It's a Trend
by David Atkins
More good news:
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders, seeking ways to shore up a state budget strained by the weak economy, are ironing out the details of a deal that would raise income taxes on the wealthy and cut them for the middle class.
Top aides to the officeholders planned to meet through the weekend, as New York State lawmakers prepared to return to Albany next week for a special session of the Legislature that the governor appeared likely to call.
Members of the Democratic majority in the State Assembly were notified that they should be ready to return to the capital on Tuesday. Negotiations were still in the preliminary stages on Friday, and rank-and-file lawmakers had not yet been briefed on the discussions. But several people who were briefed said it was possible that a deal could be reached within days.
Look for more and more of this as we get closer to November 2012. Cynical, you say? Maybe. But legislation is legislation, no matter the motives. Almost all politics is cynical, anyway.
Of course, as I have said in the past, merely instituting redistributive taxes doesn't solve the problem of how we got such massive income inequality in the first place. The economy would still be structurally broken even with a 50% or higher marginal tax rate on the highest incomes, and redistributive taxation only assuages the problem. But it's a damn good start regardless.
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