In their mania to blur the lines between tax cuts "for the rich" and tax cuts generally, even certain deep cuts that would substantially help lower and middle class Americans, many national statists invariably revile the very notion of them as unpatriotic heresy. After all, these are lean times for D.C.
To the tax-cuts-are-evil-discredited-conservative-heresy crowd, we all must (forcibly) submit to our "patriotic" duty to hand over more of our livelihoods to fund their "new age" retread of massive centralized federal power, ultimately aimed at saving us all from ourselves. (They'll borrow the rest from future generations, mind you. Why not? Bush did, right?)
But what about tax cuts directly benefiting struggling Americans like, for example, full tax deductibility of ALL consumer interest, not merely just home mortgage interest?
Businesses are able to deduct their interest expenses from their bottom lines. Why shouldn't citizens and families be offered the same?
How about a downward sliding scale of taxation on profits derived from interest on consumer debt as the interest rate gets lower and lower? I.E. credit card companies are tax-incented to offer lower rates to consumers. Undoubtedly such a scheme could be structured in a way in which it would be better for creditors to issue debt at lower rates.
These are just ideas and are obviously couched in the bloated corrupt tax regime status quo within which any idea must be made to work in the immediate term.
The first idea would immediately help those drowning in often-usurious consumer debt. Not confiscating income that many Americans desperately need just to stay solvent would be of immediate and real aid to struggling income-earners NOW (versus years down 'stimulus' road).
Working families are better served not having to send their income to federal spend-meisters in the first place, only to (maybe) have it doled back out to them via Rube Goldberg-ian schemes like the recent bank bailouts or "free" nationalized health care.
But God forbid we should have any such horrid [*shiver*] tax-cuts, when what we really need, for example, are one-time rebates made up from numbers arbitrarily pulled out of thin air (e.g. $500 for this demographic, $1000 for that demographic) and handed out en masse by categories, indiscriminate as to real circumstance.
Creative solutions that would chisel away at the soul-crushing Federal Tax Code would be much harder work for our esteemed federal electeds. An array of such real targeted relief might erode the cover for special-interest driven pork that only the same-old one-size-fits-all superficial garbage (like Bush's failed $145 BN dole of 'stimulus' checks) can uniquely provide to our federal overseers.
I guess I just keep coming back to : whose money is it in the first place?
The "tax cuts are evil" crowd obviously believe our income is not what we earn, but what government "lets" us keep.
I guess where they see evil tax cuts, I see welcome tax relief.
Such welcome relief could be crafted in short order by the new president and congress, immediately applied to this year's upcoming tax bite.
I guess we'll see if real relief for lower/middle income people is really the goal, or just "relief" according to Washington dictates, most convenient to continued federal largesse.
I won't be holding my breath.
To the tax-cuts-are-evil-discredited-conservative-heresy crowd, we all must (forcibly) submit to our "patriotic" duty to hand over more of our livelihoods to fund their "new age" retread of massive centralized federal power, ultimately aimed at saving us all from ourselves. (They'll borrow the rest from future generations, mind you. Why not? Bush did, right?)
But what about tax cuts directly benefiting struggling Americans like, for example, full tax deductibility of ALL consumer interest, not merely just home mortgage interest?
Businesses are able to deduct their interest expenses from their bottom lines. Why shouldn't citizens and families be offered the same?
How about a downward sliding scale of taxation on profits derived from interest on consumer debt as the interest rate gets lower and lower? I.E. credit card companies are tax-incented to offer lower rates to consumers. Undoubtedly such a scheme could be structured in a way in which it would be better for creditors to issue debt at lower rates.
These are just ideas and are obviously couched in the bloated corrupt tax regime status quo within which any idea must be made to work in the immediate term.
The first idea would immediately help those drowning in often-usurious consumer debt. Not confiscating income that many Americans desperately need just to stay solvent would be of immediate and real aid to struggling income-earners NOW (versus years down 'stimulus' road).
Working families are better served not having to send their income to federal spend-meisters in the first place, only to (maybe) have it doled back out to them via Rube Goldberg-ian schemes like the recent bank bailouts or "free" nationalized health care.
But God forbid we should have any such horrid [*shiver*] tax-cuts, when what we really need, for example, are one-time rebates made up from numbers arbitrarily pulled out of thin air (e.g. $500 for this demographic, $1000 for that demographic) and handed out en masse by categories, indiscriminate as to real circumstance.
Creative solutions that would chisel away at the soul-crushing Federal Tax Code would be much harder work for our esteemed federal electeds. An array of such real targeted relief might erode the cover for special-interest driven pork that only the same-old one-size-fits-all superficial garbage (like Bush's failed $145 BN dole of 'stimulus' checks) can uniquely provide to our federal overseers.
I guess I just keep coming back to : whose money is it in the first place?
The "tax cuts are evil" crowd obviously believe our income is not what we earn, but what government "lets" us keep.
I guess where they see evil tax cuts, I see welcome tax relief.
Such welcome relief could be crafted in short order by the new president and congress, immediately applied to this year's upcoming tax bite.
I guess we'll see if real relief for lower/middle income people is really the goal, or just "relief" according to Washington dictates, most convenient to continued federal largesse.
I won't be holding my breath.
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