{"id":1559225,"date":"2024-03-18T05:58:39","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T05:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=316395"},"modified":"2024-03-18T05:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T05:58:39","slug":"for-americas-wealthy-a-sweet-start-to-our-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/18\/for-americas-wealthy-a-sweet-start-to-our-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"For America\u2019s Wealthy, a Sweet Start to Our 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Fibonacci Blue – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

How those years do fly by. We\u2019ve now come nearly a quarter of the way through our 21st century. \u00a0Who\u2019s \u201cwinning\u201d this century so far? An easy question to answer: the richest among us.<\/p>\n

Those rich are riding high. In the Hamptons, the prime Long Island summer getaway for Wall Street\u2019s finest, realtors are now expecting an \u201cespecially lively\u201d spring sales season. In February, Bloomberg reports<\/a>, new listings in the Hamptons soared 51 percent over their level a year ago. The leap in listings running between $5 million and $10 million: up 136 percent. Listings over $20 million tripled.<\/p>\n

The biggest steal in the lot? Maybe a 5,261-square-foot manse in Southampton that sits on 2.4 acres, boasts a pool and a tennis court, and sits adjacent to a nature preserve. A mere $7 million!<\/p>\n

Here in the United States as a whole, show<\/a> stats from the World Inequality Database, our top 1 percent\u2019s wealth has so far this century jumped over 20 percent \u2014 and these wealthy are paying markedly less of their incomes in taxes than they did at our current century\u2019s start.<\/p>\n

Credit these happy tax times for America\u2019s most financially favored to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. The first term of the second Bush to sit in the White House saw two major rich people-friendly tax cuts enacted \u2014 in 2001 and 2003 \u2014 and Donald Trump, in 2017, added another.<\/p>\n

How much happiness have these cuts brought the wealthiest among us? Researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, in a just-released statistical deep dive<\/a> into our new century\u2019s first quarter, tell that story quite well.<\/p>\n

The Bush tax cuts didn\u2019t fully phase in until 2010. In that year, an earlier CBPP report<\/a>had noted, the Bush cuts raised the after-tax incomes of America\u2019s richest 1 percent by 6.7 percent. In that same year, the Bush tax cuts inched up the after-tax incomes of the nation\u2019s poorest<\/em> 20 percent by just 1 percent.<\/p>\n

The Trump tax cut in 2017 simply magnified that reward-the-rich trend. Top 1-percenters now stand to gain<\/a>, on average, an estimated $61,090 in 2025 from the Trump tax giveaway. Our richest one-tenth of 1 percent, meanwhile, will be pocketing an average tax-time gain of $252,300, over 3,600 times<\/em> the $70 gain that taxpayers in America\u2019s poorest 20 percent will realize.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cheerleaders for enacting the Bush and the Trump tax cuts regularly trotted out a well-worn rationale for rewarding our already rich: If we help people of more than ample means become even richer, they\u2019ll have a greater financial wherewithal to \u201cinvest.\u201d The more they invest, the more our economy will blossom \u2014 and everyone in that blossoming economy will benefit.<\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t exactly worked out that way. Billionaires have certainly blossomed aplenty, and mega-millionaires have been benefiting royally as well. But the vast majority of Americans, studies have consistently shown, have not climbed much at all, if any, up the income ladder.<\/p>\n

The new Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tax report walks us<\/a> through all these studies. One from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and the Federal Reserve Board, for instance, found that American workers in the bottom 90 percent of their firm\u2019s 2016 payroll would go on to realize \u201cno change in earnings\u201d from the 2017 Trump tax cuts.<\/p>\n

The Bush and Trump tax cuts enacted over the past quarter-century, the CBPP analysts conclude, \u201cgave windfall tax cuts to the wealthy,\u201d in the process costing the federal government \u201csubstantial revenue\u201d and \u201climiting the investments made to address national priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

National priorities like affordable housing. The real estate data firm ATTOM last year looked at median \u2014 most typical \u2014 home prices in well over 500 U.S. counties. In 99 percent of those counties, those prices are running beyond the reach<\/a> of the average American income earner.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, another report \u2014 from Harvard\u2019s Joint Center for Housing Studies \u2014 revealed<\/a> that the number of renter households spending over 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities had jumped to a record high, with nearly half of those households spending<\/a> over half<\/em> their income on housing.<\/p>\n

In a real democracy, a crisis this dire would normally have lawmakers feverishly debating what exactly they ought to be doing to alleviate America\u2019s housing pain. But we don\u2019t have a real democracy these days in the United States. We have a plutocracy, a system that gives prime political priority to preventing any pain \u2014 for the rich \u2014 at tax time. Everything else can wait.<\/p>\n

Haven\u2019t we waited long enough?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post For America\u2019s Wealthy, a Sweet Start to Our 21st Century<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bush tax cuts didn\u2019t fully phase in until 2010. In that year, an earlier CBPP reporthad noted, the Bush cuts raised the after-tax incomes of America\u2019s richest 1 percent by 6.7 percent. In that same year, the Bush tax cuts inched up the after-tax incomes of the nation\u2019s poorest 20 percent by just 1 percent. The Trump tax cut in 2017 simply magnified that reward-the-rich trend. Top 1-percenters now stand to gain, on average, an estimated $61,090 in 2025 from the Trump tax giveaway More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post For America\u2019s Wealthy, a Sweet Start to Our 21st Century<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564613,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559225\/revisions\/1564613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}