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Obama’s Tax on Millionaires – Absent Honest Debate

This NY Times article by DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, who’s supposedly a so-called liberal economics writer, is itself a complete explanation for why everyone in the current national discourse seems to be saying, “Raising taxes on the rich will kill jobs.”

Besides the President’s own advisor, National Economic Council deputy director Jason Furman, the article quotes John Boehner and Curtis Dubay, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, a professor at the University of Michigan and expert in international tax law, is supposedly the counterweight to “establishment” economic spokespersons.  His big contribution to the article is the international perspective, that a lot of other countries are raising income taxes on rich people, and that a guiding principal of taxation policy is rich people pay a higher effective rate than middle and lower class payors.

How radical!

Curtis Dubay, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that job growth in the Clinton and Bush administrations followed reductions in capital gains taxes.That is what worries Mr. Dubay. The proposal could mean higher taxes on capital gains for the wealthy. “And that’s where investment and hiring starts,” he said.

Evidently, no one from the AFL-CIO, the unemployed, or the liberal think tanks such as Center for American Progress, Campaign for America’s Future, or the Economic Policy Institute has anything different to contribute to this “debate.”

The New York Times again demonstrates itself to be an exclusive, establishment mouthpiece, especially in matters of economics and government policy.  As the paper of record, its mission is to marginalize progressive, liberal voices and shift all policy debate as far as possible to the conservative positions.

The Times presents the illusion of being objective because it presents a range of opinions, but the range it presents does not include leftists, such as Dick Wolff or Dean Baker.

There is no questioning of the premises behind the idea of taxation, other than a vague reference to “mistrust of government.” There is no mention that the government is the instrument of the sovereign people, collectively, and that the People thus enable all accumulation of wealth by allowing and protecting ownership of private property, rather than claiming it all themselves, like a King. Furthermore, wealth is produced from the collective resources and socio-economic conditions historically provided by a specific society, not by an individual who invents everything from scratch.

These, and other socialist and reasonable economic concepts are thus kept out of the debate–and the consciousness–of the American people. Ultimately, anyone heard to offer a viewpoint that isn’t within the narrow mainstream parameters of the New York Times is thought to be an irresponsible, radical idealist.

via Obama’s Tax on Millionaires – NYTimes.com.