: Clamp down on hedge-fund kingpins.
Step 6: Make amends to those who truly earn their income.
Step 7: Treat outsized pay as a defect of corporate character.
Step 8: Awake to the simplicity of tax surcharges.
Step 9: Seek a more progressive reckoning with the dearly departed.
Step 10: Restore sanity to the taxation of wealth.
Step 11: Leverage the power of the public purse.
Step 12: Admit to ourselves that maybe Ike had it right. We have a top rate of 35% today whereas in his time the top rate was 91%.
* I do not agree with all of this analysis and how to design a system for dealing with the super rich, but it is thought provoking.
If you end tax credits, deductions, and have a simpler rate structure of say 40%, 25%, and 10% then you might accomplish the same thing without killing capital's role in the creation of new businesses, maintenance of healthy businesses, and the restructuring of old businesses.
Does Bill Gates need a super sized house or houses.
I know I would like a little more money in the bank.