Tag Archives: political parties

Corporate Taxes

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Treasury Secretary and ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen opened her Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed with this:

When Congress enacted the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, the result was a dramatic reduction in corporate tax revenue. Over the past three years, corporate tax collections have fallen to their lowest level since World War II: 1% of gross domestic product.

Amazingly—shockingly—Yellen wrote that as if it were a Bad Thing.

Then she partially rationalized her disparagement with this:

Proponents of the TCJA said the US would get something in return for these tax cuts. Lower rates, the argument went, would lure production and investment to our shores, but that hasn’t happened—and for an obvious reason: other countries see what we’re doing and respond. When they see us lower our rates, they lower theirs to undercut us. In the end, no nation ends up more competitive. The result is a global race to the bottom….

Some of this is plain wrong. We did get trillions of dollars of corporate cash repatriated. We did get production and investment returned. And that spurred the outcome that Yellen so breathtakingly mistakes as a further Bad Thing. Other nations were spurred to compete on tax rates in order to retain their own businesses and to attract foreign investment.

Which drives the race to Yellen’s so-feared bottom.

But what is that bottom? Our Constitution specifies that the only things our Federal government is allowed, legitimately, to raise revenues for are three: to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. Those, with the general Welfare further specified by the remaining clauses of that Article I, Section 8, also, are the only things on which our Federal government may spend our taxpayer money. The other nations, particularly those competing with us on tax rates, have their own taxing (and spending) floors.

Racing to those bottoms may be bad for Government bureaucrats like Yellen, but they’re unalloyed Goods for the citizens of all of our nations, as we get to keep more of our money and make our own spending, saving, investing, and other allocating decisions with our money—and our decisions will be far better and far more efficiently done than any of our Governments can ever hope to do.

And at that natural bottom, nations can stop trying to compete on tax policy and focus on Adam Smith’s competition—providing better quality goods and services. Which is even better for us citizens, if not for the power of Government personages.

Only a Leftist or an entrenched bureaucrat can misunderstand that.

Progressive-Democrat Obstruction at the State Level

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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is interfering with the Arizona State Senate’s audit of the county’s election materials—which have been under Senate subpoena for the audit for nearly four months (112 days according to OANN as I write on Thursday) and which subpoenas have been upheld by the courts repeatedly. The Board is actively blocking access to the secure facility housing the county’s computers and election materials, and it is demanding that the Senate, at Senate expense, transfer those materials to a separate facility for the audit.

Aside from trying deliberately to run up the cost of the audit, the county’s relocation demand is an equally deliberate, and cynical, attempt to sabotage the legitimacy of the audit’s results and findings. A proper inspection of the activities involved in and surrounding the election must be conducted in situ. That’s the only location in which the computers’ and documents’ can be set up for audit in a way that doesn’t risk contaminating or losing outright any evidence that might be found. That’s also the only way insight into those surrounding activities can be inspected, and absent that surround, the inspection—the audit—cannot be complete. The forensics aspect will be fatally interrupted.

The Arizona Senate has been patient enough. It needs to send the State Police down to Maricopa County to execute the subpoenas for the audit by seizing the county’s secure facility and allowing the Senate’s auditors to conduct the audit within that facility.

There also needs to be this item added to the audit: the computers and documents and their interactions must be carefully inspected to determine the level, if any, of tampering, of alteration or elimination during those 112 days of obstruction, with appropriate civil and possibly criminal action taken against those county supervisors if any such evidence is found.

“Don’t Tax You…”

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“…Don’t tax me;
Tax that rich guy
Behind the tree.”

With (not too) many apologies to Russell Long.

New York’s Progressive-Democrats are on the move, again.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislators are close to reaching a budget agreement that would raise taxes on residents earning over $1 million.
If approved by the Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled legislature, New York would become the state with the highest personal income tax rate in the country.
The budget measure also includes increasing the state’s corporate tax rates….

And

The proposed changes would increase tax rate from 8.82% to 9.65% for individuals making over $1 million or those joint-filing making more than $2 million.
Two new additional tax brackets would also be created –10.3% for those making $5 million to $25 million, and 10.9% for those making over $25 million.
New York City high-income earners could be paying the highest in the country in personal income taxes. By adding New York City’s additional top-earner tax rate, those making over $1 million could pay as high as a 14.8% tax rate, surpassing California’s 13.3% tax rate, the highest in the country.

The State’s Progressive-Democrats already tax the hell out of all the yous and mes in that State, also, though, so Long’s plea is being implemented much more broadly.

It’s important to recall, also, another of Long’s aphorisms:

I have become convinced you’re going to have to have capital if you’re going to have capitalism.

New York’s Progressive-Democrats are bent on denying precisely that to the State’s private economy. That says volumes about Party’s ultimate goal.

Preferences

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board, in their Tuesday piece, wrote strongly about CEOs vs Shareholders in the context of the CEOs’ (among others)…disingenuousness…regarding Georgia’s newly enacted voting law, which expanded access to ballots and to the voting process while tightening the integrity of both.

The question is much broader than that, though.

President Joe Biden (D), with his blatant lies regarding Georgia’s election law, his open advocating for business boycotts of Georgia, while simultaneously scoffing at the idea of boycotting the People’s Republic of China’s Olympics—or anything else PRC—demonstrates his strong preference for the PRC government over the citizens of Georgia and of America.

Businesses like major league baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta, et al., repeating those lies about Georgia’s election law and pushing to leave Georgia, all the while being so desperate to do business within the PRC are similarly demonstrating their naked preference for the PRC government over the citizens of Georgia and of America.

It’s disgusting, and it’s shameful.

We can answer the businesses by boycotting them, starting yesterday. We can answer Biden and his coterie by tossing his Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled Congress in 2022 and then by tossing the Progressive-Democrat Biden/Harris administration in 2024.

It’s interesting, too, that the Party of Jim Crow suddenly is decrying Jim Crow—even as it lies about what is Jim Crow.

Lies of Progressive-Democrats

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Yet more of them, this time centered on jobs for American citizens.

Here’s what Moody’s Analytics said about President Joe Biden’s $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan Spend-a-Thon to which is attached some bucks for actual infrastructure work:

The firm estimated that the US economy will add roughly 16.3 million jobs between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2030. If Biden’s proposal were to pass, Moody’s Analytics economists estimated that the US economy would add 19 million jobs over the same time period—indicating the proposal would be responsible for about 2.7 million jobs.

Here’s what Biden’s hand-picked Transportation Secretary “Pothole” Pete Buttigieg said.

The American Jobs Plan is about a generational investment. It’s going to create 19 million jobs. And we’re talking about economic growth that’s going to go on for years and years. It’s time for America to lead the way again. And those 19 million jobs we’re about to create go way beyond some quarterly or monthly report.

Twice he lied, in quick succession.

Biden’s White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese was completely direct in his lie:

Moody’s suggests it would create 19 million jobs[.]

And then Biden personally lied about what Moody’s actually said:

Independent analysis shows that if we pass this plan, the economy will create 19 million jobs….

It makes me wonder whether anyone in this administration is capable of discriminating truth from fiction. Or whether they can, but they don’t care; they’ll just mouth whatever they think they can get away with that will benefit them politically.