Taxes of the Times, III

The New York Times has an editorial this morning supporting the idea of the Pelosi Tax, a 5.4% tax on the income of joint filers over $1 million (and single filers over $500,000). "The wealthy prospered enormously from tax cuts under the Bush administration. It is fitting that they pay a heavy share of the cost of health care reform," the Times says. It is at least the 11th tax increase that the Times has supported in the past seven years. We noted two of the others at FutureOfCapitalism.com here and here, and the other eight are enumerated in a New York Sun editorial that noted, "for the Times and the American left that its editorial positions represent, tax increases aren't the last resort, but the first answer to every problem." To find the flaw with the reasoning in their argument for the Pelosi tax, the editorialists of the Times need look no further than the family that owns their newspaper. The price of a share of New York Times Class A stock went from $34.56 on January 19, 2001 to $5.91 on January 20, 2009. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., with 2008 total compensation of $2.4 million, might be subject to the Pelosi tax, but it'd be hard to make the case that he prospered enormously during the Bush administration.