DEATH: FINANCIAL PLANNING FOR BILLIONAIRES

 

The wealth gap is increasing.

And it will still increase beyond belief until our leaders come to the realization that it is killing Democracy!

The incredibly rich billionaires, many of whom head corporations worth trillions of dollars are legally hiding their money and handing it down to their scions free of taxation.

This ‘step up’ tactic is a scam similar to the ‘trickle down’ scam of the Reagan era and it must end or America will.

We are headed in the direction of a full on feudal state of masters and serfs!

The once so-called ‘death tax’ could easily be reformed so as to not harm those with moderate inheritances.

Congress could decide upon a number below which funds would be exempt from the tax.

That ‘monetary floor’ could be changed periodically to mirror changes in the cost of living.

It could start as low (high?) as 10 million dollars.

In other words when the owner of an incredibly wealthy estate 'passes on' the first $10,000,000 of his/her wealth is tax exempt for the heirs.

Any money over and above that amount would be taxed at a rate decided upon by Congress.

And the rate could be a progressive scale, increasing with the size of the estate in consideration.

The spawns of the obscenely wealthy would not lose any of their abilities to donate to super pacs or bribe their favorite politician to do their bidding.

They would merely have a tiny amount less with which to do so.

And there would still be no need to hold a telethon or start a 'go fund me' page on their behalf!

Republican President Eisenhower presided over a prosperous period of economic growth, and he did so while the IRS wielded a top tax rate of 91%!

And no billionaires were harmed during the length and breadth of his administration’s tenure.

It is WAY past time for America to stop coddling the least needy of our Nation and start cuddling the rest of us!

Dreams, But Why Bother!

We seem to always have a political treatise or memoir hitting the book stands.  Most of them are self-serving and annoying.  But the number one job of a politician is to keep his job and basically not give a damn about yours!

A while ago a man who currently resides in the White House wrote a personal book that was not meant to garner him political gains, at least not yet.  The book was a big seller made even bigger with his eventual rise in World prominence.

This post merely uses his title to play off and it is with some small apologies to Mr. Obama that I do so.

But frankly it fits with the current atmosphere of America so...

In America we are all given a fair chance to succeed.  This is what we have commonly called the American Dream.

And we want that America Dream for ourselves and even more so for our children.

But just what is The Dream?

Back in 1928 it was simply a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage as then candidate Herbert Hoover pronounced.

Sadly after winning by a landslide over Alfred Smith he and his Republican Party could not deliver on his great claims. Funny that from them not much has changed in that department in the 4 score and 6 years since.

In fact the only thing great about his Presidency turned out to be the Great Stock Market crash and subsequent Great Depression.

The American Dream then became a next meal and a roof over one’s head.

Millions were out of work and looking to Washington for help.

Mr. Hoover did get some small accomplishments during his tenure such as increasing our Nation’s National Park footprint but basically far too little to help those who found themselves on the ground, literally!

It was the Great Depression that outlasted him and catapulted Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House.

And after several social programs were put in place by Mr. Roosevelt the nation appeared to be headed back in the right direction.

But we still needed something more.

And we got that nudge when Germany and Japan decided to take over the world.

World War II turned our economy around and it only took the lives of some 60 million people worldwide to do so.

Naturally there were many in politics upon whom that fact was not lost.  I mean the first part, the part about the economy, although the collateral damage probably slipped into their equation at some point.

These, for lack of a better term, war mongers realized the monetary benefit of war.  Of course only if they did not have to fight it themselves.

Former General Eisenhower famously warned about these hawk archetypes in his Presidential farewell speech when he coined the phrase, the vast industrial military complex.

And today that vast industrial military complex sucks the air out of America in many ways.

When the right wing continues to kow tow to their owners in the 1% by lowering their taxes while keeping the middle class down there is only one thing the country can do and that’s cut services!

Now of course you may say that we are all affected by service cuts but be real!  The uber wealthy do not need publicly funded services when they can literally buy an island with the petty cash in their pockets.

So service cuts hurt, harm and eventually kill the poor and middle class.

And let’s face it, when you’re dead the American dream is the least of your worries!

So we may still dream but between the Republican Party trying to gerrymander Democrats out of existence and the wealthy pulling the strings behind them there isn’t really any chance of a Disney ending for most Americans.

We will go into the big sleep with only our dreams perchance to keep our hopes alive.

Rudyard Kipling wrote “If you can dream—and not make dreams your master…“

Well we can dream but unless and until the American voter wakes up from their stupor and realizes what a terrible blight the Republican Party has become we shall only have dreams without any hope of achieving them.

And until then I must admit, Dreams? Why bother!

Simplify for Fairness

With all the talk about lowering taxes for all or some or none or whatever one thing seems to have been lost. How can we run a country if no one will be funding it?
I cannot believe how ridiculous some if not all the arguments against raising the tax rate on those who not only can afford to pay a bit more but won't notice it if they do!
Can we all admit for once and for all that they are not the job creators?
They have proverbially more money than, choose you God here and yet the unemployment rate is way up.  And do you know what else is way up?  The job creators' bank accounts.
Corporate and wealthy profits have soared under the relaxed tax burden placed upon them by the right trending Congress.

Shouldn't he be
pointing at everyone,
not just the middle class?

Forget the term class warfare which is merely used as a way for those at the top to complain they are being persecuted.  Many are actually in need of being prosecuted but that's another story.
The bottom line is the country is in need of funding and must also rein in some of the expenditures it makes that are not totally necessary.
And there is the sticking point.
What do we cut from the budget?
So far we only seem to have one clear cut cut and that amounts to war on a large yellow avian creature who's guilty of trying to teach America's youth.  Can't have that!
And as long as we've decided to go after something that helps children at the start of their life why not go after something that ends their lives, war?  Can we please lower our UNBELIEVABLY inflated military budget?
If you listen very carefully you can hear the sound of General Dwight D Eisenhower spinning in his grave over the VAST MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX he so wisely warned against so many years ago.
Could we get Charles Grodin to visit the White House and hand him a copy of the budget book for analysis?  I believe we can rustle up some bratwurst.
One thing we must all realize is that in order for our lives to be comfortable and for the services we ALL want, use, expect and desire to be available we must have a certain amount of collective cash.
Put simply the overall government needs money and where it comes from doesn't matter as long as it comes!
Without going into actual dollar amounts let's use 100% as the amount needed for YOU.  And even if my percentages from this point forward are off you should get the idea.
The Federal government puts in 45% of what YOU need to live.
Your State chips in with an additional 30%, your City, if you live in one antes up another 15% with the 10% balance being forked over by your local community or town board.
If the Federal government lowers taxes and thereby decides it can only opt in for say 35% then they send a little less to the States.  In order for you live the same way you are living now the State must raise taxes or if not then the other collectors of taxes will have to chip in more.  Or rather dip deeper into your pocket.
The end result is you will still be paying the same amount of taxes but just altering the 'to whom' they are paid.
The menu to fix our economy with tax reform and benefit reform is a short one.
On one extreme side of the spectrum we can keep all spending as it is and raise taxes to cover the bill.
On the other end we can keep taxes as they are and get rid of all expenditures.
Either way is absurd so somewhere in the middle must be the best answer.
I believe without question that we must alter our tax structure for America to get back on track!
And even though I have some income, however small, from my investments I would not mind paying taxes on the profits at the same rate as I do regular income AS LONG AS ALL OF US DO!
And by all of us I mean politicians as well!!!
Let's be real and call a spade a spade people, INCOME IS  INCOME!
If you end the year with more money than you started the difference is income!
END OF STORY!
FARTIG!
FINITO!
FINISHED!!!
How hard is that to understand?
If we were to tax ALL income as INCOME and at the rate of income we would be on our way toward a more fair way of collecting America's life blood, AKA taxes.
For a mega-millionaire such as Willard Mitt Romney to get away with saying he pays his FAIR share of taxes and then have the unmitigated gall to blame those who make less than 1% of what he rakes in as moochers paying no income tax borders on treasonous if not at least evil!
Under past Presidents the income tax rate was always higher than it is now and our economy thrived and grew.
To believe that this winning strategy has somehow changed fits the definition of stupidity in the, 'Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result' sort of way.
During the Reagan years we were forced into trying the 'trickle down' method of allowing the wealthy to get wealthier and the only thing that trickled down was the drool on the faces of the middle class as they watched the CEOs of America disappear in the dust.
A graduated tax scale without deductions of any kind must be the starting point for a fair tax rate for all.
Just making sure every entity, individual or corporation pays a fair share of INCOME in the total and real sense of the word is a must.  To do any less would be to welcome corruption, or actually continue to allow it to survive.
Many of us hand over papers to an accountant who charges absurd amounts to sift through everything and apply every possible deduction only to then check and see if the middle class killing alternative minimum tax rate has to kick in.
Why does a corporation, which is now a person according to a majority of morons AKA the Supreme Court of the US, have a Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax?  Certainly if us mere mortals are subject to the AMT they should have a CAMT for their very own, right?
As an individual tax paying citizen who has never sent money off-shore with the express purpose of defrauding the U S Government I can say that if I lost all my deductions and ended up paying $5 more in total taxes at the end of the year I would be a far happier camper knowing we were all in the same boat!
Figuring out how much money would be placed in the IRS coffers as a result of this fair way to collect revenue is actually a simple thing since deductions would not have to be figured in.  Then we could see how much we had to work with and  how much we could spend on the humans who fund the government in the first place!
If America is to be for all Americans then all Americans must chip in and they MUST do so fairly.
It's not "America, love it or leave it" it's America, love it and help it survive!
And to those who 24/7 think of ways to get around paying their fair share of the tax burden I say put up or shut up.
The previous message was brought to you by the letters U S & A and the number 2012.

Remember America?

Me neither!

At least not the America with that ‘can do’ spirit; the one that built cities from coast to coast and border to border; and then built an impressive matrix of highways linking every city and town to one another.

The America that landed on the moon less than a decade after declaring it would do so.

When America was cowardly attacked on that December Sunday in 1941 we weren’t told to go out shopping, we mobilized and rebuilt our lost naval forces. Every able bodied citizen signed up to defend the country, with the only draft necessary being the declaration of WAR!

We doubled our efforts to secure our borders and those of our free world partners and we didn’t come back till it was over over there.

Have we made mistakes along the way?

You’re damn straight we did!

But we made those mistakes honestly while trying to do the right thing.

We knew we were one nation, a union of states comprised of large and small municipalities all eager to follow and attain the American Dream; keep it alive for our children and their children and so on and so forth.

There have always been differences of opinions on how to make the country stronger and help our citizens live more productive lives.

So what happened to that experiment called America?

When did our creed turn to greed and our ideals go to seed?

It has always been true that in order to have more than your neighbor he or she must, by definition have less than you.

In the past you earned more by doing a better job or working in a more profitable field. That has, for the most part changed and I’m afraid it has changed forever.

For one thing our own success has made the old America an impossible relic of the past.

We no longer need as many workers to do the same job and many of the jobs we do need are now done overseas.

Things are so bad that some people even long for the job where you ask, "Would you like fries with that?"

Take the book industry as a perfect example.

With the advent of ‘e-books’ people are now carrying the Nook or the Kindle etc. and downloading their favorite read.  And guess where those products are manufactured!

Aside from the tremendous number of jobs forever lost with the disappearance of bookstores nationwide consider the ancillary industries hurt by this unstoppable trend.

Publishing houses, paper manufacturers, delivery companies, the printing industry, ink manufacturers etc. will all lose out in the transition.

Should we stop this from happening?

Of course not.

And even if we wanted to, how?

Technology may be a blessing but it is also a curse. And it’s a curse that we here now rehearse not just in North America but in the entire world. (Credit to Sherman Stone & Peter Edwards, "1776 the musical.")

But I am nowhere near the first person to bemoan the inexorable march forward of technology without intelligent leadership and forethought. This article was printed over a decade ago!

So can we turn that trend around?

First of all it is not a trend, it's the new reality.

No one can fault a business owner who answers only to his stockholders for lowering his costs. And if lowering costs means laying off half his American work force replacing them with bargain basement priced willing workers from what we used to call the third world then so be it!

We will eventually get those jobs back when we are willing to accept less in compensation than our friends in far off foreign lands.

When America is finally considered a third world country we will start to take large chunks out of that pesky unemployment number.

However total salaries will remain tremendously reduced while the profits of the corporations meting out the measly pay will continue to rise.

Government will aid corporations by continuing to lower or remove regulations completely.

As a reward for hiring one or two Americans per year Congress will stop bothering them with pesky rules about polluting the environment or worker safety and maybe even give them more tax breaks.

Although at this point any further tax break will entail that dirty word stimulus since they are already paying no tax as it is!

Today it was announced the President Obama has given in again to Republican whining and taken a huge step backwards on environmental protection.

Banks offer little or no interest to consumers and have little or no interest ion loaning them money either.

Many of the jobs people in this country will be fighting over will be in the service sector as in serving or servicing the wealthy since they will be the only ones with cash.

When the President talks about jobs he must understand that nobody can force businesses to hire more workers than they need.

The time to stop our job loss to foreign shores was twenty years ago.  That was when our leaders eschewed any tariffs on imported goods thus making it profitable to ship the jobs as well as the product away.

In fact they made it even easier if not necessary with forward thinking ‘free trade’ agreements.

In the scheme of things those agreements will end up being a good thing for the world.

But remember what I said earlier, in order for the rest of the world to have more – we must by definition have less!

Spokesmen for businesses use lame excuses like ‘uncertainty about the future’ as reasons not to hire. Yet CEOs continue to distribute obscene profits among themselves and their friends while millions of Americans no longer know whether they will be able to afford food in their old age. I guess the uncertainty of which these hypocrites speak is on the other foot.

The only jobs our government can create would be in the vastly needed arena of infrastructure repair. But even that essential national project will never come to pass as long as our leaders think only of themselves and their next election or how to get the other guy out of office.

Even a speech by the President ABOUT jobs is a bone of contention for the opposition party as they whine that it would conflict with their petty debate amongst themselves to see who they want to replace him.

And sadder still is the fact that our President agreed to move the speech back to wait for his detractors to finish their love/hate fest.

So as you can see historically high unemployment numbers are here to stay.

When and if the economy comes back it will not do so for everyone.

It simply cannot!

There are more unemployed and under-employed Americans than ever before because there are fewer jobs FOR Americans than ever before.

If we continue down the pothole filled road we’re on the top 2% of Americans who are considered extremely wealthy will hold or control over 90% of the country’s money.

At that point the middle class will no longer exist and very few if any Americans will be able to afford what was once considered a comfortable retirement.

Those of us lucky enough to have a job will die with our boots on.

And those of us unlucky in that respect will be ridiculed and reviled by the top 2% overlords of the country as lazy good for nothing drug taking baby making losers.

On the downside for our overlords with the middle class shrinking into obscurity there will be no wallet from which to steal enough money to fund the vast military complex that President Eisenhower spoke about in his farewell speech.

The NY Times alluded to this last December as well.

And without the ability to wage war or protect the country from attack many of the wealthy unpatriotic business owners will take up residence elsewhere, possible closer to their money. 

America will have gone full circle from inconsequential upstart to super power and back again.

Of course this gloom and doom picture I paint does not have to become reality.

Our leaders could stop being idiots and instead ideate.

America can once again use its ingenuity to create new industries.

But in order to do this we must continue to educate our children and give them the best chance to compete in this flat small global economy. And we don’t do that by firing teachers and cutting out Pell Grants and other loans for higher education in order to line the pockets of the filthy rich.

Our leaders will have to start acting LIKE leaders and do the jobs for which they were hired and highly paid!

They will have to talk AND LISTEN to one another and realize we are one nation and we can only survive if we remain indivisible, doing so with liberty and Justice FOR ALL!

Many of you who read this will remember the America I allude to at the beginning of this post but if we do not soon alter our current course your children will not.