The biggest difference between today’s super-rich capitalists and the robber barons [a much more descriptive term] of a hundred years ago appears to be style. Handlebar mustaches, wool suits, top hats and protruding bellies are out of fashion, but today’s plutocrats share the same values of the captains of industry of the early 20^th century. In fact, they openly long for that so-called Golden Age, when capitalism was unfettered by pesky consumer protections, labor rights, bank regulations, income taxes and safety nets. We’ve seen it all before.

We’ve also seen how the Progressive Movement of the early 20^th century figured out how to reign in the excesses and help create a thriving middle class. The trouble is that, today, many of the accomplishments and lessons learned in earlier days of progressivism have fallen by the wayside—whether through corporate-influenced legislation and/or regulation, by complacency or by a failure of memory. But the lessons and ideas are still out there, and progressives need to reinvigorate them.

That’s what veteran labor journalist Sam Pizzigatti writes about in his new book, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class. In a post at Inequality.org, Pizzigatti suggests five public policies—all of which were on the table during the Great Depression—that could put the U.S. back on what he calls “the plutocracy-busting track.”

One: Income disclosure

Require the rich to annually disclose the income they’re reporting to the IRS and how much of that income they actually pay in taxes.

Pizzigatti notes that, in the 1930s, progressives proposed just such a measure, contending that disclosure would make it harder for the wealthy to play games with taxes. It would also make it easier to see which loopholes need to be plugged.

But, in an intriguing historical footnote, Pizzigatti points out that:

In 1934, progressives actually added a disclosure provision to the tax code.  But the super rich counterattacked with a media blitz that tied disclosure to the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping. If all rich Americans had to disclose their incomes, the argument went, kidnappers would gain a wider pool of targets.

The 1930s obsession with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping proved to be a powerful detour, and the provision was scrapped. But the basic premise behind income disclosure remains a solid idea, says Pizzigatti. And today we’ve got the the technology to make it happen.

Two: Leverage the power of the public purse against excessive corporate executive pay

Pizzigatti knows that government can’t set specific limits on what private corporations pay their executives. But Congress could impose limits indirectly by denying federal government contracts and subsidies to corporations that lavish rewards on top executives.

This is not a new idea, either, notes Pizzigatti. But it’s one to build on:

In 1933, then-senator and later Supreme Court justice Hugo Black won congressional approval for legislation that denied federal air- and ocean-mail contracts to companies that paid their execs over $17,500, about $300,000 in today’s dollars. But the New Deal never fully embraced the Hugo Black perspective.

Pizzigatti suggests that we could actually do that today, “by denying federal contracts and tax breaks to any companies that pay their CEOs over 25 times what their workers are making.”

Three: Give Americans a safe alternative to private banks.

There’s precedent for this idea, too, says Pizzigatt:

For Louis Brandeis, a reform giant who also became a Supreme Court justice, prohibiting financial institutions from speculating with the savings of average Americans always remained a top priority.

In the early 1930s, Brandeis advocated the expansion of postal savings banks, a system — in effect since 1911 — that paid 2 percent interest on modest savings accounts maintained with the post office. That expansion never took place, and postal savings banks withered away. They deserve a second shot.

Four: Tax undistributed corporate profits.

America’s biggest corporations are currently sitting on stashes of cash that have hit mega-billion levels, says Pizzigatti.

Money that could be invested in creating jobs sits instead in income-generating financial assets that only sweeten corporate bottom lines and executive paychecks.

A similar problem plagued the nation back during the Great Depression, and progressives pushed for a stiff tax on these “retained earnings.” In 1936, Congress passed a watered-down version of this tax that didn’t last and didn’t make much of an impact.

A stronger tax today just might.

Five: Cap income at America’s economic summit.

In a world in which Congressional Republicans refuse to even talk about raising taxes on top earners by even 3 percent, this is probably Pizzigatti’s most pie-in-the-sky idea. But if we want a rational discussion of revenue, it’s worth talking about.

First, the historical context:

In 1942, in the midst of a war-time fiscal squeeze, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax on all individual income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $355,000 today.

Congress didn’t go along. But lawmakers did set the top tax rate at 94 percent on income over $200,000, and federal income tax top rates hovered around 90 percent for most of the next two decades, years of unprecedented prosperity.

America’s rich fought relentlessly to curb those rates. They saw no other way to hang on to more of their income.

So, what is Pizzigatti proposing? A restructured top tax rate that would give the rich what he calls “a new incentive.”.

We could, for instance, set the entry threshold for a new 90 percent top rate as a multiple of our nation’s minimum wage. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the threshold, the softer the total tax bite out of the nation’s highest incomes.

Our nation’s wealthiest and most powerful, under this approach, would suddenly have a vested interest in enhancing the well-being of our poorest and weakest.

Pizzigatti concludes his fascinating history lesson this way:

Years ago, progressives yearned to create an America that encouraged just that sort of social solidarity. They couldn’t finish the job. We still can.

The post 5 plutocracy-busting ideas from America’s progressive history appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Things just don’t seem to be getting much better for poor Leon Cooperman, about whom I have previously written on Occasional Planet.

[Scarmucci] said that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said. “The President has a philosophy of disdain toward wealth creation. That’s just obvious, O.K.? We talked about it all night.” He later said, “If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.”

The post ​Poor Leon Cooperman, Chapter 2 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When confronted with accusations regarding his history as a corporate raider with Bain Capital, Mitt Romney has famously responded that his accusers are “jealous” of his wealth and accomplishments. If jealousy is the key motivation of those advocating for change of the distribution of power in the US, then all that is needed is for advocates to change their own efforts from working for equity, to becoming part of the 1 percent themselves – problem solved. The reality is that “jealousy,” while no doubt present (who would turn down $200 million if offered?) has little to do with the motivations of advocates who seek to end abuses of the uber-wealthy in the US.

Examples of problems created through the misuse of wealth in our democracy abound and can easily fill a multi-volume tome dedicated to the subject. For brevity’s sake, I have decided to limit this quick glance at legitimate grievances that the average American has towards the 1% who control more than 48% of our nations wealth, based on stories linked to, or discussed among my acquaintances on facebook. Some would surely argue “your friends are a bunch of liberals,” which is true enough, but hey, they are my friends, and I never said this was a scientific sampling, just a list of legitimate grievances!

1.

The largest and most serious complaint is that the wealthy use the power money buys to “game the system.” An acquaintance posted a link that documents how every $1 spent lobbying by big oil results in $58 of profit. The super rich spend vast sums to influence the politicians who pass laws that allow the wealthy to continue growing their fortunes. There has actually been a drop in lobbying money this year – my personal thought is that the wealthy are throwing their funds into Super PACs, since the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision made it legal to spend unlimited amounts on elections. Which leads to…

2.

The 1% are now buying America’s elections thanks to the Citizens United decision. As if direct contributions to candidate’s campaigns were not enough, Super PAC spending is the story of the current election cycle. When a single wealthy person can spend millions on TV ads attacking candidates with accusations that may have little connection to the truth, the votes of ordinary Americans matters much less.

3.

The 1% and their corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes. Another friend linked to a story stating that top CEOs and corporations are legally avoiding paying their fair share of the cost of running this nation. What is worse, these are overwhelmingly the same people who attempt to demonize the social safety net as “bankrupting” America. So they skip out on the dinner check, while accusing everyone else at the party of eating too much and driving up the bill. Talk about rubbing salt in a wound.

4.

The 1% use their wealth in a shady manner to undercut legitimate opposition to their actions. A fellow writer for Occasional Planet linked to this story about Monsanto hiring Xe (the artist formerly known as Blackwater) agents to infiltrate groups they see as a potential threat to their profits. This goes to a problem that threatens even the 1 percent, though they seem not to see it that way.

 The uber-rich have placed profits not just above the well-being of individuals, but are pursuing policies that threaten America’s stability and possibly the long-term health of everyone on the planet. Global warming threatens everyone, and major causes include cars, factories and electricity production. These three causes are making the one-percenters fabulously wealthier every day. These same fabulously wealthy people have been funding climate warming deniers in order to prevent changes to Federal policy that might affect their bottom line negatively – such as ending subsidies for the oil industry which is making record profits already.

5.

The super wealthy are actually benefitting from the suffering of others. Mitt Romney does not deny that foreclosures in Florida made money for him. No wonder Mitt believes that the best way to handle the foreclosure crisis is to allow the market to “hit bottom!”

Five seems a good number to stop at – sadly I have enough material just from links on facebook from the last 24 hours, to continue further. The wealthy seem oblivious to the needs of others (with noticeable exceptions) and begin to remind us of 17^th century aristocrats who believe that they are so far above the peons that they need not give them a second thought except to lie to them about who to vote for. Perhaps they should be reminded of what happened as a direct result of these policies. At the very least, we see that jealousy is not a top motivator for the grievances of the 99%.

The post 99 percenters’ top 5 grievances against the 1 percent appeared first on Occasional Planet.

They want us to believe that expecting rich people to pay their fair share of taxes is a job-killing, economic mistake. But that’s not the real reason some members of Congress don’t like President Obama’s “Buffett Rule.” Their opposition has a lot to do with their own personal finances, because 48 percent of Congress members are, themselves, millionaires. [Only 1 percent of all Americans are millionaires.]

Here are some facts about millionaires in Congress, as compiled by The Agenda Project:

• 55 members of Congress have an average wealth of $10 million and 8 members have an average wealth of $100+ million
• During the worst part of the recession 2008-2009, the median wealth of a congressional member rose $125K
• The median wealth of a House member is $700,000+, while the median wealth for a senator was over $2 million
• 5 of the 6 Republican members of the new Super Committee for the Budget are millionaires.

More specifically, check out this enlightening chart listing the 136 members of Congress who oppose the Buffett Rule, plus each millionaire’s net worth.

On the other side of this discussion are the Patriotic Millionaires for fiscal responsibility, whose website lists 120 individuals and couples who now or previously have had annual incomes of $1 million or more, and who have signed onto a letter that says, in part:

Our country faces a choice – we can pay our debts and build for the future, or we can shirk our financial responsibilities and cripple our nation’s potential.

Our country has been good to us. It provided a foundation through which we could succeed. Now, we want to do our part to keep that foundation strong so that others can succeed as we have.

Please do the right thing for our country. Raise our taxes.

The Agenda Project also has released a series of [IMHO] very effective, 30-second videos that bring home the message: Millionaire politicians—whose pictures flash on the screen—are opposing the Buffett rule to benefit themselves rather than the country. Here’s one. Pass it on.

The post Millionaires in Congress oppose Obama’s “Buffett Rule” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Ideology-driven, intransigent, Norquist-pledge-signing, Obama-hating Congressional Republicans might not get it, but kitchen-table Americans do. Public opinion polls released in the past few days indicate overwhelming support for President Obama’s call for fair-share tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

And we’re not just talking about a few, cherry-picked polls. Capital Gains and Games has posted a chart that compares results from all the big-name polls, dating back to November 2010. Bruce Bartlett, who compiled that chart, says that it shows that:

“… people support raising taxes as part of deficit reduction by a 2-to-1 margin over the Grover Norquist/Club for Growth/Tea Party position that the deficit must be reduced only by spending cuts without a penny of higher taxes. In light of President Obama’s new budget plan, which includes higher taxes, I am posting an updated table, including a poll on Friday showing that three-fourths of people support higher taxes and only 21 percent support the doctrinaire right-wing position.”

Bartlett is far from a raving leftist, by the way. You may remember him from his days as a senior policy analyst for President Ronald Reagan [who raised taxes!], deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department for Bush 41, and his work as an adviser to conservative Republicans Ron Paul and Jack Kemp.

Also on board with President Obama’s plan is Andrew Sullivan, who says:

“The margins are staggering: the NYT poll shows a majority of 74 – 21; even Rasmussen shows a majority of 56 – 34. What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at. If he keeps at it, if he turns his administration into a permanent campaign for structural fiscal reform, I don’t see how he loses the argument.

At Washington Monthly, Steve Benen calls the President’s deficit-reduction plan “ambitious [and] surprisingly progressive.”

 The American Jobs Act, recently unveiled to a joint session, was refreshingly bold and quite progressive. The president’s critics on the left feared he would aim low, fail to call for major new investments, and might even propose a regulatory moratorium. Those fears proved to be largely backwards.

Going into this morning’s speech on debt reduction, we saw a very similar dynamic, with fears that the Obama plan would cut Social Security and raise the Medicare eligibility age. And again, the president exceeded expectations.

Given the larger political circumstances, it’s unlikely the president’s proposal will enjoy much support in the right-wing House, making this more of an opening salvo than a realistic legislative blueprint. But in some respects, that’s the most heartening part of the recent White House shift — Obama and his team aren’t playing by the same rules anymore. Indeed, they appear to have thrown out the old playbook altogether.

At the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson calls the President’s plan “common sense, not class warfare.”

“The headline from Obama’s plan, though, is the call for wealthy Americans to pay taxes like everybody else. If Republicans believe the current system is fine, Obama said, “they should be called out. They should have to defend that unfairness. . . . They ought to have to answer for it.”

So, what’s not to like? The President is calling for everyone to pitch in to help rebuild America’s economy.  Pre-schoolers who watch “Barney” sing a song that sums it up very simply: “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere. Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.” Even a four-year-old knows what’s fair.

The post Polls: Overwhelming public support for President’s fair-share tax plan appeared first on Occasional Planet.