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3 Things Conservatives Hope America Never Learns About Taxes
Intellectual Republicans (oxymoron yet?) are still clinging to the idea that we can’t tax the rich because of job creation, but even they must see that since we haven’t been taxing the rich and they aren’t creating jobs, this talking point is slowly choking on its own failure.
Thus they hop over to the argument that economic growth happens when you stimulate the economy by cutting taxes because then there will be more revenues because companies are more successful.
Obviously, this is not true, at least during a recession, or we wouldn’t be in this mess. And as Chris Hayes pointed out this weekend, where would we end the tax cuts? This is what I call the Republican tax cut cliff. There’s nowhere to go for them but to pull a Thelma and Louise and go all in, and hope that driving off that cliff will result in a miracle of suspension. Those of us who still believe in gravity know better.
The current Republican argument is that the top 2% should be able to get 93% of the income growth while still enjoying a tax sale. They want to continue to shift the burden of revenue to the poor and middle class, if their actual policies tell us anything.
The issue is that, as Republicans kept telling us when they drove our credit rating down, we have a deficit and we need revenue. The deficit is largely their fault, with federal spending under Obama at its lowest pace in 60 years.
Bush’s two unfunded wars were left off of the budget until Obama took office. Combine his wars with the Bush tax cuts and then the Bush economy that we are still staving off, it’s clear that we need to generate revenue. A real fiscal conservative would not balk at paying their bills. It is only this current crop of corporate tools who will say anything to justify not paying their own bills. They demand that the 98% take responsibility for policies they had no part in enacting (for example, war costs a lot more than “entitlement programs” and war enriches certain members of Congress and their federal contractor friends), while the 2% get a forever free ride.
After three years of Republican obstruction, Republicans refusing to pass one jobs bill save at the last moment the Veterans Jobs Bill, holding the country’s credit rating hostage over a deficit that they then refused to participate in addressing by making any cuts on their side and instead spending all of our money passing social legislation aimed at taking resources and rights away from labor, minorities and women (also often known as the middle class), it would be foolish to pretend we don’t know what the current Republican Party stands for. They’ve told us in their actions what they stand for, and it’s not the middle class or jobs or fair tax structures.
Another talking point of outraged Republicans is that all businesses are small businesses. This is supposed to mom and pop those mean corporate entities that get subsidies from all of us while making record profits. The federal government actually has a definition of small business, and no, big oil and big pharma and News Corp don’t fit into it. Not everyone needs a tax break.
Sadly for these conservatives, I am not coming at this from the point of view they assume I am. I have run a million dollar small business, and I have run several businesses that made much less than a million dollars a year.
What I’ve learned is that if you are not rich, you are paying a lot in taxes. If you are rich, you have a lot of ways to move your money around and use legal loopholes and tax shelters to avoid paying your fair share.
This means that the tax rate is almost irrelevant, because the top 2% rarely pay their tax rate, and even when they do, the tax laws are so friendly for the rich that they are getting a break on their house, cars, jets, vacations (used to offset income or profit), and investment income which is taxed at 15% instead of the 30% or so that a line worker at GM pays.
While most workers have taxes deducted from their paycheck, a business owner pays taxes to the government directly, writing a check every quarter. No matter who you are, this is a painful experience one can soon learn to resent, feeling as if you earned it and it should be yours to keep. But in reality, so do the workers with a paycheck earn their money and they are just as entitled to want to keep their money and want a tax cut, if not more since they are often paying more percentage wise in effective tax rates.
I have some friends who run in circles with the very wealthy and I know how they legally stash money away and play duck and dodge with Uncle Sam. These kinds of tricks aren’t available to most Americans, and that isn’t right. I like those folks; I’m friends with some of them, but it still isn’t right. Try as the Right might to paint this as class warfare and hatred of the rich, that’s not reality.
Spin those talking points around, and you have the truth. The current tax laws show a disdain for the working class, a structure created for the privileged — to keep them up and keep the little people down.
How can it be right? It’s not right, and any argument made for it is based on the truth that those in power are the top 2% or they are funded by the top 2%, so they will make policy that benefits those people. It’s a rare leader who makes policy for the people.
The whining you hear about taxing the rich is akin to a two year old who doesn’t want to share his toys. For the rich, it means the difference between feeling free to not think about money at all and having to think about money. Whereas for most Americans, it means the difference between dipping into their savings or going into debt. That’s what the 2% don’t get.
They don’t get it because it is not their reality. Just as Mitt Romney thought that a $19,000 a year job was a good middle class job, the very rich simply don’t understand the math of middle class America. They don’t understand living paycheck to paycheck. Their worries are more like, ‘Gee, in a year that balloon payment of $5 million is due on that land I bought… I hope I don’t get slammed with taxes on the sales.’ Commence bitching about taxes because they took the “risk”.
What about the middle class, who work hard for those rich people? Do they not get a seat at the table? Are they not a part of that creation of wealth? Do they not create demand with their purchases? Is their work worth less than another’s simply because it pays less, and therefore they should be punished through policy for being a worker instead of a risk taker? (I could argue that working for one of the 2% is a risk these days, but that’s another article.)
It’s absurd to think we can have a democratic society based in the notion of liberty for all buttressed by the foundation that only the top 2% count. It is possible, for we saw it recently under Clinton, to have a society where the middle class thrives and the top 2% make good money. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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10 Responses to 3 Things Conservatives Hope America Never Learns About Taxes
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Kevin Shinn
Jul. 10th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
I recall when America was fundamentally transformed.
It was in 1981, and it took a shooter named John Hinckley to cow Tip’O'Neill’s House majority into allowing it.
Kevin Shinn
Jul. 12th, 2012 at 10:03 am
“We’ve had it backwards for the last thirty years”:
American entrepreneur, Nick Hanauer, dismantles the GOP talking point that raising taxes on the top 1% negatively impacts job creation.
theimmoralminority.blogsp...
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain
novenator
Jul. 10th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Excellent post. Conservatives perpetually lie, cheat, and steal. It’s no wonder they want people to stay ignorant!
Bob Wagner
Jul. 10th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
If you are going to headline an article about 3 Things that Teabagging Republiturds do NOT want you to know, remember
1. A short, bullet list, with very simplified, easy to remember statements of each thing at the top.
2. If you want to explain it, do so AFTER the entire bullet list.
3. Liberals and those horrible intellectuals will spend HOURS reading the diatribes of the pontificating expert, and I’ve been known to do that ON OCCASION. However, I can’t spend my entire life reading every nuance of a subject, get to the end and not remember a damn thing about the bullet list if opened the article for in the first place.
I read articles for my own education, I do not get paid to read this. But as a person that will occasionally explain the BULLSHIT found on the talking head shows and the radio bullshit bullhorn shows, it takes simple, easy to remember AND easy to RECALL, even if by accident, for anyone that has been so deeply hypnotized by the right wing insanity.
That is the only reason that the Teabagging Republiturd messaging system works so well for them.
Republiturds – Use Simple to Repeat Talking Points that can be screamed from the toilet during a birthing session.
Those Liberal Intellectuals – Will bore the hell out of you with a history of the political system to just say –
“People without jobs do not buy anything!”
“When people do not buy anything, Companies FIRE PEOPLE!”
“Cutting taxes does not create jobs.”
“Republiturds have not created any JOBS with their tax cuts.” – you can follow this one with “Show me ONE!”
Keep it simple. Sorry, but it just irritated me when I read some of these articles trying to glean some knowledge that can be easily translated for the short term memory of the average tooth library visitor. And why is America trying to look like the UK, with absolutely NOTHING being done to help with dental care!?
Tom Shale
Jul. 10th, 2012 at 11:47 pm
Please – stop with the same old blame “Bush” talking points. Your points are disingenuous at best because you patently lie in your statement that federal spending has slowed more under Obama than the past 60 years. That is a complete lie.
While I try to see both sides of discussions and I consider myself a small-business owning progressive, this false rhetoric is not going to help us in November. We have to face that we (as the right did for so many years) were sold a bill of goods by our president and he did NOTHING in the first two years whilst we HAD the full majority of Congress to further our social causes.
I feel lied to, and while I’d never pull the lever for Romney the overall outlook for our nation, with a do-nothing president (who blames one house of congress for his woes – we still own the senate) things will just get worse.
Jeff R
Jul. 11th, 2012 at 4:10 am
Mr. Shale – As you must well know, Obama had a majority in both houses, but only technically. He (and WE) did not have either the good will or the honest cooperation of Senate Republicans, who told us forthrightly that “the most important thing” was making Obama a one-term president (they were honest, on this point alone, about their priorities) They lied, they lied, and they lied. They negotiated, repeatedly made agreements, and repeatedly broke those agreements. Then they opposed bills they had co-sponsored and filibustered bills for which they had agreed to vote.
Finally, it is not a “complete lie that federal spending has slowed more under Obama than the past 60 years.” It is not a lie at all. Measured in dollars the Federal Budget has grown a lot, but it is an unimpeachable fact that as a percentage under Obama the Federal Budget has grown at or nearly at the slowest pace in 60 years. Please visit that famously socialist publication Forbes Magazine for the details (www.forbes.com/sites/rick...).
It is, of course, possible to look at the data another way and FactChecker.org has done so and arrived at a growth figure of 3.3%, which makes Obama’s budget growth not first, but second, behind Clinton’s 3.2%
Ken
Jul. 11th, 2012 at 8:42 am
I disagree on your comment about the years Obama had with the majority of Congress. for the lack of progress on most issues, from stimulus, health care, jobs, etc., the filibuster is to blame. Harry Reid was and still is naive. He should have cancelled filibuster rules for the Senate from day one, but he had no idea that the republicans would become total obstructions. Same can be said of Obama. But this is the first time I can remember when one party stopped virtually everything of importance. Now Reid laments his misjudgment and Obama has finally learned you can not negotiate with terrorists. I hope Reid gets a chance to redeem himself in the next congress.
And, the spending under Obama is the lowest in over 60 years. It is just at the high level set by Bush in his last year, and Obama added the Bush wars to the budget. Bush just used off-budget supplemental bills to get his money that never landed on the budget. Obama’s budget deficit is around 900B for 2013. Bush’s last year, 2009, was over $1.4B.
Ken
Jul. 11th, 2012 at 8:47 am
I disagree on your comment about the years Obama had with the majority of Congress. We had filibuster proof Senate only for about two months in 2009. As for the lack of progress on most issues, from stimulus, health care, jobs, etc., the filibuster is to blame. Harry Reid was and still is naive. He should have cancelled filibuster rules for the Senate from day one, but he had no idea that the republicans would become total obstructions. Same can be said of Obama. But this is the first time I can remember when one party stopped virtually everything of importance. Now Reid laments his misjudgment and Obama has finally learned you can not negotiate with terrorists. I hope Reid gets a chance to redeem himself in the next congress.
And, the spending under Obama is the lowest in over 60 years. It is just at the high level set by Bush in his last year, and Obama added the Bush wars to the budget. Bush just used off-budget supplemental bills to get his money that never landed on the budget. Obama’s budget deficit is around 900B for 2013. Bush’s last year, 2009, was over $1.4T.
GeneralLerong
Jul. 11th, 2012 at 12:16 am
Thanks, Sarah. Some of us actually like to read something meaty, not a bullet-pointed outline. We can make our own bullet points afterward, we know how.
As for bumper-sticker takeaways, if that’s the level of your brainpower, another bumper sticker isn’t going to change your mind about anything. You’re seeking validation, not information.
Pepper17
Jul. 11th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
I like the bullet point suggestion to start off an article, followed by in-depth analysis of each item.