In yesterday’s Boston Globe, there was a report about a “working group” formed by Senate President Karen Spilka & State Senator Adam Hinds, chairman of the revenue committee. Fair enough. The report goes on to say: Spilka is launching a group of policy makers, academics, and business specialists from across the political spectrum who will be charged with taking what she calls “a good long hard look at our tax code.” Again, fair enough.
Now let’s take a look at how the Globe describes these policy makers, academics, and business specialists from across the political spectrum.
Did you notice that? We have several groups but only two are identified as left leaning. Apparently, there are no right leaning groups and we are to assume that all the rests are those wonderful centrists, not a right winger to be found……?
More evidence that on economic matters, the Globe (and a majority of the media) is corporate and anti-labor.
Yeah, I’m a hairs-breadth away from cancelling my Globe subscription (again). Your thread-starter reminds me of a similarly deceptive opinion piece that ran today.
Most offensively, it is a classic example of editorial handwaving that puts a New York three-card-monte flim-flam man to shame. It starts by referencing Ms. Warren’s proposed wealth tax, for which it offers faint praise.
Now, watch this verbal jujitsu. From the lead paragraph:
Now, comes this:
Where’s the red king? Did you notice what they just did?
Let me repeat the quote, with emphasis (emphasis mine):
Boom. They just shifted the discussion from taxing WEALTH (which is where Ms. Warren’s focus is and should be) to taxing the “highest income tax payers”. The rest of the piece gets worse.
There’s a repeat of the right-wing canard about compliance. This is like the MBTA officials who blame the dismal fiscal state of the T on fare evaders. Next come the tired cliches about closing loopholes.
Then they repeat the income/wealth lie, this time under the guise of “capping tax deductions for the wealthy” — they propose to cap the mortgage interest deduction for those in the top income bracket. This compounds their lie by layering another on top of it — the implication is that anyone in the top income bracket is “wealthy”. Tell that to households in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts who are trying to raise a family in a middle-class 4-br home in a town with good schools.
Next, they propose to LOWER (not raise) the estate tax threshold. The euphemism they use is “broaden the estate tax base”. Their piece is silent on the estate tax RATE, currently, at 46%, significantly less than its historical value of 75%.
This piece (part one of two) is an outright lie. It dishonestly conflates income and wealth. It claims to propose ways to raise taxes on the wealthy, yet scrupulously avoids doing that. In particular, their proposal to lower the estate tax threshold is particularly disingenuous. A MUCH better way to increase estate tax revenue is to leave the threshold where it is and raise the rate to 75%.
I agree with your conclusion. The new Boston Globe is actually worse than that, because it is not only pro-corporate and anti-labor, it is also dishonest in doing so. Its bias and deception is everywhere once you start looking for it.
I don’t understand your objections.
The writers (economists Natasha Sarin and Larry Summers, not the Globe as an institution) mention their proposal specifically as an alternative to a wealth tax, though they acknowledge it might not be sufficient.
Getting rid of the stepped-up cost-basis for at death; trimming the mortgage deduction for top earners, etc: These things are small-p progressive; a claw-back of some of the tax-law looting that’s happened over a generation.
A wealth tax may or may not be the right way to go; it sounds right to me. But these proposals are hardly some kind of sneaky plutocratic scheme. Summers has come around to being pretty reasonable lately. Times change.
Rather than think of this as some nefarious bait-and-switch, it seems to me like productive intellectual and policy ferment and competition, towards a similar goal.
I encourage you to read part 2 of the piece.
In part 1, they use wealth tax and income tax interchangeably. In part 2, they are more honest, and spend most of effort attacking the wealth tax.
They still group the two discussions together. Income is the first derivative of wealth (it is the change in the wealth). Grouping income taxes and wealth taxes into the same discussion is like grouping trespassing laws and speeding laws. Trespassing has to do with location. Speeding has to do with speed. Location is different from speed.
I don’t suggest it’s a nefarious bait-and-switch. I instead reinforce the assertion of johntmay that it’s simply another example of the publication’s bias towards the wealthy and very wealthy (and therefore corporate and anti-labor). The entire discussion is dishonest, as is so many of the similarly deceitful pieces by Mr. Jacoby.
The bottom line is that this a screed attacking the IDEA of a wealth tax. It would be perfectly at home on the opinion page of the WSJ, Forbes, or Fortune. That’s what the Boston Globe now is.