The much trumpeted Buffet Rule is more campaign PR than actual substance. A serious question is what side of the class war is President Obama on?.
http://www.economist.com/...
Mr Obama claims to be on the side of the working and middle-classes, but I would submit that this sort of tax policy is in fact trivial. It's electoral public relations. The edges are precisely what this sort of thing is around. Our economy is riddled with a multitude of deeply-embedded structural flaws that allow the well-connected to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us, but nobody will do anything about it. There is a class war in this country, a war between the subsidy barons, the regulatory arbitrageurs, the patent monopolists and the rest of us. Mr Obama is a class warrior. The trouble is he's on the wrong side.
David Dayen lays it out:
http://news.firedoglake.com/...
And without changes to the capital gains tax rate, which is not mentioned in the actual proposal from the White House, such an ideal would be a pretty weak nudge. Changing the carried interest loophole is nice, but it doesn’t touch people who just collect from capital gains rather than those who manage money.
The overall tax rate on millionaires would be lower.
First of all, this wouldn’t hit until 2013, just as a reminder. Second, Sperling writes that there would be no new tax rate on millionaires, and that overall tax rates would be LOWER under the type of tax reform the White House would like to see. This means that the Buffett rule would just nudge toward a higher effective tax rate for millionaires by eliminating or capping deductions.
The president talks about it being "math", but his proposal likely won't do much to raise the actual return in revenue from the ultra-wealthy.