Thursday, December 22, 2011

Shoe On Other Foot

It pays for your Social Security (theoretically). A year ago you were doing OK with the contribution then the Messiah sent you a half a loaf of stale bread for the coming year. To stimulate your extravagant spending he offered you a ONE YEAR reduction of 2% in the payroll tax withholding. For most folks it was virtually unnoticeable. Typically it came to about $20 a week. Hardly a spending spree. For some it got offset by rises in Medicare premiums. My monthly actually dropped by the frightening amount of $2.50.

Now the one year is up and the Bamster squeals. This is tragic. We must extend it again and keep the huge spending wave going forward and the recovery surging...or whatever. So he asks for a year extension, his Democratic controlled Senate gives him two months and the House balks in favor of his desired one year reprieve but they become the bad guys.

How bad is this? Well the White House is collecting sob stories for the media:

No Pizza! No Trip to Grandma's!

But there is one thing that confuses me in this.

If this one year pittance not being extended is so punitive, how is that different than the Bush-era tax cuts that have been in place for eleven years now? They put much more cash in the consumer's hand, they've been in place for a decade, and the economy flourished despite the tragic beginning of the period with 9/11. Only as the clock ran down and the uncertainty of the future began to loom did we see a down-turn and that was linked quite closely to the housing collapse.

Bush tax cuts bad. Bamster chump change good. Seems like simply a matter of scale here.

11 comments:

Hippo said...

Could I get a beer with that pizza please? Thankyewverymuch.

Jeff McDonald said...

Oh, no, I won't be able to afford my week's ration of ammunition...

hitman said...

2 and a half bucks ain't much ammo Jeff. Hard to keep your edge with that. Maybe you can roll your own and save money that way.

Anonymous said...

A couple thousand people in the pizza industry might lose their jobs over this.

And the ammmunition factory might have to cut some employees (Don't you need to shoot that ammo up quickly or it spoils?)

But hey their 99%, why should you care, right? I mean as long as the 1% get their tax cuts your happy, right?

~Leadfoot

Ed Rasimus said...

I'm not in the 1% by a long shot, but don't you toss me into your Occupy buddies who are hardly more than a handful of throw-backs to a period when there were actual causes to protest about.

Tax policy is not about redistribution of wealth. That's called communism. Tax policy is about sharing the burdens of government. When 51% of Americans currently pay zero federal income tax the burden sharing seems a bit skewed.

Anonymous said...

Boehner acknowledged that engaging in a payroll tax fight "may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world to do."

Yeah you got that right. Got to give the dems credit. Politically they made the the repugnants look like fools and spefically like the Grinch who stole Xmas

Beer, pizza and ammo makers are rejoicing along with the cabdrivers.

~leadfoot

Anonymous said...

@ED

The thing you don't understand about tax policy is it's a lot like the old Willie Sutton line about why he robbed the banks.

"because that's where the money is"

And if you try to change the tax policy so the few in the 51% who do have money are taxed President Grover Norquist steps in and say you better not.

No logic in taxing those who barely scrape by to live, ed.

And you may not financially qualify as 1% but tell me where is your heart at?

PS wish google would install a spellchecker here.

~leadfoot

hitman said...

Yeah, and a bleeding heart liberal checker would be nice too.

Ed Rasimus said...

Leadfoot,

There are many reasons that folks "barely scrape by to live." We have free K-12 education to prepare folks to work and earn a living. We have college tuition assistance on a long menu of options. We have the opportunity to prepare yourself for productive employment.

We also have NEA dumbing down education. We've got self-esteem promotion and waiver of performance advancement. We've got a welfare entitlement and now over three years of unemployment benefits ("money for nothing and the chicks for free"). We've got encouragement of single-parent households and child-bearing as early as possible to qualify for government hand-outs. We've got college graduate "occupiers" believing they deserve "debt forgiveness."

Exorbitant taxing of those who are most successful restricts business growth and hiring and (drum-roll, please) helps to keep wages down for your oppressed proletariat.

Please take some time with Friedman, Hayek and Laffer and less with Marx and Keynes.

And consider for a moment that if your liberal social welfare society were doing a decent job you wouldn't be begging for a spell-checker from Google. You would know how to spell yourself.

Anonymous said...

@Ed

1. I got A's in spelling K-12. And a lot of 100% test scores. My typing is atrocious since my left hand is semi-numb. Keep in mind I'm not asking the gov't to add spell-check but google.

2. You drew a wrong conclusion on why my words are misspelled on your blog. And your conclusions on why 49 million people live below the poverty line in the US are just as wrong. But calling them stupid uneducated lazy bums makes your conscience feel good right?

3 Welfare is not the answer for us who sympathize with the occupy movement. Jobs that pay a decent wage and provide good health care are the answers for what we want the 1% to supply. And I mean productive jobs not make-work.

4 Laffer??? ROTFLMAO Total con man. Trickle down was really trickle up.

~Leadfoot

Anonymous said...

ED,

I just found your blog after reading all three of your books-Thunder Rolls some years ago, a re-read last year, then Fighter Pilot and Palace Cobra in the last year or so. Great reads all three. Thank you-

Regarding your reply to "Leadfoot" on tax policy-I gotta agree with him. When we have rich guys like Buffett and the founder of Vanguard Funds express their concerns about the unequal distribution of wealth in this country, we all should take note.

Thanks again for the great reads-and your service.

Eric