{"id":17203,"date":"2014-05-25T11:45:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T15:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17203"},"modified":"2014-05-25T11:50:40","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T15:50:40","slug":"forget-taxes-for-redistribution-what-to-do-about-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/05\/25\/forget-taxes-for-redistribution-what-to-do-about-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>New Economic Perspectives<\/em> has the article <a title=\"New Economic Perspectives article\" href=\"http:\/\/neweconomicperspectives.org\/2014\/05\/forget-taxes-redistribution.html\" target=\"_blank\">Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And, as we know, Uncle Sam doesn\u2019t need any stinking taxes to \u201cpay for\u201d jobs and income and healthcare and decent retirements for the poor. If you have unemployed resources, free lunches abound! Just put the resources to work, and you\u2019ve got Bernstein\u2019s wish list filled.<\/p>\n<p>Forget taxes for redistribution. It will not work. It is a bad meme\u2014especially in America. Once you let the greedy rich get their riches, trying to take them away is harder than prying guns out of the \u201ccold dead hands\u201d of NRA members.<\/p>\n<p>Every time a progressive proposes a tax hike on the rich to pay for welfare, the Koch brothers giggle in gleeful delight. It is the surest way to prevent any policies that would help the poor. Tying tax hikes to sensible policy plays right into the greedy hands of the Conservatives and Regressives.<\/p>\n<p>Did you ever hear a One-Percenter ask for a tax hike to bail out Wall Street? Come on, they are not that stupid.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019ve long argued is that we need \u201cpredistribution\u201d, not \u201credistribution\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This article is a continuation of a series that I first posted about in <a title=\"Previous Post\" href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/05\/17\/randy-wray-what-are-taxes-for-the-mmt-approach\/\" target=\"_blank\">Randy Wray: What are Taxes For? The MMT Approach<\/a>. Reading the article referred to in the previous post gives you more context and nuance than appears in the current article.\u00a0 In this article, Wray goes to such an extreme to make his point, that you may not think about other aspects of his recommended policy mentioned in that previous article.<\/p>\n<p>Wray says more about pre-distribution in a subsequent article <a title=\"New Exonomic Perspectives article\" href=\"http:\/\/neweconomicperspectives.org\/2014\/05\/pre-distribution-redistribution-piketty-moment-democrats-oncoming-elections-guest-post.html\" target=\"_blank\">Pre-distribution or redistribution? The Piketty moment, the Democrats, and the oncoming elections (Guest Post<\/a>).\u00a0 Again, Wray&#8217;s rant might cloud what he is saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Economic Perspectives has the article Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality. And, as we know, Uncle Sam doesn\u2019t need any stinking taxes to \u201cpay for\u201d jobs and income and healthcare and decent retirements for the poor. If you have unemployed resources, free lunches abound! Just put the resources to work, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17203"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17206,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17203\/revisions\/17206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}