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Every time that President Obama emphatically repeats that he won't raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 a year, as he did yesterday, I can't help but wince. Promising the middle class -- and a good swath of the upper middle class -- that their taxes will never go up is politically cowardly, economically irresponsible, and a betrayal of the progressive belief in government. 

Let me explain each of these charges in turn.

The US Chamber of Commerce has been one of the most influential lobbying groups in our political system, in part due to the sheer volume of its spending. In the last year alone, the Chamber spent over $95 million lobbying and over $36 million on the last election cycle.

If you follow the stock market, you'll notice that big public companies are paying out all sorts of special dividends early to avoid a dreaded hike in taxes on such earnings. If the Bush tax cuts lapse, the top dividend tax rate will rise from 15 percent today to 39.5 percent on January 1. Or, if President Obama gets his way, dividend tax rates will go up only for the top 2 percent of earners, while remaining unchanged for everyone else.

In other words, dividends will once more be taxed as regular income -- and that's how it should be. 

Over the past few years, many observers of America's housing market have been documenting a remarkable rebound in demand for walkable housing and office space in urban areas, driven by Millennials and empty-nester Baby Boomers.

If you follow the stock market, you'll notice that big public companies are paying out all sorts of special dividends early to avoid a dreaded tax hike on such earnings. If the Bush tax cuts lapse, the top dividend tax rate will rise from 15 percent today to 39.6 percent on January 1. Or, if President Obama gets his way, dividend tax rates will go up only for the top 2 percent of earners, while remaining unchanged for everyone else.

In other words, dividends may once more be taxed as regular income -- and that's how it should be. 

From Burger King to Walmart, the low-wage workers we depend on to staff America’s consumption-driven economy are tired of being overworked and underpaid, and they are letting their bosses know. 

As deficit talks continue to make little progress, we should revisit how a carbon tax would not only help raise badly needed revenue but could also be essential to fighting the climate crisis. A recent Congressional Research Service report found that a tax of $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide would generate enough revenue to cut the 10-year budget deficit in half.

With fast food and Walmart workers striking for living wages and decent benefits, the corporations they enrich have never fared better. Catherine Rampbell analyzes the 3rd quarter GDP report for 2012.

Lewis Powell wanted executives selling tires or aspirin to take on an additional job: selling capitalism itself. Today, the disparate strands of the progressive movement must learn the same lesson, advocating not just for people but for the very idea of the people. Ours is the world’s greatest experiment in democracy: to create one, mutually supporting community of interest out of ancestral strangers—geographically distant, multi-origin, multi-ethnic, multiracial. Our inability to do that has been the Achilles’ heel of liberalism. It’s why we are not yet the 99 percent.