Tag Archives: political economy

How Much

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Progressive-Democratic Party politicians constantly and loudly insist that they need to raise taxes so that the rich actually pay their fair share.

Here are some data on what Americans actually pay at various levels of tax remittances.Notice, too, that the Federal Poverty Guideline for a family of four in 2020 was $26,200 for the Lower 48 and DC.

And there’s this, showing the progressing progressiveness of our tax code.Even as that marginal tax rate has come down, the percentage of total income taxes paid by those Evil Rich has gone up.

This is why those Progressive-Democrats steadfastly refuse to say how much is that “fair share,” whether in dollars or in rates.

This is Why

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Georgia recently won a court case in which the Biden administration had—illegally, as it turns out—blocked its program to expand Medicaid eligibility to individuals making up to 100% of the federal poverty line ($13,590 for singles) while conditioning benefits on working, going to school, or volunteering 80 hours a month.

However, under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020, States are unable to remove able-bodied Medicaid folks—i.e., folks who are fully capable of working but who choose not to—from their Medicaid rolls as long as the Wuhan Virus emergency remains in effect. The CDC conveniently continues to extend that “emergency,” even though no less a light than our Progressive-Democrat President, Joe Biden, has said the emergency is over.

Alternatively, Georgia could remove those folks and the Federal government could withhold hundreds of millions in federal funds. In all, the Federal government mainlines $130 billion in additional Medicaid funds into all the States’ veins.

As The Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it,

The emergency is a Faustian bargain for states….

This is why it’s at best idiotic for any State to take Federal (our taxpayer) money under any circumstance. The dollars don’t come with strings attached; they represent yokes around the States’ necks.

I Agree with the Progressive-Democrat

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California Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, the Progressive-Democratic Party member who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, claims she’s open to a tax cut deal.

Our ask is simple: if we can provide tax cuts for America’s corporations, we can certainly provide a tax cut for America’s kids[.]

I agree, and it is a simple ask. Provide the tax cut for America’s kids by reducing the personal income tax rates their parents have to pay.

Sadly, DeLauro isn’t at all serious.

Impressiveness

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had this to say about handling the burgeoning inflation extant in today’s American economy:

Slowing demand growth should allow supply to catch up with demand and restore the balance that will yield stable prices over time.

It’s impressive that a government official as steeped in economics as Powell is has such a deep misunderstanding of the situation.

It’s not a matter of slowing demand growth, it’s a matter of slowing government demand growth. The private economy, especially when it’s not competing with government for goods and services—and for the inputs to those goods and services—will easily and efficiently take care of itself, with changing supply and demand comprising self-correcting stabilizers on our economy.

A Simple Solution

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Even if it might be politically difficult and short-term expensive.

Recall that EU member Lithuania expressed support for the Republic of China and in naked retaliation, the People’s Republic of China imposed a nearly complete trade embargo on Lithuania and blocked import of any other EU member’s products that contained Lithuania-originated parts.

Now, a year later, the EU is haling the PRC into the WTO in a suit over that embargo. Be still, my heart.

There’s a better and more effective and permanent solution to this sort of behavior from the PRC.

A year later, Lithuania has learned that it can get along without trade with the PRC, and by that example, so has the EU (and so have the US and non-PRC Asia, come to that).

The solution includes these straightforward steps.

  • The rest of us increase our trade with Lithuania
  • The EU in particular, and the rest of us as well, stop trading with the PRC
  • All of us increase our trade with the RoC

Sadly, the parties involved make such moves politically difficult with their own fear of PRC retaliations. And certainly, through the middle-term, it would be economically expensive to locate and develop alternative markets and to move supply chain steps—from dirt in the ground to component parts to finished products—completely out of the PRC. However, once those transfers are completed, we’d all be better off politically and economically from no longer having our economies dependent on the good offices of an aggressive and acquisitive enemy nation.

The PRC’s behavior toward Lithuania and its attempt to extort Japan through withholding shipments of rare earths to that nation are just two examples of that benefit.