For the past 6 months, President Obama has been planning on extending the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the super-rich, continuing the President’s support for Republican economic policies and the financial elite. The President has tried different methods in order to get his new extension taken care of before the New Year; when taxes would have raised by “$3000 for a typical American Family”, according to the President. These methods have included the attempt to add the middle class to the tax cut extensions; which the Republican’s shot down in early December, or his most recently passed tax cut extension for all Americans, which also included renewing jobless benefits and granting a one-year reduction in Social Security taxes for millions.
According to Michael Hudson, a former Wall Street economist and Distinguished Research professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City, explains how Obama’s two year extension for tax cuts for the super-rich negatively affects the rest of us; “this happy 2 per cent of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (75 percent) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains). This is nearly double what it received a generation ago. The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising.” The estimated cost of the tax cut extension to the super-rich: $700 to $750 billion.
“The second pretense is that cutting taxes for the super-rich is necessary to win Republican support for including the middle class in the tax cuts. It is as if the Democrats never won a plurality in Congress. (One remembers George W. Bush with his mere 50+ per cent, pushing forward his extremist policies on the logic that: “I’ve got capital, and I’m using it.” What he had, of course, was Democratic Leadership Committee support.) It’s all “to create jobs,” headed by employment of shipyard workers building yachts for the nouveau riches and foreclosing on the ten million Americans whose mortgage payments have fallen into arrears.”
Title: Obama’s Greatest Betrayal: The Coming Sell-Out to the Super Rich and What It Means for the Rest of Us
Publication: CounterPunch.org, November 15th, 2010
Author: Michael Hudson
URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson11152010.html
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University
Student Researcher: Taylor Falbisaner, Sonoma State University