A lot of people newly entering the work force or trying to find work in a new area after being laid off discover a catch-22, that employers often require them to have some experience but that they can’t get experience until they get employed. Unpaid internships are often touted as a way of breaking that cycle, a means of getting work experience without [Read more…]
Apparently smaller bonuses this year are causing all kinds of angst for the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.
Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said [Read more…]
It is clear that there are serious vertical inequities in the tax code, in the sense that some people who are in the highest income quintiles, and even some of those in the top 1%, pay federal taxes at a lower rate than those in lower quintiles. Bruce Bartlett shows a [Read more…]
I received a private email communication from a reader that had some interesting information about my post yesterday on changing the seasons, also [Read more…]
It looks like Greece has been strong-armed into accepting the terms of the Eurozone bailout. It seems like this bailout is not a bailout of Greece but of all the banks that lent money to successive Greek governments with seemingly little caution. Much of the bailout money given to Greece will immediately go out again to repay the banks, and [Read more…]
The one-percenters and their lackeys often indignantly make the claim that since they are the ones who pay most of the taxes, they should be praised rather than vilified, since it is largely their tax dollars that enable the state to function. They point to the roughly 47% of the population who do not pay any federal income taxes as being essentially moochers, as if being so poor that you do not even qualify to pay income tax is somehow an ingenious dodge to live off the wealthy.
But this situation arises not because the current tax rates are [Read more…]
It is no secret that it is an article of faith in the Republican party that tax cuts are always good and almost all their candidates had tax proposals to do so. Via Kevin Drum, I came across a handy chart created by the Tax Policy Center that showed the effect of these cuts and what is clear is that most of the benefits go to the very wealthy. Herman Cain’s plan even raised taxes on lower incomes while cutting those of the wealthy.
These people could not be more transparent about their devotion to serving the interests of the rich.
John Hodgman of The Daily Show tells the 99% to be patient, that soon they too will be in the 1%.
To get suggestions on how to view clips on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. This clip appeared on February 2, 2012.
Most of us think that people who have made a ton of money by various means then simply invest it and live off the resulting income. But what form does this investment income take? If you are an average person, you tend to think of investment income as the interest on certificates of deposit or savings and money market accounts, which are taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. More sophisticated investors get their investment income in the form of [Read more…]