SALON

Tuesday, Sep 20, 2011 4:15 PM UTC

The “Bloomberg View” is that Michael Bloomberg shouldn’t pay more taxes

Billionaire media mogul's opinion arm opposes raising payments by billionaire media moguls

By

Topics: Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Taxes, War Room,

The Michael Bloomberg

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also a billionaire media mogul. His financial information company recently unveiled an opinion section, promising only “ideology-free, empirically-based editorial positions.” Bloomberg installed his ideology-free opinion-writers at the office of his foundation where the mayor can have direct, personal involvement in their work. All of this adds up to a mess of potential conflicts of interest. Today, the “Bloomberg View” is that very rich people — like Michael Bloomberg, say — should not pay more taxes.

Of course, the unsigned editorial is very reasonable. It’s a Bloomberg View editorial, and the Bloomberg brand is all post-partisan reasonableness. But the bottom line is that billionaire mayor and hypothetical third-party presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg opposes the Democratic president’s plan to raise taxes on billionaires. Why? Out of greed or self-interest? No, of course not! Because it’s “silly.”

However, we don’t support a special tax on millionaires. Not because it’s damaging to the economy in and of itself, but because it’s silly. And silly can be dangerous if it stands in the way of sensible reform.

A debate over taxing millionaires (and Buffett urges yet another bracket for ten-millionaires) will eat up time and attention that needs to be hoarded for the important debate about quarter-millionaires (i.e., the $250,000 crowd), because that’s where the real money starts.

Millionaires and ten-millionaires do not have “real money,” apparently. And proposing to tax them is a waste of time, time that could be spent on “sensible reform.” (“Sensible” seems like a pretty subjective term, but in this case “sensible” means “whatever Michael Bloomberg thinks.”)

A special millionaires’ tax would affect three taxpayers out of 1,000. Absurdly, it would let people making, say, $900,000 off the hook. We have no idea how much revenue it would bring in — exact figures aren’t available because Obama is going to leave the exact structure of the tax to the so-called supercommittee of senators and representatives that grew out of last month’s debt-ceiling jamboree. It’s largely symbolic. Worse, it’s a distraction.

“Absurdly, it would let people making, say, $900,000 off the hook.” Haha well, Mr. Mayor, that is how tax brackets work. Raising the top marginal tax rate on people making $250,000 lets people making $249,000 off the hook!

We mustn’t raise taxes on anyone because we need to fundamentally rewrite the entire tax code is an argument for doing nothing at all. Fundamentally rewriting the tax code is a fantasy. Anyone who has paid any attention to the Republican Party’s oppositional tactics over the last two years should dismiss “rewriting the tax code” as a complete non-starter.

“There is nothing inherently evil or even objectionable about making $1 million a year,” says the official political opinion factory of billionaire mogul Michael Bloomberg, whose townhouses are decorated with million-dollar couches and $40,000 sconces. There’s no point in raising taxes on a man who owns a $50,000 “antique snooker table,” when we can instead rewrite the entire tax code, eventually, someday.

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 1 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations