Monday, February 25, 2013

How broken is our tax system when ...

... Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, of all people, is complaining about a loophole for the super-rich?

Of the many injustices that permeate America’s byzantine tax code, few are as outrageous as the tax rate on “carried interest” — the profits made by private equity and hedge fund managers, as well as venture capitalists and partners in real estate investment trusts. This huge tax benefit enriches an already privileged sliver of financiers and violates basic standards of fairness and common sense.

Record scratching noise.

When I read that lede and looked at the byline, I Googled just to be sure she was who I thought she was. Which was worth it, because interestingly enough, the top result, after the Wikipedia and the images links, was a profile headlined "Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s Kinder, Gentler Capitalism."

So, good for her, limousine liberal, Obama-hater, search engine manipulator, or whatever. And here's a useful image from the profile, which "she’d borrowed … from Harvard economist Larry Katz," but again, so what, glad to have her putting it out there:

“Thirty years ago, the Anglo-American capitalist system was the apartment block everyone in the world admired,” Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild told a gathering of business and political influentials gathered on the 28th floor of Bloomberg LP’s Lexington Avenue office tower on Thursday morning.

“Now, that apartment block has really nice apartments up on top. In the middle, they’re kind of cramped and dowdy, and on the lower floors, they’re underwater. But the worst part of it is—the elevator’s broken.”

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