Thursday, September 28, 2017

Tax Reform and You, Circa 2017.

The grand experiment of trickle down economics continues unabated, so what does this mean for you, more of the same....


Yeah, that about sums up how I see this playing out, tax cuts, continued pushes to privatize social security, social safety net cuts, military spending increases, no increased spending on infrastructure, basically, as I said, more of the same. Hey, don't get me wrong, I love tax cuts as much as the next guy, I mean really when I have a steady paycheck, the more money it has, the more money I can spend on the things I want.

No, not really, not going to be able to buy that new used car, or buy a house, or pay the bills. The joke of this is that people are still buying this notion that when corporations pay lower taxes this money comes into the hands of employees. So, the way this is sounding is... The taxes still come out every week, and then by April there will be a check for you, with all that money coming back in a lump sum. Now, as I have said before, whenever I earned enough to actually file taxes, and I did, the refund never went to doing things like... I don't know, buying a new television to replace the one I have, or putting a deposit down on that new used car the local lot has, I'm using it to cover bills that my meager wages don't typically cover. But hey, my cell phone bill will be current for the first time in six months. I am not alone in this bad deal, how many of you can honestly say that you take that tax refund and hide it away for a rainy day, or do things with it, outside of paying bills? Yeah, I thought so.

As someone who supports the Modern Monetary Theory, I don't see debt as being a deal breaker on anything we want to do. All taxes are meant to do is control spending, sluggish economy, reduce taxes to allow more money to be spent. Economy getting to hot, raise taxes to pull money out of the system to slow it down. Running an economy on the government scale is a lot different than running it at a household scale. Seriously, a thousand dollars a month extra income in my household would allow for a new used car, and the other expenses that it would entail. Two thousand dollars a month, would afford the new car, insurance, healthcare insurance, and probably enough to move out of this cesspool into a better neighborhood.

But the truth is, an extra fifteen to twenty dollars a week, isn't going to do much, the problem has grown to large to fix the problems so many people have. Its not going to, as Mr. Cohn says, allow people to improve their lives. They won't be able to go on vacations, remodel their houses, or buy a new car (oh I'd love to get a car, a new one that gets thirty miles to the gallon). Fifteen to twenty dollars a week can at least buy a two pairs of cheap pants, new underwear/shirts, a cheap pair of shoes, and something off the dollar menu at a fast food place. Well, at least in a month I can get something out of pawn (my Parents wedding rings). Great that will save me all of two dollars a month. I could buy a few new used video games every month, or buy a DVD a week. That would be three packs of cigarettes, or a bottle of liquor a week.

They are really breaking the bank here, because they are expecting that money to trickle down to us in the form of better benefits, more jobs, and higher incomes. By and large, that isn't going to happen, that money will go to profits, experimentation in automation, or some other use that won't be beneficial to us. But hey, at least we will have a few more pennies to rub together for warmth as bills continually increase. So much for getting a new cell phone, one where my calls don't break up, unless I am standing outside with it raised above my head, screaming at it on speaker phone. Ah well, don't need to talk on the phone anyway.

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