Since when were we talking about tax rate? I thought this was about the definition of living wage, or government policies to prevent high CEO salaries.
I admit that I am also biased by emotion, as my grandparents lived through the Communist revolution. In case you're not familiar with the history, it was all about wealth redistribution. Mao came into power because he promised to take money from the 1% and give it to the 99%.
My grandparents were neither particularly rich nor particularly poor, middle to lower-middle class is probably the best description. They most definitely did not benefit, and my grandmother loathed Mao during her lifetime. They got by because my grandfather joined the army.
There are other examples in history where the wealth redistribution game went terribly wrong.
I agree that our tax policy is flawed and could use a lot of improvement. I just want to caution against raw emotional appeals, demonizing of corporations, and drastically simple solutions.
I've personally been discussing corporate taxes at least since yesterday. I also think taxes are implicit in any discussion on living wages, since a living wage is the wage someone needs to operate in their locale. If they're not making that wage, the difference is probably made up by welfare, which is funded by taxes. Also, I think taxes are an implicit part of any discussion involving wealth redistribution.
I don't think I'm trying to demonize corporations either. I even went as far as to say Dimon and JP Morgan's extreme profits
doesn't make them bad or evil,
I'm very sorry that your grandparents lived through the suckiness of Mao's China. By no means should their cautionary experience be ignored. But I think there are other, more successful models for wealth redistribution that we can look to as well. Canada, the Nordic Countries, Germany, etc.
My biggest concern (likely shared by Congresswoman Porter) is that human labor has become incredibly devalued in the past four or five decades, thanks to technology and globalization. If we look to the future, it's going to go almost to zero for everyone. That's why I find the direction these discussions go in troubling. Maybe a single mom in Irvine California should spend less than $40 on a cell phone plan, but frugality has hard limits, and we'll rub up against them sooner or later.