Monday, November 08, 2010

How to compromise on the current tax schedule

Voting to leave the current tax schedule in place for the next two years or even permanently is a no brainer. It’s a no brainer for economic reasons and it makes good political sense as well.


Now notice it reads “leave the current tax schedule in place.” There is not one word in there about “tax cuts.” The idea is not for anyone’s taxes to be cut, but rather leave the current schedule in place. When things stay the same only Dopes refer to it as a “cut.” You may recall that the Dopes wanted to increase school lunch program by 12%. Republicans argued for a more reasonable 7% rise. Dopes took the air and said that Republicans, who wanted to increase the program by 7%, wanted to “cut the school lunch program.” If the current system is extended, nobody’s taxes are going to be cut. On the other hand, if nothing is done, everybody’s taxes are going to go up.

Economically, everyone but SEIU and teacher unions can see that sending money to Washington D.C. for the 535 dopes there to divide up and then redistribute is a fool’s game. As I asked the census worker who made the “so we’ll get our fair share of federal money” argument for filling out the entire questionnaire, “Why is the money going to Washington to be divided up in the first place? Doesn’t make better sense to keep the money in Indiana? Then if we need another traffic light, we just pay for it ourselves.”

Under the current system, states are like adult children who are still turning their paychecks over to their parents, as if they were five year olds who received a birthday check from grandma and grandpa. Then when the adult child wants something, he has to beg mom and dad for some of the money HE EARNED. That’s when he finds out mom and dad has spent his hard earned money on his no count older brother’s cocaine addiction and blew the rest on an Internet pyramid scheme that looked too good to fail.

In real terms, the older brother’s cocaine addiction may well be a bail out of loopy self destructive CA, and the pyramid scheme has to be the doomed to fail Social Security system.

Politically, the Repubs ought to give the Dopes a choice to either extend the current tax schedule indefinitely or extend it for no more and no less than two years. That would put the Dopes between a rock and an extremely hard place. They can’t extend them indefinitely. Their base would go crazier than they already are. If they extend them for two years, that would put taxes front and center for the 2012 election cycle. Let’s have that debate.

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