How This Progressive Became a Flat-Taxer
Commentary on the Bezos v. Biden Twit-Fight by Ken Zino
Last month’s Bezos v. Biden Twitter fight over inflation and billionaire taxation is another confirmation of my conversion years ago from pragmatic progressive to flat-taxer. There’s an old shibboleth about banks only lending money to people who don’t need it. I can’t help but chortle over the tweets traded between the president and the Amazon King.
By my scorecard, President Biden, from his opening round jab; “You want to bring down inflation? Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share,” to his walloping left hook, “Under my predecessor, the deficit increased every single year,” referring to Trump’s tax cuts for the mega wealthy, and finally, to the knockout haymaker, “This year, we’re on track to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion – the biggest one-year decline ever,” clearly won the fight.
I used to believe in progressive rate taxation. It’s a generally fair concept. However, given the overwhelming sway the mega-rich have on the policies of our government over taxation and the protection of the 0.1-percenters’wealth, I’ll settle for them paying something. That is almost anything greater than the zero, zilch, none, null that the Gulfstream jet set pay.
It’s a good thing the pressure vessel of a Gulfstream is a lot thicker than Jeff Bezo’s skin. He’s bursting at sea-level, not 51,000 feet. Oh, unless he was in a G5 when he started this fight after non-profit investigative newsroom ProPublica’s report that based on IRS records, Bezos, the multi-billionaire who is either the richest or second-richest man, did not pay any federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011.
ProPublica also reported that in 2018, fellow private rocketeer Elon Musk – who regularly competes with Bezos for title of “world’s richest man” depending on the value of Tesla stock – also paid zero federal income taxes.
So, pick a number -- 2%, 5%, 10%, 15% -- and tax everything as income with no tax-code exceptions, no loss carry forwards, no generation-skipping trusts, no stock and property that aren’t taxed unless they are sold, if they ever are -- for anyone.
As for Bezos’ hits on Biden over 40-year record inflation, Paul Krugman argues in The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-paul-krugman.html?showTranscript=1] that it is a big problem for the country because it “conveys a sense that things are out of control, if you run your economy too hot for too long, then everybody starts to raise prices just because they think everybody else is going to raise prices, and then getting it back down can be very expensive.”
Inflation in 1979 was not actually a big problem on its own, Krugman writes, because wages were rising at roughly the same rate. It was economic policy to tackle high inflation that hurt almost everybody. If the Federal Reserve and Biden administration can cut it back to normal levels in the next year to 18 months, nothing really bad will have happened. But if the Fed’s rate hikes keep hitting it could be the 1970s all over again.
Zino is an auto industry observer and publisher of AutoInformed.com, with decades of experience globally in print and broadcast journalism, as well as social media.
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