exemptions to responsibilities

Too polite:

…constituencies with the means and the bureaucratic endurance to get what they want slowly hack away at the government over time, carving out exemptions to their civic responsibilities…

Hedge-fund gazillionaires pay less than half the top tax rate paid by most middle and upper-middle class Americans.

Matt Taibbi:

Constituencies with the means and the bureaucratic endurance to get what they want slowly hack away at the government over time, carving out exemptions to their civic responsibilities while ordinary people suck the proverbial egg.

A 100% or 200% tax break for hedge fund and private equity billionaires is not the sort of thing that one passes instantly, by standing up in front of big campaign crowds and urging on a mob; it takes a long time and a lot of behind-the-scenes baby steps.

Once upon a time, we didn’t make very many distinctions about taxable income. Whether you made your money driving trucks or buying and selling stocks, you made what you made and you paid the rate outlined in your bracket.

Then a movement coalesced behind the idea that the government should give a tax break to those persons who made their money investing…