Posted on 12/25/2010 3:56:38 PM PST by rabscuttle385
George Orwell warned us about the use of “meaningless words” in politics, words that are endlessly repeated by sloganeering politicians until they have no meaning at all. Meaningless words certainly were on display during last week’s congressional debate over the latest tax bill.
Over and over again we heard trite, empty phrases like “tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%,” “tax giveaways,” “tax earmarks,” and “borrowing money to give to millionaires.” Time and time again the same falsehoods were presented as fact, and reported as such by a credulous media.
But all of these clichés about taxes are based on the presumption that government has a right to all of your income, and so government “gives” you something when it allows you to keep a portion of that income. To this mindset, tax cuts represent a “cost” to government. After all, they argue, money that really ought to go to the most noble of purposes-- wealth redistribution via taxation--is being kept by greedy people and corporations who just don’t want to pay their fair share.
Far too many Americans truly believe that tax cuts represent a government giveaway, indistinguishable from an outright subsidy or entitlement payment. To combat this mindset, we need to be clear with our language.
A subsidy, properly understood, occurs when government takes tax dollars and gives them to favored individuals, companies, or industries. A tax cut, by contrast, simply means government takes less from an individual, company, or industry. When government takes less from you, it has not given you anything; it merely has harmed you less. This is the critical distinction that has been lost in the endless, tired debate about tax policy.
Of course the bill passed last week did contain some actual spending, mostly in the form of an extension of unemployment benefits for another 13 months. The total spending in the bill amounted to about $60 billion. But the tax savings in the bill, meaning the amount of money that will remain in the hands of taxpayers rather than being sent to Washington, is approximately $850 billion. So while a clean tax bill certainly would have been preferable, the tax relief it contains is significant. It means $850 billion will be spent, saved, or invested by American citizens rather than being sent into the black hole known as the federal treasury.
The media, however, dutifully reported that opposition to the bill came from concerned members of Congress who felt the $850 billion “cost” of the bill was too high, and would add too much to the deficit. As always, they could not distinguish between government giving and government taking away. The American people already pay plenty in federal taxes; the deficit is the result of a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
Had the bill not passed, millions of Americans would have seen their paychecks shrink in January due to increased tax withholding. That is the plain and simple truth, and that is why I voted for the bill.
Ping!
This idea that the tax rate reductions are a net cost to the government is a distraction.
The plain truth is that the democRATS who support higher marginal tax rates are attempting to keep the “working classes” working. A few years in the highest income brackets may be enough to sustain an individual for the rest of their lives if the government didn’t confiscate 40% or more of it.
Property taxes are the most equitable taxation in as much as tax rate(s) on a particular designation of property type, such as R-1 (single family residential) are uniform within the county and municipality. Exceptions are made for waterfront and the like. This is a form of wealth tax. Taxes are based on the assessed value.
Income taxes are a tax on the acquisition of wealth. Thus the wealthy use them to keep the newly minted money of the entrepreneur from becoming wealth. IT keeps the vulgar, uncooth working class types from invading those enclaves that they are so fond of like Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard.
Simply put, they cannot stand the competition from the bourgeois.
Too bad he is not in the WH instead of Obama.
He voted for the Obama tax extension with all the additional spending?
In short by raising taxes on the wealthy, the gov still channels all that money their way -- instead of the money getting channeled in ways that enrich the rest of us.
Pure BS, That is just about what the Grassely screw the tax payer will spend in one year.
You wouldn’t know a true conservative if one bit you on the ass.
The guy voted for the tax package which adds 300 billion to the debt.
I am sorry, but you are the one who is mistaken kind sir.
And just HOW does keeping tax rates lower than they were (or would have been again) contribute to the deficit, pray tell? Or is not stealing more of OUR OWN MONEY FROM US somehow a “cost” to government in your mind? If your answer is “yes,” please explain WHY you feel that government should hold title to what is MINE by right, the right of having EARNED it. Why THEY should be able to take MINE, as much as they please, and call it doing me a kindness by letting me keep a LITTLE of my own property...
I look forward to your reply.
Your reply has the unfortunate problem of sounding like either code talk or gibberish. Could you, would you please clarify it so I know what you’re talking about? What’s BS? Who’s Grassely screw the taxpayer? How and on what will he or she spend $60 billion?
Thanks in advance.
“Ron Paul is an impostor, he is a tool of the left who speaks in half truths and makes statements that no true conservative would, while voting for legislation that no constitutionalists would even consider.”
My biggest gripe with RP, I’ve said since before ‘08, is that he does NOT get it about radical Islam and what motivates it. He’s an isolationist who thinks that if we just mind our own business and play nice, the jihadists will go away and leave us alone. He’s a nightmare when it comes to foreign policy and that’s a really big deal (to me at least) in today’s dangerous world. And he’s said in so many words that 9/11 was our fault for having a presence in the middle east.
Maybe you should read the bill that was passed it has around 300 billion of entitlements attached to it.
The tax rates staying the same while spending continues to rise to me is not a bill a true conservative would sign especially when you are seating a new congress in a couple of months.
So I think they should have proposed a tax cut and made them permanent, not keeping them the same for only two years and adding another 13 months to unemployment benefits.
You must be responding to someone else, I am saying that Paul should have not signed this bill because it is more of the same.
B U M P
OK. Now I understand your reply. Thanks for the clarification!
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