Lions and Eagles

Big businesses are just going to take unfair advantage of the new tax code. How do we know Warren Buffet and Wall Street won't just cheat the new system? There will always be people who are trying to game the system. But trying to cheat the system right now is like trying to cheat at a game of Monopoly with real $5000 dollar bills: The stakes are high, and the game is complicated enough that a clever player just might get away with it. Switch to the 9-9-9 plan, and you've lowered the stakes, and made the rules as simple as tic-tac-toe. Sure, you just know someone is going to try to cheat, but it's harder to see how they'll get away with it. You just want to help the rich, and step on the poor. Cut that out, we're trying to have a reasonable conversation here. Nobody sane wants a tax code that helps the rich at the expense of the poor. But that doesn't mean that the only other choice is a system that punishes success. Let's have a simple tax code with a ...

Since I wrote my first article , I've had some questions and concerns posed to me about my example. I like questions and concerns! It gives me a reason to do more writing! My friend John wrote to me: Another problem lies in the sales tax structures of the various states. An erroneous assumption in your calculations is that Georgia does not charge state sales tax on groceries. Only local sales taxes are charged on groceries and I believe pharmaceuticals. Florida has no sales tax charged whatsoever on groceries or prescription drugs. Varying state tax structures, to me, infinitely complicate the whole picture of whether 999 is good or bad when integrated into the existing taxes that will not go away. Here's the good news: Unlike Obamacare, we don't have to pass this bill to know what's in it. We can research, we can calculate, and we can prove whether this undertaking is really complicated beyond measure. My first task will be to research existing sales tax struc...

But aren't all sales taxes regressive?   Funny, I never hear anyone bring this one up when the state or local governments are trying to get us to approve the SPLOST, or penny sales taxes, or any of those other "temporary but somehow never dying" sales taxes to pay for all of those local projects they love. When politicians want to put a new sales tax on us, the word "regressive" is never heard. It's only when someone proposes getting rid of a complicated income tax system that no one likes anyway that this word even comes up. Anyway, I want to be careful with this topic. "Regressive" is a politically-charged word. Let's make sure we establish what it means, first. According to Investopedia , a regressive tax is "a tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than high-income people". It may be just me, but that doesn't sound like a very precise definition. A larger percentage of what? Does this mean that, in a...

Test 2: But what about that 9% income tax? Won't that hurt poor people who aren't paying income tax now? One concern raised is that the flat 9% income tax will hurt people who aren't taxed right now. Let's try those numbers out, again keeping the assumptions of the tax calculator intact. Let's take a household of 4 (same as mine), earning and spending at the poverty level. That is, every dollar they earn in a year, they have to spend. Just to make it worst-case-scenario, let's say that everything they buy is new, so everything they buy is taxed. Most sensible families at the real poverty level are buying used wherever they can, which means the tax doesn't touch everything they buy, but let's take this worst case just for the sake of argument. The latest data I have says that in 2005, this family would have earned (and spent) $25,660. Let's say that this family lives in a state with 0% sales tax, just to keep that part of the math simple. Finally,...

By now, most everyone's heard about Herman Cain's 999 Tax Plan. Some love it, some love to bash it. But who can you trust? It seems everyone's got something to gain. A lot of the negative statements about it have come from other candidates who see it as a great target, or from tax lobbying institutes who depend on the complication of the existing system to justify their existence. But then, even though I like Cain, I don't want to risk trusting his math blindly, without checking it out myself. I mean, sure, he's got a degree in math, another in computer science, and he used to calculate rocket trajectories for the Navy, but he could be wrong this time, right? So, here's a little experiment. I ran across a 999 Tax Calculator  web site, not affiliated with or funded by the Cain Campaign, which lets you plug in numbers and see the effect of the new tax plan on prices. The best part is, you can see the calculations and check them for yourself. Will the poor pay mo...

I realize I may be doing a bit of troll-feeding here, but I saw this image on a friend's Facebook page, and just couldn't resist the challenge. This is a sign from an anti-Tea Party rally. I believe that I can prove every point on this sign to be wrong, for both Jesus and Obama. As a disclaimer, I am not an official member of any Tea Party organization, but I have attended several Tea Party events, and I do consider myself to be a supporter of Tea Party values. Just for fun, I'll go in reverse order: Free Healthcare? Healthcare is provided by doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, who diagnose your illness, and  take care of you while you get better, or until you die, whichever comes first. Depending on how sick you are, this can be very expensive. Jesus never offered healthcare. He offers healing. Jesus's healing is this: "The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and ...

Heard on the radio this morning: Police officers unhappy with their pay and benefits may go on "ticket strike" by cutting down on number of traffic tickets issued, cutting into municipal revenue. When your employer is strapped for revenue, and can't pay what you want as a result, how does it make sense to protest using an action that will leave them even more strapped for revenue? As a government, how does it make any sense to pass a law, then build your budget on the expectation that people will break that law, giving you income from fines? How does that fit with the idea that we are supposed to be a free society? I'm just saying....

Georgia passes an illegal immigration bill, and of course, some celebrity comes along to raise a fuss, and call it racist. Frankly, Santana doesn't know what he's talking about. The bill says that if an illegal immigrant gets nabbed while committing some other crime , they get sent back home. Big whoop. Oh, and employers have to take some reasonable effort to make sure their employees aren't committing identity theft. Which is, again, a crime, in case you didn't remember. You know who really gets left out of the immigration debate? The folks who are already trudging on a path to citizenship. The law-abiding immigrants who are here under their own names, who have spent decades and often tens of thousands of dollars filling out forms and making sure they abide by all the rules, waiting to get through "the system". These are the people who really deserve the benefit of immigration reform. But they can't vote, and most of the folks I know on this road aren...

President George W. Bush: Attacked Iraq after obtaining Congressional approval, UN resolutions, and an international coalition. President Barak Obama: Attacked Libya with no Congressional approval, no UN resolutions, no international coalition. President Bush was roasted in the media for "unilaterally" starting an "illegal" war by attacking a country that "didn't attack us first". Now we've got a president who really has done the very thing he accused his predecessor of doing. Will Obama face half the criticism Bush did? Now, I'm not altogether certain what the right move in Libya would be. Certainly doing nothing isn't the right move: When France of all countries is doing more to stand up to a dictator than we are, something's wrong. Maybe attacking their military facilities is the right thing in this case. But after this, maybe Obama supporters should think twice before talking about Bush's "illegal" war.

I've had another thought on the union situation in Wisconsin and many other states. I'd like to frame a situation, and pose a question to many of my more Left-minded friends, if you all will be kind enough to consider what I say. Let's start with a situation where workers have decided to organize into a union. When the workers organize, they gain the ability to strike. Even if the strike is illegal or unofficial, it may happen in the form of workers suddenly all taking a "sick day" at the same time. (Teachers: What kind of example is that to set for your students, to fake a note from the doctor to get out of class?) Now, let's stack the deck. We give the union the power to tell employer that they have no ability to deal with anyone not in the union. This means that anyone going to work joins the union automatically, whether they wanted to or not. This also means that the employer can't replace people who are employed but don't want to work, with pe...

So again, I'm looking at the Wisconsin mess. As one blogger I follow has noted, " Cairo and Athens come to Madison. " The argument I hear from one of the protest participants is that collective bargaining is an important right. Now, I have never worked in a "collective bargaining" job. I did once work in a grocery store which gave employees an option of joining the union, but I was a minor at the time, and therefore not eligible for union benefits. (Now, the union wanted to sign me up and take a cut of my paycheck anyway, without telling me I wouldn't get any benefits, but thankfully I declined.) But let's say you've been in the world of collective bargaining, and it looks like that is going to be taken away. Your union managers tell you that you absolutely need collective bargaining, that it's vital to your well-being. You can expect this. It's not your job on the line, it's theirs. Just as I can expect the car salesman to tell me...

One of the big items on the discussion table for Federal budget cuts is NPR. Those in favor of NPR are talking about it as "de-funding Sesame Street". Well, let's look at Sesame Street a moment. I think that if there's a single NPR production that could survive without tax money to help, it would be the show with the Big Bird. Sesame Street is a huge international franchise, and the money made on Elmo toys alone must be worth a sizable fortune. Here's my devil's advocate question: Do they really need the money they get from our taxes? Or can they get along without it? We get upset when Wall Street gets tax money, especially when it goes to people who can clearly do without. Why don't we hold Sesame Street up to the same standard? Is it because it's "for the children"? Or is it the cute and cuddly monsters? I'm not saying that Sesame Street isn't a good cause. They do their job very well, educating and entertaining. But does ev...

Two things I ran across yesterday are spinning in my head. First, I ran across this link . Duquesne University Economics Professor Antony Davies compares the national debt to a household income. Here's a video from that page: Watch that. Listen twice to what he says at the end. If you take all of the debt, all of the unfunded promises that have been made in Social Security, Medicare, and so on... If you take all of that, and add it up, it outstrips the   economic output of the entire planet. That's right. Our government has promised to pay more money than exists, more money than can possibly exist. In the world. Let that sink in. When I learn this, I think: Ouch. We are screwed. Now, on to the next thing. An old college "sister" of my wife is in Wisconsin taking part in the protests at the state capital. She posted that the state budget shouldn't be balanced on the backs of state workers. I asked whose back it should be balanced on. She replied, i...

My letter to the editor sparked some interesting debate and comments. Mostly encouragements, good to hear. There were a few folks who didn't necessarily disagree, but who think that we'll never get people to be personally responsible for themselves on a large enough scale to ever solve the problem.What can I say? If you start with a low expectation of people, they'll satisfy that expectation. It's like the epidemic of low expectations in majority-black schools these days: If you tell students that they can't learn, then they won't try, and if they don't try, they won't learn. Likewise, if you create policy based on the expectation that people won't try to plan for their own future, you'll make it harder on people who actually do plan for their own futures. On the other hand, if we expect that there will be people who are responsible, and that there will be people who are charitable to those in need, then we might actually get people who are ...

I have submitted this as a Letter to the Editor at the Citizen . This is in reply to the Jan. 4th letter to the editor, " Thanks to 'our wonderful' Obama ". A reader thanked the President for an increased Medicare check she recently received. Here's the thing: The money didn't come from Obama. As my parents taught me, money doesn't grow on trees. All money in the government treasury comes from taxing, and borrowing against future taxes. Ms. Zeldin: Decades ago, before I was old enough to work, politicians told you a lie. They said that if you would just pay your Medicare taxes into the system, they'd pay you back when you got older. You were told that if you would just accept the additional taxation, you wouldn't have to pay for your own medical care in retirement. It was a scam, a Ponzi scheme. They took the money and ran. Now you're being paid back, not with your own tax money, but with mine. Now, that's bad enough. I understand,...