Republican "Tax Reform": Robbing the Poor, Giving to the Rich

As usual, there have been a number of things in the news that are worth writing about at length, but I have been far too busy to write even one long essay, let alone several [in fact, though this is my November blog post, I didn't actually finish it until a few days into December; I had to back date it to the end of November]. But I would like to comment briefly on the "tax reform" bill that was just narrowly passed by the US Senate, a slightly different bill having been passed by the US House sometime ago. The two versions still have to be reconciled and the House at least has to vote again on the final version, so the bill is not final yet and there's still a chance that nothing will get through. Nevertheless chances are probably better than even that something will get passed and signed by the sleazy buffoon in the White House (who will try to claim the majority of the credit for it, even though he's unlikely to have more than a superficial understanding of what's in it). That would be a disaster for the United States and less directly for the rest of the world, as it would be hard to write a wose "tax reform" bill if you tried.

I'm not going to even try to list all the ways in which this bill is horrible, because there are so many that I'd be sure to miss a few. The bill eliminates numerous deductions that benefit ordinary people, including ones for medical expenses, for repaying student loans, for teachers using their own money to buy school supplies for their students, for tuition waivers for graduate studnets and more. It also eliminates deductions for state and local taxes, so people living in states which have state income taxes will be taxed for money that they've already paid to their state. Meanwhile, most of the reductions in taxes for middle class and lower income families that are touted by those supporting this garbage expire in ten years, so ultimately most non-wealthy people will see their taxes go up, some by a lot. Overall, the bill will raise taxes on those in the middle and lower income brackets by a total in the trillions. Despite this, the bill will balloon US government debt by around $1.5 trillion. Why? Because while it ultimately raises taxes on most people, it massively cuts taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. The corporate tax rate is cut by large amount, and unlike tax reductions for non-wealthy Americans, that cut is permanent. The "alternate minimum tax", a provision that ensures that wealthy people generally can't escape paying taxes altogether by accounting tricks (basically if their taxes as calculated normally come out lower than the AMT, they pay that latter) is eliminated. Even more egregiously, the estate tax is eliminated. This tax is only payable on estates worth something like $10 million or more, so it affects so few Americans that they number in only the hundreds. Though the Republicans and the right wing like to call it a "death tax", of course the dead person isn't taxed; their heirs are. Since the Republicans like to call themselves the party of "individual responsibility", you wouldn't think they'd have a big problem with taking a small portion of a massive inheritance from people who didn't actually earn it in the first place. But you'd be wrong, because as this bill shows, they are actually the party of the ultra-wealthy, intent on entrenching massive inequality for the forseeable future.

Even the fact that the "tax reform" provisions of the bill essentially transfer trillions in wealth from ordinary Americans to the richest doesn't begin to cover all the terrible aspects of this bill. It also opens up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration, which is the kind of massive stupidity that will screw not only Americans but the entire world. It is eliminate the insurance mandate from the Affordable Care Act (so-called Obamacare), allowing healthy people to avoid buying insurance altogether without penalty, which means many will not do so, reducing the number of healthy people paying into the system and increasing costs for everyone else, possibly causing the system to collapse. It will almost certainly trigger cuts in Medicare that will make chemotherapy unaffordable for many cancer patients. And the list goes on and on. Yet all but one Republican in the Senate voted for it (all the Democrats opposed it). So will ordinary people who vote Republican wake up to the blindingly obvious fact that the party they support is working exclusively for the wealthy (like the oaf in the White House, whose family will see a reduction in taxes of up to a billion dollars)? Maybe, but then maybe they'll be fooled by absurd nonsense about trickle down economics and how the tax cuts will magically boost the economy enough that they'll pay for themselves, even though the only economists who support such bogus claims are a tiny handful of kooks. Or maybe they'll consider it worthwhile to hand all the money and power in the country to a handful of plutocrats as long as they can continue to screw over minorities and immigrants, not to mention have a bunch of wildly unqualified extremist judges confirmed to the bench. I guess we shall see.