Monday, February 02, 2009
Regarding holy grails
This is the silliest lede I've read, well, all month:
It's the holy grail of Washington politics: a federal budget that generates ample funds through a simpler and fairer tax code, defuses the spending time bomb for health and retirement programs, and supports the nation's economy during the worst downturn in generations.
Ridiculous. That is the holy grail of taxpayers. The holy grail for most of Congress is to dupe taxpayers into believing that our leaders care about these things, and the Washington Post seems delighted to go along.
One does not have to be more than triflingly cynical to know that very few politicians actually want a "simple and fair" tax code, because only through complexity and unfairness can they dispense rifle-shot favors to constituents and other worthies. More to the point, the party in power has never evinced an interest in "diffusing the spending time bomb" for entitlements. Usually, its Congressional leaders deny that there is one or concoct some accounting legerdemain to "prove" that the problem is now solved.
We have enough problems out here in the real world without the capital city's newspaper pretending that these clowns are sincere, especially under the absurd headline "Democrats Set High Goal Of Sweeping Fiscal Reform." They run the place. A simple and fair tax code is absolutely within their grasp, but they will not enact it because very few of them, in fact, would know what to do with themselves once the job was accomplished.
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Feb 02, 08:16:00 AM:
Spot on.
In addition to the tax code, we have been asking them to enforce the immigration laws for decades. They run their "Culture of Corruption" and ignore the laws they want to ignore.
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 08:24:00 AM:
What is this "simple and fair" tax, Tigerhawk? The fair one that treats poverty like a lightswitch, either on or off?
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 08:31:00 AM:
The graphic that runs with it is worth a bit of derision too. Somehow the headline ended up as the footnote, and the footnote ended up as the headline.
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 08:35:00 AM:
The post was about Congress' motivations to investigate and enact a fair tax code, Anon, not just what that code may consist of.
That would be another discussion. Maybe you could start it on your blog.
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 08:37:00 AM:
Game theory would predict this. The parties compete to win big blocks of voters using bribes paid for by the rest of us.
The ante's been raised with Bush's trillion dollar prescription drug payoff to the Greatest Generation, and now Obama's trillion dollar payoff to key elements of his coalition. Only the US federal government can piss away a trillion.
To top it off, Obama nominates tax cheats.
I fear that Obama-Axelrod plan to use looming deficits to advance their vision of socialist equality. Watch the upper limits on social security / medicare disappear. As deficits continue, their definition of rich will move down from $250,000 to $150,000 and then to $75,000. Without limits on entitlement taxation, effective federal tax rates will go over 50%. Don't forget that 401Ks are subject to tax when the money comes out. Look for those rates to go up. We'll all be "equal pigs", except for the truly wealthy and the connected.
Link
By 
TigerHawk, at
Mon Feb 02, 08:45:00 AM:
What is this "simple and fair" tax, Tigerhawk? The fair one that treats poverty like a lightswitch, either on or off?
Poverty and taxation have little to do with each other, since poor people pay very few taxes on income, wages, or property (although they obviously pay sales taxes, other consumption taxes, and bear the burden of indirect taxes that are passed on to them, such as corporate income taxes). Anyway, I wrote a post on tax reform about four years ago, and while I would do a couple of things differently now (such as extend the Social Security retirement age even more) I think it holds up pretty well.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Feb 02, 08:50:00 AM:
Let me elaborate on the first sentence of my last comment. Taxation can cause poverty by crushing economic activity, and to the extent that changes in tax policy motivate more economic activity they will lift some people out of poverty. My point, though, is that current discussions about federal tax policy in the United States really do not touch on the problems of poor people, because we have largely spared them from having to pay federal taxes. Indeed, the bottom half pays virtually no federal income tax. If they work, their main tax burden, and it is significant, is the payroll tax, but that was kludged up by the Democrats who wanted to promote the myth that Social Security was a "pension" rather than a welfare program.
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Feb 02, 09:35:00 AM:
Actually I thought due to the Earned Income Tax Credit, the lower half of income earners actually had a *negative* rate of taxation, even counting payroll taxes.
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 09:47:00 AM:
Somewhere in my fathers effects is a letter from the Federal Government saying that the income tax would never go above 2%.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Feb 02, 09:50:00 AM:
Tyree, if you can dig that up and send me a scan or photo of it, I guarantee it will make for an amusing post with links from all over...
By Viking Kaj, at
Mon Feb 02, 12:21:00 PM:
Anybody else notice that the two most important appointments in the cabinet went to Illinois cronies of the Daley machine?
Ray "Da Hood" LaHood and Arne "Center Forward" Duncan.
Rahm Emanuel also has a special interest in how the 800 billion in infrastructure "improvements" are spent, because this is where all the "pay for play" action is going to be.
Tax code schmax code. We are being fleeced by the Illinois machine and nobody is paying attention.
But wait until the bill comes home to roost. When we have to start paying interest on all the borrowed money you can bet taxes will go up.
I'm thinking about printing a bumper sticker:
Save the Country: Kill a Lobbyist!
Anybody else in?
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 12:22:00 PM:
The liberal demacratic tax code 1% for the public 99% for them
By Viking Kaj, at
Mon Feb 02, 01:11:00 PM:
By the way, has anybody else noticed that Bill Cellini, the president of the Illinois State Asphalt Paving Association, is Ray LaHood's political mentor?
By Viking Kaj, at
Mon Feb 02, 01:13:00 PM:
By the way, has anybody else noticed that Bill Cellini was indicted with Rezko?
By Viking Kaj, at
Mon Feb 02, 01:16:00 PM:
"Simple and Fair" to the Chicago machine means we all pay taxes and they don't. Look at the cabinet. I predect more condos built by the Outfit next to their casino in
Aruba will soon be offered at "bargain" prices to cabinet members.
What's the tax rate in Aruba, anyway?
By , at
Mon Feb 02, 11:12:00 PM:
"One does not have to be more than triflingly cynical to know that very few politicians actually want a "simple and fair" tax code, because only through complexity and unfairness can they dispense rifle-shot favors to constituents and other worthies"
Tigerhawk: re "rifle-shot favors" -- Where did you learn to write so well? (And don't say Princeton.)
