Tuesday, December 19, 2017

What's it Going to Take for You to Distrust Our Orange Overlord? (Tax 'Cut' Edition)

One of the reasons cons work is because the marks don't ever want to admit they've been conned

This is really addressed to the population of Republicants making less than 7 figures and with less than 8 figures of income to pass down ... in short, probably none of my (3) readers, but probably nearly the entire party.

If there were any question that this administration doesn't have the best interest of the people they appear to be representing, it's this graphic (courtesy of 538):


This "tax cut" is so wildly unpopular that it's less popular than the last two tax HIKES. And you can't tell me that the middle-class Republican base in the audience were happier about Evil Slick Willie's Huckster Tax Increase (which led to just about the only surplus in decades, yet again disproving Voodoo Economics, but we won't go there) then they are about anyone's tax cut.

But the point is not whether this tax cut will help you in the long run (it won't), or trickle-shrink the deficit (it won't), or even temporarily grow the economy (any more than printing $1.5T would). It's not even whether or not you've been con(vinc)ed into thinking it's good for you. The entire point is to hand out money to the people this administration is actually representing, which is the poor, put-upon Dagny Taggart types who go home and shower in clean, sequential bills every night, and would like to hire a few extra man-servants to vacuum up the dirty bills when they're done. This is nothing more than a pay-back for campaign contributions (and a promise of fresh ones) from the unfathomably rich, and an effective pay raise for the multimillionaires "representin'" you in DC.

Quick questions: what happened to "tax reform" and "code simplification"? Where's that postcard I'm going to be able to file my two (Mar-a-Lago golf course and Napa winery) deductions on? Tax reform and simplification sound like good ideas ... but that's never what this was actually about, and it's not even the optics any longer. And where are the Republicant deficit hawks that shut down the government(!) -- trashing our credit rating, costing us credit interest, and risking our standing as holders of the universal reserve currency -- over the debt ceiling debate (using that evil Democrat tool, the filibuster)? Once this bloats the deficit, I can bet those cockroaches will come back out of their cracks and start stripping away far more than they've given you, even if you're in the 6-figure bracket. Moral of the story: 100% of you simply need to shove your way into the top 1%, and then this government has your back (if you don't care about things like health, safety, public space, or existential threats to this country from a damn Twitter account).

But don't think you can't benefit from the new tax code (once you learn an entirely new tax code, which is not in any way "simplification"). For example, the Failing NYT makes this suggestion:

Imagine that you’re a wealthy person in the top tax bracket, and you own a genuine Rothko that has become worth millions more than you bought it for. Selling, you’d have to pay a huge tax on the painting’s increase in value. Instead, you could exchange the painting with a company you own for shares, a transaction that wouldn’t be taxed. Then, have the company sell the painting, paying only the new, low 21 percent corporate rate. If you pass the shares onto your heirs, they won’t have to pay any taxes on them.

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