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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Inequality Will Go Nuclear If We Don't Raise Taxes On The Rich Inequality Will Go Nuclear If We Don't Raise Taxes On The Rich Robert Reich, Contributor | Mar. 13, 2012, 7:39 AM | 705 | 23 A A A inShare3 radioactive joerodz via Flickr Robert Reich, Contributor URL Robert Reich, Contributor is an economist, a professor, and former Clinton labor secretary Recent Posts The Precarious Jobs Recovery ROBERT REICH: American Workers Are Getting Screwed More Than Ever ROBERT REICH: Stop Starving Public Universities And Shrinking the... RSS Feed The Widening Wealth Divide, and Why We Need a Surtax on the Super Wealthy The Precarious Jobs Recovery Bye Bye American Pie: The Challenge of the Productivity Revolution Let Santorum and Romney duke it out for who will cut taxes on the wealthy the most and shred the public services everyone else depends on. The rest of us ought to be having a serious discussion about a wealth tax. Because if you really want to know what’s happening to the American economy you need to look at household wealth. A few days ago the Fed reported that household wealth increased from October through December. That’s the first gain in three quarters. Good news? Take closer look. The entire gain came from increases in stock prices. Those increases in stock values more than made up for continued losses in home values. But the vast majority of Americans don’t have their wealth in the stock market. Over 90 percent of the nation’s financial assets – including stocks and pension-fund holdings – are owned by the richest 10 percent of Americans. The top 1 percent owns 38 percent. Most Americans have their wealth in their homes – whose prices continue to drop. Housing prices are down by a third from their 2006 peak. So as the value of financial assets held by American households increased by $1.46 trillion in the fourth quarter, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans became $1.3 trillion richer, and the wealthiest 1 percent became $554.8 billion richer. But at the same time, as the value of household real estate fell by $367.4 billion in the fourth quarter, homeowners – mostly middle class – lost over $141 billion (owners’ equity is 38.4 percent of total household real estate). Presto. America’s wealth gap – already wider than the nation’s income gap – has become even wider. The 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together. Given this unprecedented concentration of wealth – and considering what the nation needs to do to rebuild our schools and infrastructure while at the same time saving Medicare and reducing the long-term budget deficit – shouldn’t we be aiming higher than a “Buffet tax” on the incomes of millionaires? There should also be a surtax on the super rich. Yale Professor Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott have proposed a 2 percent surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent of Americans owning more than $7.2 million of assets. They figure it would generate $70 billion a year, or $750 billion over the decade. That’s half the savings Congress’s now defunct Supercommittee was aiming for. Instead of standing empty-handed while Santorum and Romney dominate the airwaves with their regressive Social Darwinism, Democrats need to be reminding Americans of what’s happening in the real economy – and what needs to happen. The wealth gap is widening into a chasm. A surtax on the super rich is fair — and it’s necessary. Read more posts on Robert Reich » Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook. Tags: Inequality, Taxes, Wealthy | Get Alerts for these topics » Sponsored Link: Download: Microsoft Enterprise Apps on VMware vSphere, NetApp Unified Storage, Cisco Unified Fabric Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: tom007 (#0)
After that attribution, I refuse to read any further.
#2. To: Cynicom (#1)
The older this guy gets and the less he does, the longer his list of accomplishments. He is another POS who the evildoers made sure was in Clinton's administration. Wake up, America!!!
I can't remember-- is he 4'11' or 3'9"? I saw him on Carson one time -- his feet dangled above the floor when he was sitting in the chair.
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