5-12-06 Tax Cuts

From my perspective as a person with a relatively low income, the idea of "tax cuts for the wealthy" initially hits me as a negative. The whole story is hardly contained in that major media spin, however. After the "tax cuts for the wealthy", the top 50% (highest incomes) in America still accounted for over 96% of the 2003 revenues the government received on individual income tax returns.

It breaks down like this... The top 1% (highest incomes) paid over one third of the revenues. The top 5% paid over half the revenues. The top 10% paid over 65% of the revenues. The top 25% paid over 83% of the revenues, and the top 50% paid over 96% of revenues.

The "other half", the lowest income 50% accounted for 3.46% of the revenues.

It means that somewhere in the neighborhood of two million people in this country accounted for over 34% of the revenues in 2003. Twenty million people accounted for just under another third of the revenues. Another 95 to 100 million people accounted for about another 30% of the revenues, and the remaining 120 million who paid income tax accounted for just under 3-1/2% of revenues.

This is the way that progressive or graduated taxation is supposed to work. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx spoke in favor of this kind of "tax the rich" philosophy. It's difficult to find much in the way of support, throughout our country's history, for the antithesis. So, having Bush give the highest income people in America a tax break isn't really giving the lower income people in America a kick in the face. It's basically just bad timing.

It's bad timing because of all the other bullshit going on. If it had been done during the Clinton years, it would have made more sense. That it's ten years behind the trends of the nation's financial needs is just bad timing.
But it certainly makes sense when you understand that everything else Bush has done over the past six years is, basically, insane.

As a spoiled rich kid, his resume speaks for itself regarding the fate of Arbusto, the oil company that junior ran into the ground before becoming governor of Texas. His resume is littered with business dealings that essentially did absolutely nothing for anyone but himself and his cronies, while putting the screws to any other investors outside this circle of buddies. While governor of Texas, the list of sweetheart deals and investor scams that got Bush cronies loads of money from state coffers is enough to turn anyone's stomach.

Nothing changed when Dubya became President, except that the scale of the corruption went national and international, with the coffers of the whole nation now being subjected to this kind of theft. The consistency of the record is quite easily perceived.

So, the "tax cuts for the wealthy" don't really bother me so much as all the other bullshit. These tax cuts are merely a side effect of the medicine that Dubya administers. The defect in this man's basic character is that he is personally ignorant of what it's like to suffer. All his life, he has clearly been unaffected by anyone else's suffering or travails in life. Such a man is an easy target for those surrounding him to use to their advantage.

In the fantasy world of "good guy versus bad guy", this man has no slightest clue that he is the bad guy. And because he is basically THAT insane, it won't take a broken business or a broken state, or even a broken nation to bring the truth of his deeds being evil to dawn upon that lowbrow brain of his. The only thing that will bring the truth home to a person like this is a jury pronouncing him guilty. Only on that personal level would an idiot such as this finally come to ask, "I'm the bad guy????"