Daily Archives: 29 November 2017

It’s Only a Few

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It’s only a few Americans that we don’t like—the despicable 1% (actually the 0.2%).  That’s the Progressive-Democratic Party’s excuse for insisting that the death tax be kept in place in the current tax code reform effort.

The estate tax affects a very small—and very wealthy—number of Americans.

Only the estates of about 2 out of every 1,000 Americans who die face this tax right now.

Besides, repealing the tax, the Progressive-Democrats claim, would

unfairly provide more benefits to the wealthy over low- and middle-income Americans.

No, the real unfairness, in the minds of these persons, is that it would provide any benefits to the wealthy.  Never mind that the wealthy pay the largest share taxes, especially when compared to income earned.  A couple of CBO statistics, coarser than just the hated 1%, compiled in 2013 from 2010 data:

Quintile Share of Income, % Share of Taxes Paid, %
Top 57.9 69.3
Bottom Two, Combined 9.7 2.8

Notice, too, quite apart from that, the Progressive-Democrats’ fundamental philosophy: those not rich are not in a position to take the same tax-avoidance steps as the rich, so the rich must be denied those steps; they must be held back.  The right of each man to show the best that there is in him must be denied the successful because others cannot or do not keep up.  Can’t possibly reform the tax code so that it applies equally to all income levels.  So much for equal opportunity, according to the Progressive-Democrats.

Never mind, also, that the estate tax is a fundamentally unfair tax that taxes wealth, much of which has been taxed already in the earning.

Never mind, too, that the identity politics-centered claim is false: the death tax affects the minimally wealthy and the small businessman and small farmer whose businesses and farms reach above the threshold in asset value but that don’t have free cash, and so the businesses and farms must be sold to raise the taxman’s vig—impoverishing the heirs.

No, this is just another excuse to hammer those hated wealthy, and who cares about the collateral damage.

A State Runs a Budget Deficit

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Louisiana, run by Progressive-Democrats since Bobby Jindall was term-limited out of office, is facing a $1.5 billion deficit as “temporary” tax increases implemented earlier begin to expire.  Jay Dardenne, the center-left Republican Commissioner of Administration, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards’ chief budget officer, says that “devastating” spending cuts would be necessary absent a renewal of the tax increases or enactment of other tax increases.

Devastating: among those are additional reductions in higher education. This is misleading from a State official whose State already objects to school choice and to successful voucher schools in the K-12 range—because they take money away from badly failing public schools.  Except they don’t.  The State funds the public schools on a per-student basis, but when a student leaves for a voucher school, he takes less than his full allotment of funds with him, leaving the “losing” public school fiscally net better off.

It’s misleading, too, because higher education has an inflated tuition and fee structure supported by all that government funding (the Feds are contributors to this inflation with their own money transfers to the higher ed institutions), leaving those students fiscally net worse off.

Other areas facing spending reductions are tear-jerker “child-welfare” programs and “other” state agencies.  Never mind that these facilities waste the funds allocated with their high bureaucratic overhead and middle-man frictions.  And in the case of welfare (not just child), through uncertain enforcement.

No, the only ones truly facing serious spending reductions are the lobbyists and the Progressive-Democrats’ (and too many Republicans’) cronies.

It’s past time for a $1.5 billion reduction in State spending.  Louisiana needs to leave the money in the citizens’ hands, and it needs to stop competing with the private sector in providing goods and services and in acquiring resources for its own (unnecessary) functioning.