Love, aka Brother Love wrote on Nov 17
th, 2017 at 10:15am:
The House passed "tax reform." Now it goes to the Senate where tax cuts for the very wealthiest aren't quite as popular. Sorry!
Oh, this will pass alright. And then, Amerika may well be led into terminal decline. The Reagan tax cuts led to deficits. Once taxes are cut, there's no raising them again. This would be politically impossible - hence why no president from Bush Snr to Obama has raised taxes, despite the huge US debt, which is predicted to rise to 100% of US GDP.
Bush Snr was booted out for not delivering on promised tax cuts, and he didn't deliver because he saw what this would do to the US economy. His son failed to learn, and cut taxes further. The deficit is where it is today because of Bush Jnr's tax cuts. By then, Bill Clinton had paid off the Reagan debts. In the US, the Democrats are seen as the party of economic management, thanks largely to Clinton.
If history is anything to go by - the Reagan and Bush cuts - the US economy will shrink, not grow. All tax cuts since Reagan have put all that wasted money in the pockets of the top 1%. Wealth inequality has grown accordingly. Rather than increasing economic growth as the economist Laffer claimed, cutting the taxes of the rich simply moves this money into savings and trust accounts - much of it offshore.
Since the GFC, governments have kept the global economy afloat. We've moved on from the whole Reagan mistrust in government, and for sound economic reasons. There has been a growing movement by the richest US citizens to reverse the political tax cut auctions. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet want their taxes raised. They also want to raise the minimum wage. Doing this creates
demand. Putting more money into the hands of the rich does not create supply. As Keynes showed in the 1930s, putting money in the hands of middle class consumers does. This creates economic growth.
These cuts are a huge mistake that may well cripple the US. Trump does not learn from history, and he's surrounded himself with rich billionaires, all of them, including Trump, born into money. Trump's cabinet aren't self-made Gateses or Zuckerburgs or Buffets, they're Establishment elites. This is the type who will benefit from these cuts, which largely go into savings and inheritance. They have no intention to make America great again. Like Trump, they're there for their own interests. While this is hardly uncommon in US government, never has the self-interest of appointed officials been so naked and unabashed. Trump has appointed just the sort of croney hacks he claimed to be running against. In return, he's made the generous gesture of refusing his presidential salary.
Yes, for the princely sum of 300-odd thousand dollars a year, Americans get to have their country's wealth handed over to the corporate Establishment, who just got a 20% tax cut.
Drain the swamp indeed.