The Faux ‘tax reform’
When Corporate tax rates go down from 35% to 20% where does the corporate money saved typically go? First, we need remember that some corporations like Trump Enterprises pay no taxes because of existing loopholes so they gain nothing. Hard to pay less than no taxes. The only salaries which usually are affected are the corporate executives who will probably limit themselves to between a 10-20% increase in salaries which are already in the millions. Then a portion of the saved money will go to increase dividends to their stock holders. The half of Americans who don’t own stocks will not get this dividend income. Since 81% of stock wealth is held by 10 percent of the population, the very wealthy can include this dividend increase as part of their huge tax cut included in the Republican Tax ‘Reform’ . Some of the money corporations save in taxes will go to reduce the cost of goods or services provided. But these goods and services, for the most part, are purchased by the affluent, so this is another way in which the affluent get financially helped. The poorest, with no money to buy anything but essentials, do not get to save anything from ‘bargains’. That new car with a $1000 dollars off means nothing to the poorest.
Several things are rather certain here: None of this huge money being given to the wealthy will ever trickle down to those most in need of financial help. Any jobs created will be at non living wages because that keeps the bottom line down. Few corporations will make any significant changes in employee salaries, pensions, health care, vacation time, or any other benefits. Lincoln made it rather clear back in his day that labor comes before capital and ought to be protected from capitalistic greed. Today labor has little protections at all. Unions are weaker now than any time in the last 100 years. Minimum wages, had they just increased with the cost of living, would be $22/hr. Only families in which both parents work full time can possibly exist today on a minimum wage job. 42% of adults in this country don’t earn enough to even pay federal taxes, so this so called ‘tax reform’ does nothing for the poorest except cut their benefits so that the rich can continue to sequester more and more of our nation’s wealth. While modern medicine can do wonders to keep us living longer and healthier, there is a huge underbelly population who never have access to these wonders of medicine. In many of our urban, rural, or suburban ghettoes most people don’t go to the hospital except maybe to die—which is a somewhat exaggeration, but not much. Freebies in an emergency room don’t exactly get access to many expensive treatments.
This ‘tax reform’ is the cruelest hoax ever foisted on those least able to defend themselves. To pull it off many middle class Americans will get some meaningless tax reductions and these will come at a cost of raising the national debt even further. For people like me, whose income mostly comes from shuffling papers around in sort of an investment poker game, the money coming in keeps growing exponentially, even though I have no real need for more money. My hermit-like existence with no expensive hobbies or expensive addictions (maybe writing and reading and walking, but these cost nothing) enables me to give away each year far more than I spend on myself, and still the money keeps rolling in. My tax rate, after all the deductions is well under 10% while the poor bastard who pushes a wheel barrel around all day pays more than twice the tax rate. I doubt Christ and all the other prophets founding different religions had this sort of thing in mind as an ethical goal.
Of course this societal scam is going on globally, and if the least fortunate are dumb enough to put up with it, well, this just matches the dumbness of the wealthy who think this scam will not implode our society and all their wealth with it. But it will—the wealthy are addicted to money, power, titles, etc. so they cannot ever feel enough wealth is enough. In the past, the wealthy were safely arrogant enough—like what can these less fortunate fools do about it? Just quarantine them off in urban, rural, or suburban ghettoes and let them kill each other off in the depraved environment in which they live in, or are growing up in. In theory every nation is responsible for the varied communities within their borders. But that hasn’t been true in America for a long time now. We just ward these despicables off out of sight and out of mind, and let them figure out a way to lift themselves up by their boot straps.
What the wealthy and affluent, with all the good schools, good teachers, good health care, good job opportunities, sometimes good pensions, and safe neighborhoods, do not understand is that the less fortunate across the globe now have a weapon of mass destruction themselves—it’s called terrorism and is quickly becoming some sort of national sport everywhere. It is no shock anymore to pick up the paper——oops, that’s kind of rare anymore—or go on the internet and see terrorism occurring somewhere almost every day now. When society implodes the ‘have nots’ always win—with nothing to lose—while the have nots have all their property to protect. Eventually, not so distant now, riots will be roving riots controlled by gadgets which coordinate which community riots when and for how long.
No country yet in which this sort of thing begins to happen, has been able to right itself. Almost every nation we have invaded the last fifty years and turned their country into rubble has ended up with thugs controlling neighborhoods until new thugs take over, and the process repeats itself in a positive feedback process. Anybody care to live in these ‘freed’ nations we once invaded like Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Syria, Haiti, and a whole slew of South American and African countries? Freedom for our victims is simply the freedom of nothing left to lose. When we say this kind of implosion cannot happen in America we just increase our level of stupidity. At a time when terrorism is growing exponentially we make it legal for all citizens to carry weapons of mass destruction. Can anyone imagine what our civil war would have been like if most of our citizens personally had weapons of mass destruction? Does anyone seriously think our country now with three huge minority populations of blacks, hispanics, and whites, with no group having a clear cut majority anymore, and a President who is energetically baiting each group to blame their economic situation on the other—that another civil war is not quite likely to happen? And this time it will not be uniformed troops on a battlefield, but roving bands of terrorists fighting the same kinds of battles we see being fought in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Columbia, Brazil, and so on. It is no longer like in the past, where one army wins, and the other army loses, and peace comes at last. No one wins in modern day societal implosions. Thugs rule the streets until new thugs take over and they rule until new thugs take over and no one’s life is worth much and often doesn’t last all that long. Remember when we thought that if we had enough bombs and military bases that no country or population would ever dare interfere with our helping hand?
With an empire of military bases too expensive to maintain, and widespread neglect for the less fortunate in our own country, our national implosion will come from within, unless of course the emotionally disturbed Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump become emotionally unhinged and start heaving nuclear bombs around. Maybe that is our choice: nuclear holocaust or societal implosion with domestic terrorism. Well, not to be morbid, but I have my helium tank ready. Always be prepared. After all, we all die and the trick is to do so painlessly. Those who die young are a tragedy. When the old die, whether it be today, next week, next few years—is nit picking—it is not tragedy. The very act of being born sort of guarantees death will follow, sooner or later. Now that is realism.
