Hillary Clinton approves of Brazil’s tax rates and wants your taxes to rise:
Clinton: Rich ‘Not Paying Their Fair Share’ in Taxes
The rich are not being taxed enough and the economy is suffering for it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.
The former first lady broached the subject during a national security discussion at the Brookings Institution. She lamented that the United States has lowered taxes on the wealthy and said nations around the world need to “increase their public revenue collections” to spur investment.
“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues (the United States is), whether it’s individual, corporate, whatever the taxation forms are,” she said.
Clinton pointed to Brazil’s high taxation as an example that other countries should strive toward.
“Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — it’s growing like crazy. And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty,” she said.
Well, as far as that “growing like crazy” part, Hillary ought to read what The Economist is saying this week:
The problem is that while it may be growing at Chinese speeds, Brazil is not China. Because it still saves and invests too little, most economists think it is restricted to a speed limit of 5% at the most, if it is not to crash. The growth spurt is partly the result of the stimulus measures taken by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government when the world financial crisis briefly tipped the country into recession late in 2008. The trouble, say critics, is that much of the extra government spending is turning out to be permanent—and so the economy is starting to resemble a Toyota with the accelerator stuck to the floor.
And to make things worse, very little of that spending is on much-needed infrastructure. But I digress.
Hillary, who was talking about your taxes while in the middle of a national security discussion at the Brookings Institution, has no business as Secretary of State to be meddling in the subject, particularly, as Jammie reminds us,
It’s not enough we have to live with her disastrous foreign policy, but now the hapless Hillary Clinton has decided to take it upon herself to lecture the “rich” and tell them they’re not paying enough in taxes. This from a woman so greedy she wrote off her husband’s soiled underwear on her taxes and between her and Slick are worth over $100 million.
At times like this,I wonder if that rumor over the Brazil-Turkey-Iran deal is actually based in fact. The rumored strategy is stupid enough that it may be.
Look at the bright side, she’s not saying we should become China for a day.
At least not yet.
UPDATE,
Don’t miss Brazilian Neocon’s comment:
We down here in Brazil don’t even know how much we pay in taxes, there are DOZENS of taxes around, and all sort of cumulative taxes and taxes on taxes. Federal income tax is 27.5% in the higher bracket, state VAT (which applies cumulatively on each and every step of the production process) is anywhere between 8 and 17%, there are taxes on owning a car (2-3% of the sales value of the car, payed once a year), on owning property (0.3 to 1% of the value, every year), on providing a service (10-20% on the price of the service). Over 60% of the price of gas here goes to the government (federal and state) in taxes – we pay almost the double Americans pay for gas!
There are dozens of taxes no one but IRS employees and tax attorneys know about.
As was pointed out in the blogpost, we are growing now not because of our taxes, but DESPITE them. The recent growth spurt happened when the government temporarily cut taxes on new cars and home appliances as an answer to the global crisis. It also happened because our central bank keeps inflation and interest rates controlled through pragmatic measures, despite populist government pressure (our central bank is independent from the government)
Please, do not try and be more like Brazil!
