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https://theconversation.com/everybody-has-not-won-trickle-down-economics-was-an-idiotic-idea-how-do-we-fix-the-inequality-it-causes-223296>
"In his 2024
State of the Union address, US president Joe Biden announced his
plans for a bold set of tax reforms. Tax on corporations would go up.
Deductions for high-income earners would come down. Tax breaks on corporate
jets would take a hit. Low-income taxpayers would benefit, as would
middle-income house buyers.
Most controversially, Biden called for a “billionaire tax”. He planned to raise
US$500 billion over ten years by imposing a minimum 25% tax on Americans whose
wealth exceeded $100 million. “No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than
a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse,” he declared.
Biden’s proposal was a reversal of Donald Trump’s
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,
which was signed into law in 2017. The act involved significant reductions in
tax rates on corporate profits, investment earnings and high personal incomes.
Trump described the plan as “the rocket fuel our economy needs to soar higher
than ever before”.
The polarisation of tax policy between Trump and Biden can be traced back at
least 40 years. In the 1980s, the world’s economies were shaken up by the idea
that if big corporations and wealthy individuals were taxed less and freed from
the encumbrance of government regulations, they would grow the economy and
people of all socioeconomic groups would be better off financially.
It was dubbed “trickle-down economics”. The story was that through a natural
process, some of the wealth created by and for those at the top would trickle
down through the rest of the economy, so everyone would benefit from liberating
the economic might of the wealthy.
Of course, everybody has not won. Since the advent of the global neoliberal
experiment in the 1980s, the world has become increasingly divided into rich
and poor. Economic inequality has soared to new heights.
Things have got so bad globally that the World Bank declared 2023 “the year of
inequality”. The losses people have suffered as a result of COVID-19, climate
change, political conflict and inflation have fuelled the fire of raging
inequality. Political populism around the world fans that flame."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
