[Plura-list] Dems want to give $600b to the one percent

[Cory Doctorow]

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Tomorrow, I'm helping Bruce Sterling launch "Robot Artists & Black
Swans," a book of sf short stories in the Italian "fantascienza" mode,
at Austin's Book People!

https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-bruce-sterling-robot-artists-black-swans

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Today's links

* Dems want to give $600b to the one percent: Repealing the SALT cap is
not a middle-class issue.

* This day in history: 2006, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🌻 Dems want to give $600b to the one percent

Remember when a group of establishment Congressional Democrats vowed
that they would add means-testing to the emergency relief checks so that
"the money wouldn't go to people who didn't need it?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/03/biden-stimulus-checks-what-you-need-to-know/

The argument that federal relief should target the 99% and not the 1% is
a familiar - and defensible - one. The Trump #taxscam handed trillions
to the richest Americans, triggering stock buybacks:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/business/investment-boom-tax-cuts-economy/index.html

and a superyacht bubble:

https://www.propublica.org/article/superyacht-marina-west-palm-beach-opportunity-zone-trump-tax-break-to-help-the-poor-went-to-a-rich-gop-donor

But it delivered no meaningful benefit to everyday Americans.

Now, that said, there *was* one area of the Trump tax bill that targeted
the wealthy: the State and Local Tax (SALT) Cap, which capped SALT
deductions at $10,000.

That meant that taxpayers could only write off the first $10k of their
state and local tax. In practice, this affected very wealthy Americans,
predominantly those living in large, high-property-value cities, which
has substantial overlap with rich Democratic donors.

That's the only reason for Trump's SALT Cap, and it's a stupid and
spiteful reason: passing a tax that targets the wealthy because of
partisanship is bad.

But taxing the wealthy is, in fact, good. Trump set out to do something
bad and did something good, in other words.

Now, a group of Dems - many of the same Dems who held up the stimulus
because they didn't want to send $1600 to the underserving wealthy - are
holding the $2t infrastructure plan hostage and demanding that the SALT
Cap be repealed.

And while they claim a SALT Cap repeal would benefit the middle class,
it disproportionately and vastly benefits the ultra-rich: 86% of the
benefit of the repeal would go to the top 5% of US earners.

https://itep.org/salt-cap-repeal-has-no-place-in-covid-19-legislation-national-and-state-by-state-data/

Under a SALT Cap repeal, households earning more than $1m/year getting
$48k in extra cash:

Meanwhile, 98% of middle-class households with incomes of $50-75k would
get *nothing*. The 2% who got something would average *$250*.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/salt-cap-repeal-would-overwhelmingly-benefit-high-income-households

Lifting the SALT Cap is a powerfully regressive move. It is *three times
more regressive* than the Trump tax plan - that is 300% more tilted in
favor of the wealthy.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/09/04/the-salt-tax-deduction-is-a-handout-to-the-rich-it-should-be-eliminated-not-expanded/

Lifting the SALT Cap has nothing to do with the middle class. For
starters, the SALT deduction only applies to people who itemize
expenses, rather than taking the standard deduction. 92% of the top 1%
of earners do that (it's only 5% of the 40th-60th earning percentile).

It's possible that there are people in especially expensive cities in
"blue states" for whom the SALT Cap is a burden - people at the lowest
threshold of beneficiaries of a repeal who really are financially
stretched.

If that's our concern, there's an easy, non-regressive fix - raise, but
don't repeal, the cap. If $10k is too low, make it $15k, or even $20k.
But by making the cap unlimited, we ensure that the wildly
disproportionate beneficiaries of the change are the ultra-ultra-*ultra*
rich.

As David Sirota points out, this maneuver - claiming that a tax-break
for the super-rich is really about the middle class - comes straight out
of the GOP playbook. It's how Republicans sold cuts to the estate tax:

https://www.dailyposter.com/p/dems-somehow-pretend-this-mostly

That move - like the ones Dems are making now - made it much easier for
the ultra-wealthy to make vast, tax-advantaged intergenerational wealth
transfers, creating the rentier dynasties that now crouch on the
political system's chest, sucking up all the oxygen.

Just to be clear: "there is no state where this is a primarily
middle-class issue."

https://itep.org/dems-dont-repeal-the-salt-cap-do-this-instead/

The cuts will transfer $600b, primarily to the highest earners, over the
next 9 years:

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/repeal-10000-state-and-local-tax-salt-deduction-limitation-sep-2018/repeal-10000

That's $600b worth of giveaways to the rich from the party that couldn't
muster the political will to include a $15 minimum wage and that fretted
endlessly about whether the $1400 stimulus (down from $2000) might go to
someone in the middle class.

And while the "SALT Caucus" of Dems who are holding the infrastructure
bill hostage to the super rich are a rogues' gallery of establishment,
corporate Dems from high-tax states (Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, etc),
the roster includes some otherwise progressive heroes.

Progressive Californian lawmakers like Ro Khanna and Katie Porter have
both called on Biden to lift the cap entirely (though they've stopped
short of promising to hold up the infrastructure bill), as have NY
Democratic "insurgents" like Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones.

Some progressives, though, have kept the faith. Even as the entire NY
Democratic caucus signed a letter calling for a SALT Cap repeal, AOC and
Kathleen Rice refused.

https://www.salon.com/2021/04/28/key-democrats-want-to-keep-most-of-trumps-corporate-tax-cut--and-slash-more-taxes-for-the-rich/

Trump's tax cuts supercharged inequality and created a destructive,
speculative finance-bubble by handing permanent tax gifts to the people
who needed them the least. A full repeal of the SALT Cap is even more
plute-friendly than Trump's plan.

The fact that Trump passed a SALT Cap out of spite is irrelevant.
America's inequality crisis demands an end to regressive measures,
including the special treatment of capital gains and carried interest,
which gives tax advantages to speculators and punishes wage-earners.

Democrats will not win elections or change our political conversation
with business-as-usual handouts to the super-rich in the hopes of
winning campaign contributions. They have the money, we have the people.

Dems cannot win by being the party of the wealthy. The Republicans have
that one on lock.


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🌻 This day in history

#15yrsag Sony screwing artists out of iTunes royalties, customers out of
first-sale
https://web.archive.org/web/20060504122606/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060428/ap_en_mu/music_downloads_royalties;_ylt=AowpM.my63biaeu.FU8A_rRxFb8C;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

#1yrago Read the prologue of "The Lost Cause"
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/28/force-multiplier/#gnd

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🌻 Colophon

Today's top sources: Useful Idiots (https://usefulidiots.substack.com/).

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about pipeline protests.  RESEARCH PHASE

* A short story about consumer data co-ops.  PLANNING

* A Little Brother short story about remote invigilation.  PLANNING

* A nonfiction book about excessive buyer-power in the arts, co-written
with Rebecca Giblin, "The Shakedown."  FINAL EDITS

* A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause."  FINISHED

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues."  FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
https://craphound.com/news/2021/03/28/past-performance-is-not-indicative-of-future-results/

Upcoming appearances:

* Book launch for Bruce Sterling's Robot Artists & Black Swans (Book
People), Apr 27,
https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-bruce-sterling-robot-artists-black-swans

* Book launch for Aminder Dhaliwal's Cyclopedia Exotica (Indigo), May
13, https://www.crowdcast.io/e/udbva8py/register

* Seize the Means of Computation, Ryerson Centre for Free Expression,
May 19,
https://cfe.ryerson.ca/events/how-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-seize-means-computation

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

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