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Obama plays Robin Hood

The White House wants President Obama to play the part of Robin Hood at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

Obama hopes to use the big speech to remove a blemish of his presidency: an economic recovery that has left wage growth behind.

Free community college. A $175 billion tax cut for the middle class. Faster, cheaper broadband internet. A week of paid sick leave. Discounted mortgages.

Obama wants to move forward with all of these populist proposals for the poor and middle class, and he wants to do so by taking from the rich in the form of higher taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street.

Few of the proposals are going anywhere with a GOP Congress, but the White House sees Obama’s penultimate State of the Union as the president’s last, best chance to lay down policy markers for the next two years —and to frame the 2016 battle for the White House.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/229886-obama-plays-robin-hood

America’s Middle Class Is Unlucky

President Obama’s tax plan is Piketty-lite, aimed at reversing years of economic rot among America’s poorest 50 percent

Derek Thompson Jan 19 2015, 1:51 PM ET

At this stage in Obama’s presidency, ambitious tax proposals to soak the rich are the political equivalent of desert rain dances—sometimes impressive, often well-meaning, always doomed, and essentially ceremonial. The administration’s latest tax-modification ritual would raise taxes on wealthy estates and large banks to pay for larger tax breaks for middle-class households, particularly those with two working parents and kids. The plan is Piketty-lite, skimming the wealth of the 1 percent to redistribute among the incomes of poorer workers.

Why should America’s richest families have to withstand yet another tax increase to benefit poorer Americans? The short answer is that the United States has, since the turn of the century, cemented its status as the best place in the world to be among the working rich, while poorer workers have suffered compared to other advanced countries. Here’s the longer answer…

Twenty-five years ago, the United States was the richest country in the world, for richer and for poorer, for both the 10th percentile and the 99th. Although America’s richest 50 percent is still the richest top half of any country, our distinction as the land of opportunity is eroding from the bottom up, as the Upshot elegantly showed. American superiority is rotting from the bottom up.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/americas-other-half-problem/384588/