GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Trump’s tax plan

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Yesterday, President Trump outlined his tax plan. Key features:

  • Slightly lower personal income tax rates. (Top rate from near-40% to 35%.)
  • Eliminating almost all income tax deductions, except mortgage interest and charitable contributions. (No more deduction for your State or property taxes, among other things.) Increase in the “standard deduction”.
  • Much lower corporate income tax rates. (Top rate from 35%, one of the world’s highest, to 15%.)
  • A one-time tax on overseas business profits. (That haven’t been repatriated to the U.S. Apple has a lot.)
  • A “territorial system” where future profits that corporations earn abroad, are not taxed.
  • Repealing a bunch of taxes and complications, most notably the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the estate tax.

Of course, Congress still has to chew on it.

Taking Trump’s proposals by themselves, I have little objection. Rates should be lower. High income taxes are a form of slavery. Corporate income taxes are stupid because they are an indirect, distorted sales tax (that is, a tax paid ultimately by consumers). Estate taxes destroy many small businesses (forcing families to liquidate the business in order to pay the 50% tax or whatever).

Nonetheless, I can’t praise this plan. Because it will reduce revenues at first, without being matched by spending cuts. Our budget will come no closer to balance.

President Obama already doubled the U.S. national debt in his 8 years, from roughly $10 trillion to roughly $20 trillion, for an average real annual deficit around $1.25 trillion. Is Trump going to beat Obama’s record? I sure hope not.

This is an important point. The true level of taxation is the government’s spending level. All spending must be paid for, one way or another. There are 3 possibilities.

  1. Overt taxes.
  2. Borrowing. This is a covert tax, a tax on the future (when either the debt must be repudiated, or more and more government revenues must be diverted to servicing it).
  3. Money-printing. Another hidden tax, this time on the real value (the purchasing power) of everyone’s wages and savings. Also known as “inflation”.

So really, it isn’t a tax cut unless it’s a spending cut also. Trump wants to cut the overt taxes. So, what? Without spending cuts, it’s only a corresponding increase in the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

And what happens when we add (say) a Trump infrastructure spending package and a Syria or North Korea war on top of that? More of the hidden taxes: borrowing and/or money-printing.

Who are the real progressives? (Hint: We are)

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Here’s a thought: *It’s wrong to take things from people by force.*

The above is an ethical principle so basic that even leftists know it. When, say, watching a movie that has cavemen, the leftie can see that the caveman taking things (by force) is a sign of his savagery. Or, when teaching a kindergarten, even a left-wing teacher will stop the kid who grabs another kid’s toys or body parts without prior, explicit consent. The willingness to deal with others by mutual, voluntary consent is the foundation of civilized society.

But in the sphere of politics, the left-winger forgets it. Politically, her concept is that if you can get “the community” or government to take things from people by force (rather than taking things yourself)……then it’s OK. She calls that concept “progressive”. But it isn’t progressive. It’s regressive and, indeed, reactionary.

It’s reactionary because it dates back to savage times. It’s the prevailing rule in the dark(er) ages of human history. In medieval and early modern times, they called it the Divine Right of Kings. The idea was that the monarch, being answerable only to God, had the right to take anyone’s life, liberty or property at any time. Which meant, more or less, that the government had the right; government was effectively unlimited.

Beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, unlimited government was opposed by the Lockean Revolution, a set of ideas developed by many, including John Locke. The core idea was that individuals have natural rights, superior to the government’s. The Lockeans were not anarchists; they pushed the ideas of limited government and rule of law.

The Lockean Revolution was (and still is) profoundly progressive. In itself, it is an instance of progress (over savagery). Also, to whatever extent it has been practiced, it has tended to make the surrounding society much more developed and open.

Opponents of the Lockean Revolution were reactionaries. Why? Because almost by definition they were aristocrats, defending old privileges and unjust institutions (such as slavery and unlimited government).

Eventually, the reactionaries saw that Big Government could not survive, if people understood that it was reactionary. Big Government advocates saw the need to dress themselves up as new-fangled and “progressive”. So they developed new political theories; new justifications for Big Government, that is, government which would be able to take things from people by physical force, as it pleased.

Following more socialistic philosophers such as Rousseau or Marx, advocates of Big Government chopped off the King’s head – while preserving his Big (or nearly unlimited) government, in practice. Instead of God or the King’s right, they talked about the supremacy of the People (or Nation or Race or Proletariat or Community) over the individual. (“We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” – Hillary Clinton)

In chopping off the King’s head – and by their own loud, ongoing proclamation – Big Government advocates have re-branded themselves as “progressives”. But they are not. They remain reactionaries. Because, in practice, these “progressives” still oppose the Lockean Revolution – which is (in Jonah Goldberg’s phrasing) the greatest gift to humankind of the last 1,000 years.

In point of fact, limited government – and the Rule of Law – are civilization and progress; while Big Government, however left-wingers may now justify it, is still as savage and reactionary as it ever was.

We who believe in freedom and limited government may often get called reactionaries, by left-wingers. Call it example #6553 of left-wing deflection and projection.

Big Government drives the economy underground

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Some days ago, cnbc.com ran an article called $2 Trillion Underground Economy May Be Recovery’s Savior. It uses quotes from experts:

The shadow economy is a system composed of those who can’t find a full-time or regular job…

“You normally see underground economies in places like Brazil or in southern Europe,”…

Estimates are that underground activity last year totaled as much as $2 trillion…double the amount in 2009, according to a study… “The jobs are in service industries from small food establishments to landscaping.”…

A report from ADP Research Institute states that many employers, especially in low-wage businesses such as retail and food service, plan to reduce workers’ hours to less than 30 a week to avoid having to offer health benefits through Obamacare…

“The result is less tax money paid to the various levels of government.” “Those working and not paying the taxes puts the burden on those who pay the tax,”…

Workers who aren’t on the books don’t get Social Security or health benefits…

Several points here leap out at me.

  1. How Obamacare destroys full-time jobs, as predicted by many on the Right before it passed.
  2. How ‘normal’ taxation creates Second or Third World conditions in the economy.
  3. How people can at least survive, when taxes are lower (or absent).
  4. The experts’ and media’s cluelessness about all this. Despite the information presented by the article, its unspoken perspective remains that government is robbed, when people avoid taxes. Umm… how about people being robbed, when an excessively large and redistributive government taxes them so heavily that they (or their potential employers / trading partners) are forced into the underground economy?

In other words: Shouldn’t we shrink government and lower taxes enough that people won’t need to be in the underground economy?

That’s the question these articles never ask; the one you’re supposed to never think about. They are always written from an assumption that people do something illegitimate, when they avoid the government’s tax man; never from an assumption that the government does something illegitimate, when it charges people enough to drive them to it.