Ken Nelson

The metaphor would apply if we bought the RV for the oldster driving it from future money.

I like the Tea Party. I go to Tea Party events. And at every one of them I meet morons that seem just as stupid as somebody I’d meet at an SEIU event.

Confirmation comes in today’s McClatchy poll where 70% of Tea Party members polled said that Medicare and Medicaid shouldn’t be cut to reduce the deficit.

The Tea Party skews old and when I’ve been at these events I’ve wondered what they hell they wanted to cut.  They are getting all the money anyway.  They voted it to themselves from the future.

I’ve left the Tea Party events disheartened about our nations future largely because of the simply moronic attitude they take that we can just ignore the money they are getting, and somehow cut out “waste” and “fraud” and cover the bills.

They haven’t a clue.

Yet… they are the best we have, which alas, isn’t saying much while it says all you really need to know.

When the tax-compliance industry employs more people than Wal-Mart, UPS, McDonald’s, IBM and Citigroup combined, there has simply got to be a better way.

Michael Walsh
Today’s NY Post

And it’s come to this:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/federal-tax-rules-72536-pages/

Time for a reboot, don’t you think?

Via Instapundit

There are an infinite number of videos, articles, studies, all saying what this video says.  AND NONE of them matter.

The entire video is true. But WE ARE HOSED unless we can take back their ability to take our money.  The INCOME TAX.

1913 doomed us.  We are just waiting on the end.

Megan McArdle is the brightest spot about the venerable but increasingly ludicrous Atlantic magazine.

Today she asks a very tough question of liberals. Basically, if Congress has unlimited taxing powers, which they seem to support, can it use that power to get around its power limits, such as free speech, privacy, so forth. She uses a liberal touch stone, abortion, as her example:

1)  Can Congress enact a $50,000 tax on second term abortions?

Good question Megan.

How about a $25,000 tax on registering Republican?  Or a $15,000 tax on writing negatively about Congress? Or a $100,000 tax credit for registering a number of Democrats?  Are there limits? As currently thought by Congress and the courts, no there are not.

The 16th Amendment was poorly written and is a HUGE risk to freedom. It needs to be eliminated, and if we decide to permit Congress to tax again, replaced with a carefully worded document that LIMITS what Congress can do with the power to tax.

Government pay scale… Plus benefits…

Evan Siegfried thinks we shouldn’t cut Federal pay, but should cut Federal workers. He writes:

At the end of the day, not one person can honestly tell you there isn’t a problem with the manner in which federal workers are compensated. This is not a partisan issue. The government needs to get serious and provide bold leadership in thinning its ranks.

I say… why choose.  Cut their pay and cut their numbers. We won’t miss them if they leave for private employment, nor will we miss them if they just aren’t there anymore.

Evan gives a few anecdotes about government staffing… I’ll share my own. I’ve taught classes to software programmers over the years. When teaching private companies, 18 of 20 were typically pretty sharp, with a couple being “not so sure”.   In a typical government class of 20, maybe 5 will be folks I might hire, 10 will be “okay for government”, and 5 will be incapable of programming.  I’ve even had students who literally couldn’t type on a computer, and didn’t know the basics of computer programming, yet they were GS-9 Computer Programmers pulling in mid-40K + great benefits.

Basically government just hires and hires until the job is done by 15% of who they have hired. And they don’t fire.

I’ve known incredibly sharp government engineers. Smart folks who could make it anywhere. But… I’ve also known too many that are just dumb as doornails and only hold the position because the government never fires anybody unless, sometimes, if they commit a crime.

The government has too many people working on too many activities.  We need to shed both the people and the things they are working on.

Buried in the ObamaCare 2000+ page law was a provision that basically makes all people in the nation part of a huge double entry accounting system so that the IRS can verify that everybody reports what they sell because you have reported what you bought.

Right now, if I hire a non-corporation for a service, and the service costs more than $600, I have to file a 1099 reporting the transaction.  The law expands that requirement to corporations and requires me to report for every PRODUCT that purchase from a vendor where the total purchases for the year from that vendor exceed $600.

So… if I eat at Applebees, and Famous Daves, both owned by the same company, and spend more than $600 dollars there in a year, I have to report it.

Or if I go on a road trip to sell my software and stay in five Choice hotel chains for, say $120 a night.

Or virtually any air travel. Oh.. and the rental car.

And any computer I buy.

I file one with the IRS and I have to know where to send other copy for each vendor I buy more than $600 stuff from.

My company files, currently, maybe ten 1099′s a year.  For services like technical writing, janitorial service, that sort of thing.  If they aren’t a corporation. Under the new system, off hand, I’d say I’ll have to consolidate and file perhaps 100.  And these 100 are a LOT harder than the janitor we see every week, or the tech writer I conference call.  This is  A HUGE increase in work, basically because the Government has now impressed my company into their new national double entry accounting system.

This is so stupid. Why would they do it?  Because they want money. As tax rates rise, compliance drops. As compliance drops, the force used by the IRS rises. It is a nasty game, and we have to break ourselves of it.

Set taxes at fair, low, levels. Probably half, at least, what they are now. Have whatever government that funds – and make it do less, but do what it does well.

An Obama administration panel is looking at the Housing interest deduction and the Childs Tax Credit because they “cost the government” over a trillion a year.

It makes no sense to me to have a housing interest deduction, or a tax credit for kids, or any of the other zillion other things in our HUGE tax code.

Considering, though, that the tax burden in this country for those that pay any taxes is shamefully high,  shouldn’t a “deficit” panel focus entirely on government spending?

SPENDING is the problem. and TAXES are TOO HIGH.

Now if you want to talk about 50% of the country not contributing, by all means go RIGHT AHEAD.

England cut spending modestly and it is called “austerity”.   Commenters fret that it could HAPPEN here. Well, let’s hope so!

Citi strategist Willem Buiter, alongside Howard Davies chairman of the London School of Economics, said that “savage austerity” is in the US’ future. “The only question was really the timing and the composition.”

Obama has borrowed 3 trillion dollars in 20 months. So to get back to even we need to cut spending by that much, or raise government revenues by that much. Or some combination there of.

No doubt Democrats hope they can turn this “austerity” into austerity for citizens through higher taxes to pay for Democrats power basis.  We maybe stupid enough to bite a that.  Some commenters on this blog seem eager for it.  Establishment Republicans differ only in that they would be happy to slow the rate of growth of government, and then raise taxes.

The right answer, of course, is to get government back to where it belongs… doing hardly anything.  In other words… cut spending. Austerity for the government and those who leach on the rest of us through it.

But wouldn’t that entail economic disaster??  Why would you say that?   Money government spends is taken from others that would use it in other ways.  The only real concern is about removing the decifit (which is newly printed money) from the economy.  But the deficit isn’t cost free.  Inflation and debt service aren’t “free”.

You can’t throw a dart at the government organization chart without hitting something we can do without. So start throwing darts!  Get rid of the Dept of Education, Labor, Commerce, NASA.   I’m happy to get rid of wars too.  Bring them home.  Promise bigger bombs if those countries act up again.

Apparently, Medicare will be the entire US budget shortly.  It is clearly unsustainable. Are “old” people, many of whom are Tea Party members, willing to cough up an extra few grand a year to actually contribute to their own health care?  I hope so, because that is what is needed, and that is what is fair.

Commenter Carl will say that anybody that proposes this will be unelected promptly. So be it. It needs to be done.  And if presented clearly and explained, I suspect most people will understand changes are necessary.   And if not done to favor political special interests, people will be more inclined to take the hits.

So do we have it in us?   About half of us do not. They are called Democrats. They are union thugs, public sector employees, the stupid young, and the just plain stupid. Will they doom us?  Quite likely.

I hope not.   But if France and England are clues, our future isn’t bright.  Instead of joining together to put government back in its place, we seem more likely to get the honor of paying public sector union employees to strike, light fires and hold the nation hostage.

The right path forward for the nation is clear. The only question is if it is too late to put the special interests that hold us hostage back in the hole they emerged from.

If Double Irish works, why not TRIPLE Irish!

Google earned a tub of money last year and payed just 2.5% of it in taxes.

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Cool!

My only beef with this is that I don’t think corporations should pay taxes. People should. Stockholders should when they receive payouts. But basically, if you don’t vote, you shouldn’t pay.

I don’t view this as money “stolen” from the US Government.  I view it instead, as money that Google can spend much SMARTER than the US Government to make life better for all of us.  So, for instance, instead of $billions to prop up a dead General Motors, we can have cool free e-mail, and maps that tell us where we are, and all the other nifty stuff that Google is spewing out at a fantastic rate.

You want to watch jobs bloom?  Get rid of the corporate tax.

But our government isn’t about us, it is about itself and those who own it (currently private and public unions).

 
We could spend it on roads, or lower tolls, or extravagant bonuses!

A New Jersey toll taker earned $300K last year.

Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses.  In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included.

Other people’s money is FUN. Print more! Tax more! 

How DARE he bitch about his taxes!

The Chicago lawyer who foolishly stuck his head out and said what he would do to those he employs if Obama’s tax rises go into effect has decided to quit blogging.

This morning, in a final follow-up post, Mr. Henderson called himself a "fool" for having written his original post and said he was quitting blogging.

I can’t blame him really. Why put up with getting raped on taxes, and getting vitriolic hate mail by the thousands?

His mistake was in trying to be reasonable about it. He should have said… you take $50,000 from me, I’ll take it from those I hire.  Instead he went on about the cost of nice things. I called it a plea, and it was, but it also was a poorly worded notice of intent where the plea was the less critical part, and the notice overlooked.

Henderson pointed out that taking money from him to raise consumption was pretty dumb – as he was consuming it all anyway.  But that misses the point… the political class wants to spend it. They can do it SO MUCH better….

Update: Here is his final post.

A final note: I am especially saddened that my post was misconstrued as being about anything other than the impact that tax increases will have on people at the lower end of the high-income bracket. Agree or disagree, certainly questions like this need to be part of the equation. I understand the suffering of the world and the good fortune I have. The debate is not, or should not, be about whether we should try to improve the well being of everyone in our neighborhoods, our country, and around the world, but how. I have different ideas about this than many of our readers and my critics, but my motives are the same as theirs. I’ve never made up stuff about them, distorted their arguments, or questioned their good intentions. I would expect the same in return.

As to what he can expect in return… when getting in the way of progressives/socialists, you can generally expect the worst in return.

China knows where to send the Henderson’s of the world…reeducation!

Some call Todd Henderson’s blog posting (update: the posting has been removed, likely to give Mr. Henderson’s life back) about the impact of the expected tax rise in January a “whine”.  I call it a plea.

If our taxes rise significantly, as they seem likely to, we can cut back on some things. The (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center, but these are only a few hundred dollars per month in total.

There are two basic questions at the core of his plea. The first, an economic one, is can Todd Henderson and his family, and tens of millions of others like him, make more productive investment decisions about their money than the various governments and bureaucracies that stick their hands into his wallet? This is transparently an OBVIOUS yes.

The second question is where most of the commenters about his post head… is it right for someone in the top 2% of income earners of the country to complain about paying more than his fair share of taxes?  To me this is an obvious YES as well. It isn’t obvious to me that it is right for one person to pay more for government than another.

That there are so many American’s that fundamentally view Todd Henderson’s output as their own to take should frighten.  That they are now in charge of the government should make you cower.

I can’t think of a government worth taking more than 10 to 15% of someone’s yearly product.  I believe we can fully fund a well functioning government that provides for the defense and common good at that rate or less.  The excess is bad investment that is killing our economic future as well as liberty.

 
Skin… what most voters NEED in the game but don’t.

D.C. voters were pissed that somebody was fooling around with their ready supply of patronage jobs.

So they sent Adrian Fenty packing after one term where he mainly focused on TRYING to clean up D.C.’s corrupt, bloated, patronage based school system.

In spite of test scores rising, irritation of teacher layoffs and other anti-corruption measures caused black voters to not support him.

Now a cynic , or somebody familiar with D.C. racial enmity towards profitable shopkeepers that dare to serve their communities, might suggest that blacks didn’t like Fenty because he is multi-racial. And that they DEFINITELY didn’t like Michelle Rhee, his school administrator, because she was Korean.  But I’m not a cynic…. well maybe.

I’d agree that race was  was probably part of it. But I suspect the main driver was that blacks in D.C. love spending other people’s money and he was getting in the way of the party. Since VIRTUALLY all the money spent by DC government comes from whites (that live in Northwest D.C or clustered in South East DC around the capital,  or via the Federal government), why be careful with it?

In this, D.C. is a model for the country, although the country has less of a racial angle to it.   With over 50% of the nation not contributing to taxes, how can we really expect them to be picky about how or what the money is spent on? It’s all FREE to them!

Thus D.C. acts as the canary in the cage.  Its terrible state shows what decades of that kind of “no skin in the game” attitudes can do.  And that should warn us. But it won’t.

I know she didn’t really say it, but it still fits.

Forty one White House aides owe $831,000 in back taxes. Now hold on, before you get angry, know that the amount per aid is ONLY $20,000. Come on folks, the government owes TRILLIONS!  It’s no big deal.  Now the rest of you just pay your taxes, and fill out your forms, and move along. Nothing to see here.

Here is a list of other Federal departments and the back taxes they owe.

H/T: Instapundit