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She’s Coming For The Millions You Don’t Have
Admittedly, I don't have a lot of patience for the tax debate in America.
Maybe I should say I don't have a lot of patience for the debate as it plays out online and across social media.
The number of Americans who purport to be aggrieved at the prospect of higher taxes for corporations, high-earners and the rich is wildly disproportionate to the number of people who should care, where "should" means you own lots of stocks, earn lots of money and/or control lots of wealth.
That discrepancy's
We know trickle down is very limited effect. The spending impulse from a tax increase is not figured into the math. S&P profits may increase to some degree.
It irks me that the very wealthy do not pay for the armed forces that protect their wealth.
Old Orange Hair is a perfect example.
I’m more anti-M&A rather than anti-tax. Having been through many RIF (reduction-in-force events) either as a layoffee or “survivor”, I have no sympathy for corporations that claim to need cost-cutting.
Corporations want to cut costs because it’s by far the easiest way to increase profits in the short run. It just occurred to me that C-Suite guys (most guys) are the bombardiers of the corporate world. They don’t have to see their victims die while they collect the spoils of their actions. Anyone ever met a nice cost cutter?
Plus the c-suite is usually the last ones to get fired, and even when they do, they walk away with hefty pay days. I’ll never understand the logic of golden parachutes. Why would you reward someone with a massive pay day when you are firing them for doing a poor job?
b/c shareholders aren’t really the practical owners of the company – and if the CEO fights you, it can take a long while to get the Board he/she populated to fire him/her. A big fat wad of cash can help smooth that out.
Enjoyed this. You made me laugh. One thing that’s not often mentioned (or not enough really) is that half of stocks are owned by non-Americans. So a good portion of any corporate tax cut automatically goes to non-citizens or foreign entities.
Even if I was in the demographic these tax policies would impact (I’m not and probably never will be), I’d like to think I’d be supportive of the proposals.
I have one relative that’s in the 9 digit level of wealth and despite giving their money away generously, I would imagine they’d resist this if only because it takes away control over how they give.
Bravo. It also irks me that there’s rarely talk of corporate ‘welfare’ and corporate socialism in the tax debate, too. A glaring example from just over a week ago, a la the NY Times, about dam removal in Oregon:
“After more than 20 years of advocacy from the tribes, federal regulators in 2022 approved an agreement to demolish four dams on the Klamath. The dams were providing less than 2 percent of the energy portfolio of their current owner, PacifiCorp — a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy — and the company would have had to pay more to upgrade them to modern-day standards than to take them down. The $500 million cost of the demolition project has been split between California taxpayers and surcharges paid by PacifiCorp customers in Oregon.”
So, the owner of the dams…. you know, the company with a $275 BILLION cash pile, wasn’t made to pay the $500 million to remove the dams, which would have been less than upgrading them and were past their usefulness anyway??!? But worse, the people of Cal and Oregon did pay for it.
A few thoughts.
Tariffs are a tax on the poor, since most wealthy do not shop in chinese import shops such as dollar general or walmart. Therefore net result of Orange tax policies is further dividing than you indicate.
I wonder how many of the ‘multitudes of online commenters’ regarding tax policies are not foreign bots trying to affect election outcomes. Not a comment about your pages.
Raising tariffs (tax on the poor) to create a sovereign wealth fund (likely administered by a person with last name Trump or Kushner) would be a transfer of wealth and power from the poor to the crown.