Now That Healthcare is "Fixed" (hah!)

As that fiasco plays out this week, the emphasis has turned to "now that we have health care fixed, let's move on to tax reform".  Paul Ryan went so far as to say,

"Transformational tax reform can be done, and we are moving forward,"

Now, personally, I never met a tax cut I didn't like.  The tax system is horribly broken in this country and broad cuts and reductions across the board sound great.   As Ryan also said,

"We are actually unique in the world in the way we discourage capital from coming back to America and how we incentivize off-shoring jobs," ... "This is not the kind of exceptionalism we should aspire to ..." 

There is a genuine problem in America: most people are getting poorer.  Wages have been in stagnation for nearly 50 years while prices have continued to climb.  The statistics the government reports to tell us how wonderful everything is in the country consistently lie about the cost of living.  Their hedonic adjustments tell you that even though the car you want to buy says $33,000 on the sales papers, it really is the same cost as the $19,000 car you bought in 1997.  The new car is technically superior to the 1997 car, so it's really cheaper.  If all you have is the money to pay for the $19,000 car, well then, the government says "sucks to be you".  Not really.  They don't acknowledge your problem at all.

Idiots like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren look at this rampant screwing of the people by the big government and central bankers and think the answer is to make the government bigger and never, ever mention the role of the trillions of dollars of assets the Federal Reserve created.  

The unfortunate reality is that there is no tax reform on the horizon that will make them richer.   Most people aren't poor because the feds take too much of their money; they're poor because the feds have gummed up and distorted the economy so badly.  Hobbled by regulations, fake money from the putrid, execrable central banks, and the crony deals that enrich the few insiders, the Fed.gov can’t deliver the jobs and incomes people need.

Earlier this year, House Stupid Party members said they were going to strive for a tax return you could do in the space of postcard - then they overcomplicated that by keeping popular deductions.  That's not how you do it.

You want "transformational change"?  Throw out every page of the tax code.  Everyone pays a flat percentage.  I don't like throwing around numbers for what it should be because (1) I don't know, and (2) things will change so much, so fast, that any number you start out with will need to be changed.  I've heard 17%.  I've heard 10%.  So let's pretend 15% is the answer.  Maybe three or four questions on a tax return.  

A simple flat tax will never happen.  It would shutter the entire tax preparation industry - there's about a $12 Billion industry there just for the franchises.  No more H&R Block, no more tax lawyers, or accountants.  Everybody pays the same percentage.  The rich will pay the vast lion's share, like they do now, and the poor will pay a pittance, like they do now.   David Stockman, who of course was Reagan's budget chief, said,

The income tax has been slashed so many times since 1981 that it’s no longer a broad based societal tax; it’s a kind of luxury tax on upper income salary earners and the small share of households which garner most of the capital income from dividends, interest payments and capital gains…

Stockman went on to point out that 60% of tax filers accounted for 5% of tax revenue.  In addition, 35% of tax filers – more than 52 million filers at the bottom and middle of the income ladder – didn’t pay a single dime of taxes after deductions, exemptions and credits.

And that kind of reform just ain't gonna happen.  The "Deep State" loves a complex tax code.  The insiders hide little treats for themselves and their friends in it.  They use it to control the "little people".  The stupid politicians who call themselves "voice for the poor" would scream that the rich aren't paying enough.  Perhaps worst of all, there's no public outcry calling for that kind of reform.

If you want to dream of REAL reform, Make the Dollar Great Again.  Or, at least, Make the Dollar Real Again. Tie the dollar to gold again, fire everyone at the Fed and fire all the dictators central economic planners.  Do we legally need to have a Federal Reserve?  Reduce it to one guy running the "gold window" that Nixon closed in 1971: selling gold coins for dollars.  Or maybe that becomes the Treasury office that sells gold coins now.