Krugman calls for return of the 91% tax rate

Let's go for more taxes!

Let's discuss raising us some revenue without hurting the little people.

With the re-election of Barack Obama, I feel compelled – in the spirit of coming together for the common good – to get on the tax raising bandwagon. Here’s my proposal.

· Let’s raise taxes to 50% on people making more than $1 million dollars a year. How much will that raise? Warren Buffer says that the top 400 earners in the US made $90 billion, so that means $45 billion to the treasury. Plus it will satisfy Chuck Schumer.

· Let’s have a 100% sales tax on the sale of movie tickets, CDs, videos and all other entertainment. These are purely luxury items and will not affect the ability of the poor to live. Movies tickets, CD rentals and DVD sales alone should raise $30 billion.

· Let’s have a 100% sales tax on newspapers and magazines. Circulation revenue for newspapers is $10 billion, let’s assume the same for magazines. That’s $20 billion in new revenue for the government. Reporters and editors have been calling for higher taxes and surely they would not mind doing their fair share.

· Let’s have a 100% sales tax on advertising in all media. Advertising is not only irritating but it is the way in which evil corporations get us to spend our money on frivolous and unnecessary goods and services. We should get about $100 billion just from the major networks and that isn’t counting newspaper and magazine advertising which could double that number to $200 billion.

· Let’s tax all foundations with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax of their assets each year. Some of the biggest foundations have been funding programs that increase taxes on the little people. Since they are in the business of philanthropy, they should welcome doing their fair share. And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the highest paid person working for the foundation to a salary of $75,000 annually. If they refuse to comply we’ll revoke their tax exemption. The hundred largest foundations have assets over $236 billion dollars, and that only includes those with assets over $600 million. Total foundation assets are about $500 billion. A 10% tax would produce nearly $50 billion per year.

· Let’s also tax endowments with assets over $100 million with a 10% tax on their assets each year. They, along with foundations, should welcome doing their fair share. The Yale endowment alone is worth over $16 billion dollars and what do they do with that? Not much that I can see. Does Yale need that money more than the people of the US? No! And while we’re doing that, let’s limit the highest paid person working for the foundation to a salary of $75,000 annually. If they refuse to comply we’ll revoke their tax exemption. Endowments total $250 billion; a 10% tax could raise $25 billion to help our government balance its budget.

· We should investigate the accounting practices of the movie industry. There is something seriously wrong with an industry that claims that Forrest Gump never made a profit. We don’t know how badly this industry has cheated the IRS, but let’s assume that $30 billion is a lowball number.

In keeping with President Obama’s position that we will do no “dynamic scoring,” we have already identified $400 billion in new revenue to help close the deficit gap while only raising taxes on 400 people! We have simply put in some much needed sales taxes and are asking those who have been most vocal about the need for everyone to do their fair share to come to the table. Surely no one could deny the reasonableness of these proposals.

Now, if anyone wants to tax the income of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or the buffoon who suckered thousands of people to fill his pockets by taking Facebook public, people who already have all the money they could possibly spend in their lifetimes at, say 100%, you would hear no objection from me.