The Buffett Rule
The White House
In a 2011 interview, billionaire investor Warren Buffett decried tax loopholes that allow him, because of his investment income, to pay a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, and he advocated changes to tax policy that would require the superrich (or the 1 percent, as they would come to be known in the parlance of the Occupy Wall Street movement) to pay more of their income in taxes. Indeed, this idea became a pillar of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and, in late 2011, the White House proposed the “Buffett Rule,” which would require a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for people earning one million dollars or more a year. As part of the unveiling of the Buffett Rule, the White House released the video included here, a simplified (and partisan) explanation of exactly what the Buffett Rule proposes. Like Walter Benn Michaels does in “The Trouble with Diversity” (p. 673), the Buffett Rule makes a case that income inequality is stalling American progress.
Source: whitehouse.gov
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The White House
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