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Taxes: The Brazenness of the Lies

Old_JoeOld_Joe
in Off-Topic
An opinion piece in which the utter deceit and financial pornography of the proposed tax plan is evaluated and discussed in detail. With facts! And charts! In color!

Rated RT: Content warning- Ted will not appreciate this.

Lie #1: America is the most highly-taxed country in the world
Lie #2: The estate tax is destroying farmers and truckers
Lie #3: Taxation of pass-through entities is a burden on small business
Lie #4: Cutting profits taxes really benefits workers
Lie #5: Repatriating overseas profits will create jobs
Lie #6: This is not a tax cut for the rich
Lie #7: It’s a big tax cut for the middle class
Lie #8: It won’t increase the deficit
Lie #9: Cutting taxes will jump-start rapid growth
Lie #10: Tax cuts will pay for themselves

Comments

  • msf
    I'm on the GOP email list, where I get various "surveys" to fill out. (The Democrats have similar "surveys".)

    Re Lie #6
    One of the questions was whether there should be tax cuts for the middle class rather than for the wealthy. My response (the form allowed "other" write-in responses) was how about a revenue neutral tax cut instead - if you want to give a tax cut to the middle class, how about paying for it by increasing taxes on the wealthy?

    I thought the GOP was against tax cuts that weren't revenue neutral - or was that the old GOP?
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    >> if you want to give a tax cut to the middle class, how about paying for it by increasing taxes on the wealthy?

    you are in big trouble now
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    The substance is worse than just the lies:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-led-congress-is-on-a-ruinous-course/2017/10/17/2d1428d4-b27b-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html
  • LewisBraham
    edited October 2017
    Both excellent articles. Getting rid of the estate tax always seemed extraordinarily stupid to me and antithetical to everything Democrats and Republicans ostensibly believe in. The American myth of the self-made individual who pulls himself up by his bootstraps will be replaced by trust fund kids who will be rich in perpetuity. It will create entrenched wealth and power no different really from the feudal aristocracy in old Europe. We already have that to a large degree. Two of our last three presidents were trust fund kids.

    Moreover, there is a hypocrisy to the idea in an individualistic country that one should inherit everything from one's parents--be they sins or blessings. You can't inherit your mother and father's credit card debt if it exceeds their assets. You can't inherit someone's criminal record like in the bible or the Indian caste system here. Why should children who did no work at all inherit billions tax free? What did they do for that wealth other than be born? And how would ensuring they do receive the billions incentivize them to work hard and help grow the economy? In actuality, massive inheritance encourages indolence in the heirs. Looking at the history of the European aristocracy isn't particularly inspiring for the espoused benefits of getting rid of the death tax.

    Then there is the simple fact that as it currently stands the estate tax affects only 0.2% of the population--virtually no one but those in government seeking to eliminate it.
  • CrashCrash
    @LewisBraham: Ding! And along the same lines, here is Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) just making sense. (And it's been a very long time since I have credited any member of the Repugnant Party with making ANY sense.) I'm about half-finished with the book.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanishing_American_Adult
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    edited October 2017
    The past-facing nostalgic Sasse feels and thinks and espouses all the right decent values, without question, but he's a weakling and wimp thus far politically, master of false equivalence re the candidates, factually wrong praising us supposedly more-responsible elders, and passive and eye-averting on racism and sexism. If he rails further against toxic hyperindividualism, more power to him, but it remains to be seen whether he ever really steps up, and boy is the clock ticking.
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    and the math:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/17/lawrence-summers-trumps-top-economists-tax-analysis-isnt-just-wrong-its-dishonest
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    and the Laff-able history:

    https://newrepublic.com/article/145331/art-laffer-intellectual-rot-republican-party
  • PRESSmUPPRESSmUP
    If you're running out of adjectives or words to describe our current environment, this might help:

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/polite-words-for-impolite-people/smatchet
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