CNN's Velshi Thinks 'Taxes May Need to Go Up for Everybody'

CNN's financial guru Ali Velshi says "taxes may need to go up for everybody" in the long-term in an interview with Khabar magazine. He adds that we would need higher taxes for "if we want economic growth to be more robust."

Velshi has echoed his tax rhetoric before, namely in December's fiscal cliff debates when he ripped the Bush tax cuts and claimed that letting them expire would not harm the economy. He repeatedly slapped Republicans for not compromising and hiking taxes on the wealthy, but largely refrained from blaming President Obama and the Democrats for the dysfunction.

He addds that a tax hike would "slow consumption and would slow the economy down," but it would be needed to fund infrastructure. "We should be considering a federal infrastructure bank, and a real shift of tax expenditures to infrastructure," he said.

Velshi did admit the Obama platform of higher taxes on just the wealthy was bogus: "I don’t think they should be rising now for anyone if it can be avoided. But the concept that taxes can rise on the rich and not on the middle class in the long term isn’t logical."

During the fiscal cliff debates, Velshi went on a tear against Republicans for not conceding to higher taxes on the rich to get a deal done. He called the Bush tax cuts a "deal with the devil" and claimed letting them expire wouldn't harm the economy.

He referred to European countries with higher tax rates as evidence that higher tax rates don't mean a lower standard of living. "So what's the argument that if we increase the tax rate by 4.6 percentage points on the richest Americans, we're somehow going to have economic catastrophe?" he asked.