(6 minute read)
Good tax/Bad tax
I recently saw a meme about all the taxes that the Dems passed to fund the Inflation Reduction Act and how providing money to the working class was wrong, wrong, wrong. Had the Dems passed the act unfunded like the give money to the well-to-do Act, the Trump Party would have complained that it was unfunded.[1] Billionaires like Trump picked up a cool TRILLION dollars.[2] During the Trump Republican Party Administration the National debt increased by $7.8 TRILLION dollars.[3] Trumpers in reality de-funded (reduced) tax revenue while running up more debt. Our debt now stands at $27.76 TRILLION dollars. (Before the Biden Administration.) More since I wrote this.[4]
What tax doesn’t affect the poor? Who should pay? Who’s better able to pay?
It’s a taxing situation
Point of no return
When I was sent by the Army to Korea in 1968 our flight went from SeaTac airport in Washington state to Tokyo, Japan. Honestly, I didn’t know that a 707 could fly that far and the aircraft was fully loaded with nothing but GIs and our gear. At some point in our flight, we passed a ‘point of no return.’ In other words, the plane didn’t have enough fuel left to make it back. The only option was to continue.
I maintain that at some point our economy will reach a ‘point of no return’ if we haven’t already. Mathematically, though it will take a supercomputer to do the math, there will be a point where it is no longer possible to pay back the debt.[5] That’s what happens to people when they end up having to file bankruptcy. They don’t have sufficient income to repay their debt and keep living in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.
We got to where we are now by the actions of both parties over the years. The massive cuts for the rich undertaken by the Trump Republican Party didn’t help. Trickle-down economics (supply-side economics) have NEVER worked for the benefit of the working class.[6] NEVER. Count on Trump Republicans to not support improving the taxing situation for low and medium income earners.
It is no longer in their political DNA.
When I was on a small city council we had 3 primary sources of tax revenue, often called the three-legged stool: income, sales and property taxes. We had some smaller sources of revenue like user fees.[7] (I still maintain that such fees used by municipalities are effectively a tax on people.)
This is a story that I’ve told before. Back in my politically active days I would walk around the little city that I lived in and talk to people when I got the chance. I was walking around a side street of what I called old town and saw an elderly lady outside her front door locking up for what turned out to be her last time. She had a coat. As I walked up to talk with her she looked familiar to me. It turned out that I had been her paperboy when I was growing up. How many reading this remember the days of having paperboys delivering the newspaper? Anyway, as we talked she related to me that she was locking up for the last time and getting ready to go and live with one of her kids. When she paid all of her bills she had $8 left over. You read that right. She had gone through most of her savings. The city was getting ready to raise water and sewer rates to pay for debt service and her $8 wasn’t going to cut it anymore. This was over a decade ago.
Things haven’t gotten better.
Absurdity
A lot of the really poor don’t make enough to file income tax returns.[8] A complaint often levied at immigrants illegal and otherwise as well as the poor is that they don’t pay taxes. That’s bullshit. You can’t live in America without paying taxes. Families might pay zero in federal or state income tax and still pay thousands in taxes out of their meager incomes. Sales tax for example is considered a regressive tax because it affects the poor disproportionately.[9] Sales tax is paid on most everything that is bought including food in most places. Then there’s gasoline tax. There’s payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security whether or not people live long enough to benefit from either.
As an aside my older brother died in his 50s. He paid into Medicare and Social Security his whole working life and never drew a penny. When I retired from a major international aerospace corporation the average number of once a month pension checks that were paid out was 18. The average employee was only living a year and a half after retirement.
Millions of people never reaped what they sowed.
What’s fair?
The betters. I’m tired of hearing about the suffering rich being picked on. I’m all in for those that are well off paying more into the system that made them wealthy. They’re still going to be wealthy and still have more than most of our society. Billionaires could pay in hundreds of millions and still remain billionaires. If they dropped down below being a billionaire they would still be worth hundreds of millions. They aren’t going to be loading up their limousines and heading for the poor house any time soon. If people are making a few million a year they can afford to pay more in taxes and not have to move in with their kids.
Corporations. Let corporations start paying more taxes in this country. They had low tax rates to begin with and still went overseas for cheap labor. It’s about cheap labor NOT taxes. Corporations weren’t paying the corporate tax rate. They had entire groups of people hired to figure how to reduce their tax rate. If we make the United States a third world country with cheap labor then they’ll come back here. The problem with us is that people want more out of life than just existing and living to work. Profitable big businesses that can afford to buy back their own stock should obviously pay more in taxes. Citizens shouldn’t have to pay them blackmail to keep them here when we’re the ones buying their products.
No one should be an economic slave.
Red states WIN!
Yes, I checked this out. 95 out of 100 of the poorest counties in the United States are in Red States.[10] (And don’t use Occupy Democrats for a source. They aren’t reliable! I used a source that checks other sources and provides explanations.) But wait! Nine out of 10 of the poorest states are also Red States. Like being poor or want to be poor? Want to have less?
Vote Republican!
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/trumps-tax-plan-rich/
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/u-s-billionaires-got-1-trillion-richer-in-trump-s-first-term
[3] https://marketrealist.com/p/national-debt-under-trump/
[4] https://usdebtclock.org/
[5] https://www.pgpf.org/analysis/2022/07/higher-interest-rates-will-raise-interest-costs-on-the-national-debt
[6] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trickledowntheory.asp
[7] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/user-fee.asp
[8] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/five-myths-about-the-47-percent/
[9] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regressivetax.asp
[10] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/jul/29/facebook-posts/are-97-nations-100-poorest-counties-red-states/
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