The editors of the Washington Post don’t like the outline of tax reform as construed by the Trump Administration one bit:
TAX REFORM was supposed to attract wide, bipartisan support. Lower rates would be fully offset by cutting unneeded deductions and loopholes. The benefit would be a simpler, more efficient tax code. But the idea has moved steadily toward just another irresponsible GOP tax cut, paid for with magical thinking, that would erode the nation’s fiscal health and burden future generations. Republicans who know better must resist this path.
President Trump released a tax reform framework Wednesday, promising that “historic tax relief†would result in higher wages and a “middle-class miracle.†That’s about as likely as it sounds. In fact, the plan is packed with giveaways to the wealthy and threatens to add even more to the debt.
One of the many problems with the tax code as it stands is that as long as you’re only considering the income tax just about any lowering of the marginal rates will be a “tax cut for the rich” because 45% of people pay no income taxes and most of those aren’t rich. That’s by definition. “The rich” are the top 1% or .1% of income earners, depending on whom you ask.
The non-rich pay substantial federal taxes, too, but it’s mostly in the form of payroll taxes.
I’m blase toward the entire thing. It’s a piddling proposal that won’t accomplish much for anybody all and serves as little more than a distraction from the really interesting things (big things!) taking place in American society at the popular level.
Consolidation of news media into D.C. and Manhattan mean endless preoccupation with court politics. I’m sure elites are fascinated with their own doings but the whole thing strikes me as Versailles, 1788. They didn’t see what was happening then and they don’t see what’s happening now.
Of the many bifurcations in American society one is the gap between those who just want to be left alone and leave others alone and those who want to change how other people behave. I believe the first group is very large and the second very small. The question is how much stink does the second group have to raise before the first group rebels.
As Elbert Hubbard said about communism, when more people want to change their own behavior than want to change the behavior of other people, I might get on board with the behavior changers. (What Hubbard said was that when 51% of the people want to give rather than get, I’ll be a communist.)
IMO tax reform should just lower the corporate income tax, add a new bracket at the top on personal income, and stop there.
Well, I’m not a communist and never will be. I’m a socialist and what has for the first time made me feel there’s hope for the future is that socialism has greatly evolved from the concepts of the last century and there is a huge hunger out there to know more about it. The elites in their arrogance haven’t been paying attention, because they don’t think the “little” people are important enough to pay attention to.
As something that informs one’s views, socialism is fine just as libertarianism is. As a program it stinks because the numbers don’t add up.
A government that embraces some aspects of socialism can work. A government in which socialism is the operating principle will inevitably fail. That’s why there’s less socialism in Scandinavia today than there was thirty years ago. The numbers didn’t add up.
Yes, but Venezuela sure worked out……….right?
Can someone please explain how Sweden or Venezuela are socialist?
Alternative suggestion, Ben, from Ben Bradlee’s wikipedia:
In 1991, Bradlee delivered the Theodore H. White lecture[33] at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His message: Lying in Washington, whether in the White House or the Congress, is wrong, immoral, tearing at the fiber of our national instincts and institutions — and must stop. He said, “Lying has reached such epidemic proportions in our culture and among our institutions in recent years, that we’ve all become immunized to it.” He went on to suggest that the deceit was degrading the respect for the truth.
Bradlee also foresaw media consolidation early on.
Your best reporting will be at the city, county, and state levels because the sources are more accessible and communities are both more familiar and more concerned.