Short and Sweet Blog

Claire McCaskill, democratic Senator from the purple state of Missouri, is the 19th richest person in the US Congress.  She is fortunate enough to be in the top 3% of the already rich denizens of that imperial body of paragons.  She would certainly suffer if tax rates go up as she apparently prefers.  This is what she says about taxes, including a prominent mention for those capital gains and dividend taxes:

Can her words be interpreted as being prepared to send the American people out to violently attack the affluent high wage earners, the above $250K’ers, with pitchforks or would she limit her crusade to the truly and utterly rich, those who have multiple homes and whose income comes in the tax-preferred form of capital gains and dividends.  I wonder if she could be any more coy when she conflates these two very different groups?  If she is actually serious about addressing the gross unfairness of capital gain and dividend taxes shouldn’t she just come out and say, “Let’s tax all income, however earned, exactly the same!”  Now that language would shake things up.  Just think of poor John Kerry and Theresa Heinz Kerry.  Is Claire McCaskill, a sitting member of the Senate whose ox would personally be gored, coming out against ultra-prefered treatment given to income in the form the capital gains and dividends?  This is the bulk of the income received by herself and her ultra-wealthy friends.  If it’s true, that’s change I could begin to believe in.  [But of course, as pleased as I would be at this prospect, as a realist I think it would be wise if we were to first carefully consider the practical aspects of nearly tripling capital gains and dividend taxes in terms of its effect on economic growth in our now-sluggish economy.] 

Sen. McCaskill was very likely just spinning.  While she makes a strong statement for fairness and at the same time demonizes her evil Republican enemies, I believe that she is obviously advocating raising the rate on capital gains back the Clinton era level, from 15 to 20%.  She is clearly willing to suffer to cut the deficit, since as a Democratic party member she is by definition a serious deficit hawk.  Her prescription, raising rates on the wages of top earners from 35 to 39.6% and  on capital gains/dividends from 15 to 20%, does nothing to address the inequity between the wage earners and the truly wealthy.  This strategy is a way she can be seen advocating  “raising taxes on the rich” without risking substantial increases in her own cushy capital gains tax rates.  By conflating the high wage earners and the truly wealthy and calling them both “rich” she justifies doing nothing to address the obvious unfair advantage capital gains income retains compared to actual earned income.  She would still prefer not to have her ox gored to the same extent as those relying upon their work to earn the bulk of their living.  But such duplicity is not new nor is it limited to Claire McCaskill.  And so it goes in the imperial capital.

This entry was posted on December 7, 2010 at 1:51 am and is filed under Taxes. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.