Column: Two billionaires explain why they shouldn’t pay more taxes, unlike you poor saps

Grocery tycoon John Catsimatidis, during his 2013 campaign for New York mayor. Business Column: A devastating analysis of the tax cut shows it’s done virtually no economic good You may remember all the glowing predictions made for the December 2017 tax cuts by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration: Wages would soar for the rank-and-file, corporate investments would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves. The Marcus-Catsimatidis essay is structured as a counterpunch to the “patriotic millionaire” movement, through which some members of the 0.1% have cited America’s “moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more.” In a June 24 open letter to “2020 Presidential Candidates,” 19 billionaires declared that a wealth tax, say like the one advocated by Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren, would be “a key to both addressing our climate crisis, and a more competitive, stronger economy that would better serve millions of Americans. The White House said the cuts reflected “priorities,” implying that they were made necessary by budgetary stringency -- fostered, in part, by the massive tax cuts enacted to benefit Catsimatidis and Marcus and their “enterprises.” Business Column: Stephen Moore’s ranking of states’ economies has been wrong for 12 straight years If you happened to check out the latest ranking of states for their “economic outlook” published last week by the right-wing political group ALEC, you would be excused for concluding that California is deep in an economic hole and digging itself deeper. Marcus and Catsimatidis bolster their claim to perfect knowledge about how to spend their money by referring to their businesses, which they call “our legacies.” They grouse that “every additional dollar the government takes from us is a dollar less for this critical process of expanding America’s wealth and job-creating businesses.” That brings us to Home Depot, the legacy of Bernard Marcus, who co-founded the company and from which he retired as chairman in 2002.