Texas Governor Rick Perry touts himself as the most conservative candidate who is electable. He prays with the fundamentalists, hunts with the Second Amendment gang, decries federal tyranny with the 10th Amendment crowd, and “pokes” around with the birthers. He just released an economic plan that looks like a conservative wish list. And in doing so, he reveals the essential bankruptcy of today’s conservative politics.
Perry’s plan is anchored in the belief that the rich have too little money. He would eliminate taxes on million dollar estates, coddling the heirs to the wealthy. He would tax work but eliminate all taxes on wealth – on capital gains, interest and dividends. Warren Buffett’s tax rate will plummet towards zero. He’d install an optional flat tax at 20%, offering the affluent their choice of the old code or the flat tax, insuring full employment for accountants.
In the US, the richest 1% now make about as much as the bottom 60% combined, and have as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Perry would insure that the rich do even better. Asked about this, Perry said “I don’t care” if my proposals add to inequality. He assumes that if the rich have more money, they will use it to create jobs. But there is no evidence to support that fact. Over the last decade, with the top end Bush tax cuts and the wealthiest 1% capturing all the rewards for growth, we suffered the worst job creation record since the Depression, and wages for the typical US household lost ground for the first time when the economy was growing.
Perry’s plan believes that corporations have too little in profits. So he slashes taxes on corporations. He calls for lowering the corporate tax rate to 20%, offers multinationals the chance to repatriate the trillion in profits they’ve parked abroad at 5.25%, and would establish a “territorial tax” on corporations, ending US taxation on profits earned abroad. This too would generate jobs, he argues.
But corporations are now sitting on over $2 trillion in profits. They don’t lack cash; they lack customers. And multinationals have been shipping good jobs abroad, while perfecting methods to avoid taxes by parking profits in overseas tax havens. Perry’s plan would simply give them greater incentives to move jobs and report profits abroad.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011104431/rick-perry-and-bankruptcy-modern-day-conservatives
