The Rich Must Pay their Fair Share

The super-rich in America don’t pay their fair share!
by Charlie Leck

In the mid-1990s, Arthur Levitt, the Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), went to Senator Phil Gramm (Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs) to express his alarm about the growth of unregulated derivative investing and told the Senator he was also very concerned about shaky accounting procedures and practices in America’s banking and investment industry. The Senator, afraid that Levitt was suggesting stronger regulations, said the following to the SEC Chairman:

“Unless the waters are crimson with the blood of investors, I don’t want you engaging in any regulatory flights of fancy.”

The above quotation is reported in Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s new book, Winner-Take-All Politics (How Washington made the rich richer).

I urge you to read the review of this book on the Crooked Timber blog.

The book will help you understand what has gone so wrong in America – why the middle classes have virtually disappeared – why financial reform is so difficult to achieve – why business is so powerful in American politics – and who was responsible for the devastating crash in our economy in 2007 and 2008.

The filthy rich in America pay far less in taxes (proportionately) than you do and the Republican Party keeps protecting them and their pocketbooks. Yet, huge numbers of middle class citizens, bamboozled by people like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, keep supporting the party of the super rich.

More about this in coming days! For now, get the book and read it. Audio versions of it are also available.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.