I received an email from our Rep. Tulsi Gabbard wherein she stated the House just passed a “disastrous” tax reform bill.
I am glad that the House passed a version of long overdue tax reform. It’s not what you nor I want, it’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s a start.
Calling the bill disastrous is hyperbole and does nothing to clarify either side’s position. Saying corporations and the wealthiest Americans will get massive tax breaks is only partly and disingenuously true. American corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world which encourages them to keep their earnings in other countries that don’t penalize them as heavily as our government does.
Money flows towards where it is treated well. If we want to attract trillions of dollars back to our country to be put to work here, we need to be friendlier to corporations large and small. Saying that the wealthiest Americans will get massive tax breaks seems, on the face of it, unfair. But wait, more than half of all Americans pay zero federal income taxes, so how can the largest percentage of our population get a tax break when they pay no taxes at all?
The top 20 percent pay over 67 percent of all taxes, so obviously those that pay the most stand to gain the most from any across-the-board, fair tax reforms.
I’m not even particularly worried that teachers might lose a deduction for furnishing their students with school supplies. It seems like such a noble effort on their part, and I’m sure it is, but we spend more tax dollars per pupil than just about any other country in the world. So much of it goes to support bloated administration (much like our government) and of course the steel-clad money triangle that goes from unions to elected officials to schools and teachers to unions, to elected officials, ad nauseum.
Our current crop of renewable energy is not economically feasible without government subsidies. Have you looked at Germany which has the highest percentage of renewable energy sources powering their country? Their utility rates are three times that of their neighboring countries!
You can only prop up companies such as Solyndra for so long before they collapse. It’s fine to search for and improve upon renewable energy sources but don’t make us pay for them before they are economically feasible just to line the pockets of political donors and please your base.
One of the next new credit bubbles to burst will be the trillion-dollar student loan debacle of the governments making. Why has college tuition risen over 1,000 percent, much more than inflation, the cost of living or even Obamacare costs?
Here we go again with funding students with ever increasing lines of credit for education that go to ever-increasing college tuition costs whose administrators and professors seem to have an unquenchable thirst for said free funds, spreading the money around to larger and larger faculties and staff, where everyone deserves a six-figure salary or more and many of the students, at least the ones that graduate, have useless degrees with no marketable skills.
Being able to write off their interest isn’t going to save them, but I’ll bet you will blame the lack of deductibility on the loan deadbeats for not paying back what they borrowed.
We all struggle to make ends meet. Except for those in government. Washington, D.C., never suffers from unemployment, do they? And many government workers with the help of their union (which no government organization needs) make far more in wages and benefits than comparable jobs held by regular taxpaying citizens.
Reduce the size and scope and financial malfeasance of our government followed up with a healthy slashing of business regulations will help. Teach kids the way we used to be taught 40 or 50 years ago when we really learned something and graduated with our wisdom shining.
Don’t give student loans for ridiculous degrees that will never lead to a vocation that can pay back the loans for them. Women’s and Ethnic Studies are only useful in a Left Wing chatroom.
Many people may not have been around in the ‘50s and ‘60s as I was, but education used to work and it worked well before it was changed, and not for the better. The proposed tax reform bill, if passed, will not be a disaster but another important step in helping our economy recover.
•••
Stan Lake is a resident of
Kalaheo.
