Yves Smith — Nobel Prize-Winner Joe Stiglitz Blasts America's 1 Percent-Coddling Tax System

It’s a sign of how well relentless propagandizing works that Joe Stiglitz has to devote a lengthy op-ed in the New York Times to debunking the idea that our income tax system, whose salient characteristic is low tax burdens for the rich, is good for anyone other than the rich. Economists have increasingly taken note of the fact that the US experiment in lowering taxes produced the opposite of the outcomes that were claimed for it, namely, spurring growth and increasing incomes in all cohorts (the barmy “trickle down” theory). Cross-country comparisons show that advanced economies with higher growth rates, like Germany, typically tax their wealthy more, showing that high taxes on the rich are not a negative for growth. Instead, giving tax breaks to the rich has turbo-charged rentier capitalism:

AlterNet
Nobel Prize-Winner Joe Stiglitz Blasts America's 1 Percent-Coddling Tax System
Yves Smith | Naked Capitalism

Props to Yves, too, for calling Joe Stiglitz on being a deficit dove.