A group of wealthy people is circulating a petition calling for higher taxes for themselves. Sound familiar?
This particular group is based in Germany, and it is asking the government to impose a 5% wealth tax on the 2.2 million people with over 500,000 euros. This has the potential to raise over 100 billion euros for economic recovery.
Like Wealth for the Common Good signers, these petitioners believe that reinvesting in the common good is a necessary strategy for addressing inequality.
As reported by the BBC:
“The path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice,” they say in the petition.
Those who had “made a fortune through inheritance, hard work, hard-working, successful entrepreneurship, or investment” should contribute by paying more to alleviate the crisis.
It’s powerful when those who would pay a tax advocate on its behalf. We wonder, where will the next campaign be?
Published 11 August 2009. Linked from the Christian Science Monitor.
By David R. Francis, Staff Writer
Raise my taxes, says millionaire Chuck Collins.
The scion of the Oscar Mayer family supports a House panel’s healthcare plan that would boost taxes for families earning more than $350,000 a year. He also advocates ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich right away, rather than when they expire at the start of 2011, and closing foreign tax havens to Americans.
Although the financial burden would be sizable, Mr. Collins is busy urging other wealthy Americans to sign a tax-me petition.
“The good news is there are still people out there willing to pay for the common good,” says Collins, whose nonprofit Wealth for the Common Good is collecting the names.
As of July 21, some 210 wealthy people had signed. Collins hopes to get more than 1,000 signatures before delivering it to President Obama and House leaders.
The idealist wealthy are “not as small a minority as one might think,” says Eric Schoenberg, an investor and Columbia University Business School professor, who also signed the petition.
It is “reasonable and fair” for “the people who have done best out of the economic system in the last 20 years” to pay in extra taxes the bulk of the cost of healthcare reform, says Mr. Schoenberg. “Healthcare ought to be a basic right of citizenship.”
His research suggests the really rich are more willing than the modestly rich to share their wealth for the common good.
There are other indications of idealism among business people and the well-to-do:
•Responsible Wealth, a nonprofit group that includes several wealthy members, has been advocating for years that the estate tax be retained.
•A group of business owners and leaders called Business for Shared Prosperity welcomed the July 24 rise in the federal minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour, although it costs their firms more money.
“It is an unsustainable and dangerous downward spiral to push American workers into
poverty and expect taxpayers to pick up the bill for the consequences,” states Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce.
But wait! Don’t these taxes on the rich burden the very people who start the most firms and create the most jobs? Statistics suggest the burden is not overwhelming. Households with incomes over $250,000 have saved more than $700 billion from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. The proposed graduated surtax under the House Ways and Means Committee’s healthcare plan would take back $544 billion over the next 10 years, providing about half the cost of the entire plan, calculates the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
What that means is that even after digging deeper to help pay for expensive healthcare reform, the wealthy would still be paying less in taxes than during the Reagan administration – and far less than in President Eisenhower’s time.
In 1955, the top 400 US taxpayers paid 51 percent of their average income of $12.3 million (adjusted to 2006 dollars), according to Sam Pizzigati, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. In 2006, the most recent data available, the top 400 paid 17.2 percent of their average income of $263 million in federal taxes.
That 17.2 percent rate is also “much lower” than tax rates for the rich in Britain, France, Germany, or Japan, he adds.
Nor, some economists note, did the US economy grow more slowly when taxes on the rich were far higher in the 1950s and 1960s – or grow more swiftly after the Bush tax cuts.
Originally published on 9 August. Linked from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tom Petruno, Los Angeles Times
Upper-income earners who actually want to pay higher taxes have launched a public campaign calling for an immediate rollback of the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush.
The group, which calls itself Wealth for the Common Good, believes that people who have taxable income of more than $235,000 a year should support restoring their top federal income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent – and now, not in 2011, when the higher rate is scheduled to return anyway.
From their Web site:
“Our country is facing the worst economic challenge since the Great Depression and an urgent need to make a long overdue investment in bringing jobs and stability back to our communities. This investment should be paid for, in part, by repealing the Bush-era tax cuts our country cannot afford.
“Those of us with taxable incomes over $235,000 benefited from the upside of the economy during the last decade and profited for eight years from a 2001 tax cut. Now is the time to give back.
“We would see a minimal tax increase – from 35 (percent) to 39.6 (percent), a rate still far lower than the one under President (Ronald) Reagan – but the increased revenue would raise an estimated $43 billion per year.”
The group’s founders include Chuck Collins, who inherited some of the Oscar Mayer meat fortune and who has long been involved in agitating on income-inequality issues.
He may be best known for co-writing the 2003 book “Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes” with Bill Gates Sr. The book made the case for retaining the federal estate tax.
This month, Wealth for the Common Good sent its request, including a petition with more than 1,000 signatures, to President Obama and to House and Senate leaders.
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.