Monday, September 27, 2021

You Keep Using That Word...

Everybody can complete the Princess Bride meme, right?  "But I don't think it means what you think it means."  

In this case, it's the Evil Party line that their so-called $3.5 trillion spending plan (people who have analyzed it say it's more like $5 trillion) will really cost zero dollars.

(From Forbes on Twitter)

As if to underline for emphasis, the president tweeted the claim that “My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars”  by saying, 

Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.

And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.

Sorry, pudding-for-brains, but the term for paying for programs by taxing everyone is "revenue neutral" not "costs zero dollars."  Have you been listening to those Modern Monetary Theory idiots again? 

Of course, when they start a propaganda campaign, they push the same message everywhere possible, and within a little while Congress Critter Pramila Jayapal said that “This is a zero-dollar bill because it's all going to be paid for with taxes on the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals.”  Brad Polumbo from FEE responded this way

I would just add that what they're saying about only the most wealthy people paying for these programs is proven to be impossible.  When they tax corporations, those taxes will paid by two groups of people: (1) the people who buy their products and (2) the employees.  This has been studied literally more times than I can count.  Corporations don't have any revenues except for what they sell.  They can cover the expected tax expense by either adding that expense to the cost of their products or by cutting expenses in the company.  This has been shown to usually result in lower pay and benefits for employees.  In other words, corporations don't pay tax, they collect tax and send it in.    

As for taxing the wealthiest, I've written volumes on this but it comes down to a couple of things.  Most importantly, this bill is going to cost $3.5 trillion and if they confiscated, not taxed, the entire net worth of the 20 richest billionaires in America, they'd get $ 1.077 trillion.  There's not enough billionaires below that number to add up to what they need.

Like I say, over the years I've written not just inches of text on this subject, but yards of text.  One of my favorite ideas to show how absurd the socialists are was to point out that they view the rich as Scrooge McDuck swimming in his pool of gold coins.  It's a cartoon, OK?  There are no pools of gold coins.  The vast majority of the wealth of these people is in properties they own, like Jeff Bezos' Amazon stock or Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook stock, and I'm sure their advisors have diversified them, like Bill Gates advisors have by buying up land.  All of these are things that would collapse in value if they flooded the market with it to sell in order to pay a new tax bill. 

Years ago, 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…

The only conclusion that stands up to reason is that if they really want to pass something this big that's revenue neutral, the taxes have to extend all the way down the income ladder.  Yes, they'll get more tax money from the wealthy, just like they do now.  I haven't seen any accurate numbers on this for a while, but a few years ago, I pointed out things like the lowest 50% of incomes pay 3% of all tax revenue, and the top 3% of U.S. taxpayers paid practically 90% of all taxes.  The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).  The numbers of taxpayers paying most of the income tax become shockingly small. The top 0.1% of income tax payers, who paid more than the bottom 70% of the population combined, is just 1409 taxpayers.  Those 1409 people paid more than 98.7 million other taxpayers. 

If you know people who think that taxing corporations is a good idea, remind them they'll be paying those taxes themselves.  At the (probably) bogus $3.5 trillion cost, that works out to $24,000 per taxpayer.  If it's really the $5 trillion analyzed that bumps it up to $38,000 per taxpayer.  Like all tax and spend programs, it's going to hurt everyone, and some will be hurt more than others.  



15 comments:

  1. The original income tax was also 'just on the wealthy', and we see how that turned out.
    Frank

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    1. Actually, I believe the original income tax was written to only tax federal employees. No one else, rich or poor. I think that lasted just until the ink dried on the document.

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  2. Folks, NEVER forget that this is being pushed by the same group that not too long ago claimed that we could spend our way out of debt...........

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  3. The entire game economy of New World is built on New World Coins.

    Attached link: https://www.iggm.com/new-world-coins

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  4. To be fair, if the $3.5T budget, which the Dems acknowledge will actually cost over $5T, passes, then the value of a dollar will be Zero. As in, we're done. Gone. A failed empire waiting for the vermin to finish off our bloated rotted corpse.

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    1. That is the intent, Beans. There are so many low info/ignorant and unintelligent members of Congress - and we won't discuss which caucuses - who aren't aware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, but the elite scum currently moving Biden's lips and tongue (no, Obama isn't that smart, either) are well aware of it, and see this as their last chance to crash our economic system and change us to their version of communism. They don't want to risk Trump - or even someone similar - somehow regaining control of the government and squashing their desperate attempt to force us into servitude. The 2016 election both terrified (and, consequently) enraged the Left, and they will do _anything_, including causing hyper-inflation, to keep control.

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  5. We face a government shutdown.
    Who will protect our southern border?
    Maybe the State Department won't be able to stop private rescue of citizens in Afghanistan.
    Maybe they won't be able to afford more IRS agents to monitor our bank accounts.
    The Horror!

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  6. hows that song go? boom boom out go the lights..

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  7. A. Corporations don't pay taxes. Their customers do.
    B. Redistribution is theft no matter who does it.
    C. The end user always pays.
    Too simple to grasp?

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    1. Apparently.

      "It's the lure of easy money, it's got a very strong appeal." Glenn Frey, "Smuggler's Blues"

      "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy..." Winston Churchill

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  8. The sign language lady is telling the _deaf_ the truth. She's is saying "He's full of it right up to here" with her right hand, and "He's just jerking you off" with her left hand.

    It's a good thing the scum running Biden don't know sign ASL.

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  9. If the cost is $0, why raise the debt limit?

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  10. This is the kind of fiscal insanity you get when you allow people who failed BASIC MATH to hold office.

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  11. "$38,000 per person"?

    As if.

    Now plug in the inflation that will cause, times forever.

    Then the cost of everything going tits up, all at once.

    This is going to cost the average taxpayer everything he has.
    Just not all on the first day after it passes.

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