Time to talk about tax reform
Talking about money: mine and ours
Private money
• Wages
• Investment
• Inheritance
Public
money
• Taxes
• Fees
Private opportunities:
Housing, transport, education,
recreation, healthcare,
recreation, contacts,
Communal opportunities:
Transport, safety, green space,
courts, democratic process, arts,
clean air, education, recreation
Protect the vulnerable
Shelter, health care, crisis
intervention, help for seniors,
people with disabilities and children
Private Money
Current private income distribution
Concentration of wealth since 1980
The best things in life aren’t free
The cost of raising a child in a middle-income family has increased
by 40 percent since 2000. Every child-rearing expense has steeply
increased: day-care, education, food, gas, medical insurance, etc
The 2008 recession was the worst blow
Many megabanks brought down the
economy by creating and selling risky
financial products – with our money
The losses were huge
$15 trillion in personal wealth was gone
-- Almost $50,000 for every man, woman and
child in the US
$ 6.1 trillion in housing value disappeared
-- As if a hurricane destroyed every house in every
state on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida
8.4 million jobs were lost
Investors have fully recovered …
Too many Americans have not…
Milwaukee's poverty rate at 29.4%
Public money
Public money creates
opportunities for everyone
Public money sustains the middle class
Public money sets the groundwork for
economic growth and security
Port of Green Bay
Sewage System
Sanitation system
Chippewa Valley Tech College
Dane County Airport
Highway system
Tax policy moves money
City water system
We can decide:
• where to collect it
• how much to collect
• how to use it
• how to keep the
public informed
The less money we collect, the less we have to use
for the public good. The less we get from
corporations and the super rich, the more they
have to invest in elections and lobbying.
14
Not everybody pays their fair share
Not everybody pays their fair share
Corporation
Profits
Taxes Owed
P
What could we buy
Mattel
$1 billion
$270,000,000
0
Family Caregiver Support
Wisconsin
Energy
$1.7 billion
$456,000,000
0
Senior employment and
training programs
Corning
$2 billion
$540,000,000
0
Annual funding for
Alzheimer’s research
Du Pont
$2.1 billion
$567,000,000
0
Rheumatoid arthritis meds for
60,000 people
Honeywell
$4.9 billion
$1.3 billion
0
Health insurance for 80,000
workers
Boeing
$9.4 billion
$2.54 billion
0
National Park Service
Gen Electric
$10.5 billion $2.84 billion
0
Small Business Administration
Verizon
$32.5 billion $8.8 billion
0
Environmental Protection
Agency
Wells Fargo
$49.4 billion $13.34 billion
0
National School Lunch
program
Tax policy now grows wealth for the top 1%
28%
25%
25%
25%
As low
as 15%
“280
consistently
profitable
Fortune 500
companies paid
about half the
statutory
corporate tax
rate while
spending $2
billion to lobby
Congress on tax
policy and other
issues”
Top taxes are low-especially for the richest
with income over $87 million
Causes of the federal deficit
19
House of Rep./Ryan Budget Plan
Make all Bush tax cuts permanent
Maintain capital gains tax rate at 15%, no Buffet Rule
Maintains current FICA cap, no increase above $110k
Reduce tax rates for wealthy to 25% - average gain = $175,000
Reduce other tax rates to 10%
Cut the formal corporate tax rate to 25%
Eliminate taxes on overseas profits
Repeal Alternative Minimum Tax and taxes in Affordable Care Act
Estimated Reduction in Revenues over 10 years:
$10 trillion
Impact of Spending Cuts in
House/Ryan Budget
• 17 million people lose access to health care
• 21 million low-income Americans lose
Medicaid within 7 years.
• 8 million people lose Food Stamps
• 2 million children removed from Head Start
• 1.8 million women, infants, and children lose
food and healthcare support (WIC)
• Over 1 million students lose Pell Grant support
Making the changes we need
Polls consistently show
that increasing taxes on
the wealthy is hugely
popular. In a recent
Gallup poll, 62 percent of
respondents said “upperincome people” were
paying too little in taxes.
In a CNN poll, 68 percent of Americans agreed that “the present tax
system benefits the rich and is unfair to the ordinary working man or
woman,” and 72 percent said they support changing the tax code “so
that people who make more than one million dollars a year will pay
at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.”