It’s very amusing, but, not in a good way, when uber-white Progressives like The Hill’s Emily Brooks white-knights for black people, and, really, say that blacks just cannot succeed without the help of The Government. And progressive white people, of course
America will never achieve racial justice without reforming our broken tax code
As inflation continues to impact working-class Americans across the country, reports show that Black Americans are being hit the hardest. On top of the massive economic inequalities caused by the pandemic, rising costs for housing, food, and gas are making it virtually impossible for Black communities to improve their financial conditions in material ways.
My grandfather — as a young person — met people who had been wealthy slave owners before the Civil War. It has only been a few generations since more of America’s wealth was derived from enslaved people rather than farmland or factories. We have come a long way since then.
What, exactly, does her grandfather knowing people who owned slaves have to do with anything? In Progressive Grievance World, though, it seems they’re all living like it’s 1850
Unfortunately, there is still a very long way to go. Black Americans continue to face systemic discrimination in virtually every corner and every institution in America. One of the most salient yet overlooked places where Black Americans encounter bias, however, is our nation’s tax code. Its preferential treatment of existing wealth over income leaves the Black community at a permanent disadvantage when compared to their significantly wealthier white counterparts.
As a result of decades of racist federal policies like redlining, Black Americans hold nowhere near the level of wealth that white Americans do. The ratio of white-to-Black wealth in America today is 6 to 1; for every dollar the average white American holds, the average black American holds only 17 cents. If Black Americans held a share of national wealth that was equal in proportion to their share of the population, they would hold $12.68 trillion in total wealth instead of $2.54 trillion, which puts the total racial wealth gap at $10.14 trillion. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a situation where Black Americans are overrepresented among the poor and underrepresented among the rich, making up 26% of the poorest fifth of the country and just 3% of the richest fifth.
Um, OK? But, the tax code applies to all colors equally. If you make between $40,526 to $86,375 your rate is 22%. The tax code doesn’t know your skin color. In Progressive World, everything is raaaaacist. Emily makes quite a few leaps of Liberal Logic in attempting to link rich people being rich to the tax code being bad for blacks.
Despite the complexities of the matter, there’s one simple solution that would help address this problem. Wealthy, predominantly white investors should be asked to pay taxes just like people who work for a living while workers should be given some more financial breathing room. We should be making it easier, not harder, for Black workers (and workers of all races) to save and spend their hard-earned cash and build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities, while asking more from the ultra-wealthy who can easily afford to pay more.
They do. They pay a hell of a lot more monetarily in taxes. Sure, the percent may seem lower, but, they feed more money back into the economy, create businesses and jobs, give to charities. Emily is also upset that they do not pay full taxes on capital gains. I’m really not sure how this would create any sort of equality/equity, it’s just penalizing people who had nothing to do with slavery.
I myself am a wealthy, white investor living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Nowhere in this piece does Emily mention that she is paying full boat on her taxes, forgoing deductions, paying full boat on capital gains. Because, let’s be honest, this is all about Virtue Signaling without doing a damned thing in their own lives.
Teach copied and pasted but evidently didn’t read…
But here is the thesis that Mx Teach conveniently edited out…
One can credibly argue that this sop to the wealthy is more about class than race, that working class whites are disadvantaged by the tax code just as much black Americans.
This is one reason that wealthy white elites (and their Congress) keep the white working class and Black Americans at war with each other.
So yes, the tax code rewards the wealthy at the expense of the working class, white and black. So does every other policy including labor, trade, fiscal, bankruptcy, healthcare etc, etc.
Jeff,
For the last about 80 years every thing possible has been done for blacks to my them equal to the average American citizen, but nothing works. A man coming from Africa as an immigrant can achieve great things in our country, as can a Latino, Asian, etc. But blacks born in the US do not achieve. At some point you have to open your eyes and see that they are not mentally capable of achieving in our system or any other system. You constantly castigate people here about the oh so poor Blackman, yet pups and I have your info thanks to your doxing yourself and you have done zero in helping others other than constant bitching.
Dear Elwood:
I labored. I earned. I paid taxes. I saved. I invested. My investments paid taxes. I earned. I paid taxes. I purchased. I paid taxes.
Why not just a flat tax???? Everyone pays.
James, have you put any research into the ‘Fair Tax’ proposal? I heard several presentations on it years ago and there was a book explaining it in detail. It actually appears to be more “equitable” than the Flat Tax plans that have been floated. Of course that drives the left crazy [crazier?].
There are lots of ways to tax the wealth of people for government purposes. Our government at all levels use pretty much all of them. There are variabilities involved in each process (taxing wealth, property, saving, investments, labor, and purchasing). But there is no single way that is superior to the others and certainly no one way is morally superior to any other. The problem with taxes in America is how it is used, not how it is raised. As such, the “fair tax” (TM) is just another topic where people can argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin without addressing why our government needs 4 TRILLION every year and every year tells us it isn’t enough.
I agree Professor. The government does not need $4T for the services outlined in the founding documents. Too much has been delegated to government that should be done by the states or the people. Government takes too much of our labors for things it should not be doing.
There is no limit to what you can accomplish with enough other people’s money.
As Margaret Thatcher once said, the problem with Socialism is eventually you run our of other people’s money.
She had no idea that you could just create money out of thin air.
The largest US federal expenditures are Medicaid/Medicare, Social Security, Defense and Interest on the debt, being over 80% of the total budget.
Foreign aid, R&D, education, courts, FBI, NASA, unemployment payments, transportation etc, etc make up the rest.
What should be cut? Healthcare? SS? Defense?
All regulatory agencies, the FBI, SS, just all three and four letter agencies. They do nothing.
Total BS. “Our tax code taxes labor income roughly double that it taxes income from stocks…” First of all, roughly half the labor pool isn’t taxed at all when speaking of federal income tax-nice little thing to conveniently not mention.
Wow-where to begin? The stock income is taxed less than labor income because there’s at least twice the risk with the stock income. More risk, more benefit, or more to lose, as witnessed today with Grandpa’s economy. And what these clowns who wrote this apparently don’t realize is the “stock money” they mention was (in most instances)first earned as regular income and taxed accordingly, then taxed again when the stock is sold.
“Only taxes investment income when it’s sold..” Not entirely true at at all- as any one who’s held mutual funds knows, you can be taxed on capital gains distributions every year without selling any of it.
“The tax code rewards the wealthy..” Not really, as the top 1% pay about 40% of all income taxes and the top 10% pays about 90% of all income taxes. The US has one of the more progressive tax systems in the free world. Other than that, maybe they got something right in there though it’s hard to find..
The Fair Tax plan seems to retain all the wonderful thing that a complex bureaucracy brings us.
A flat tax seems simplest and fairest to me.
James, bear with me, my copy of the ‘Fair Tax’ went missing years ago. Simplified, the Flat Tax retains income reporting and the attendant liabilities on individuals and taxes at a flat rate on income, while the Fair Tax makes no accounting for income and uses a retail sales tax scheme for the government’s vig. Most areas already have a sales tax platform in place and the expansion would be rather simple to implement and individuals would have no record keeping requirements. Don’t buy anything [I think the original concept exempted or made allowances for food and medicine ] and don’t pay any tax. The proposed tax rate was 17~22%, from my old memory. While either plan would probably be a vast improvement on the current system.
Again, I’m pulling this out of the cobwebs of my brain and there are probably some minor misstatements. I think Neal Boortz was one of the co-authors of ‘The Fair Tax’ and used copies are available.
This is what I get about Fair Tax.
“Get a Tax Refund in Advance on Purchases of Basic Necessities
The FairTax provides a progressive program called a prebate. This gives every legal resident household an “advance refund” at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free. The prebate prevents an unfair burden on low-income families. Learn more .”
Somehow, after watching trillions being wasted/stolen in the COVIA recovery debacle my bic is not flicked.
https://fairtax.org/about/how-fairtax-works
We’ve devolved into a discussion of Flat Tax vs. Fair Tax, while a worthwhile intellectual exercise, your point about trillions wasted/stolen about sums it up. As long as the professional politicians are writing the tax code, we shouldn’t expect any worthwhile improvements much less actual changes. They will line their pockets with our money first.
