Working Life

There is so much stupidity in the debate over the phony debt and deficit “crisis”, and its little “sibling, the “fiscal cliff”. Here is one very stupid thing: whether the tax cuts for the very wealthy should be extended. The tax cuts were a bad idea — immoral actually — when they first were proposed by George W. Bush. Which still makes the tax cuts — legalized robbery — a bad idea today.

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This is not entirely surprising, at least if you spend the time to talk to people and show a little courage. People do not mind raising taxes — if it’s done for the right reasons and if the burden is put in the right place. That’s what the 2012 elections showed.

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Cleaning up email, with one eye on big Sandy, I happened to catch this important observation: neither presidential candidates wants to talk about the tens of billions of dollars being sheltered abroad.

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Elections don’t happen in a reality created in one debate, or even one election season. People think about things– emotionally — in ways that reflect being propagandized to over many years. And that brings us to taxes– and a reason Democrats lose elections and, when they win, they often drag us in the same poor policy direction.

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Right after the now-infamous debate (or, exchange of sounds bites), I wrote a bit about the fallacy of the exchange on taxes. Just a quick clean up here to underscore an important point — both candidates support, in one form or another, extending some or all of the Bush tax cuts. And that is sheer lunacy.

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I guess it’s a function of inflation and/or a numbness to reality but the rhetoric about money isn’t what is used to be. Back in the day, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (whose name probably means nothing to the shallow commentators who think political history started with Ronald Reagan) is alleged to have said, ” A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”. Dirksen, who served in the 1950s and 1960s (and probably could never win a Republican primary in today’s wing-nut world), would have been a piker by today’s standards of throwing around figures without regard to reality. Which brings me to the Romney lie about taxes–which the president got right, admittedly, in a clumsy way, but most liberal-progressive pundits are getting wrong.

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This isn’t a stop-the-presses new piece of information to people paying attention — the capital gains tax preferences benefit only the very rich, like Mitt Romney. But, here is a simple way to argue it.

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   Welcome to another edition in the economic philosophy of the Republican Party, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Today, courtesy of the Citizens for Tax Justice, it’s the Herman Cain Robin Hood-in-reverse plan. Courtesy of CTJ: If presidential candidate Herman Cain’s proposed “9-9-9 tax plan” was in effect today, then […]

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   Sure, for humor, I turn to listen to Jon Stewart and Colbert. But, really, if you want the funniest laughs you have to mix in Republican leadership talking points. Seriously. Ah, yes, the "class warfare" inherent in Harry Reid’s proposal to apply a 5 percent surtax on millionaires. Except it isn’t so–not surprisingly–as the […]

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    Sometimes numbers are a bitch. Because they expose ugly truths that we either choose to ignore or don’t understand. We better get this one straight in the next few months or the bi-partisan cuts just shoved down the throats of the American people will pale in comparison to what will come post 2012.    […]

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