What of a Fourth Tax Bracket

The definition of rich is something which goes back who knows how far but one thing definite is it's not current.  There are millionaires out there, likely a lot of them, who saved up that money through their IRAs, 401K, etc, etc and these are honest workers who were good with saving and now they may have a million dollars or more.  These are specifically not the one percent.

This has been a source of huge misunderstanding and I submit the misunderstanding is due to the inability of the Fed to keep track of any definition of 'rich.'  There is another class of rich well beyond someone or a couple with savings of, say, ten million dollars.

For the sake of a talking point, let's set that ten million dollar mark as the break point for the fourth tax class.  As it stands, the tax code is generally low, medium, and high but, for cooking, such limited variability is only good for frying hamburgers and eggs.  That's fine for McDonald's but we need something more sophisticated.

Therefore, we suggest at least one more setting of 'highest' and that may not be sufficient because a billion is a thousand million and there are many billionaires.  Some are worthless, profiteering, parasites such as Martin Shrekli whom you may remember as jacking the price of a cancer drug from (roughly) $15 to $700 on the same day.  That sort of thing is criminal and hopefully they will burn him for it as he has already attracted the attention of ex-Attorney General, Eric Holder.

However, there are others who have created a start-up company which yielded surprisingly good results and perhaps there is no criminality but this person wound up with a billion dollars.  How shall this one be taxed relative to someone who has tens of billions.

So, the premise is the tax brackets lack the sophistication for the modern world, inflated currency, etc, etc.  The largest justification for that is the relative ease with which middle class people can get into the upper class tax bracket when, in fact, they are not upper class by a long shot and, typically, their behavior is vastly better and less selfish than those who are in the ultimate upper classes.

Here at the Rockhouse, we are not interested in GOP tax plans but we have talked about the necessity of increased taxes on the rich with Goldwater Republicans and have found agreement.   Today's proposal is an extension of that thinking toward regard for a stair-step gradation to the uppermost rich who were, during Eisenhower's administration, taxed at a rate of 92%.

Note:  that number is a talking point and not a hard and fast demand.


Mostly this is to hype "Say There, You With a Million in Your Pocket" which I think is not too bad.   Maybe on working up some more ergs I should try making a song in a Bob Dylan-ish style with it.