Carygrant
06-26-2012, 01:42 PM
Wake up Republicans -- is everybody wrong but you ?
Limiting the tax relief available to the richest Americans on pension contributions and mortgage payments will help curb income inequality that the OECD says is the fourth-highest among the 34 countries it surveys.
“Income inequality and relative poverty are among the highest in the OECD,” the organisation said in its annual survey of the US. “At the same time, there is no consensus in the economic literature that reducing inequality would be harmful to economic growth.”
The recommendations are likely to be welcomed by President Barack Obama but rejected by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger for The White House. The role taxes should play in both bolstering the country’s recovery, as well as cutting the US deficit, is one of the starkest dividing lines between Republicans and Democrats with presidential and congressional elections less than five months away.
The OECD also joined the growing chorus of groups warning that politicians in Washington must stop the world’s largest economy falling off what has been dubbed a “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year. Broad tax increases and spending cuts are due to take effect in January in a combination that the Congressional Budget Office has said will tip the economy back into recession.
Despite the pace of job creation in the US slowing over the last three months, the OECD stuck with its prediction that the economy will expand 2.4pc this year and 2.6pc in 2013. The report from the OECD, which is based in Paris, did not advocate a fresh round of monetary stimulus, but argued that “the downside risks to the economy in the near term suggest that policy makers should continue to support the recovery.”Although the OECD did not cut its forecasts for US growth, Tuesday did provide evidence that Americans are becoming gloomier about their own prospects. Consumer confidence this month dropped to its lowest level since January, according to the latest reading from the Conference Board.
Its index fell to 62 in June, shy of what economists had forecast, and down from 64.4 in May. More worryingly, an index measuring expectations for the next six months dropped to its lowest since November.
“Unfortunately, (lower) prices at the pump were not enough to offset glum labour market developments and negative headlines from Europe,” said Guy Berger, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.
As reported by The Daily Telegraph on June 26 th .
Limiting the tax relief available to the richest Americans on pension contributions and mortgage payments will help curb income inequality that the OECD says is the fourth-highest among the 34 countries it surveys.
“Income inequality and relative poverty are among the highest in the OECD,” the organisation said in its annual survey of the US. “At the same time, there is no consensus in the economic literature that reducing inequality would be harmful to economic growth.”
The recommendations are likely to be welcomed by President Barack Obama but rejected by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger for The White House. The role taxes should play in both bolstering the country’s recovery, as well as cutting the US deficit, is one of the starkest dividing lines between Republicans and Democrats with presidential and congressional elections less than five months away.
The OECD also joined the growing chorus of groups warning that politicians in Washington must stop the world’s largest economy falling off what has been dubbed a “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year. Broad tax increases and spending cuts are due to take effect in January in a combination that the Congressional Budget Office has said will tip the economy back into recession.
Despite the pace of job creation in the US slowing over the last three months, the OECD stuck with its prediction that the economy will expand 2.4pc this year and 2.6pc in 2013. The report from the OECD, which is based in Paris, did not advocate a fresh round of monetary stimulus, but argued that “the downside risks to the economy in the near term suggest that policy makers should continue to support the recovery.”Although the OECD did not cut its forecasts for US growth, Tuesday did provide evidence that Americans are becoming gloomier about their own prospects. Consumer confidence this month dropped to its lowest level since January, according to the latest reading from the Conference Board.
Its index fell to 62 in June, shy of what economists had forecast, and down from 64.4 in May. More worryingly, an index measuring expectations for the next six months dropped to its lowest since November.
“Unfortunately, (lower) prices at the pump were not enough to offset glum labour market developments and negative headlines from Europe,” said Guy Berger, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.
As reported by The Daily Telegraph on June 26 th .