Not Everybody Gets A Pony From Santa Trump This Tax Cut Christmas
Some commentary will indicate that the act favors the high income, but I see a different theme here. The really big cuts – the corporate rate reduction, the maximum rate on business income of individuals and the repeal of the estate tax and GST seem to favor those who get wealth without working – the New Gentry or the Entitled Children (I think I might have a poll as to which of those to use). Many people who provide services without using capital don’t get the new preferred rate. And some of those revenue gainers are directed at people who might be quite well off, but are still working for their money. I’m thinking the deferred comp, entertainment expenses and rules that make it more painful to pay high salaries.
This is quite a bit different than the tax reform push in the seventies and eighties. There was a hands the cross the aisle kumbaya moment between Ronald Reagan and Bill Bradley when they commiserated about the very high rate that they had had to pay – Bradley for playing basketball and Reagan for playing the Gipper. Prior to the big rate reduction in 1986, there was a maximum tax on personal service income that made the maximum rate on income you worked for 50%, while the coupon clippers still had to pay 70%.
Republican Tax Cuts And The New Gentry
Actually I think, we may and it looks to me that the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act is meant for them, It’s really amusing because a more accurate title might be The Tax Cuts For People Who Don’t Need Jobs Act. I use the word “need” advisedly. Many of the New Gentry have, what you and I might call jobs. And they might work very hard at them and be well paid. What they actually have though are careers. Careers and jobs look very similar from the outside, but they are different. A career is something you do to contribute to society and have a sense of affirmative purpose. It might be a sacred calling or perhaps a frivolous pursuit. A job is something that you do to feed your family.
A good job is clean work with no heavy lifting that pays well. Those jobs look a lot like careers.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.