taxes

The Irony of the MAGA Mind…

by MyBaconPress

Sometimes, when I write about someone passing away, it’s with sadness because the person was good and did good things in the world. Willie Mays was like that. But sometimes, when I write about someone passing away, it’s with happiness because the person was an evil blight on humanity and did damage for money. People like Jim Inhofe.

Inhofe was definitely in the second camp. He was a Senator, a Republican (of course), and a staunch defender of the oil companies’ battle to boost climate change. Inhofe helped win that fight. Now the world will suffer increasingly hotter winters, more violent tropical storms and hurricanes, more floods, droughts, crop failures, and all the other horrible things science has been trying to warn us about since the 1950’s – only to be ignored. Or, more accurately, shouted down by people who refused to understand.

Inhofe was the moron who brought a snowball, a weather event, into the Senate chambers to show that climate change, a climate event, wasn’t real – because snow still happened. 89 years the planet suffered under the weight of this man’s stupidity. Thanks, in part, to him, we STILL get to suffer but HE shuffled off and avoided the worst of his actions. Classic con move.

Oh, well, at least I can take comfort that where he went is (reportedly) much hotter than where we are…

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Do you know what I find ironic? With the help of compliant conservatives, the one percent is right on the precipice of winning their class war. I know, it’s been presented (by the one percent, remember) as a “culture war” but it’s been a class war since the start. They want to be an official aristocracy and FDR made that difficult. Sure, FDR also made the country the financial envy of the world and created the largest and strongest middle class the world had ever known but rich people couldn’t get AS rich AS fast under his rules so those rules had to go.

But they couldn’t have done it alone. They needed a mob. They found one in conservatives and they led the cons around by the nose through fraudulent (and very scary) broadcasts that looked real enough to fool people not paying too much attention. The one percent seduced the cons with easy answers. Trump’s main gift is his constant promises of easy answers to complex problems. That’s why they love him. Easy answers.

No, none of that is the ironic part. That’s just background. One of Trump’s easy answers is yet another tax cut or worse. He has actually floated the idea of eliminating income taxes altogether and replacing them with tariffs on goods. Every competent economist has blasted the proposal but “smart” and “MAGA” simply do not go together.

All of these tax cuts are a one percent wet dream as well. They just get richer and richer but, have you noticed? The country keeps having to cut services and opportunities because we can’t afford them. “Cut more!” is all we ever hear. They don’t talk about it like they used to. These days, they pretend it’s all about stimulating investment but there was a time they said the quiet part out loud.

There was this conservative Bozo known as Grover Norquist. He once held the Republican Party in his grip with nearly perfect control. He had them sign a pledge that they would never, ever raise taxes nor allow them to be raised. If they didn’t sign, they didn’t get any support from the GOP. If they DID sign, he could wave that promise around at them any time one of them seemed about to act for the good of the country instead of rich people.

Old Grover said a lot of things over the course of his career but, to me, his most famous quote is “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The “reduce it to the size” part is the tax cuts. They seem designed to bankrupt the nation.
“Hey, it feels like we might be getting to the ironic part, here, pretty soon.”
“Yeah, it does.”
And so we are…

I became curious about how all of these tax cuts would affect people when the government is, finally, bankrupt. Do you know who it looks like is going to suffer the most as a result of conservative mantras? Why, mostly, that would be conservative states! Isn’t THAT ironic?

The cons only think about welfare recipients (the easy answer) and except for themselves, think ALL welfare recipients should be cut off immediately since the other ones are “only committing fraud.” But the government does a LOT more than just welfare. When one bundles all the money the Federal government gives to states that need help, the most Federally dependent states are mostly red.

Okay, there ARE a couple of blue states in there but it seems likely that, as blue states, they’ll vote against red for the good of the nation and, frankly, themselves. There’s nothing ironic about that. But if we look at the top fifteen states that are Federally dependent, we find Alaska (1), Louisiana (2), Montana (3), Arizona (5), Wyoming (6), Kentucky (8), Mississippi (9), Texas (10), West Virginia (12), and Tennessee (14).

That’s ten of the top fifteen Federally dependent states that can be counted on to do serious damage to themselves in support of the richest people in this once-great nation. Even more ironic? They’ll do that financial harm to themselves, chanting their mantra about voting their own interest – all while voting against their own interest and in rich people’s interest, instead…

Hold on to your hats, folks. It’s going to be quite a (terrifying) ride…

Speaking of Tax Frauds…

by MyBaconPress

Here in California, the cons are out with a new campaign against taxes. They bought a ballot initiative that is trying to limit the taxes the state can raise on it’s own AND make it more difficult for citizens to raise taxes via legitimate initiatives. (I distinguish between “bought” and “legitimate” based on whether paid signature collectors were used. Paid collectors shouldn’t be allowed. They have corrupted the process.) The supporting campaign keeps trying to make the case that the thing that makes California so expensive is taxes. That isn’t true. Granted It IS true that taxes are higher, here, than many other places. But when I start thinking about cost of living, taxes generally aren’t on the list. I don’t blame the government. I blame private and corporate entities.

Yes, California adds a bunch of gas tax – probably the most visible spot for “high taxes.” It’s somewhere between .83 cents and $1.08 per gallon, depending upon whom you believe. But the gas companies charge every cent they can get AND manipulate the market to keep prices higher than they need to be. The tax is dependable and predictable, but the rest of the price? That’s the variable and it fluctuates wildly based on…reasons.  The price fluctuations affect the prices of everything “downstream” that gets shipped anywhere. By themselves, the gas companies can seriously harm the economy on a whim – and they do so on a regular basis, often as a political statement. Those decisions are made in corporate boardrooms, not government offices.

When it’s time to cover my housing for the month, it’s not taxes that depress me. It’s the rent. It’s outrageous. Rents and mortgages in the state are probably the single most important driver of cost-of-living these days. And they’re outrageous because of private companies, not government. In fairness, it was a conservative government (43) decision that allowed (even encouraged) Wall Street to attack our living situations but that was deregulation, not taxes, and deregulation is a darling of the One Percent and the far right.

When I push my cart up and down the aisles in the local market, pricing decisions by private companies, not government, are looking me in the face, depressing the crap out of me. People don’t shop just on what they want. They have to consider what they can afford, as well. For many, that means less. Perhaps less quality, often, simply less food. But it’s not the taxes causing those choices. It’s pricing decisions made in boardrooms.

Our local, corporate, killer power provider (PG&E) already charges exorbitant prices and the increases just keep coming. Every time they kill a few people or burn down a town, they get a rate increase. Then, they get another increase to do the work they should have been doing in the first place. I don’t even buy power from PG&E, but they get to gouge me anyway through “delivery fees.” In winter, I don’t fear taxes. I fear my PG&E bill. We, the victims, get happy ads telling us how they’re working to do the right thing. And even that took deaths and lawsuits. Again, corporation. Not government, not taxes.

I do acknowledge that taxes are higher on the working class than they should be – everywhere in this once-great nation, not just California. But that’s because of a tax shift from the wealthy to the non-wealthy. If the One Percent would pay taxes at the same rate they extract from society, taxes could actually be reduced on the working class.

This tax trap measure is basically the same play Ohio tried to make to keep citizens from adding abortion protections to their state constitution. Get a ballot measure on some fake “issue” to make it harder to govern or make changes, locking in advantage for one team that disadvantages everyone else. In this case, the One Percent don’t want to pay taxes on what they take out of our society, so they try to make it harder to raise their taxes by subjecting the process to a decidedly NOT democratic two-thirds threshold instead of a simple majority.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t think we should let them do it. If you agree, vote against this latest measure, the ‘California Two-Thirds Legislative Vote and Voter Approval for Fee and Charge Increases Initiative,’ (that’s a mouthful) when it comes up on the ballot…

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Well, Draymond Green finally got himself suspended indefinitely. Green has been a dirty player for quite some time. Those who like him just say he takes no guff but I think he’s too aggressive and has been for a long time. He keeps getting suspended for unsportsmanlike behavior and after his last episode, hitting an opposing player in the face, the league has had enough. Good. The Warriors keep him around because of his talent, but I don’t know what value he brings to the team, not being on the court…

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In a move that shocked absolutely nobody, the cons have decided, reluctantly, of course, to move forward with their politically driven “impeachment inquiry” into Joe Biden’s activities. I get it. They have no choice. The lack of evidence demands it. They absolutely MUST do it. How else are they going to find a charge? So far, nothing they’ve done has worked. They’ve leveled unsubstantiated accusations. They’ve suggested, without support, misbehavior. They’ve made unfounded assertions. I mean, what does a corrupt party have to do to get a response from people, these days?

They had it all worked out. They’d get Hunter to “testify” behind closed doors so nobody could hear what he said, then they’d rush out to the microphones and claim that Hunter had handed them the smoking gun and now they just HAD to move forward. Hunter sort of shot a hole in their plan by not showing up. (I think he plans to honor their subpoena right after Jim Jordan honors the subpoena he ignored from the J6 committee.) So they couldn’t blame Hunter but it didn’t stop them from moving forward with the rest…

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Hey, speaking of stupid, does anybody know exactly what the right wants to see at the border? I mean, are we actually supposed to set up gun turrets and simply murder anybody we see who happens to be too close to the border? ”Close the border” is so much easier to say than to do. What, exactly, are they asking for?

I’d like to wind the cons up a bit. Sure, any thinking person knows walls don’t work but I say we should give them their stupid wall after all – but only if we use a billionaire tax to pay for it. (It turns out Mexico didn’t, won’t, never has, and never will pay for it.) It’ll be in interesting social experiment. Do cons hate brown people or love billionaire wealth more? Inquiring minds, indeed…

Raise Rates…

by MyBaconPress

I have to tell you, I’m a little surprised at the Biden administration so far. He keeps doing things – or trying to do things – I like. None of them are radical, though you would never know that talking to a con. To me, he’s kind of doing things the left SHOULD do and should have been doing all along. By now, anybody with an historical bent and intellectual honesty knows that Bill Clinton took the Democratic party to the right of center – I’ve said many times that Clinton was the best president the Republicans have had in decades – and it has kind of stayed there ever since. (I really do enjoy listening to cons complaining about “far left” policies. There IS no viable “far left” in the US.) So, when I cast my ballot for Biden it wasn’t because I expected him to do anything I would admire. It was because he wasn’t Donald Trump. I mean, it really WAS that simple. I’m sure that’s the case for most of us who voted with the Democrats.

I should add, I wasn’t anti-Biden. I planned to vote for Biden the first time he ran for office. That would be 1988. He got sidelined in that campaign by a plagiarism scandal. (Plagiarism? How quaint…) Afterwards, though, he pretty much went along with the Democratic tide. He supported things I didn’t like and things I expected to be problems. (They were.) So, when he moved to the front of the pack in 2020, I was not excited. But, again, he wasn’t Trump. All I was hoping for was normalcy; peace and quiet for a few years. But Biden has stepped up with some rather progressive programs. It’s important to note that Clinton got away with his “faux Republican Presidency” because people had become exasperated by the actual Republicans. So when the charismatic Clinton smiled and promised to focus on our pain like a laser beam, we all relaxed, breathed a sigh of relief, and went about our business. While nobody was paying attention, Clinton was enacting and supporting conservative policies like a spawn of Goldwater. That little aside is to acknowledge the possibility that Biden might be up to the same tricks but I haven’t seen it, yet.

One of the things Biden is going to have to do is pay for his programs and to this end he’s talking about raising the Capital Gains tax. This is a good thing and I hope he can. DINO’s Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are likely to be a problem, though. Through the course of America’s Neo-liberal nightmare the tax laws have changed to make rich people richer and richer and leave the ever-expanding lower class struggling. High taxes on the wealthy once created the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. Now that middle class is shrinking and, left unchecked, will, at some point, become a very small class dedicated to serving the wealthy – at the pleasure of the wealthy. One of their best tricks was to use the Capital Gains tax cuts.

As painlessly as possible, there are two types of income, earned and unearned. They are just what they sound like. Money you get paid from going to work is earned income. (Duh!) Money you get from someone else’s work is unearned income. That is, you didn’t have to DO anything for that money. You made an investment and held it for awhile. The value of the investment grew (because somebody, somewhere was working) you cashed out the investment and – viola! – you made money. But you didn’t EARN the money. You just kept the money. So, our corrupt Congress critters changed the tax laws and made the Capital Gains tax rate lower – FAR lower in many cases – than the earned income tax rate.

But that was just step one. Step two was to change laws so, say, a CEO could be compensated with company stocks. See, the story was, if the income of the CEO was dependent on the performance of the CEO, the CEO would do everything in his power to protect stock prices. That story did NOT include the reality that depressing wages for the workers – the people producing the revenues in the first place – is a GREAT way to improve a company’s bottom line and increase the stock price which, in turn, makes the CEO that much richer, you see? The more harm he does to his employees, the greater the benefit he brings to himself. Sure, it’s a crap system but of course it is. It was built by the people who stand to benefit from it the most. But wait, there’s more. See, when it’s time for the CEO to pay taxes on the income he kept (from the work YOU did), much of his income came in the form of stock, which means he pays the Capital Gains rate, currently 20% for the richest rich people. Compare that to the 37% those same people would pay for earned income – if they actually earned anything. (By the way, these are book rates – where the rate starts. Effective rates – what people actually pay – are always lower…)

I’ve long held a position I call “Backs or Bucks.” It holds that everyone who can should contribute to the society in which we live. People who work contribute to society with their backs, that is, the work they do. People who only move money around should, by rights, contribute to society with bucks. This means investment tax rates should always be higher than earned income rates, at least to my mind. For the vast majority of Americans, the largest Capital Gain they’ll ever realize in their puny little lifetimes is from the sale of a house. This obvious truth can be addressed with a progressive rate structure. That is, the first, say, $500,000 in gains might not be taxed at all, with the next $500,000 taxed at, say, 5%. So for the first MILLION dollars in Capital Gains, one would pay 2.5% in taxes. After that, it should go up. WAY up.

Always-wrong conservatives rend garments at the suggestion and cry out that higher taxes will be job killers. As usual, there’s no evidence to support their pretended belief. In fact, the only available evidence indicates that high taxes on the wealthy cause them to actually do what they always promise low taxes might someday encourage them to do. The upside to the conservative contrarianism is that when they start predicting disaster, you can take comfort that there will be no disaster and that the tax increase is the right thing to do.

Of course, conservative media will start in about how such a tax increase will harm the average American. It won’t. Biden’s proposed tax increase will only affect you if your primary compensation comes in the form of stock. Most likely, yours doesn’t. Most likely, you get a paycheck. Most likely, you pay more in income taxes (as a percent of income) than, say, Jeff Bezos and that’s just wrong. Biden wants to fix it. I think working Americans should support the effort. Call your Congress critter. He or she is likely rolling in dough they took from unearned income so it’s going to be difficult to get them to do this, but the future of a once-great nation depends upon it…

Start A Tax or Start A Church…

by MyBaconPress

I have to confess: I’m a little jealous of the business model of churches.  I know, they got in early so they got the really plum model, the one all businesses have been trying to re-create ever since.  Still, they’ve got it pretty sweet…

People voluntarily stop by the retail outlets (aka, “church”) once a week to make another payment on the installment plan in an effort to acquire a “product” the church never has to actually produce (immortality).

How much does their product cost?  They never say, at least not in absolute terms but 10% seems to be the going rate.  Now, that’s 10% of the gross, not the net and don’t cheat!  (God will know.  He knows everything…)

Man, what a great racket…

Even better, it’s common for churches to try and get their front-line employees to take a vow of poverty.  Just imagine owning a business in which the employees ask you to pay them as little as possible.  Think of what that does for the bottom line.

Sweet…

Still, I don’t think it’s “business model envy” that leads me to the position that it’s time Americans reconsider our stance on taxing churches.  Now, I’m only talking about property tax, here.  Churches like to pretend they use the donations collected to do “good works” around the world.  But they keep a lot of that money.

I’m ok with letting churches write-off what they don’t keep, that is, whatever actually gets used for “good works”.  It’s not the attack on religion it may seem.  It’s more like “holding them accountable”.  If you collect money on the premise that you’re going to do “good works” and then buy a shiny golden calf…er…cross with Jesus hanging on it (or any other kind of idol…) well, you’ve sort of collected money under false pretenses, haven’t you?

The state could use the money the churches are hoarding and even JESUS said, “Grant unto Caesar that which is Caesars”…

…failing that, I’d like to announce the formation of my brand new church, The Church of Universal Understanding!  The “understanding” of course, is that you send the Church of Universal Understanding – me – money.  I’ll use it for “good works”.  Well, most of it.  Ok a lot of it.  Well, some, for sure.  Er…define “good works”.

Don’t I need someplace to minister to my flock?  Shouldn’t it be someplace that glorifies the Lord?  I mean, you can’t ask the Holy Father to sit his Holy Butt on an unheated toilet seat, can you?  More, I’ve heard He really gets into a “smiting” mood if He’s asked to wash His Holy Hands under anything less than solid gold fixtures.

So, please…keep sending those tax-free donations.  The very moment my new, 32,000 square foot Palace-that-Glorifies-the-Lord-but-I-get-to-live-in  is complete, we can get some really “good works” done…