Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Monday, October 3, 2016

Paying Federal income tax doesn’t make you a patriot …

Any more than not paying Federal income tax makes you a traitor.  If that were the case then the almost half of all Americans who pay no Federal income tax are traitors. 

This crap is a perennial favorite of Democrats, who like to imply that rich people who don’t pay Federal income tax are somehow leeches on our system. It’s almost always said in the context of “making the rich pay their fair share.”  

It’s become for them almost as powerful a weapon to deploy as calling someone a racist.

“The rich” are inherently evil to Democrat class warriors.  To them, the rich only became rich because they exploited and cheated others.  Or by simply and unfairly inheriting the estates of their parents who – surprise – only became rich by cheating and exploiting others. The only way to deal with the rich, then, is to take their ill-gotten gains for use by the common people.

The Democrat redistribution focus is part Robin Hood; part Madame DeFarge. In short, to many Democrats, the rich are evil monsters who get richer and richer at the expense of others and pay a pittance of their real income to support the operations of the government. That, in turn, means that the burden of paying for such things as defense, education, aid to the elderly and the poor, and all the other worthwhile endeavors provided by our government fall on someone else. 

The victims ending up footing the bill are always the poor and the middle class. That’s pretty interesting since the poor don’t pay any Federal income tax at all, and the middle class generally don’t pay much if any Federal income tax either. Guess who pays the most?

Democrats know this, but they are loathe to give up their vilification of the rich.         

Which I find particularly fascinating since the major backers of the Democrat Party are among the richest people in this country – Wall Street investment banker types, movie stars, entertainers, currency manipulators like George Soros, sports team owners, and, of course, the Clintons.

There are many billionaires in this crowd, and others worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Some made their fortunes in business deals or show business; many just inherited family fortunes. Yet they are seemingly in agreement that the rich – including themselves – aren’t paying their “fair share.” (BTW, nothing prevents anyone from paying more in taxes to the Feds than required; I wonder how many of these same people do ...)  

I am going to go way out on a limb here and wager these big money folks all have teams of tax accountants and lawyers to insure they pay as little Federal income tax as legally allowed.  I’d also suggest that they aren’t worried one bit about maintaining or even raising the estate tax – their accountants and lawyers have already figured out how to pass along their wealth practically tax free. So it’s very easy for them to be in favor of taxing the rich more – it won’t affect them. 

As much as Democrats love to rant against the evil rich – and particularly at election time – their attacks are always very selective. If you support their agenda you get a pass no matter how grave your sins; if you are a Republican with the same exact history, you’re a monster.   

Billionaire currency speculator George Soros almost singlehandedly crushed the Bank of England, devastated the English economy, and made himself a billion-dollar profit at the same time by short selling $10 billion worth of English pounds; he tried to do the same to Deutsche Bank following the Brexit event.  In the past few years Hillary went from “dead broke” by her own admission to having a family net worth estimated at $100 million and nobody is sure exactly how.  And now she’s the Democrats’ candidate for President campaigning against the evil rich Donald Trump, railing against the rich in her $15,000 designer outfits.    

Recently she and other Democrats accused Donald Trump of not paying any Federal income tax. This reminded me of Harry Reid’s claim that Mitt Romney didn’t pay Federal income taxes for at least a decade. – which Reid knew was a lie, and which was later disproven. 

But the suggestion that someone running for President should be automatically disqualified if they didn’t pay Federal income tax apparently works for some people. (It also helps that Trump refuses to disclose his tax returns, which makes it appear he’s hiding something.)

Now, Democrats and their friends in the media are having a field day over an illegally leaked filing by Trump that showed he took an almost billion-dollar loss in the 1990s.  Of course, that would have enabled him to use that loss against future earnings for many years, and by doing that quite legally not be liable for Federal income taxes at the same time. So the Democrat and media focus has to shift a bit – not so much as defending his use of the tax laws, which they should in fairness – but hammering more on his billion-dollar hit as evidence that he’s not a smart businessman after all.   

Notably absent is all this discussion about the patriotism of paying taxes are the 47%-48% of all Americans who also – and quite legally, via various tax credits and subsidies – don’t pay any Federal income tax. Shouldn’t they be paying their “fair share” as well?     

So here’s the question: Should you be demonized if you take advantage of all the credits and subsidies legally available to you to reduce the Federal income tax you pay?

Apparently it depends on who you are.  And how you vote.  

No comments:

Post a Comment