I stole a lot of this from the back page of last week’s Time Magazine, Joel Stein’s Tax and Spend column. Which is funny enough to go read your own self.
So the GOP has managed to once again get the majority of Americans to believe the fantasy that if we extend the tax cuts to those making over $250,000 a year, they will use that money to create jobs rather than for just another historic spat of peeing down on us. How will this create jobs? Are they going to go down to the ghetto and find some unemployed black teenager to make their personal assistant? Or hire an illegal immigrant to clean their toilets?
Okay, here are the facts which are far too complicated for most Americans to absorb. Democrats of course know that once you start using math, big words and explanations that it cuts into Facebook and Dancing with the Stars time. That only works in more civilized nations where it is understood that health care should not be profit driven and freedom and liberty are not about which state can execute the most people.
On the other hand, Republicans understand that only too well. They are light years ahead in the angry emotional sound bite department. They know that intolerance, bigotry and especially ignorance is what drives White Americans to vote their way when no one is looking. So here are 6 reasons why keeping the tax cuts on the wealthy is batcrap crazy.
1) These taxes will go up only 3% – from 36% to 39% – what it was during the Clinton economic boom. Though that 2% of wealthy Americans never changes, just as the remaining 98% never changes, Americans believe they will all move up into that 2% no matter the impossible math of it. About the same number of Americans who believe they will never really die.
2) The $250,000 cut off is not gross income but net income. After these sadly rich souls deduct all their interest payments on their big homes and vacation villas – not to forget their daily expenses on their schedule C for bogus sole proprietor businesses they work our with their tax accountants. That amount is about $100,000. So the gross income here is really about those making around $400,000 a year.
3) The 3% rise in taxes is only on income over $250,000. So these poor victims still get a quarter of a million bucks a year at the old W. Bush rate, paying taxes on only the income above the $250,000.
4) There is no creation of jobs in this at all says everyone other than Republican operatives and think tanks. Well, other than each of these wealthy individuals who MAY hire a part time personal assistant to do their errands or help count their gold. Who are most always the offspring of their wealthy friends and relatives.
5) There are a myriad of tax tweaks and discounts for small business and farms that bypass this rise in taxes. BTW, small businesses under 50 employees do not have to hire Negroes, pregnant women or anyone with a funny sounding name.
6) Keeping the tax cuts for these top 2% increases our debt $1 trillion dollars every three years. DEBT is what we OWE. DEFICIT is what we spend in relation to what we take in each year.
So what makes America so unique in the world? Two things it seems.
a) We believe that all 98% of us will fit into the 2% of the $250,000 a year group. For as the new Pizza Hut ad so well says, "We love pizza, we don’t love math!"
b) We will all live forever in the sky with no shrimp cocktails, ham sandwiches or Homos. Oh, and no masturbating! And of course it goes without saying, In Heaven there are not Taxes.