People wonder why great civilations like Greece decline. Greece, where even those who ARE assessed taxes don't pay them.
Which modern-day countries have robust economies and relatively properous populations? Those that assess and collect tax revenue to fund services for their people.
Think Germany, which is almost single-handledly, propping up the Euro, and Scandanavian countries, where education through college and health care is government funded and their people have the highest rated standard of living and are rated to be the most satisfied. Those countries have surged ahead of the U.S. -- or rather -- the U.S. has fallen behind them in almost every standard-of-living measure, such as longevity, infant mortality, education, health, and medical care.
And in this country, which touts a democracy in which the majority rules, a vicious, short-sighted, ego-centric minority has hijacked the government and held it hostage in the name of defunding so much of what contributes to a decent standard of living for so many.
One of Wisconsin's U.S. senators, Ron Johnson, apparently doesn't agree. He carps that "The federal government is spending 25% of our entire economy vs. 100 years ago when we spent only 2%." (More about Mr. Johnson in a future blog post.)
A hundred years ago when, according to a political fact-checking service, the government did little more than deliver the mail?
So we should turn back the clock to the day when the government did nothing to protect its people from disease, contaminated water/air/food, free-flowing sewage, ignorance and so much else that contributes to being a superpower? Isn't that unbelievably callous and hypocritical from a self-professed Christian multimillionaire (isn't that an oxymoron, according to what Jesus said?) who can easily pay for anything he wants/needs, thanks to government pay, benefits, subsidies and tax laws that favor the rich and corporations? (Mr. Johnson is CEO of a plastics company owned by a family he married into.)
Wouldn't someone who claims to be conservative want to conserve not only his country's high standard of living, but the health, safety and well-being of the majority of its people and, thus, the strength, power and first-rate standing of his/her country?
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Economy-Tanking Tax Cuts
Minnesota Congressional Rep. Michele Bachmann officially declared her presidential candidacy yesterday and vowed to get the U.S. economy going again by cutting corporate taxes.
That raises the question I ask -- and wish more media voice pieces would also ask -- every time I hear Bachmann, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and so many others who call themselves fiscal conservatives say that cutting taxes is the way to economicy prosperity in this country.
My question is, if cutting taxes brings economic prosperity, why did the country's economy tank after Bush II cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003?
A follow-up question is when, in U.S. history, did the economy boom as a result of tax cuts?
I find lots of assertions and postulations in Internet searches theorizing that cutting taxes puts more money in consumers' hands to spend on goods and services, thus increasing tax revenues, but nothing indicating when that has actually occurred to the point that it boosted the economy.
Conversely, we have a very real and painful recent example of when and how cutting taxes -- especially while at the same time waging two horrendously expensive, yet unfunded, wars and a horrendously expensive, unfunded Medicare drug benefit -- plunged the nation into the worst recession since it dug its way out of the Great Depression by, not cutting taxes, but with government spending that put Americans back to work.
Evidence abounds in other countries' tax policies. Which country in the developed war suffered the least in the recent and ongoing global financial crisis? Germany, which is a high-tax country. Which countries are suffering the most? How about Greece, whose population is renowned for not paying taxes.
Contrarians assert that World War II should be credited as the real reason America recovered from the Depression. That no doubt contributed. But why? Government spending and imposing taxes to cover, at least in part, the cost of that war.
So why didn't the Bush-era tax cuts infuse the economy with lots of revenue thanks to consumers having more money to spend? One reason is that people didn't spend the money they no longer sent to Uncle Sam. They paid off credit debt and put it into savings. The other is that the vast majority of the cuts went to those in the highest income bracket, who also didn't spend it on consumer goods -- unless you count yachts (a yacht manufacturer in Wisconsin after years of benefiting from Bush tax cuts closed down for a while in 2009 because business dried up and got millions in government assistance a couple of months ago) -- but invested it in Wall Street.
Americans in lower income brackets are not only still waiting for that to trickle down, but are shouldering the tax burden that has been -- and increasingly continues to be -- shifted from the wealthy and big business to the rest of us.
That raises the question I ask -- and wish more media voice pieces would also ask -- every time I hear Bachmann, Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and so many others who call themselves fiscal conservatives say that cutting taxes is the way to economicy prosperity in this country.
My question is, if cutting taxes brings economic prosperity, why did the country's economy tank after Bush II cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003?
A follow-up question is when, in U.S. history, did the economy boom as a result of tax cuts?
I find lots of assertions and postulations in Internet searches theorizing that cutting taxes puts more money in consumers' hands to spend on goods and services, thus increasing tax revenues, but nothing indicating when that has actually occurred to the point that it boosted the economy.
Conversely, we have a very real and painful recent example of when and how cutting taxes -- especially while at the same time waging two horrendously expensive, yet unfunded, wars and a horrendously expensive, unfunded Medicare drug benefit -- plunged the nation into the worst recession since it dug its way out of the Great Depression by, not cutting taxes, but with government spending that put Americans back to work.
Evidence abounds in other countries' tax policies. Which country in the developed war suffered the least in the recent and ongoing global financial crisis? Germany, which is a high-tax country. Which countries are suffering the most? How about Greece, whose population is renowned for not paying taxes.
Contrarians assert that World War II should be credited as the real reason America recovered from the Depression. That no doubt contributed. But why? Government spending and imposing taxes to cover, at least in part, the cost of that war.
So why didn't the Bush-era tax cuts infuse the economy with lots of revenue thanks to consumers having more money to spend? One reason is that people didn't spend the money they no longer sent to Uncle Sam. They paid off credit debt and put it into savings. The other is that the vast majority of the cuts went to those in the highest income bracket, who also didn't spend it on consumer goods -- unless you count yachts (a yacht manufacturer in Wisconsin after years of benefiting from Bush tax cuts closed down for a while in 2009 because business dried up and got millions in government assistance a couple of months ago) -- but invested it in Wall Street.
Americans in lower income brackets are not only still waiting for that to trickle down, but are shouldering the tax burden that has been -- and increasingly continues to be -- shifted from the wealthy and big business to the rest of us.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Norquist Appropriates (R)s' Fealty
I keep hearing and reading about a pledge a private citizen named Grover Norquist who has no official position in government at any level forcing Republicans elected to Congress to sign a pledge to not raise any taxes of any kind or anything that smells like a tax without an equal amount being cut in some other area.
My question is what are these elected officials doing commiting fealty to an individual who has no constitutional or legal authority over them when they have taken an oath to their constituents to represent them and act in their best interest?
My question is what are these elected officials doing commiting fealty to an individual who has no constitutional or legal authority over them when they have taken an oath to their constituents to represent them and act in their best interest?
Saturday, May 7, 2011
How to Reduce the National Debt
A friend read my posts about the sessions Paul Ryan held on his proposed budget. Here is his comment about them:
I honestly haven't heard any real suggestions to reduce the debt. I am in favor of lots of the proposed social programs, especially some sort of health care for all, but how are they to be funded?
I am disappointed that we hear no real suggestion for reducing our National Debt from the other side of the aisle.
The National Debt of the Nation is terrible and its a burden we are leaving our children and grandchildren to solve. I fear that life for them will not be as good as life for us has been.
I believe this problem has no single solution but requires MORE taxes for the rich and the not so rich. I also believe we will all have to made some sacrifices.
Most important we need those in office opposed to Ryan's plan to make suggestions of there own and I believe the President needs to bring the sides together to address the problem of our unsustainable Debt. Without some sort of a solution on the debt we are headed in the same direction as Greece, Spain and Great Britain. If we continue as we are it wouldn't be long until we are a second rate nation.
I am disappointed that we hear no real suggestion for reducing our National Debt from the other side of the aisle.
The National Debt of the Nation is terrible and its a burden we are leaving our children and grandchildren to solve. I fear that life for them will not be as good as life for us has been.
I believe this problem has no single solution but requires MORE taxes for the rich and the not so rich. I also believe we will all have to made some sacrifices.
Most important we need those in office opposed to Ryan's plan to make suggestions of there own and I believe the President needs to bring the sides together to address the problem of our unsustainable Debt. Without some sort of a solution on the debt we are headed in the same direction as Greece, Spain and Great Britain. If we continue as we are it wouldn't be long until we are a second rate nation.
If we reject what Paul Ryan is suggesting as a means to reducing our National Debt and I am sure it is full of wrongs and faults, what than do we do to reduce a 14 trillion National Debt?
Here is my reply to my friend:
That's the fallacy of Ryan's plan. It doesn't reduce the debt. Many non-Republican accounts I've read say that his plan actually increases it. Here's what one Republican -- Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, who's hardly a flaming liberal -- says about it:
The other side of the aisle does have a proposal. You can read about it here:
And here is what the New York Times' Paul Krugman has to say about that plan:
You want to erase the debt? Here's how. Raise taxes--and close the loopholes that enable the richest and mega corporations to skate free. (A report in the news just yesterday said that 50 percent of the biggest corporations in this country paid no taxes last year.)
Start with the capital gains tax by making it apply to actual capital gains so it can't serve as a tax haven for millionaires' and billionaires' income. Hedgefunders who made billions in just one year--one took in $13 billion last year alone -- get away with claiming that income as capital gains, which is taxed at 15%, so they can keep from having it taxed at the highest income rate of 35%. (No wonder the multimillionaires in Congress want to reduce capital gains tax to zero!)
Second, end corporate charity, particularly to multinational companies that pay no -- zero -- taxes on the profits they make in the U.S. AND actually receive tax credits in the billions of dollars. Some, like oil companies, receive tax-funded subsidies DESPITE making record profits -- up from 21% to 46 % this past quarter from the previous quarter, which itself was a record-breaking quarter as has been every quarter in recent memory. Ryan voted to continue those credits and subsidies, but when asked why at the local town hall-type sessions he's held (some of which I attended) he obfuscates and turns the discussion to small businesses. Those are an entirely different animal and dear to the hearts of most average Americans -- and Ryan knows that, which is why he wants to talk about them and avoid having to explain why he pumps more and more welfare, funded by you and me, into the coffers of the rich. The rich have benefited greatly from this welfare that has become rampant since Reagan. Here are some interesting charts.
No wonder Congress doesn't want to change things.
Third, reform the healthcare industry, including some aspects of Medicare -- and that doesn't mean privatize it. I can't think of a single instance in which something was privatized or deregulated that benefited average, everyday people. Why the big push to privatize? It benefits corporate CEOs and other top execs, big-time investors, Wall Street and politicians who pander to them to get reelected and become multimillionaires themselves, thanks to fat campaign chests, money they get to keep if they don't spend it all on their campaigns.
Private companies have to make a profit -- and that's on top of their administrative costs, which are generally 10%-30% of their revenues. The only way they can do that is to pass those costs along to you and me. That's where healthcare costs have fallen off the rails. Hospitals, clinics, HMO's, etc. were not-for-profit until the industry caught Pres. Richard Nixon's attention and convinced him how wonderful it would be to allow the healthcare industry to be for-profit, thus Nixon's 1971 "New Health Strategy" and the birth of for-profit HMOs.
Granted, advanced techniques like MRIs and by-pass surgeries that weren't available in "the good old days" goose costs too, but a lot of that -- particularly in the pharma industry -- is simply b/c they can get away with it. Drugs that cost in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month for Americans are available in other countries for a fraction of that cost. Phamas claim those countries' governments subsidize those costs and that they (Phama companies) need to charge high prices so they can recoup their research and development costs, yet they fail to mention that much of those costs are already covered by government grants and other public funding. So the U.S. subsidizes drug costs too. The difference is the U.S. government a la laws and rules passed by Congress just gives the subsidies to the pharma companies instead of to patients.
Get industries with a vested interest, such as pharmas, out of the law-writing business. The Medicare Part D law was literally written by pharma company reps. And what did it get us? Big profits for pharma. The government (Medicare) law that was passed can't get competitive bids, can't buy less expensive from other countries, such as Canada. The bill had a huge gaping hole in the middle that futher enriched private industry but impoverished those on Medicare. They have to buy supplemental insurance to cover that hole--which it does only partially. So who benefited from that? Insurance companies.
Americans have been brainwashed into believing that privatizing is the American capitalistic way. Capitalism can be good if it doesn't run wild and turn into national cannibalism, which is the direction the country is currently headed. A healthy economy needs a population that can afford to buy the goods and services produced by the private sector. Thanks to unemployment, depressed pay, etc., that "buying public" is shrinking, and along with it tax revenue and other community benefits, such as public education.
Medicare's administrative cost is 3%. Social Security's is 1%. There is nothing and no way privatizing can approach that kind of operational costs. The way Medicare needs to be reformed is to establish a reporting mechinism that pays a percentage of the money wasted via fraud, duplication, etc., to whoever reports it. Medicare premiums, benefits and eligibility needs to be means tested. Why should taxes (you and me) pay for millionaires to be on Medicare? Ditch Part D completely and include perscriptions in regular Medicare like it is in other healthcare coverage plans with means-tested deductibles and co-pays.
That Medicare add-on is but one huge unfunded program Bush foisted onto this country. Others include the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. During WWII, not only did everyone share the sacrifice (well almost everyone, the ultra rich remained the ultra rich. I'm convinced those elites -- the true elites in this country, not acadmics or public employees or others the actual elites turn into punching bags as a way to keep us from retaliating against them -- will never have to ever feel any pain). But the country sold war bonds during WWII as a way to help finance the war. What did Bush do when he invaded Iraq? He told us to go shopping!
That's another way to help erase the enoumous debt Bush left us with. Sell war bonds now and dedicate the revenue to pay off the nation's debt. I attended a listening session last week held by two WI Democratic Assemblymen. At least half of those who spoke -- and they were all working, middle-class people, a couple of whom had young families -- said they were willing to pay more taxes if it would help the economy/debt situation. So, even though the affluent would consider those people schmucks and would scoff at the idea of buying something like a war bond that wouldn't pay off big dividends, if that listening session was any indication, a lot of civic-minded, patriotic middle Americans would.
This country has also been brainwashed into believing that taxes are evil and raising them is shear heresy. At the same time, the nostalia du jour is those wonderful, prosperous, Americana years of the 1950s. Ryan preaches cutting taxes and a flatter tax structure. Yet, ignored or denied is that the tax structure in the 1950s was anything but flat. Top income bracket was 90 percent. Here's an interesting chart:
If cutting taxes creates jobs and improves the economy, why did the economy go into a nose dive and unemployment start to soar after Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts?
Here's what happened to jobs in this country after Bush cut taxes (in red) and after Obama took office (in blue).
Instead of any (R) plan that I've heard of erasing the debt or leaving those who come after us to pay it off, the policies they support simply continue to kick the can down the road. And, thanks to their ideology re: the environment, global warming, and conservation, all those children and grandchildren they're so worried about inflicting a national debt on will have higher rates of cancer, respiratory disorders and myriad other toxin- and pollution-induced illnesses.
But, don't get me started... 
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tinned-Ear Obama
I got so steamed with this double shot of recent news,
(1) multinational behemoth General Electric paid 0 taxes on its 2010 $14.2 billion profits, nearly $5 billion of which was on U.S. operations and salt-in-the-wound rubbingly gets a $3.2 billion U.S. tax benefit (damn! gag! retch!!!), and
(2) President Barack Obama rewards GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt for this kind of unbelievably baldfaced, unpatriotic and unAmerican chicanery--legal or otherwise--by appointing him chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness,
that I sent Obama an email. (Ha! For whatever good THAT will do, delusional girl that I am.)
Here's what I wrote: Dear President Obama:
You know, it's bad enough that corporations like GE pay no U.S. taxes and even get tax credits while poor, working middle- and lower-income schmucks not only pay taxes, but have to shoulder the tax burden of tax skaters like GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. But when you rub our noses in that kind of affront by appointing freeloading Immelt to a council that's related to JOBS and advises you on a competitive business strategy, you are not only doing average Americans a disservice, you are shedding past and what otherwise might be prospective voters like the Titanic shed passengers. Your ear for listening to Americans--loyal, patriotic, taxpaying Americans, not unpatriotic, unAmerican, leeches like Immelt--has turned to tin.
Want to boycott GE products? They're listed here: http://www.ge.com/products_services/
And if you don't want to stop watching NBC, CNBC or MSNBC which NBC owns, you can stop buying goods and services advertised on those networks, and send a letter to Corporate Public Relations Director for any product advertised on NBC or CNBC or MSNBC telling them you will not buy THEIR products until GE starts ponying up its fair share.
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