LinkedIn Marxist Class Struggle Propaganda

Posted: 10/10/2019

Every morning LinkedIn provides its users with a Daily Rundown feature of selected news. On many days, I have to cringe my teeth given the utter leftist propaganda LinkedIn is spreading.

Here is a wonderful example how LinkedIn tries to stoke the flames of economic inequality and to stir resentment between rich Americans and the rest:
“Lower tax rate goes to the richest
For the first time in U.S. history, billionaires in America paid a lower tax rate than those in the working class, according to a study by U.C. Berkeley economists. The richest 400 families in the country paid an average effective rate of 23%, or a full percentage point lower than the 24.2% rate paid by the bottom 50% of American households. While the tax rate paid by the poorer half has changed little over time, the 400 richest U.S. households had an effective tax rate of 47% in 1980.” (S1; emphasis added)

What is the takeaway:

1. LinkedIn is absolutely clueless about economics and taxation!
2. If these UC Berkeley economists indeed produced such a study with those conclusions, then they are laughable amateurs and clueless as well
3. It is well known that e.g. the top decile of income tax payers pay about 50% or more of all federal income taxes. Too look only tax rates and not at tax revenues is as stupid as it gets!
4. Few of the rich and wealthy American households receive any welfare benefits, but many of the bottom 50% of households do and these welfare benefits and tax refunds are a substantial form of tax free additional income to those households

My advice to LinkedIn: Do not blindly rehash stupid articles from the Washington Post (S2)!

The underlying economic study was recently published as a book (S3). This book costs $26.55 on Amazon. Just look at the ridiculous title: “The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay”. What a waste of money!

Last but not least: One of the study’s authors is assistant economics professor Gabriel Zucman at UC Berkeley:
“Zucman has co-written several papers with Thomas Piketty” (S3). Thomas Piketty was also his doctoral advisor. Piketty, a French economist whose work focuses on wealth and income inequality, has been thoroughly discredited as an economist based on his best selling book “ Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. Only leftists still admire Piketty!
In 2015, Zucman published his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens”. So called “tax havens” are another favorite scapegoat of leftists! Tax havens are by far not only used by the rich and wealthy, but also by dictators and their families and by corrupt politicians. Tax havens are often a canary in the coal mine indicating excessive taxation by greedy politicians!

Sources (S):

1. Lower tax rate goes to the richest (LinkdIn 10/10/19)
2. For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year (Washington Compost 10/8/19)
3. The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay 1st Edition
4. Gabriel Zucman, French economist, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of