The Wall Street Journal frequently has superb reporting. However, neanderthals continue to roam their editorial pages. And they are clutching their pearls in horror over the fiscal cliff bill presided over by the Kenyan socialist.
After paying a lifetime of taxes on wages and salaries, business and farm profits and capital gains, Americans who save their money rather than spend it get the reward of giving 40% to Uncle Sam.
Most American have nowhere near $5 million in their estate when they die and the estate tax on that amount is rising from 35% to 40%, not exactly a huge increase. Given that many large estates consist of inherited money anyway and multiple tax avoidance schemes already exist, somehow the poor dears will probably do ok somehow.
Wall Street Journal also whines about the capital gains tax going up. This has long been a giant loophole. Michael Arrington who sold Techcrunch to AOL for $50 million+ and now runs a hedge fund explains why it should be abolished.
Even though I’m investing other people’s money, the government calls it a capital gain. So instead of paying 39.6 percent on that money (I won’t call it income), I pay only 15 percent (or maybe 20 percent under the new rules – it isn’t clear to me).
Kill This Loophole
Many of us benefiting from it have been asking for it to end for years because it is so vastly unfair.
It’s not often that something is so egregious that even the people benefiting from it are asking for it to go away.
Arringon thus appears to have an actual sense of fairness and objects to the grossly unfair capital gains rates. By contrast, the WSJ bangs its rattle on the high chair about having to pay a penny more in taxes.
Meanwhile, even as Democrats claim these tax rates won’t matter to investment, Senators stuffed their bill full of tax subsidies for special business interests. The wind tax credit survived (cost: $12.1 billion), and so did the tax breaks for cellulosic ethanol ($59 million) and the impoverished producers of Hollywood ($248 million).
These would be tax breaks that WSJ doesn’t like. They are curiously mute on defense and oil company subsidies. And let’s not forget that it was government money and subsidies that invented solar power (NASA) and created the Internet (DARPA), all of which have had tremendous benefit to the public.
But the WSJ editorial board has long shown they have no interest in what is good for the public at large, but only for what benefits their 1% class.
House Republicans should pursue their own agenda and let Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats pursue theirs. Mr. Obama has his tax triumph. Let it be his last.
It won’t be. The Teapublicans have shown they are paper tigers, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, as they always fold have faced with a real fight. And WSJ editorials continue to show their nasty, greedy view that their class is entitled to special treatment and the rest of us should just get used to it. Good luck with that.