09/17/2012:
"DON'T RAISE MY TAXES!" Now don't get me wrong; I am no more a fan of tax increases than any other rational person (and if you remember those wacky "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota" folks, most of 'em drove Volvos to jobs at the university or the medical centers).
But if you've been paying any attention at all, you know by now that "No new taxes!" means "No new taxes for corporations or the wealthy." For everyone else, it means that next year there will be a "whoops, got some more bills to pay here"
— and taxes will be going up again. Not corporate taxes or taxes on the rich (which, if anything, will fall once more as more "loopholes" are invented); no, your taxes.*
The American elephant in the room is our refusal to have a serious discussion about making the best-off Americans pay their fair share of taxes. I don't care what it says on paper that they have to pay; I care about the amount that they're actually paying, which for a majority of the wealthy (and nearly all major corporations), is less than I pay. I don't mean less "per capita"; I mean less in real dollars.
Hell, if a majority of the wealthy were paying even what I pay in real dollars (to say nothing of percentage of income), America would not be in nearly so deep a hole.
The conventional argument says that you can't piss off the rich folks or they'll take away more jobs.
This, and this alone, is why any argument about wealthy individuals and corporations paying their fair share in taxes
— like they do in most other countries in the developed world
— is completely off the table.
Which overlooks two things:
1) They've sent the jobs overseas anyway, and they're going to send more
— no matter how much we coddle them. Why? Because they are unpatriotic Americans who could care less about their country or the people who live there. To that end:
2) Put the fuckers in prison when they don't pay their taxes (hell, that's what happens to the rest of us when we don't), or when they ship jobs overseas. That might get their attention, especially since most of them have never experienced anything remotely similar to prison food.
Y'know, I personally am just sick to death of footing the bill for all these crummy Americans who have so much more than the rest of us, but not only don't want to contribute their fair share, don't think they ought to have to contribute anything ("Taxes are for the little people"
— Leona Helmsley). And I'm sick of their constant threats to ship our jobs overseas if we make them play ball.
Screw it. Send 'em to prison and let the rank and file vote for the employees most suited to run the company. Chances are that the companies would soon turn a greater profit and actually begin hiring again... since 75% percent of the profits wouldn't be going directly into the CEO's pocket. Greedy greedy makes a hungry puppy!
So, yeah, don't raise my taxes.
Raise theirs!
*For Wisconsin residents, these additional funds are pilfered from the paychecks of government employees
— i.e. the boss extorts a kickback from his underlings.
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