“… until you run out of other people’s money.” M. Thatcher
George Rebane
The momentous lies retold daily by the Democratic Party are now getting too numerous to count. Among the most impactive on Americans is their assertion that the $5T+ cost of their new government growth and spending programs “will be zero”. How’s that? Well, they’ll just tax the crap out of “the rich” and corporations. ‘You, Mr/Ms Main Street Snuffie won’t have to pay a penny; what’s not to like?’
For our informed and educated neighbors such claims are truly head-spinning as is made clear again by economists Phil Gramm (also former senator) and Mike Solon in the 15oct21 WSJ (here). There we are reminded again that “the wealthy already bear far more of the burden in the US than they do in other developed countries.” The chart below compares the ‘fair shares’ paid by the top 10% earners in the US, France Germany, and Sweden. Note the enormous imbalance in what our socialists are demanding to what we already are paying to keep the vote buying programs funded. The tax burden in other developed nations (including the vaunted Sweden) is more equally shared by incorporation of a nominally 15-20% VAT on all purchases. So it turns out, as Gramm and Solon show, that the US already has the most progressive tax system in the world, thereby giving lie to the claims that somehow the ‘rich’ are getting away with murder at the expense of the remaining 90% of Americans.

Their public copy aside, what the Democrats’ new tax proposals do is continue to favor the top 1% who lower their tax rates by charitable giving and investing in tax-favored securities and sectors promoted by our government. These provisions actually favor the very rich – i.e. the top 1% of earners, not the 10% - and none of such bennies will be affected by the new ‘tax the rich’ rates designed to hit the less wealthy down the income ladder. No lamestream outlet is allowed to tell us this.
In the meantime we are having a problem finding enough workers to support robust economic growth. “Since the War on Poverty started in 1965, the labor-force participation rate of bottom-quintile earners, who now receive more than 90% of their $50,000 average income from government transfer payments, has fallen from almost 70% to 36%. With the Build Back Better Act proposing to explode unearned benefits and shower them on middle-income Americans, how long will it take for the current U.S. labor-force participation rate of 61.6% to fall to 55%, as it is in France, or 50%, as it is in Italy? Who then will pull the wagon and pay the taxes to fund the American welfare state?” This is what we mean when we talk of the takers and makers. And who do the takers vote for, and which party wants to maximize the people (citizens and illegals) who draw ever more of their succor from the government?
(And these worthies have no idea what’s in store for them regarding their contribution to labor, once the nation, any nation, falls under the tender mercies of a single party state. History read is a great teacher; not so much history ignored.)
We are reminded again by Gramm and Solon that “corporations don’t ultimately pay taxes” – their customers and their risk-exposed owners pay the whole kit and kaboodle. “If there is anything economists agree on—and there isn’t much—it’s that all taxes imposed on corporations fall in part on the consumers of their products and in part on their stockholders and workers. Workers pay between 50% and 70% of the corporate tax that isn’t passed on to consumers in higher prices. The record growth in real wages after the 2017 corporate tax cuts, especially among low-income, minority and disadvantaged workers, bears this out. So when corporate tax rates are raised, it’s workers and their pensions, retirement accounts and insurance investments, which own 72% of America’s stockholder equity, who pay most of those taxes.”
Again, the indominable man-in-the-street who votes Democrat has no clue of this, or at best considers it to be another rightwing piece of fake news put out by rich capitalists and big corporations. However, when you run the numbers, you see that “not surprisingly, with much of the 2017 tax cuts made up of corporate rate reductions, child tax credits and a doubling of the standard deduction, the Trump tax cuts made the tax code more, not less, progressive.” When was the last time you heard that on any of the lamestream outlets?
We can put a ribbon around all this by citing the most recent big three feel-good economic accomplishments out of Bumblebrain’s teleprompter – 1) he has created 5M+ new jobs, 2) unemployment dropped below 5%, and 3) wages have gone up. Well, not exactly. Employment gain has been anemic due to government handouts, industry is stifled for lack of workers. Unemployment dropped only because more people dropped out of the workforce - i.e. they quit looking for jobs. And the buying power of wages has declined due to not keeping pace with the big jump in inflation. Americans’ real wages have declined for the first time since the big Obama dip in 2013. And all of this is due to self-inflicted harm brought to you by Team Biden and his ballyhooed Build Back Better policies which have a snowball’s chance in hell of kicking in. But to Bumblebrain, all this is "progress".
Dinner table topics (updated 16dec21)
George Rebane
At our house the conversation turns to politics after the usual householder topics are covered and resolved. Both Jo Ann and I are political animals. Readers know my beliefs and propensities, there is here a long record of both, one that is regularly ignored by those of the Left. Not so many here know about the wife of my life. She is a longtime hardworking volunteer in various philanthropic organizations and in charge of our family’s giving. She is also a member of the NC Republican Central Committee, the Union’s editorial board, and the Nevada County Republican Women Federated. The latter is the local chapter of the largest organization of grassroots Republicans, and next week she will become the new president of the NCRWF. Did I mention that she’s also the family matriarch with our two daughters, six adult grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren? Me? I now try to devote as much time as possible to master the lifestyle of a classic flâneur of the Taleb school – you see, I have been blessed as a kept man by a very capable woman. Enough.
The entire basis of the abortionists is that there is only one body and one life involved. That’s not true in any sense of the word, most certainly not clinically, and in many places, not legally. What the pro-lifers should continually point out is the singular ‘body’ in the pro-choicers’ mantra, and ask ‘how many bodies (lives) does your choice affect?’ Getting them to admit to the correct answer will change the nature of the debate on a pregnant woman’s rights, subsidizing abortions, who should be involved in the decision, especially in the pregnancy of a minor, and so on.
All ideologues, no matter their coloration, agree on the importance of controlling language as part and parcel of controlling thought (Sapir-Whorf and all that). The ongoing onslaught of the Left to cancel western culture requires strict adherence to language control, especially as it is taught in schools, used on the lamestream, and pontificated by progressive politicians. The tsunami of illegal entrants across our open southern border is a case in point. These arrivals are no longer illegal aliens, or even illegal immigrants. Today they are simply migrants. Everyone knows that people have innocently migrated here and there for ages, that’s how the world got populated. And the migrants from the south are simply people who decided to move to the United States, so what’s wrong with that? Read the poem on the Statue of Liberty.
In the same vein the press has banned Christmas tree. The thing we light and decorate in our living rooms during Christmas is now relabeled as the “holiday tree”. None of that European western culture need be acknowledged in lands both ancient and colonized. Today a new global world of equity is dawning. But a little attention reveals that the culture cancelling is very precisely directed. No one yet dreams of calling the menorah of Hanukkah a ‘holiday candelabra’.
And then there are pejoratives like ‘white supremacist’ and ‘racist’ which must only be used for their implied meanings but never ever defined. For to offer definitions, no matter how imprecise or ludicrous, would quickly torpedo their entire narrative in pursuit of social justice and equity. Substance in support of socialists’ apologetics is definitely not their strong suit.
We both could not help smiling (more like snickering) when we heard the latest report on NPR about BLM leaders going on media to lament that ‘armed white people are now running amok’, thereby making their rioters and pillagers to feel unsafe during their public activism. As odd as that may seem, we hope that more law-abiding people would carry in public, and have the strong belief that rioters assaulting innocents should not feel safe as they are promoted politically on the lamestream.
[13dec21 update] Ivermectin's effectiveness subrogated to landing a $40M grant. A leading virologist and researcher, Dr Andrew Hill, republished his favorable findings on the life-saving effects of Ivermectin in order to satisfy the politically correct requirements for obtaining a sizeable grant for Liverpool University. Given the demonstrated performance of Ivermectin in saving lives during the Covid pandemic, Hill worried about changing his report that could then cost about a half-million lives since his research was one of the main inputs used by the WHO to recommend Covid therapeutics around the world. You can read all about this tawdry and deadly saga here. (H/T to reader)
‘Bend over and spread ‘em.’ Our State Dept admits this was the reception our diplomats got when arriving in China and succumbing to their government’s C19 tests via anal swabs. Understandably Foggy Bottom has been very silent about this new level of contempt Xi has for Team Biden. This latest foreign policy embarrassment was instituted in February 2021, immediately after Bumblebrain got sworn in. The insult was first discovered by The Hill to whom State admitted that it was carried out but under protest since the State Dept “never agreed” to the Chinese ignominiously swabbing our diplomats where the sun don’t shine. This was confirmed by Judicial Watch which filed a lawsuit after State stonewalled a FOIA request. (more here)
[16dec21 update] No disaster remains unattributed to climate change. The know-nothing activists are doing their best not to let the recent Midwest tornado disaster go to waste. They will be haranguing us with a passel of made-up tales that the whole thing is more undeniable evidence of preventable manmade global warming. However, suppressed historical data tells a markedly different story of huge multi-state tornado systems with hundreds killed that have devasted that region since white settlers started keeping records in the early 1800s. But such counter-narrative evidence is no match for the bullshit that now saturates lamestream outlets. (more here)
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