Today's headlines included stories that the President has compromised with Republicans to support a bill that maintains the tax rates at current levels, extends long-term unemployment benefits another 13 months, and gives working people a "tax holiday" on 2% of their payroll (Social Security) taxes. Democrats are furious. For some reason, they were looking forward to increasing tax rates for the wealthy back to Clinton-era percentages. Remember Clinton, the president who passed a tax increase retroactively to nine months before?
I really don't understand the class warfare. If you read my prior post, you understand my confusion. Why does America routinely punish the successful? Why is it such a sin that those making a lot of money would pay the same tax rates as those earning a lesser amount? The only complaints I have heard from actual taxpayers is that the rich are always able to find tax loopholes or tax shelters. But the fact remains that if I earn $10K a year, 20% would be $2000; but if Mr. Bigbux earns a million a year, 20% would be $200K. So any way you look at it, he is paying more taxes than me, even if he does find a tax deduction that I didn't find. There is no good reason that he should pay a higher tax rate than anyone else.
This week in my devotional Bible reading, I read about Joseph as Pharoah's right-hand man. You remember in Genesis, Joseph was the second-youngest of the twelve brothers, and his father's favorite. He wore the coat of many colors (inspiring a Broadway musical starring Donny Osmond--but I digress.) Joseph was sold into slavery, bought by Potiphar, falsely accused by Mrs. Potiphar, and thrown into prison. There he became a trusty in the prison, and interpreted dreams, correctly predicting that the cup-bearer would be freed and the baker would be executed. Then Pharoah had a dream, and Joseph was called to interpret it. He foresaw 7 years of plentiful harvests, followed by 7 years of famine. He suggested hoarding up the surplus grain during the first seven years so that there would be enough to survive on during the famine.
What does this have to do with tax policy? I'm getting to the point, I promise. After five years of famine, the people of Egypt came to the government and complained that they didn't have any money left to buy food. They said here, take our houses and lands in exchange for food. With that they survived the sixth year. But after that, they came back to the government with the same complaints, and said that they had nothing left to give but themselves. So they offered themselves to the Governor of Egypt as slaves in exchange for food. Remember that the Governor of Egypt at the time was Joseph. Joseph gave them the food, but he set up a universal taxation throughout the land. All Egyptians were to give 20% of their incomes to the government. And when the rains returned and harvests came, the Egyptian government became more wealthy than any other land.
Today, we Americans have come to the government, hat in hand. We have asked for relief from the Great Recession, and the government has responded by expanding the welfare state. For the next 13 months, the unemployed will get paid for looking for work in their chosen field. I guarantee you that if long-term unemployment ended today, tomorrow the folks would start looking for any available job, instead of holding out for the job they were laid-off from two years ago.
This morning I heard several media-types bemoan the fact that extending the current tax rates to the wealthy (AKA not ending the Bush-era tax cuts) would "cost" the government over $700B. I would like to disagree. The wealthy may hoard their money, or they may invest it in businesses that employ people, so that tax rolls would expand and the government receipts would multiply. But you see, it wouldn't be the rich who were paying the taxes directly, it would be the working folks--and that is what has Democrats in a snit.
Instead of taking the Old Testament method of taxing everyone 20% (look it up--even after Israel became a nation, their base-rate of taxation was the tithe, and along with other fees and required payments, the total collected was about 20%), we have become a nation of feudal serfs. If you don't remember the Middle Ages, I would remind you that the king of each city-state would have knights that paid him about 40% of their earnings. And the knights' earnings came from a protectorate set up to defend the land surrounding the knights' homes. In exchange for this small measure of protection, the serfs would work 4 days out of the week tending to the knight's estate, leaving only 3 days to work their own land.
The problem with this feudal system of economics was that if a king made a treaty with a rival king, he would give away a knight or two, and the serfs who served him. So the serfs were not actually sure who they worked for ultimately; they just knew that in peace-time their crops would not be burned, their villages would not be pillaged, and their families would not be harmed. And they hoped and prayed for peace.
We are in that same situation now, people. We have not heeded the words of Ben Franklin, who said "Those who give up freedom for security often get neither." We have sat back and allowed Big Government to take more and more responsibility for our lives, and as a result demand more and more of our persons and our property. And what do they have to show for it?
This morning I heard on NPR a story of how our tax dollars are going to produce a cop-show television series in Afghanistan. For those of you who don't believe that television influences a society, here are the details. The US Embassy in Kabul is sending money to an Afghan production company, Tolo Television. They have produced a TV series called "Eagle Four", about four Afghan cops who chase bad guys, including terrorists and suicide bombers. Two of the four stars are women; we are trying to open up gender equality in a centuries-old male dominated society. The cops dash after bad guys, like someone who puts on a suicide vest and pinpoints a location on a map. So we are trying to indoctrinate the Afghan people that terrorists are bad, that police are good, and that Law & Order reigns supreme. In fact, it sounds very much like the plot of a Law & Order episode. The reporter for NPR has filed a Freedom Of Information Act request to find out exactly how much money we are spending on this venture, but so far there has been no response. But we know a typical episode of Law&Order costs a few million dollars to produce. You do the math.
And this is why we send our tax dollars to the US Embassy in Kabul?
To those democrats who cry against tax relief for the wealthy, I would say let's reign in this kind of ridiculous spending, and save our $700B that way, and not worry about soaking the rich.
I am afraid that if we continue on our present course, we will go from a feudal system of government to a share-cropper economy. Share croppers were freed slaves who wanted to farm. But they did not own the farm land, or the equipment necessary to farm it. So the Company Store would sell them seed and equipment to farm on land that they did not own. And no matter how much they grew, or how bountiful the harvest was, the Company Store would settle up accounts in such a way that the farmer always ended up owing something. The earnings never quite caught up to the debt. So while the share-croppers were technically free, in reality they were still enslaved by the land-owning Company Store.
If you are not following this, let me spell it out. The US Government is like the Company Store in the era of Reconstruction, right after the Civil War. They give out loans, they let us use their land, but in the end, there is never enough tax revenue to cover the government obligations. We, the Share-Cropper Nation, are going deeper and deeper in debt, and are thereby giving up our freedom, one annual deficit at a time.
While other countries are making sincere efforts to live within their means, the US media terms their efforts as "austerity measures." This makes it sound like they are giving up their fortunes, and deciding to live an "austere" life. If you don't know what that means, Google it. Up to now, "austerity" has been thought of as un-American. Maybe we should change our lifestyles, and find some austerity measures of our own.
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