Tag Archives: taxes

You didn’t build that

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“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” – Barack Obama

And the right goes insane. He’s the most anti-business president in history! Or something! But if you read his remarks in context it becomes clear that his meaning is other than what these two unscripted sentences alone would seem to imply. Really. Take a look.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

“The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

(Emphasis my own.)

When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. Radical, I know. And when he’s saying “you didn’t build that,” he’s quite obviously referring to the “roads and bridges” of the previous sentence. If you seriously don’t get that…well, no. I don’t even believe someone doesn’t get that.

But wait! The president is still awful and a communist! He doesn’t seem to realize that the business owner himself paid the taxes that built those roads in the first place! He doesn’t get it!

Or maybe it’s the right-wingers who don’t get it. Sure, the successful business owner paid taxes for the roads. (Well, some of them do.) But here’s the thing your’e forgetting: So did everyone else. It’s not that “you didnt build that”–it’s that you didn’t build it alone. We built that road together, through our taxes, through our government. And having done so we created an environment where business can thrive–your business, my business, everyone’s business. If you are successful in America, you owe a little of that success to other Americans. The ones who helped pay for the infrastructure in which your business could thrive.

And, importantly, if we forget that doing these kinds of things together is part of that recipe for success, then we risk having less success in the future. It is not only necessary that wealthy individuals and successful businesses pay taxes, it’s only right that they do so. Not to pay back the people who helped them. But to extend that nurturing environment forward so that the next hard working person with a big dream can be successful, too.

Anyone who reads the presidents remarks to mean something different is engaging in, shall we say, “motivated misunderstanding.” His meaning is obvious and factual on its face.

Obamacare: Not a tax after all!

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I should have known better than to accept anything Republicans said at face value. Even I believed that Obamacare, or at least the part of it where people have to pay a penalty for not buying insurance, was “a tax.” So what, I said. So it’s a tax. It’s 1% of people who might pay 1% of their income for lacking personal responsibility and being “free riders.” I’m cool with this “tax.”

But it turns out not to be true at all.

Apparently if it were a tax, the SCOTUS would have thrown the case out due to lack of jurisdiction. They can’t actually hear a case on taxes until someone has actually paid the tax. The fact that they did hear and rule on this case proves that, at least according to the Court, Obamacare is not a tax.

TED: ideas worth hiding

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I really don’t get why this TED talk was considered controversial. Someone suggested to me that it was because it contained “proof” that supply side economics is bunk, that such proof is dangerous to The Man–and thus the effort to keep it hushed.

But I think the reason it was kept under the rug was not because it contained anything new, but because saying these things to an audience of venture capitalists was simply embarrassing to TED organizers. One of the points of TED, after all, is to lure VC money into funding the great ideas presented there.

WERE YOU AWARE OF IT?

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When elected Republicans say they are deeply worried about the deficit, they are lying. They just like to use that bogeyman to bludgeon liberal priorities. They do not give a rats ass about the deficit.

Provide health care for 9/11 responders with lingering health issues? Insanity! We have to control this deficit, you know!

Extend jobless benefits in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Good heavens no! The deficit!

Extend Bush’s tax cuts for millionaires even though it would add far more to the deficit? We must! And pass the Grey Poupon while you’re at it, there’s a good fellow.

Lying. Like I said.

Priorities

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When congress debated extending jobless benefits during the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, they did a lot of fretting and handwringing over whether it would add to the deficit. When congress is faced with extending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy instead of letting them expire as written, however, the GOP had no such concerns–despite the fact that they add a whole lot more to the deficit than jobless benefits do.

Let us dispense with the notion that letting those tax cuts expire will increase taxes on small businesses, because they won’t. And let us also remember that some of the soberest–and Republicanest–minds in American economics have come out and admitted that extending them would be disastrous.

It’s hard not to wonder whether the GOP cares more about Donald Trump’s tax bill than it does about millions of unemployed Americans.

Tax Voodoo

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I heard it again today. The idea that the government takes in more tax dollars if it lowers taxes. This time it was Wisconsin senatorial candidate Ron Johnson on Joy Cardin’s Wisconsin Public Radio show. Let’s have a listen.

One might make the case that Geithner is wrong; that raising any taxes on anyone is a bad idea in these economic times. But that isn’t what Johnson is saying. He’s flatly saying that cutting taxes increases tax revenue, full stop.

Do you believe him? I don’t. There may be a theoretical point at which cutting taxes does increase tax revenue, but the idea that we’re at such a point, or that this principle is axiomatic and true under all circumstances, strikes me as complete bullshit. Need more? For the wonkish, here’s an article discussing why tax cuts that pay for themselves are myths and here’s another.

Taxes: Figure it out

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Listen, America. I want to warn you about an impending crisis. No, it’s not al Qaida. It’s not global warming. It’s not even unemployment. It’s how many of your friends and neighbors are freeloaders.

That’s right! Did you know that about 10% of Americans pay nothing at all to the federal government in taxes? It’s outrageous!

Wait, what? You heard a higher number? Forty-seven percent, you say?

Who’s right, me or them?

Bonus question: What percent of American corporations pay no federal income tax?

Also: No links. Figure it out. You can do it.