Tax the Rich!
How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer
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- € 10,99
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- € 10,99
Publisher Description
A powerfully persuasive and thoroughly entertaining guide to the most effective way to un-rig the economy and fix inequality, from America's wealthiest “class traitors”
The vast majority of Americans—71 percent—believe the economy is rigged in favor of the rich. Guess what? They’re right.
How do you rig an economy? You start with the tax code. In Tax the Rich! former BlackRock executive Morris Pearl, the millionaire chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, and Erica Payne, the organization’s founder, take readers on an engaging and enlightening insider’s tour of the nation’s tax code, explaining exactly how “the rich”—and the politicians they control—manipulate the U.S. tax code to ensure the rich get richer, and everyone else is left holding the bag.
Blunt and irreverent, Tax the Rich! unapologetically dismantles the “intellectual” justifications for a tax code that virtually guarantees destabilizing levels of inequality and consequent social unrest. Infographics, charts, cartoons, and lively characters including “the Werkhardts” and “the Slumps” make a complicated subject accessible (and, yes, sometimes even funny) and illuminate the practical reforms that can put America on the road to stability and shared prosperity before it’s too late. Never have the arguments in this book been more timely—or more important.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The leaders of the Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of Americans with assets of more than $5 million who advocate against wealth disparity, present an accessible guide to the inequities of the American tax system. Pearl (How to Think Like a Patriotic Millionaire), the former managing director of BlackRock, and political strategist Payne (The Practical Progressive!) explain economic concepts like "marginal utility" (the difference in effect that a sum of money can have based on a person's level of need) and analyze loopholes that allow people to avoid paying taxes on long-term investments and inherited wealth. Elsewhere, Pearl and Payne explain how corporations funnel profits through foreign tax havens and reduce their tax burdens by paying executives in stock options. The authors include useful graphs to explain complex financial matters and lighten the mood with tax-related political cartoons. Their suggestions for reform include equalizing the capital gains tax rate and the income tax rate, creating dozens of new tax brackets with increasing rates at the top end of the income scale, and instituting a wealth tax on "the absolute richest Americans." Unfortunately, the only advice for achieving these reforms is to vote out legislators who support unfair tax policies. Nevertheless, this is an illuminating insider's view of how the wealthy exploit the U.S. tax code.
