Published 30 July 2009. Linked from The Nation.
By Katrina vanden Heuvel.
At a moment when conservative Democrats are holding real healthcare reform hostage under the guise of “fiscal discipline”–fighting against a robust public option, promoting a regressive taxation of health benefits, and opposing a surtax on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans–a network of business leaders and high net worth individuals has emerged as a powerful and sane voice in this debate: Wealth for the Common Good.
Recognizing that the Bush tax cuts allowed households with incomes over $250,000 to save more than $700 billion during a time of war– and that the economic policies of the past thirty years have disproportionately benefited top earners–Wealth for the Common Good has called on the Obama administration and Congress to immediately repeal the Bush cuts for households earning over $235,000 before they expire in 2011. That would raise an estimated $43 billion in revenues and help address this nation’s public investment deficit–in healthcare, schools, infrastructure and other areas vital to our nation’s health and wealth. Over 200 individuals (including me) who would pay these taxes have now signed onto the petition which will be delivered to President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and (for what it’s worth) House Republican Leader John Boehner.
As for the proposed surtax on individuals with incomes over $350,000 to pay for healthcare reform, Chuck Collins, the co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), told me: “The alternative to taxing the wealthy to pay for healthcare reform is to tax employer-funded health benefits or not cover all Americans. Both of these are unacceptable options. The members of Wealth for the Common Good are aware of both the urgency to reform healthcare and the unfairness of the current tax system. The proposed surcharge would greatly reverse some of the most regressive elements of our federal tax system and fix our broken health system.”
People like Arul Menezes–a principal architect at Microsoft–recognize that their financial success is due in part to public investment. “Every day I benefit from schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, parks, and civic amenities that were built and paid for by previous generations who were much less well off than we are today,” Menezes said. “Yet they had the collective will to invest in their future and the future of their children.”
Let’s demonstrate that same kind of collective will once again and reverse our thirty-year public investment deficit–starting with healthcare.
Join Chuck Collins at the Wishcamper Center at the University Center at the University of Southern Maine for a stimulating evening exploring how our country moved away from the ideal of everyone paying their fair share to tax breaks for the few, why the estate tax is so important, and how we can use this critical moment in our economic history to invest in the common good. This event is organized by the Maine Center for Economic Policy.
The program is free and open to the public, but please RSVP to dfelder@mecep.org
The Maine Center for Economic Policy advances public policies that help people prosper in a strong, fair and sustainable economy. We advance this mission through high-quality research, analysis, citizen education, and coalition building. MECEP is an independent, nonpartisan organization. To learn more, visit www.mecep.org
Originally published 5 August. Linked from Portland Press Herald.
If you’re one of those well-heeled Mainers who think your country is careening headlong into full-fledged socialism, you might want to take a sedative right about now.
Chuck Collins is coming to town.
Collins is a co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a new group of rich folks who think, especially in these fiscally challenging times, that they’re not getting taxed enough.
You heard that right. People with money – in some cases, mountains of money – who see it as their civic duty to help foot a bigger chunk of the bill for health care reform, the economic recovery, deficit reduction …
“I love a good conversation about this,” said Collins, who will speak at 7 tonight at the Wishcamper Center at the University of Southern Maine. “It goes really to the heart of what kind of society you want to have.”
As opposed, Collins noted, to the kind of society we’ve had under “the Bush-era tax cuts” on everything from wealthy estates to capital gains and dividends to plain old, six- and seven-figure salaries.
Collins’ message: “People who have achieved high accumulations of wealth should pay back the society that made it all possible.”
So who exactly is this guy?
For starters, he’s a great-grandson of hot dog magnate Oscar Mayer who grew up in a world where money was never a problem. A world where talk of wealth-generated tax havens was “part of the oxygen you breathe.”
His childhood, Collins said, “gave me a good window into the nature of taxes and privilege.” His conscience, on the other hand, constantly reminded him that “I am so blessed” as he graduated debt-free from pricey Hampshire College in 1984 and embarked on a career dedicated to narrowing the ever-growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Hence, when Collins inherited $500,000 from his great-grandfather’s estate at the age of 25, he didn’t run to the nearest high-yield, low-tax investment strategy. Instead, he went looking for worthy charitable foundations – and gave every penny of the inheritance to them.
And now, as a senior scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Policy, Collins argues that the “organized complainers” who howl at the mere mention of higher taxes for the rich do not reflect what all wealthy people feel these days.
Rather, he said, a “silent majority” of the wealthy understand that they’ve been pretty darned fortunate – maybe too fortunate – over the past decade as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the worst recession in half a century and a record-breaking federal deficit have left middle- and lower-income Americans reeling.
“We (people making more than $235,000 a year) got $700 billion in tax cuts from George Bush since 2000,” Collins said. “For a lot of us, the idea that we could get those cuts during a time of war is really unseemly. In all of our history, it’s never been done before.”
So now what?
Wealth for the Common Good’s most immediate goal, Collins said, is to persuade the Obama administration to immediately rescind the Bush tax cuts (which are scheduled to expire in 2011) on households that make more than $235,000 a year. Doing so, he said, would pump $43 billion of much-needed revenue into federal coffers to help fund health care, education, green energy and transportation infrastructure.
How well that message will play in Maine depends, as always, on whom you ask.
At the Maine Center for Economic Policy, which is sponsoring Collins’ appearance this evening, Executive Director Christopher St. John calls Collins “one of the very, very few people who can actually talk about taxes in a way that makes sense to ordinary folks.”
Moving over to the right side of the political spectrum, Chief Economist Scott Moody at the Maine Heritage Policy Center would beg to differ.
Noting that many of those “households” that make over $235,000 are actually small businesses that can ill afford to pay more taxes, Moody said Collins’ call for an early end to the Bush tax cuts “is like using a bazooka to kill a mouse.”
“Ideally, you want a flat-tax system where everyone pays the same rate,” Moody said. “In our opinion, that’s the best way to level the playing field.”
Then there’s Andrew Cadot, an attorney with Perkins Thompson in Portland and one of a dozen Mainers – out of more than 1,000 people overall – who have logged onto Wealth for the Common Good’s Web site (www.wealthforcommongood.org) and signed the petition calling for Obama to reset the tax code sooner rather than later.
Cadot said that while he’s not one of the 225 (and counting) petition signers who now make more than $235,000 per year, his asset portfolio does put him in the top 1 percen” of Americans when it comes to net worth.
And why did he sign?
Because, Cadot said, it’s high time that those with the most money in this country accepted their responsibility not just to themselves and their heirs, but to the society that helped put them where they are.
“Many of them can’t possibly spend in their lifetime what they’re carrying in their hip pocket,” Cadot said.
Right next to their anxiety pills.
Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at: bnemitz@pressherald.com
Published on 5 August 2009. Linked from yesmagazine.org.
By Chuck Collins
When members of Congress proposed paying for expanded health care with a tax surcharge on America’s wealthiest citizens, the attack was swift but predictable. Taxing the top was
Latin Public School in Boston is the oldest public school in the U.S.
labeled “class war,” n attack on the successful, and bad for business and the economy.
So it was refreshing when the high-income members of a new network –Wealth for the Common Good (WFCG) –stepped forward to essentially say “Sure, raise our taxes.” Why? Because it’s fair, and because they can afford it.
“In hard times it is important for Americans to come together and unite over the idea that medical care ought to be a basic right of citizenship,” said former investment banker Eric Schoenberg, a member of the organization. “It’s only fair for those of us who have benefited the most from this system to contribute the most.”
Over the last 30 years, our economic policies have slowly changed to disproportionately benefit our nation’s top-earners and concentrate wealth into the hands of a few. The members of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals, and other high-income individuals, are among those who have benefited from such policies. Their goal now is to help shape policy so that it benefits people of all income levels
Wealth for the Common Good went public on July 29th with their public call to immediately reverse the Bush-era tax cuts on households with incomes over $235,000. Thousands signed the petition, including hundreds of high-income individuals who would personally pay the tax.
Many members directly support the health care surcharge, but their objectives go beyond that proposal. The broader debate over taxes will be heated in the coming years as we see the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and face the consequences of an unprecedented national deficit. Wealth for the Common Good, advocating for a rebalanced tax code, wants to be part of the debate.
Changing the conversation is key to this effort. Arul Menezes, a principal architect at Microsoft and member of the initiative, acknowledged that fact when describing his own financial success during a Wealth for the Common Good press conference.
“I could choose to tell my story this way: ‘I arrived [in the United States from India] with $250 in my pocket, and got where I am based entirely on my hard work.’ This is true, but it’s not the whole truth.” Menezes then gave “a more honest reckoning” that took into account his publicly funded education, government investments in the technology industry, and all of the benefits he gains from “schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, parks, and civic amenities that were built and paid for by previous generations…[that] had the collective will to invest in their future and the future of their children.”
In the coming months, Wealth for the Common Good is leading focus groups on a number of proposals that would raise revenue, such as eliminating tax preferences for capital gains and subsidies for excessive executive compensation. Later this fall, it will amplify the voices of small business owners that want to close overseas corporate tax havens.
“Our current tax structure is regressive and unfairly burdens those in the middle and bottom tiers,” said Todd B. Achilles, a WFCG member and a leading executive in the telecom industry. “Ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to be successful and pursue their dreams means ensuring that each and every American contributes appropriately to the nation’s well-being.”
Chuck is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, and coordinator of the Wealth for the Common Good network. Along with Bill Gates Sr., he co-authored Wealth and Our Commonwealth, a case for taxing inherited fortunes.
Interested? Read YES! Magazine’s special issue on The New Economy.
Visit the Maine Public Broadcasting Network to hear Chuck Collins talk about the campaign.
Two members of Wealth for the Common Good spoke out today about the role our nation’s infrastructure plays in creating individual wealth. During a press conference, Arul Menezes, a principal architect at Microsoft, and Bill Collins, former mayor of Norwalk, Conn., talked about their personal stories of financial success and their willingness to pay more taxes — in order to help foster the success of other Americans.
Menezes grew up in India and arrived in the US in 1988 to attend graduate school at Stanford. He noted that his education was covered with a grant from the National Science Foundation. He credited public investments in research and development for his professional success, and that of the technology industry as a whole.
“A more accurate telling of my story would consider that every day I benefit from schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, parks, and civic amenities that were built and paid for by previous generations, who were much less well off than we are today. Yet they had the collective will to invest in their future and the future of their children,” he told reporters.
“I have the feeling nobody really likes to pay taxes. But they are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.”
Bill Collins is a veteran, former Connecticut legislator and served as Norwalk’s mayor for eight years. He currently works as a newspaper columnist and CEO of Minuteman Media. His success in real estate propelled him into the income level that would be affected by a repeal of the Bush-era tax cuts that Wealth for the Common Good is calling for.
“Those of us who have the greatest ability to pay are not being asked to,” he said. “I am not keen on being part of the freeloader class.
Although Tuesday’s press conference marked the official public launch of Wealth for the Common Good, we’re still actively recruiting signers on our petition to reverse the Bush tax cuts on households with incomes over $235,000. Please add your voice and tell our leaders, like Menezes and Collins have, that individual wealth depends on a establishing a healthy and fair public infrastructure — one that takes care of everyone equally.
Aired 28 July 2009, 8 pm ET. Linked from GRITtv.
Wealth for the Common Good member Eric Schoenberg, a private investor and professor at Columbia’s business school, talks alongside Rep. Maxine Waters about the proposal to pay for health reform with a surtax on the wealthy.
Broadcast 29 July 2009. Linked from Marketplace at American Public Radio.
Listen to the segment.
Bill Radke: Have you ever looked at the taxes that get withheld from your paycheck and thought: “I wish Uncle Sam would take more money?” Me neither. But a group of nearly 200 ultra-wealthy Americans has banded together to say just that. Marketplace’s Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
Stacey Vanek-Smith: The group’s called Wealth for the Common Good. It includes former executives from Starbucks and Microsoft, and it’s delivering a petition to President Obama and Congress today asking lawmakers to roll back Bush era tax cuts for Americans making more than $250,000 a year.
Chuck Collins is one of group’s the co-founders:
Chuck Collins: We’re saying we’re ready to reinvest. We want a first-rate education system. We want a health care system where our neighbors don’t walk around without health insurance. So it’s really in our self interest.
David Cay Johnston teaches tax law at Syracuse University. He says rich Americans are likely to bear more of the tax burden in years to come now that the government is hurting for money and the national debt is ballooning.
David Cay Johnston: We need to develop a society in which how much we levy in taxes matches up to how much we are spending on government services.
The Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire in 2011. But Wealth for the Common Good points out that Uncle Sam would get an extra $43 billion if it scrapped the cuts now.
I’m Stacey Vanek-Smith for Marketplace.
Originally aired 28 July. Linked from WAMU.org.
Listen to the segment.
Lawmakers at the local and national level are staring at huge budget gaps, which is complicating the push for spending on issues like health care. But one group of successful Americans is calling on fellow taxpayers to “take one for the team.” Chuck Collins, co-founder of “Wealth for the Common Good” talks about whether paying taxes is patriotic.
Media advisory:
Contact: Sara Koenig or Shonna Carter, Riptide Communications 212-260-5000
Hundreds of Americans Vow to Re-Invest in the U.S. Economy in Effort To Raise $43 Billion
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 – As states across the country are forced to cut health care and education programs to bridge massive budget deficits, a cross section of America’s wealthiest individuals and business leaders are calling on President Obama and Congress to immediately reverse the Bush-era tax cuts rather than wait for them to expire in 2011. The group, Wealth for the Common Good, includes former Starbucks CEO Howard Behar and Microsoft’s principal architect, Arul Menezes, among others with annual incomes over $235,000, who have joined this emerging network. They will hold a news teleconference laying out their initiative to promote increasing revenue to help pay for improvements in health care, education, infrastructure and energy systems by raising taxes on the wealthy. The group will deliver a petition signed by 190 of America’s top earners along with close to 1,000 others to the President, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and House Republican Leader John Boehner. The signers are urging them to reinstitute the progressive income tax structure.
“Our country is facing the worst economic challenge since the Great Depression. There is an urgent need to make a long overdue investment in bringing jobs and stability back to our communities.” said Chuck Collins, the co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good and scion of the Oscar Mayer fortune, “this investment should be paid for, in part, by repealing the Bush-era tax cuts that our country can no longer afford.”
WHAT: Teleconference: Launch of Wealth for the Common Good’s campaign for the roll back of Bush tax cuts
WHO: Arul Menezes, Principal Architect Microsoft, Bill Collins, former Mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut, Chuck Collins, Co-founder, Wealth for the Common Good, Alison Goldberg, Coordinator, Wealth for the Common Good.
WHEN: Wednesday, July 29th , 11 ET
Wealth for the Common Good was established to bring together a network of business leaders and high net worth individuals who want to play a role in public policy and promote pragmatic and progressive tax reform.
(Organizational affilitions for our speakers are listed for identification purposes only. They represent themselves, not their employers.)