We’re all sick of hearing about
the “Bush Tax Cuts”
The Bush Tax cuts did NOT
increase the “tax burden on the poor and middle
class.”
Common sense tells you
that. How can cutting taxes on one group while not
increasing
taxes on anyone else hurt anybody?
Come on. You know the
answer. We’re not talking high-level set theory or calculus here, or
Keynesian
versus Austrian School economics, it’s just plain-in-your face logic.
Yet day after day we hear
politicians – particularly Democrats and the “99%” pack of crazies
rant about
how cutting taxes on “the rich” (and by the way a lot of other not-so-rich
people)
“pushed” the tax burden on the poor and middle class.
What a bunch of misinformation.
Better still – what a load of
demagogic, class-warfare crap. The only people who could believe
that BS
are either dumber than a bag of hammers or completely delusional.
To help the misguided, let’s put
it in a “see-Spot-run” way even a loon could grasp – we hope.
And we’ll keep the math really simple
for those who were “socially promoted” from the first
grade on and had to cheat
to pass their GED test so they could get that job as “Fry Chief” at
Burger
Biggie. (And then, of course, bitch and moan about how unfair everything
is because
their neighbor who made great grades and got a degree somehow earns
more than they do.)
So here you go kids …
Let’s say you charge a group of
rich people $2 for each orange. For people who have less
money (the poor
and middle class) you only charge $1 for each orange. At some point you
decide
to charge the rich folks $1.50 per orange, hoping they’ll buy more stuff from
you with the
savings, but keep your price of $1 per orange for everyone else.
Okay, now here’s the pop quiz –
who got hurt?
Answer (ding!) – Only the
one selling the oranges, and maybe not even them if they make
it up
on volume. None of the buyers got hurt. The rich folks got a
little better deal than before but
everyone else still paid less than the rich
folks did.
That’s what the Bush Tax Cuts
did. The only difference here is that the government was the
seller of
oranges (financial support of its bloated bureaucracy, wasteful earmarks, and
non
stop political theater and chicanery) and charging in the form of
taxes.
Some people who were already
paying the lion’s share got a little break along with a lot of
other taxpayers
who weren’t as well off. People who really weren’t paying much of
anything
already didn’t have to pay any more than they used to.
How is that unfair?
The only real outcome of the Bush
Tax Cuts to the government and politicians was that there
was a possibility of
less slush money down the road to sling around and with which to provide
bread
and circuses to the populace, enrich their friends, and punish their enemies.
That's what the true “horror” of
the Bush Tax Cuts was to our elected weasels. Less money to
squander on
pet projects and causes. Less money to curry favor with special
interest groups.
Less money to spend on make-work projects to appear to be
doing something about the
economy. Less money to squirrel away here and
there for something they’d rather not have
known to the public quite
yet. Or ever.
Oh, the humanity. How could
we ever expect our government to do with less money? Spend
less? – are
you crazy? Raise taxes on everyone equally? – again are you crazy; that’s
political
suicide.
So someone came up with the
bright idea – apparently after concluding that most people were
so stupid they
couldn’t pour piss out a boot with directions on the heel – that the best way
to
get more money to squander was to convince people that “the
rich” weren't paying enough.
The villain was clearly those
damned Bush Tax Cuts that favored the wealthy. Oh, and the fact
that
capital gains were taxed at a lower level than ordinary earnings.
Since politicians were pretty
certain that most of their constituencies wouldn’t understand what
capital
gains were in the first place, except that rich people made money from them and
everyone else obviously didn't, that was an easy mark, too. All they
needed to do was trot out
Warren Buffett who claimed he paid a lower tax rate
than his secretary, because most of his
earnings were from capital gains.
Forget that reversing the tax cuts
would affect a lot more people than the rich. Or that even if
you raised
the minimum tax on billionaires to 30% or more, the total amount of money
raised
could be a mere spit in the ocean of debt we were already in.
After TARP, the bailouts of the
auto companies, and the goofy “investments in
the future and/or infrastructure” (butt-kissing of
special interests), you could
take ALL the billionaires’ money, plus wipe out any tax cuts,
and
we’d still be in a massive hole.
Somehow, despite reality, they
got traction with the idea of soaking the rich/wealthy even
further, probably
because if you suggest robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on
the
support of Paul.
Conveniently, “grass roots”
movements like OWS ginned up, and made repealing the Bush
Tax Cuts and making
the rich “pay their fair share” the cause de jour.
Celebrities – who were already
rich, but who would apparently fail the emptying-the-piss-in-the
boot test
themselves – jumped on board, raging against, we suppose, themselves.
However,
did you ever see one of the ranting celebrities – nor Buffett
for that matter – whip out their own
checkbooks and write a great big
whopping check to the U.S. government to “pay their fair
share,” huh?
They and you do know Uncle Sam will gladly accept your voluntary
contributions
… so why their hesitation to pay their fair
share? It's as simple as writing a check.
For the real fanatics in this
election year’s class-war, it’s not about reality. It’s not about math
or
logic. It’s not even about making headway on paying down our debt.
It’s all about politics.
Pitting one side against another simply to get re-elected.
So please …do us all a favor and
stop harping on the tax cuts. Nobody got hurt by those. No
children
went hungry because someone paid lower taxes. Nobody’s health was
jeopardized
because Warren Buffett only paid 15%.
Please stop with the tax and
income inequality speeches, too. Taxes are always unequal, by
design, so
that those who have more already pay more. Income inequality is always
going to
exist because people and their marketable skills and abilities are
unequal, too.
It would be nice if our
politicians recognized – finally – that not everything is a zero-sum game.
In
short, when one person is successful, that does not necessarily come at the
expense of
another person.
It would also be a pleasant
surprise to see the general population get their collective act
together
and realize that most people -- not all for sure, but most -- with a
lot of money have
actually earned their success, and their success should be
admired and applauded, rather
than envied and reviled.
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