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Today's Top Stories From the Breitbart News DeskThe White House put out a paper on Thursday that purported to calculate the share of income the wealthiest paid by the wealthiest 400 families in the United States. The number they come up with is shockingly low: just 8.2 percent. That is far below the 26 percent rate that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates is paid by the wealthiest 4 percent of America, admittedly a much larger group than the 0.0002 percent analyzed in the White House paper. So why do the ultra-wealthy pay so little a share of their income in taxes? It's not clear that the share is so low. The White House economists get to their 8.2 percent by including as income unrealized capital gains. By almost any sensible definition, the rise in the value of an asset does not produce income until it is sold. Even the tax code, which often deploys less than sensible definitions, only counts realized gains. By including unrealized capital gains, the White House is deploying a kind of sleight of hand, telling the public it is measuring taxes on a familiar thing—income—when it is actually measuring taxes on something it made up—income that isn't really income because no money actually came in. And indeed, it might go out when the stock market tide ebbs, as it inevitably will. In years when the market crashes, income taxes on the wealthy could amount to more than 100 percent of income by this new definition. In case you are still wondering why the administration would want to use this unheralded definition of income, President Joe Biden helpfully tweeted out: "You pay your share in taxes. It's long past time the super-wealthy pay theirs as well." In other words, the White House considers this as an argument for hiking taxes because it is desperately searching for ways to raise revenue to pay for the trillions of dollars of social engineering schemes and Green New Deal projects it is trying to push through Congress. Meanwhile, outside of D.C., the nation's economy is beginning to flounder. The Chicago Fed's national activity index showed that economic growth slowed in August, pulled down by slumping growth in production, employment, and sales. If not for still solid consumption growth, it would have been truly bleak. And in even more up-to-date economic news, the Kansas City Fed said today that manufacturing growth slowed and inflationary pressures hit record highs. For the record, both the slowdown in growth and pickup in inflation hit right around the six-month mark of Biden's presidency. That's arguably about when an economy begins to respond to a new president's policies because the first six months tend to be reflections of the predecessor. So this inflation and sluggishness can fairly be laid on Biden's desk. – Alex Marlow & John Carney |
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