Some years ago, a President of the United States came up with what was deemed to be a really good idea: If we cut taxes on someone who is making a lot of money, they will re-invest the money they are saving to create more jobs, better paying jobs, and more taxpayers who will in turn make up for the revenue which was lost in the first place.
It sounded like a reasonable deal, so it was put into practice. What no one mentioned was that the plan was an income redistribution plan. Almost immediately the plan went awry.
Instead of using the money that they saved on taxes as an investment in jobs and prosperity, there were those who decided to use that money as an investment to make even more money for themselves. So the next thing we know, we have money invested into speculative ventures involving stocks, bonds and real estate which really took off and, indeed, made money for those wise enough to invest the tax dollars that they didn't spend into making more money.
In the meantime, us here in the middle were noting that it was becoming harder and harder to stay in the middle. While our incomes remained the same, the power of that income to buy us things like housing and groceries was being slowly diminished over time. Not only that, but the goods we are able to afford are now labeled "Made in China" or "Made in Mexico", sold to us by people who are lectured that they should be damn happy that they have a job in the first place.
So, fast forward a few years and we find ourselves in a position where all of that money that has been saved in taxes which didn't trickle down is needed to pay for several wars and several other bad decisions handed to us by Presidents and Congressmen over the past thirty years or so. Now, we've gotten into this mind set that certain people have the right not to pay taxes, or if they pay taxes they should be granted tax relief or at the very least, not have their taxes raised. Some of the people who are most vociferous about the right not to pay taxes are not now or have ever been in a financial position where they will be touched by some of the recently proposed increased tax rates.
I find that about as insane as the Monty Python bit where Eric Idle was wanting to be a woman just so he could have babies (or at least he wanted to have the right to have babies when it was pointed out to him that he didn't have a womb which was nobody's fault, not even the Romans').
I'm not against making more money, but it would seem to me that if I had the means by way of a tax break to make more money, I would expect to pay a larger portion of that income in taxes because --- big drumroll, here --- I would have more at risk and would need a larger portion of the services offered by the government in order to make even more money. And believe it or not, I would still have enough money to hire more workers to produce more product which would pour even more money into the system.
Such a deal!
Okay, I've strayed a bit from the point... the point being that the Reagan idea of "Trickle-Down Economics" is/was an ideal which has had limited success at best, and has created a breed of greedy folk who have managed somehow to convince "The Great Unwashed" that greed is good. Income redistribution when labeled as lower tax rates for the well-to-do is a good thing. When it's done by way of increased taxation, it somehow becomes a Communist Plot. The same action is going on either way, it's just that as trickle-down, income redistribution just plain doesn't happen.
We've left the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Hopefully someone will figure it out and be in a position to do something about it.
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