House Democrats’ Plan to Tax the Rich Leaves Vast Fortunes Unscathed

House Democrats’ Plan to Tax the Rich Leaves Vast Fortunes Unscathed - New York Times.

Ok, so Democrats are going after the "merely rich" to fund our social policies. Well, the little guy or at least the moderately rich are going to pay taxes while the rich elite makes off with their wealth once again. Seriously, I'm against wealth taxes because it's a loser's game. But it certainly raises the already critical levels of inequality. And, in history revolutions have started over less financial inequality.

P.S. I'm using the New York Times gift feature to share this article with you without you needing a subscription to read it. So, don't be shy to click the link and read the article for yourself.

 

Also, Democrats are trying to figure out a way to bring back the full SALT deduction.

SALT Break Would Erase Most of House’s Tax Hikes for Top 1%

High-earning taxpayers would face much smaller tax hikes -- or even cuts -- if Democrats decide to restore the federal deduction for state and local taxes in legislation that’s now moving through the House.

If the SALT deduction were fully reinstated, the top 1% of taxpayers -- those earning at least $401,601 -- would face a tax increase less than half as large as that if the current cap on the write-off were retained, according to data from the right-leaning Tax Foundation.

And of course the kicker...

About 57% of the benefit of a SALT cap repeal would go to the top 1% of earners, worth an average of $33,100, according to data compiled by the Brookings Institution. Restoring the full SALT deduction would cost the U.S. Treasury $88.7 billion in revenue for 2021 alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper.

 

My guess is that the left's rich base has sat down with the Dem politicians and told them under no uncertain terms that they need to get taxes on the rich under control if they want continued support.

 

Yes, I've noticed the rich are all for higher taxes as long as there isn't any chance of them paying it.

 

I don't need to read it. I already know the NYT has lied by omission and made distortions and deceptions.

I will, however, point out the great irony, which is that Liberals repeat the same lies over and over and over until Liberals actually come to believe the lies they tell.

For the whole "inequality" nonsense, how do you know you're being lied to?

Read. Or listen, because there's lots of Useless Tube videos on "inequality" that would give Herr Josef Göbbels a woody.

Your typical Göbbels-style propaganda goes like this: Income inequality, blah, blah, blah, wealth, wealth, wealth wealth.

See?

They lie using the Fallacy of Equivocation by equivocating income with wealth.

Income and wealth are not the same thing. Income is what you earn, while wealth is something you acquire through a lot of effort and more often than not, unlike income, wealth increases in value.

You can tax income, but you cannot tax wealth, unless you amend the Constitution to tax wealth in the same way you amended it to tax income.

Show of hands....how many think an amendment will pass allowing the taxation of wealth?

Never happen.

Let me demonstrate how differently twisted these Göbbels-nutters really are.

Let's say I have a vision. There's an empty lot down the way. I only got $10,000. So, what do I do?

I go to the public library and read how to write a business plan. I write the business plan and shop it around to potential investors until I get enough on board to make my vision a reality.

That would be part of the hard work and effort I mentioned.

So I take the money from investors, buy the empty lot and build a 40-story high-rise with high end apartments, middle income apartments, office space and retail space.

Now....here's the key....other people say my 40-story high-rise is worth $8 Million.

I never said it was worth $8 Million. Other people said it was. Other people like real estate agents and county auditors and tax assessors and media pundits and such.

Then, 20 years later, other people say my 40-story high-rise is worth $40 Million.

And everybody hates on me.

Why? It ain't my fault the county auditor says my asset is worth $40 Million.

Yet these nutters fly into an insanely jealous rage until they start frothing at the mouth and fall over backwards in their own urine and feces.

A high school acquaintance had 100 acres of land valued at $200/acre.

40 years later it's valued at $28,600/acre.

Her net worth went from $20,000 to $2.86 Million. How is that her fault?

She didn't create the Supply & Demand situation that drove up the value of her property. Other people did that.

And these nutters think she actually has $2.86 Million in cash and they want it.

What's Gates' net worth? $96 Billion?

Except he ain't got $96 Billion in cash. He's got maybe $7 Million in cash. The other $95.3 Billion is all non-cash assets.

To make these Liberal nutters happy, I guess he's supposed to cut up a Microsux stock certificate of 100,000 shares into 1 cm x 1 cm pieces and hand it out the people.

Somebody has a DaVinci painting worth $475.5 Million.

I guess Liberals would have us cut up the painting into little pieces to distribute to The Poor®.

 

What few people seem to understand is the so called inequality is mostly self imposed, bottom line is a lot of people in this country are stupid when it comes to money.

While what I am going to post is hypothetical, it's based on what I have seen people do with money, more so when it's money they didn't earn.

Lets say the government decides your high school acquaintance is too wealthy, so to reduce that inequality they seize three fourths of the property, divide it into smaller parcels and give it away to people who are poor.

Come a few years later it will be discovered most of that given away property has been mortgaged. the mortgages where defaulted on and the properties are now lost to foreclosures.

So where did the money go?

New cars, drugs and lotto tickets.

And those poor people are once again poor and seeking another handout to be stolen from the so called wealthy to be giver to them.

Now for a real world example, a guy I met in Junior High School came to me looking for a loan.

Background, at that time my wife and I where living in a shotgun shack, 2 bedroom single bath home, he had a huge 5 bedroom home up in the "wealthy" section of town, a few years earlier the guy looking for a loan actually commented to me "with all the money you and your wife are making why are you living in a 35 year old shack, when you could afford a nice home like I have?'

Now back to the loan, he had been flipping homes and the bottom fell out, he had two mortgages on his "big" home and couldn't meet either of them and wanted a loan so he could catch up on his payments to avoid hitting the streets.

I wanted to tell the guy are you nuts, you quit your job to get into flipping and you took out a second mortgage to finance the scam you got into, now you have no job, no income and want to borrow money from me?

I didn't say that, I made up a story explaining the majority of my money was tied up in long term investments, as such I don't have a lot of liquidity, I really wished I could help him out but I just didn't have that much cash on hand.

He seemed to understand I wasn't the rich man he thought I was and as such wasn't trying to screw the down on his luck poor guy about to lose his home, but what he said back to me really sunk in to the core of his problem, "that's ok, I know you would help us if you could, I guess I will just buy a few more Lotto tickets and hope I win.

The concept of working and saving was something he didn't understand, to him the only way to have lots of money was by doing something to get rich quick, things like multi-level marketing, flipping homes and of course, getting 6 number correct and hitting the big one.


..

 

Mostly? It's a 100% self-imposed.

It's the old adage: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

I've repeatedly posted a link to a Michigan website where for $125 you can get MIG/TIG welding certification and get a job that pays $18-$65/hour depending on where you live in the US.

In rush Liberals with a Million-and-One excuses why The Poor® can't do it.

There's nothing more disturbing than NPR interviewing some mealy-mouthed turd whining they ain't got $400 cash for an emergency, yet they have $1,200 in butt-ugly tattoos.

There are literally 1,000s of free tax-payer funded programs at the city, county, university, State and federal level available to The Poor® and 1,000s more cost less than a week's minimum wage pay check, but The Poor® blatantly refuse to take advantage of those opportunities.

If people refuse to do what they need to do, that's not my problem.

The whole "inequality" nonsense is just a shell game for Liberals to grab more power.

 

Based on what I have seen in life I'm not going to dispute that, I cannot prove what the exact number is, but it is way over the top, the government can only steal so much from the workers before they quit working or go underground and barter amongst themselves, then the house of cards collapses.

A really good guy I used to work with added some to that statement, it is "and you can't do anything if you are dealing with someone who is the other end of a horse."

No kidding, I learned how to stick weld when I was 14 , at 18 I was hired as a welder repairing dumpsters, it was nasty hot work but I was making 3 to 4 times as much as friends where making, literally right now I could drive over to Clewiston walk into U.S.Sugar and walk out hired as a welder at $32 per hour with good benefits and a take home truck.

Yes $32 seems low, but it's rural out here and the average wage is $12 per hour.

But that is not happening, I don't want to go back to work I have enough to do around here to keep me busy.

None the less the jobs are out there and they pay very well, the problem is no one wants to do that kind of work, prior to retiring from BellSouth / AT&T as a Digital Technician I was making something like $32 with over the top benefits, company paid for pension and a 401(k) with 100% matching up to $175 per week, from there it was still matched but the match tapered down as the employees contribution went up. .

It was there I discovered how lazy and weak people where getting, I would get assigned a new hire to train and 2 out of 3 of them would quit before their 6 month probation period ended, common reasons where, the sun was too hot, the rain was too wet, turning a screwdriver or pulling in come cable was too physically demanding.

And out of those who quit, the majority where males and from what I am being told by my still there co-workers it's only getting worse, even though the pay is now $39 per hour.

That's because they need the poor for their never ending virtue signalling, in reality they could care less about actually solving a problem, they for the most part caused with their handout programs.

After hurricane Andrew I volunteered to work with a group of people who where collecting needed supplies up in NW Miami, in the evening we would shut down the collection point (a public school) and lead the tractor trailers we loaded during the day down to a storage location in Homestead (another school), Publix Supermarkets loaned us 4 tractor trailers with drivers to move the supplies.

On a Saturday, August 29, 1992 I was assigned to work at a distribution point just North of Homestead on US-1, it was rather well organized, a storm victim could start at one end and come out the other with a couple of carts filled with enough supplies to make it 2 weeks, water, food, hygiene, clothing, we had everything at a one stop location.

I got home that evening early, around 9:00 PM, I turned on the TV while my girlfriend began making dinner, I was watching channel 7 Miami and they where interviewing a rather obese woman with a group of barely dressed children around her, she was crying and complaining that her apartment was wrecked, she has no water, no food, no power, her kids are starving and nobody is trying to help her out, I as I often do was recording the interview, I thought I saw something I had seen before, so when the interview was over and and tossed back to the studio I rewound the tape and watched the interview again.

It was then I figured what I saw, over her shoulder about 3 blocks South was the collection point I was assigned to work at, the woman in the interview was either too lazy or too stupid to gather up her children and neighbors, walk 3 blocks South and be given everything she needed to survive, furthermore the Salvation Army had set up a few catering trailers, she could have gotten inline and be given for free a nice hot meal for her and her children, also had she wanted to she could have gotten in another line and use the bathroom facilities that where setup to take a warm shower for her and the children.

But no, all she wanted to do was get on TV and complain about having to live in a dark powerless damaged apartment with no running water.

Correct, you can lead a horse to water but there isn't much you can do with someone being the other end of the horse.

It is a government funded addiction with society destroying strings attached.

The War On Poverty, like so many wars the US government has gotten into has been an abject failure which has cost billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives and in the end only made the problem worse.

 

There isn't one person in poverty (snicker) who didn't work extremely hard to get there.

Even that wouldn't be so bad, but they work twice as hard to remain in poverty.

They make no effort to change their lot in life, mainly because they spend every waking moment (and all the money they have) trying to immediately satisfy every infantile urge imaginable.

I am awed. In shop-class, the teacher (not Mr. Floyd, the other who yelled at me all the time) because I broke a riveting gun trying to rivet sheet metal. Then he yelled at me because I ran a board through a planer. It was there and then it wasn't. I don't know what happened to the board. I broke a drill bit on the drill press. I have no idea how that happened.

That's because "poverty" is an attitude.

No amount of money will change people's attitudes and what's worse is the Liberal one-size-fits-all approach to everything.

While money won't change their attitude, the lack of money will.

If you cut them off from the free money, they'll be sufficiently motivated.

 

For the 3 years that I was in Junior High I took shop class because it was something I liked doing, in the 9th grade the shop class teacher retired and was replaced by a coach who hated the assignment, as a result he was a b-buster to everyone in the class.

One day a few of us decided we had enough of his crap and where going to get even, this guy has a habit, around the middle of the period he would leave the shop to to the boys room do his business and then stand out in the parking lot with a few other teachers having a smoke.

Our plan was to teach him about metallurgy, the lesson being hot brass looks just like cold brass, when he came out of the boys room to head to the parking lot I took a propane torch and began heating the lever latch on the parking lot door of the shop, when we saw him drop his cigarette to the ground we let the door close and went back to what ever we where doing.

Shortly after that there was this horrific scream outside the parking lot door, someone inside wrapped the inside lever with a shop towel and opened the door and the teacher was seen running back to the boys room probably seeking a sink and lots of cold water.

After that he was absent for a week and by the time he came back he had been replaced with another teacher who didn't know anything about shop but wasn't such an a**, we did notice back at the gym the former shop teacher did have his left hand wrapped in gauze as if he had some sort of an accident or something.

 

They don't seem to realize it but they work twice as hard to remain in poverty versus getting out of poverty and anyone who claims they cannot get out of poverty doesn't understand what poverty is.

Very true hence the popularity of the Lotto, new cars and booze, now poverty supporters will claim none of that can be bought with stolen taxpayer money, but the reality is it happens ever hour of the day by working under the table or in business's dealing in merchandise or flesh much of which is illegal.

A little background, I have been doing both still photography and video for about 4 decades.

A long time back I had a friend on mine who was taking a journalism class and for her final she was going to do a story on poverty., just a few problems, she had no idea what she was going to get into, couldn't find anyone who would help her with the shoot and was quite white.

At the time I knew a manger at the Fort Lauderdale Housing Authority, I explained to her what my friend wanted to do, I was informed my friend must be nuts , I persisted and a week or so later I was informed a family had bee found who was willing to participate in the video, my friend was ecstatic that I was able to find what she needed to build her package for her final.

The shoot at my insistence was going to be done during the day, the location was a housing project known as the Green Monsters located near NW 27 Ave and Sunrise Blvd just East of a well known drug den named the Triangle Bar, a location that produced at least a homicide or more per month.

The Green Monsters got that name because the buildings where painted dark green down to about 4 feet above the walkways and grade, below that was painted black, this color scheme worked well to lower maintenance costs as the black his dirty finger streaks and all the other filth that was strewn about.

I picked up my friend and we rove over to the apartment where the shoot would be done, the closer we got to the location the more worried she looked, it didn't bother me all that much, I had worked around that area at night quite a number of times riding shotgun with the Broward Sheriff's Office, at the location we quickly set up and the interview began.

There where 3 generation's living in a 2 bedroom apartment, most of them females taking care of very young children or toddlers, the place smelled like a combination of sweat, urine and roach droppings, at one time I actually thought my friend was going to puke, for the interview I had the principals move from a couch to the dining room table, it had a glass top and around the edge where the top met the metal frame was a combination of grease filth, the top wasn't much better, it was streaked with grease, once in a while a roach could be seen walking on the underside of the top, that didn't seem to bother anyone there other than my fried.

After an hour or so we wrapped up the shoot, the gist of the tenants complaints where, no one cares about them, no one cleans the place up for them, they are sick and tired of living in such a s-hole and someone must do something about solving that NOW!

Driving back to my place while talking with my friend I could tell she was sort of in shock, it didn't compute, nor did what she just saw match what she thought poverty was, it turned her story line upside down.

She thought poverty was caused by the evil rich forcing others to live in poverty, not able bodied people who spent all day on their butts watching TV, breeding all night long and too lazy to pick up a sponge and some cleaner, expecting someone else to do that for them.

It's a learned attitude passed down from one generation to the next generation .

Don't tell that to folks who thing tossing money at a problem solves everything.

That might work, but only if after they have looted and burnt down everything in their neighborhood is not replaced out of taxpayers pockets, it's not like they can or are willing to travel to get what they want or more importantly need, after they distroyed what little they had where they lived.

And I see that as a very dangerous and blood flowing problem that very well could happen, over the years I have learned city folks think they are the smart ones and those who live in rural areas are just a bunch of dumb hicks, in reality the city folks are not so smart when compared to those who live in rural areas.

As such if those in the city think they can just migrate away from the mess they created out and into rural areas, they are in for a real nasty surprise.

As a person who moved from a urban city, out to very rural area I have experienced it first hand, they (rural folks) don't trust city folks and for a good reason, they have seen what we did to where we lived and they don't want up to bring that crap out to where they live.

 

Yeah, they're basically just frothing at the mouth.

That's great.

Yeah, I could tell stories like that all day long. I was on the road 2 years responding DVs and loud music complaints and health and welfare checks. A lot of those were in the projects.

Government can break the cycle with a simple policy change.

Single mothers age 26 and under are no longer entitled to HUD housing.

Where will they live? Well, mommy and daddy. Or, mommy or daddy. Or some other relative.

If that isn't possible, then the government could provide a group home at a fraction of the cost of HUD housing (HUD rents are over-inflated above market value soaking the tax-payers for $Billions every year.)

Put the group home in an ugly building, SRO (single room occupancy), meaning their child doesn't get a separate room, and a bigger room for those who have more than one children. No doors on the rooms as in old-fashioned dorm-style. No overnight visitors. Visiting hours end at 10:00 PM. Lights out at 11:00 PM. Curfew at 12:00 PM.

During the day, they work on their GED, and if they have a GED or diploma, they work on getting a job or job-training.

From 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM Monday through Friday, they have financial literacy classes, relationship counseling classes and substance abuse classes.

Sadly, their visitor(s) will only be able to visit them for an hour. In the Day Room, not their room.

That takes the fun out of everything. Can't party and gossip and drink/drug and watch TV all the live-long day.

That would break the cycle within a generation.

 

Work it like the anti-gunners, one small step at a time, have a non-supported child, not a problem we are a caring society, have another and sorry no extra benefits.

 

So, there are uber-rich Democratic DONORS too, who knew?

 

Why does this amuse me?

Why Democrats are getting squeamish about taxing the moderately rich

In 2017, Donald Trump’s tax reform law capped the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) at $10,000. The four New Jersey Democrats, and allies in other states like Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), have constituents with relatively high incomes who live in areas with relatively high state and local taxes. As a result, those constituents would benefit a lot if the tax code allowed them to once again deduct all—or at least more—of their state and local tax bill from their federal taxes.

So these Democrats are currently negotiating to get that tax cut included in the Democrats’ legislative package.

Democrats: Party of the rich.