The Real Job Creators are Poor

To justify the Republican's objection to taxing the wealthy, when Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) to explain why the Bush tax cuts didn't create jobs, Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question.”

CAP's Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now. In fact, if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.”

Today the tax rates are actually at historical lows. The GOP, as Fred Upton displayed, simply has no explanation for these facts.

Since the days of the Bush breaks in 2001 and 2003, Republicans consistently have said that tax reductions stimulate the economy and the lost revenue needn't be offset. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the #2 Senate Republican, asserted, for example: "You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

He says "Americans". Not rich Americans, or the richest of the richest Americans, or the top 1% of Americans. Just Americans, as though we're all financially equal.

The GOP didn't pay for the Bush tax cuts, a decision that dramatically increased the deficit, which Republicans now say the 99% must pay by suffering slashed government services.

Rather than answering to the PEOPLE, the Republicans have loyally upheld their solemn pledge to lobbyist Grover Norquist to never, ever raise taxes. Last year, for example, they GOP refused to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, contending that would be a tax increase, not the end of tax rates that were intended to be temporary.

Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist writing an op-ed piece for Bloomberg, says, "The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s 'job creators' is every bit false. I’ve never been a 'job creator'. 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. When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around."

"Let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business."

And the REAL job creators in America are either poor, unemployed, under-employed, part-time workers, or under-paid. And of those with jobs, 50% of all American workers earned less than $27,000 a year when the poverty line for a family of four was $22,314.

What have we all be saying for all these years? The Bush tax cuts just let people and corporations hoard money (over $2.2 trillion just in corporate off-shore banks accounts alone, not including personal off-shore accounts to avoid taxes). Taxing them is the only way we can circulate the money supply. Or, as the Republicans like to accuse us of, "redistributing the wealth", rather than concentrating it all at the very top.

The Bush tax breaks cut the capital gains tax to a tax rate lower than that on a true middle class income. (The rich primarily make most their money from "capital gains".)

Last week, Republicans found themselves confronted with a choice between raising taxes on the 99% or on the 1%. So far, millionaires and billionaires the greedy gluttons the ultra-rich the humble "job creators" have been spared.

My Related Posts:

• Subsidies for the Rich and Famous
• It's not Class Warfare, it's just "Business"
• Historical Tax Rates on the Rich (1862 to 2011)
• The Second Gilded Age: History Repeats Itself
• Mellon: The Banker Who Rigged the U.S. Tax Code
• The GOP Tax Plan - Ignorance, Insanity, or Greed?
• We have a Revenue Problem, Not A Spending Problem
• 280 Corporations are "Too Big to Tax"
• Trickle-Down Economics: The Cruel 30-Year Hoax
• You Pay Hidden Entitlements for the Rich
• Record Profits + Record Bonuses = Zero Jobs
• Low Wages Kills Jobs, Not High Taxes

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• "The richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined."
• The total net worth on the Forbes 400 List marks $1.5 Trillion in 2011
• The Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion
• Historical Tax Rates and Time-line
• Capital gains from Citizens for Tax Justice
• 1977 - 2007 tax rates from U.S. Treasury
• Economic Policy Institute on capital gains taxes
• Capital gains explained from U.S. Internal Revenue Service
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