03 14 01

Scrabble/Squabble/Babble/Baubles


by guest ranter Lisa Thomas

Well, well, well, the mileage we get out of words today would make Mr. Webster squawk and then fall mute forever. According to Ari Fleischer yesterday, the Bush Tax Cut has now become the "Economic Recovery Plan."

This "plan" definitely needs a good talking to. Goodneighbor Ricky Repub, believing this "across-the-board" tax cut is almost as good as Nintendos in the backseats of Suburbans, needs a good finger-wagging.

Ricky says the Bush "plan" is fair because he's plugged salaries from $25,000/year to half a million a year into various tax charts and the rates are about the same, percentagewise (watch that sneaky little word). Judy waits tables for $25,000 a year and (because she has children) with Prince Dub's new cut, she gets back $1250, about a 5 percent refund. Her top boss, with a chain of restaurants he inherited, nets $500,000 a year and gets back $30,000, a 6 percent refund.

So isn't that fair? Top Boss paid a lot more in taxes than Judy in the first place, so shouldn't he get back a lot more? Isn't he, in the top one percent of the country financially, among the most productive members of society? What's fair about Judy, being on the very bottom level of society, getting back a greater percentage than a truly contributing member of the economy?

Wait, wait, wait! Who's talking about "FAIR"? We COULD. We could talk about "Fair" until we're blue in the face, and some of us could make a case that Judy is just as productive a member of society as Top Boss, who has plenty of loyal managers who handle the restaurants while he spends his springtime in Monte Carlo. We could talk about how since everyone is born equal, Judy's uninsured children should have free medical insurance like Top Boss' children. We could say Bob Novak sounded like an icicle the night he equated "riches" with "most productive." We could remind him that Van Gogh and Dostoevski were, by his definition, the dregs of society. But hold on. "FAIR" went out the window when they stopped African-Americans from entering their polling places last November 7, when they used four-million dollar false "felons' lists" to keep innocent people from voting. "FAIR" went out the window when the States-Rights people pooh-poohed the Florida Supreme Court and went straight to a Republican-heavy U.S. Supreme Court and had them call the election for George W. Bush as the Republican State Chair had already done.

We can't talk about "Fair" in this country any more. So we're talking about what WORKS.

Whether Bush-Cheney have talked the country into recession or whether it would have headed that way anyway, the economy isn't looking good. From whatever corner you come, you know that consumer confidence is now clearly falling. People aren't spending. The market keeps dropping. Hope is in retreat.

So the same Bush Tax Cut that was promised when the economy was in high gear is now the "Economic Recovery Plan" that will put us back on track and back into the economic security of the Clinton years. Forget "Fair." The governor says it will work because it will create consumer spending. There is some very remote possibility that the governor even believes that.

As established, Judy the Waitress is getting back $1250 (much MORE than most individuals), and Top Boss is getting back $30,000. George W. Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, by the way, gets back $100,000 on this plan. So who is going to shop til they drop? The buying that upturns the economy is of refrigerators, tv sets, clothes, cars, you name it. Judy the Waitress MIGHT be able to get in a new tv set, if her kids don't get sick this year. Top Boss doesn't NEED a tv set, and the market is falling, and he is very likely planning to use his $30,000 to buy in at what he thinks is a low point. So the spending we supposedly need is coming from Judy and her non-productive ilk.

In that case, if the point is to stir up and revive the economy, wouldn't it make more sense to give Judy a larger percentage of the surplus than Top Boss? Let's look at some stoney facts:

1. Taxpayers in the lowest 60 percent of the income scale would get only 12.7 percent of Bush's tax cuts. Their average annual tax reduction would be $256. The bottom 20 percent of taxpayers would see an average tax cut of $47 a year (You can see here how lucky Judy is! Maybe I shouldn't take the governor's word for how much Judy gets back?).

2. In contrast, the best-off 10 percent of all taxpayers would get 60.3 percent of Bush's proposed tax cuts, and an average tax cut of $7,300 a year. The wealthiest one percent of all taxpayers would get an average tax reduction of $54,480 a year--45 percent of the total tax cut. (And wow, you can see how those productive Bush people RAKE it in when you remember George and Laura get back an extra HUNDRED thousand.) (Both above statements, minus closing comment, discussed by Citizens for Tax Justice, 1311 "L" St. NW, Washington, D.C.; http://www.ctj.org/html/gwbcrev.htm)

3. And don't forget about the wealth gap in the country and what it has done to human history in the past 2,000 years. According to a 1995 study by the Federal Reserve, the richest one percent of U.S. households owned 35 percent of the total wealth. After 1995, the gap began to really widen.

Now the U.S. Treasury Department tells us that the richest 1 percent pay about 20 percent of all federal taxes including income, payroll and estate. So if these folks are going to get a tax REDUCTION of 45 percent, doesn't that mean uh... that we're going against the graduated income tax that took many years and a constitutional amendment to get through?

We're not talking about "Fair." We're talking about something plain and hard and basic - where the heck it's COMING from; what WORKS.

They want to talk about "across-the-board" tax refunds? Fine, an excellent idea, if they were serious, that would most likely stimulate the economy that's gone sour. *IF* they were truly across-the-board. Give every man, woman and child in the U.S. a flat thousand dollars cash. Ninety-five percent of them would spend it and boost the economy. Five percent would hang on to it or add it to their trusts. The cost to our surplus: $280 billion dollars, less than a third of what the DEMOCRATS are proposing for a tax cut. So fine, do it for three years in a row. There's a trillian dollars poured back into the economy. If the idea is to boost the economy by spending, there's no argument. If the idea is a sneaky way to continue polarizing the economic classes in this country, then there is nothing but a lot of stuttering in order.

If we are to believe the economic doom the Republicans have been talking about in recent weeks, then where are the bakers who can "make the pie higher"? Percentages DON'T MEAN DIDDLY when the pie starts shrinking. If Judy the Waitress really is going to be refunded $1250 and the former governor is going to be refunded $100,000, then we have to find EIGHTY Judies for every governor in the White House. In other words, if we skipped the big tax cut to the "Most productive" here, we could fuel another EIGHTY Judies with money to be spent on VCRs and camcorders.

Percentages are a sleight of tongue. They mean NOTHING. And remember, we're not talking fairness. We're talking about money put back into the economy so that it can buy tv sets and items that boost the economy. Money returned and put into trust funds will not be argued by ANYONE as being a boost to the economy. Focusing on PERCENTAGES is a devious way to bypass this fact and slip more back into the pockets of those who gave us the big debt hanging over our heads now. Go ahead; accuse me of class warfare because the scales make me tilt my head until my neck is in a permanent cramp. Accuse me of class warfare if it takes our minds off the elemental point of WHERE IT IS ALL COMING FROM. It always gets back to that, the very bones of taxation. We need x amount in pot "A". We have to take some from pot "B" and some from pot "C" and some from other pots. But it has to be somewhere before it can make it to pot "A" (the cost of maintaining ourselves). When we try to put almost all of the burden on low-income taxpayers (pot "B" ), there just isn't enough, and the result is a cut in programs designed for the very people we went after. Hey, I am NOT into class warfare. I'd like to stuff a trillion dollars into pot "C". I'd like to see every citizen making over 300,000 a year get a free copy of the newest Pokemon movie along with five new DVD players. *IF* we had it to spare.

We don't. We have a little to spare, and we need to use good sense when we spare it. It's not only a moral issue that dictates against our passing it out where it won't make any difference; it's also an economic and pragmatic issue. Pass it out where it will invigorate the economy - flat, across-the-board amounts that will be spent and make people's lives easier. Not gobbledygook percentages that result in most of it not re-entering the economy. When George figures out how to make the pie higher, then we can look at percentages. Not now.

It's the BASE, Stupid.


Lisa is a fringefolk member and the founder of Grandmothers for Justice

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