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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
 Tenured RadicalCreates Turbulence For Airplane Rich For UD -- a lover of well-crafted stories, a proponent of fairness, a web enthusiast, and a professor -- the Victor Fleischer story has it all. First, look at him. A pisher. Thirty-six years old. Yet, already possessed of an old-man's mind, Professor Victor Fleischer meditates deeply upon tax codes, private equity taxes, tax policies, tax hikes, tax laws, carried interest taxes, service-compensatory profits, investment manager loopholes, income gaps, partnership tax rules, und so weiter. This meditation has been carried out in quiet, non-aligned obscurity at a midwestern American university, its results published only on the web (they will soon appear in print, in a law journal). "The draft paper has been downloaded more than 2,000 times," with politicians and everyone else eager to read Fleischer's proposal that the government "hike taxes on the 'carried interest' portion of the investment manager’s income from the current 15 percent capital gains fee to the 35 percent income tax that rich Americans typically pay." People already making millions of dollars a year in income (recall Harvard's hedge fund managers) have that income taxed at half of what you and I (I'm going to assume you make less than twenty million dollars a year) pay in taxes on our incomes. Thomas Frank can write all the books he wants about grotesque wealth disparities in this country, but it's guys like Fleischer, doing the math and making the case, that actually redistribute things. 'It’s all quite an accomplishment for the former corporate tax lawyer, who entered the academy just four years ago after practicing in New York and doing a brief six-month stint in Washington. Academics generally toil in obscurity for years, hoping for a big political hit. The now-famous paper was Fleischer’s first published policy recommendation.' So there's that drama, the drama of a guy walking into academia and having the big lights turn on all at once. But the tale's even more gratifying. The shits are playing their parts to the hilt: 'Industry lobbyists mock his earnest demeanor and bright-red hair. Behind closed doors, some even call him “Bazooka Joe,” after the bubble gum cartoon character.' They've got their mockery cut out for them: 'In early May, the Senate Finance Committee invited him to speak at a closed-door briefing for staffers from the Hill, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service. It's fun to watch the lobbyists looking for arguments, and, then, finding none, muscling up against Fleischer for more personal attacks. 'Behind closed doors, they call Fleischer a careerist hack. They criticize his use of the phrase “airplane rich” as a way to describe the investment managers, saying he’s simply targeting the wealthy.' UD thought the correct term was fuck-you rich, not airplane rich. With the main character in Saul Bellow's novel Humboldt's Gift in mind, UD calls her hero Von Humboldt Fleisher -- of humble flesh. A man of limited financial but limitless intellectual and ethical means. |