Wrapping the wealthy in the term “job creator,” Republican lawmakers are hammering President Obama over the “Buffett rule,” a tax reform policy based on the simple and popular notion that millionaires should pay their fair share in taxes. To the GOP, this is a surefire way to ensure millionaires or “job creators” do not invest in the economy. “The reason we tax cigarettes in this country is to get people to stop smoking,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “If you tax capital more, you get less capital. If you tax job creators more, you get fewer jobs.”

But a surprising group of people find that to be entirely untrue: the “job creators” themselves. As the billionaire behind the Buffett Rule, Warren Buffett, explained, “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.”

Indeed, 200 millionaires created a group known as the Patriotic Millionaires to make this exact case. In a direct rebuttal of the GOP, members of the group like Ask.com founder Garrett Gruener noted that a higher tax rate makes “zero difference” in how he invests:

Ask.com founder and Oakland venture capitalist Garrett Gruener said that changes in the marginal tax rates make “zero difference” about where he is going to invest.

“The kind of investing I’ve done for the last 25 years isn’t based on how a few points of the income tax rates change,” said Gruener, a Democrat and member of the Patriotic Millionaires. But “somehow, the Republicans have managed to convince 98 percent of the people that they are affected by how 2 percent of the population is taxed.”[...]

Business owners also dismantled the other Republican talking point that higher tax rates will harm small businesses. “I’m not sure what the connection is” between raising tax rates and hiring, said Anchor Brewing CEO Keith Greggor. Anchor has added 26 full-time and 10 part-time employees since last year. Not a lot of “small-business owners I know are millionaires,” Greggor added. SF Made, an organization that represents 230 San Francisco manufacturers with 100 or fewer employees, said if there is a connection between raising taxes and inhibiting small-business investment, “we haven’t seen it.”

Patriotic Millionaires launched a video last month challenging Republican millionaires in Congress for their opposition to the Buffett Rule, stating that millionaire lawmakers’ “continued support of policies that advance their own economic self-interests is un-American.” But if Republican lawmakers are unwilling to listen to the “job creators” they say they speak for, then perhaps they will heed the advice of their figurehead President Ronald Reagan. After all, the Buffett rule is practically his idea.

Today marks the third anniversary of Congress approving the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion bank bailout passed at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. TARP, for all its warts, saved the financial system from collapse. However, similar efforts have not been undertaken to rescue those who lost their jobs, savings, and homes due to Wall Street’s malfeasance. The 2009 Recovery Act was not big enough for the task at hand, while federal anti-foreclosure programs have fallen flat.

TARP’s anniversary coincides with the third week of protests on Wall Street (which have since expanded to several other cities). It’s perhaps fitting then that several economists are calling for “massive debt relief” as a way to help lift the economy, as ballooning debt (student and otherwise) is one of the issues galvanizing those who have occupied Wall Street:

Some economists are calling for a radical step: massive debt relief.

Federal policy makers, they suggest, should broker what amounts to an out-of-court settlement between institutional bond investors, banks and consumer advocates – essentially, a “great haircut” to jumpstart the economy.

What some are envisioning is a negotiated process in which cash-strapped homeowners get real mortgage relief, even if it means forcing banks to incur severe write-downs and bond investors to absorb haircuts, or losses, in some of the securities sold by those institutions.

“We’ve put this off for too long,” said L. Randall Wray, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “We need debt relief and jobs and until we get these two things, I think recovery is impossible.”

As Reuters reported, economist Stephen Roach has called for “Wall Street to get behind what others have called a ‘Debt Jubilee’ to forgive excess mortgage and credit card debt for some borrowers.” Roach said debt forgiveness would help the economy get through “the pain of deleveraging sooner rather than later.” “For their part, bondholders need to understand that we’re not earning our way out of this mess and should eat losses now before they get nothing,” added economic analyst and financial blogger Barry Ritholz.

As the American Independent put it, “debt forgiveness ideas have been swirling since the recession began.” It’s worth taking a moment to bring those ideas back up, three years after the banks received a bailout of their own.

ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall in Derry, New Hampshire.

With the aid of corporate front groups like ALEC, several states have advanced “right to work legislation” this year, in an attempt to further erode unions’ ability to collectively bargain for fair wages and benefits. Were it not for Gov. John Lynch’s (D) veto pen, New Hampshire would be the only state in the northeast with a right to work law.

During a campaign stop in New Hampshire Friday evening, Perry urged the Granite State to try again to pass right to work legislation. Ignoring the fact that the legislation is a direct assault on unions’ capacity to stand up for workers, Perry said “right to work is not an anti-union bill” but rather a “pro-jobs bill.” The Texas governor went on to claim that “our friends who have chosen to be in unions” ought to support the legislation because “they’ll have more access to more jobs”:

PERRY: Right to work is not an anti-union bill, it’s a pro-jobs bill. And our friends who have chosen to be in unions, they’ll have more access to more jobs, making this a right to work state.

Watch it:

Perry’s assertion that right to work bills are not “anti-union” follows in a long history of Republican legislative wordplay.

Legislation gutting environmental protections is referred to as the “Clear Skies Initiative” and “Healthy Forests Initiative.” Republicans defend their plan to end Medicare by instead claiming that it “saves Medicare.” Perry himself says he wants to “fix Social Security,” a program he believes is unconstitutional and a “monstrous lie.”

Union members, of course, know better than to buy what Perry is selling. Right to work legislation — known in union circles as “right to work for less” — would result in lower wages, fewer health and safety regulations, and make it far more difficult for unions to organize on behalf of workers. Economist Gordon Lafer has found that right to work laws “have no impact in boosting economic growth.” “Research shows that there is no relationship between right-to-work laws and state unemployment rates, state per capita income, or state job growth,” he found.

In New Hampshire, the fight goes on to protect the state from right to work legislation. Corporate interests are not shy about their desire to weaken unions with right to work legislation, nor have unions obscured the fact that such bills threaten their future. If Perry sincerely believes that right to work isn’t anti-union, he is pitching his tent in a lonely camp.

Our guest blogger is Alyssa Roberts, a former intern with the Center for American Progress Action Fund and a student at Claremont McKenna College.

Opponents of Colorado’s Proposition 103, a ballot initiative that would restore the state’s income and sales tax rates to where they were in 1999 in order to fund education, claim that the tax increase, if approved, would kill “119,000 jobs over the next five years.” Compare that number to the state’s current unemployment rolls — about 227,000 people, total — and its sounds like Proposition 103 would grow the number of out-of-work Coloradans by 50 percent.

How could increasing the income tax rate from 4.63 percent to 5 percent and the sales tax rate from 2.9 percent to 3 percent for five years have such as devastating impact on employment? It wouldn’t. The organization fighting the proposal, which calls itself Save Colorado Jobs, bases its alarmist claim off a study by economist Eric Fruits. His study didn’t actually predict any job loss if Proposition 103 passes. Fruits even admitted that the anti-103 group distorted his findings.

“It’s not quite correct to call it a job loss,” Fruits told The Colorado Statesman. “It is a difference in employment levels.”

Save Colorado Jobs got the shocking 119,000 job-killing statistic by adding together the projected decline in job growth for each year the tax increase is in effect. But a cumulative number doesn’t make any sense. After all, you wouldn’t add together the number of employed people in the state over five years, which would be about 14 million (when Colorado’s population is only 5 million), to arrive at a job creation number.

And that’s not the only dubious claim against Proposition 103. Again citing Fruits’ study, Save Colorado Jobs says that the tax increase “chases away $218 million in taxable income.” That would only happen if the tax increase lowers the state’s net population growth by 3,610 people each year and the average income of new residents drops by $181, as Fruits’ study predicts.

But his analysis rests heavily on the assertion that people move because of higher taxes, which is actually very rare. When wealthy retirees decide to move, it’s more likely to be because of the weather than the tax rate. And a poorly funded education system discourages potential residents from moving to a state.

Colorado spends $1,809 less than the national average per pupil on K-12 education, ranking it 40th in the nation. The state’s public education budget suffered $500 million in cuts over the last three years, which forced districts to lay off teachers and even reduce graduation requirements to save money. Proposition 103 won’t fix Colorado’s long-term economic problems, but it would temporarily spare schools from further cuts.

When President Obama released his plan to implement the “Buffett rule” — which would ensure that millionaires can’t pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families — 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney derided it as “class warfare,” saying it is “simply the wrong way to go.” But as Time’s Michael Scherer pointed out today, Romney may have a tough time defending his opposition to the Buffett Rule, as one of its highest profile targets could well be…Romney himself:

Just how much Romney pays in taxes is, for the moment, a private matter. But his income is public knowledge. In August, Romney disclosed that in 2010 he and his wife made between $1.1 million and $2.8 million in royalties, salary, speaking fees and interest, most of which was likely taxed at a marginal rate of 35%, after accounting for deductions. The Romneys made an additional $5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains, which is generally taxed at a much lower rate of 15%.

Calculating the Romneys’ exact tax burden is not possible from the public records because of a number of factors, like the amount of money that Romney deducted from his taxes and the length of time that he owned investments, are unknown. But ballpark estimates are possible. Assuming that Romney declared roughly the same number of deductions as others in his income level and that his dividend and capital gains income qualified for the 15% bracket, Romney would have paid roughly 14% of his gross income in taxes to the federal government in 2010 according to Bob McIntyre, who crafts tax policy at the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice.

The Buffett Rule is meant to prevent exactly this sort of circumstance, wherein a super wealthy individual, due to the preferential tax treatment of investment income, is able to dramatically lower his or her tax rate. If Romney’s income had been wages or salary instead of from investments, his tax rate would have been closer to 30 percent.

In 2009, “1,470 households reported income of more than $1 million in 2009 but paid zero federal income tax on it.” In 2008, the average federal income tax rate of the richest 400 people in the country was 18.11 percent. And Romney, by arguing against the Buffett Rule, will be saying that this sort of tax system, from which he directly benefits in a big way, should stay in place.

Source: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan refers an economic struggle between 99 percent of Americans and the richest one percent of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

It may shock you exactly how wealthy this top 1 percent of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans:

1. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Owns 40 Percent Of The Nation’s Wealth: As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, the richest 1 percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Sociologist William Domhoff illustrates this wealth disparity using 2007 figures where the top 1 percent owned 42 percent of the country’s financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home). How much does the bottom 80 percent own? Only 7 percent:

As Stiglitz notes, this disparity is much worse than it was in the past, as just 25 years ago the top 1 percent owned 33 percent of national wealth.

2. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Take Home 24 Percent Of National Income: While the richest 1 percent of Americans take home almost a quarter of national income today, in 1976 they took home just 9 percent — meaning their share of the national income pool has nearly tripled in roughly three decades.

3. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Own Half Of The Country’s Stocks, Bonds, And Mutual Funds: The Institute for Policy Studies illustrates this massive disparity in financial investment ownership, noting that the bottom 50 percent of Americans own only .5 percent of these investments:

4. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Have Only 5 Percent Of The Nation’s Personal Debt:

Using 2007 figures, sociologist William Domhoff points out that the top 1 percent have 5 percent of the nation’s personal debt while the bottom 90 percent have 73 percent of total debt:

5. The Top 1 Percent Are Taking In More Of The Nation’s Income Than At Any Other Time Since The 1920s: Not only are the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans taking home a tremendous portion of the national income, but their share of this income is greater than at any other time since the Great Depression, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities illustrates in this chart using 2007 data:

As Professor Elizabeth Warren has explained, “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” More and more often, that is not occurring, giving the protesters ample reason to take to the streets.

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry has already caught some well-deserved flak for his administering of the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF), which was meant to deliver incentives to companies that would create jobs in the Lone Star State. Instead, as Time’s Massimo Calabresi reported, the fund “channeled millions of dollars to companies whose officers or investors are major Perry campaign donors and Perry has allowed them to keep their subsidies in many cases even when they fail to deliver promised jobs.”

And it turns out that some of the businesses which Perry chose to subsidize — and he had almost complete control over which companies received TEF funds — were notorious subprime lenders Countrywide and Washington Mutual:

Just as the largest banks began receiving public cash, they aggressively ramped up risky lending. Within four years, the banks were out of business and homeowners across Texas faced foreclosure. In the end, the state paid $35 million to subsidize it. [...]

As Perry offered $20 million in grants to Countrywide and $15 million to Washington Mutual Inc. — each blamed for having a major role in one of the country’s most serious recessions — he took in tens of thousands of their dollars for his gubernatorial campaign.

Both of these companies blew themselves (and many, many homeowners) up via subprime loans, and helped subprime lending increase significantly in Texas:

The AP analysis found that Washington Mutual, Countrywide and their subsidiaries boosted risky lending in Texas within a year after receiving grants from the Texas Enterprise Fund. In 2004, only one out of every 100 Washington Mutual loans in the state was originated to homeowners with less-than-perfect credit. The next year, that figure rose to more than one in four.

In a 2004 speech, Perry “called Countrywide a good employer and said state government subsidies would help other such companies move their businesses to Texas.

Texas actually had quite stringent mortgage lending regulations that allowed it to avoid the worst of the housing bubble. And it seems like the state could have been even better off if Perry hadn’t actively brought some of the worst subprime offenders into the state to ply their wares.

When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.

Ever since, many Republicans have been attacking Obama for inciting “class warfare.” “It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership,” agreed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, if calling for an end to millionaires having lower tax rates than their secretaries is class warfare, Obama is only the latest class warrior to occupy the Oval Office. In a June 6, 1985 speech at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, then President Ronald Reagan explained that tax loopholes allowing a millionaire to pay lower taxes that a bus driver were “crazy,” because they allowed the “truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share”:

We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. [...] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?

Watch Obama and Reagan’s remarks, side by side:

When Reagan asked the crowd whether millionaires should be paying more or less in taxes than a bus driver, the crowd resoundingly responded “more!” Reagan also told an Illinois crowd about a letter he had received from a man who said that tax loopholes allowed him to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. “He wrote me the letter to tell me he’d like to come to Washington and testify before Congress as to how that’s possible for him to do and why it is wrong,” Reagan said.

A recent Daily Kos/SEIU “State of the Nation” poll conducted by Public Policy Polling found that 73 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Republicans, favor the Buffett rule. Remember, it was Reagan who completely equalized the tax treatment of investment income and wage income, which is currently one of the key tax disparities that allows the wealthy to dramatically lower their tax rates.

As the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon and Michael Linden put it, “in calling for the ‘Buffett Rule,’ Obama is merely calling for a return to basic fairness. He is echoing the very same call that Ronald Reagan made 25 years ago. Given the history, maybe we should be calling it the ‘Reagan Rule.’”