The Mother of Middle-Class Tax Cuts

Glad you are debating here, Chris. Perhaps no one else is paying attention to us, but we, as time permits, can attempt to state our thoughts and feelings. Not a surprise, I have a few comments on your latest post.

On Adam Smith, he wrote at a time when incorporated entities and central banks did not rule the roost to the extent they do today in America and the larger world. Because of that, I believe some (maybe even most) of his statements now amount to mere over-simplification of our real issues. He could not, and did not, contemplate that of the 100 largest economic forces in the world, it's said that 51 are countries and 49 are individual corporations. He likewise did not imagine a USA "playing chicken" with how long we can be the world's biggest debtor (with no plan to repay any of it) and dupe others into believing we're too big to fail.

On 401(k), yes I have one, and I am frustrated as a real financial conservative that the yields on insured debt securities (bank CDs, government bonds, even other bonds.) are held way BELOW inflation by our Fed "creating" funny money. The recent emergency responses to the subprime melt-down have not only included the Fed funds rate declining ABITRARILY to 2% to rob the elderly of yield at their local banks, but also have included the Fed FLOODING markets with "liquidity", aka funny money from thin air. All this is politically motivated (to avoid disaster commencing on Republicans' watch) and is in ADDITION to our decades of stated fiscal deficit. It is weakening both America and our currency AND FACES A SUDDEN DAY OF RECKONING SIMILAR TO WHAT WE NOW SEE HAPPENING IN CRUDE OIL.

Except for Clinton (8 years of the last 28), Replublican presidents have presided over this.

On "redistribution", you use a term in your 3rd paragraph above, "lesser individual", to describe those with whom wealth might be shared downward via liberals' tax policies. I do not believe that the two guys who started "Girls Gone Wild" and "Red Bull" (both now very wealthy) are greater or better than teachers, laborers, factory workers, farm workers, store clerks, and everybody working in the criminal justice system, as examples. I DO believe that most who are "earning" ten million or more a year, in fact, are gathering that kind of money from forms of opportunism and that the money itself is actually COMING FROM those "lessers" or from their lost opportunities usurped (such as in short-selling securities.) So returning some, even most, of it to society is not at all "immoral" to me.

I think it's more immoral if we DON'T find that political courage to levy taxes that, in fact, curb the excesses from so easily developing in the first place. We wonder, today, why we have "billion-dollar" CEOs. The answer is BECAUSE WE DON'T STOP THE CYCLE WITH TAXATION (like we used to when CEOs typically earned 25 times the pay of the average worker---earnings that were actually quite enough.)

As for "economic growth", the best things we can do is tax both astronomical incomes and astronomical capital gains until our nation is not indebted and is not printing emergency "funny" money. (Key word: Astronomical. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ANY NEW TAXES ON INDIVIDUALS UNDER $75K OR FAMILIES UNDER $150K). Reducing some spending is a good idea, too. But the difference between you Republicans and us Democrats is that you want to reduce spending on individuals and we want to reduce it on the portion accruing to incorporated entities.

Daniel David of NM 11:13AM May 22, 2008