Daily Archives: 8 November 2021

Punish Success

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Punish, especially, those who are successful.

[T]he $1.75 trillion [reconciliation] package restores limits on so-called “mega IRAs,” preventing more money from being added to a Roth or traditional individual retirement account if its value exceeded $10 million. The restriction…would apply to individuals who make over $400,000 and married joint filers with more than $450,000 in annual income.

There’s that marriage penalty back, too.

And (and contradictorily to the income limit posited above)

[W]ealthy Americans with account balances above $10 million would have to draw down their accounts by a certain threshold each year, thereby triggering taxes on the money.
…. The general rule is that anyone with more than $10 million in an account must withdraw at least 50%. Those with more than $20 million would be required to withdraw 100% of anything over that $20 million threshold in their Roth accounts.

Regardless of their income. And to hell with their heirs. Or their intended charities.

Here’s another aspect of their game, from Steven Rosenthal of the Tax Policy Center:

A big first step to strip retirement tax benefits from those who don’t need the help[.]

Because Leftists know the needs of Americans better than those who’ve earned the wealth with which to satisfy their own needs.

Really, though, it’s not even that much. It’s much pettier.

Jealousy… is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

 

Disingenuosity of a Progressive-Democrat

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Recall that last spring’s reconciliation bill included an expanded child tax credit, which payments were automatic monthly payments that went to families without income as well as to those with income.

Progressive-Democrats, in the current reconciliation bill, want to make those credits permanent, and still automatic. Progressive-Democrats also want to start paying out a universal basic income to all Americans. But, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD) is denying that the child tax credit is a step toward a universal basic income.

As constructed, though, this “credit,” paid automatically regardless of “need,” is itself income, and given the breadth of Americans who receive it, it’s virtually universal all by itself.

And, of course, it’s income.

What is Hoyer’s limiting principle that proves this child tax credit is not a step on the road to a fully universal basic income? What hard principle prevents him from changing his mind on this, or that prevents any of his colleagues from changing this “credit,” later?

Hoyer has none. He’s simply being disingenuous when he claims the nearly universal child tax credit isn’t a step—a huge step, nearly spanning the gap, I say—toward a universal basic income.