The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

Well it looks like the tax scam is a done deal and still many articles on the Internet, even some from usually reliable sources continue to report that the tax rate has been cut for all seven tax brackets and that is not true. When the articles show the actual brackets it is obvious that the first bracket on taxable income up to $19,050 remains at 10%. If it is 10% under the current tax system and 10% under the Republican tax scam it is the same. Anyone making up to $44,050 will not get a cut in their tax rate. However the standard deduction for an couple will double from $12,000 to $24,000 but the couple will lose their personal exemptions $8,100. If you subtract what you are losing from the increase in the standard deduction $24,000 - $8,100 = $15,900. Under the current tax system you would be able to deduct the $12,000 standard deduction plus the $8,100 giving a total of $20,100 before your income could be taxed. What is getting the press is the doubling of the standard deduction not the elimination of the personal exemptions. This will leave a couple with only another $3,900 that is not taxable. At 10% rate that is $390 a year saving. That would give you an extra $7.50 a week maybe enough for lunch at McDonalds.

I don't think we know the worst part of this tax plan yet. A family of four would lose 4 personal exemption and $16,200 making $4,200 more of their income subject to taxes than before. The more exemptions lost for other family members like elderly parents will make things even worse. There is a child credit but it is only 1/2 of the existing personal exemption. We will have no idea how bad the Republican tax scam is until the 2018 taxes are filed.

Paul Ryan was interviewed on the Today Show this morning and boy could he dance. When asked how he could add a $1.5 trillion to the national debt as a give away to billionaires when campaigned for office sounding the alarm that the national debt was crushing the nation. They even had pictures of him campaigning with the national clock showing the public how fast it was going up. Ryan said he had not changed his mind about how big a problem the national debt was but now the Republicans were going to slash spending on other programs. The Republicans have said for a long time they want to eliminate "entitlements" like social security (the Republicans fought social security from day one), unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare. When Republicans tried to eliminate the social programs they found they were way to popular with the public. Baby Bush tried to eliminate social security by saying that the $2.7 trillion social security trust fund held in US treasury bonds was just worthless paper but the public shut him down. The Republicans decided to bankrupt the country so they could eliminate the entitlements and that is exactly what Paul Ryan and the Republicans achieved by giving a $1.5 trillion away to billionaires like Trump. Word has it that Ryan intends to resign and who ever takes his job will have no choice.

Ryan touted the huge tax cuts to corporations he was slapped in the face with reality. Ryan recited his rehearsed line about how corporations would give back their tax savings and raises to the middle class. Then a film was played of the actual room full of the heads of corporation when ask by a Trump representative to hold up their hands if they would add jobs or raise wages if the tax bill passed and very few held up their hands. Ryan said that was just antidotal. No that was reality straight from the horses mouths.

As more and more accurate information comes out about the Republican tax scam we are finding out who the twenty percent are that really got screwed. The Republicans are claiming that 80% of the taxpayers are going to get a tax cut under the Republican plan. I would not worry about those who will get a tax cut but about those who won't. I am sure the Republicans looked around to see who didn't make political contributions. People who have several children are not likely have enough money left over to make political contributions and they have no political power. I also wondered why the standard deduction was not eliminated and personal exemptions were not retained for everyone because that would more accurately reflect the costs. The Republican tax advantage disappears rapidly as the number in the family increases. The loss of personal exemptions for couple is $8,100 an is offset by the 11,300 increase in the standard deduction but what about a family with four children? They lost $24,300 when the personal deductions were eliminated (6 X 4,050 = $24,300). Now the equation is different the family will have to pay taxes on an additional $13,000 ($24,300 (lost personal exemptions) -$11,300 (standard deduction increase) = $13,000 increase in taxable income. Yes there is a $1,000 increase in the tax credit for each child. It was a thousand and now it is $2,000 but that still leaves a increase $9000 of income subject to taxes. The more children you have the bigger your tax increase.

How anyone could increase the taxes on those families struggling to make it with several children and cut taxes on billionaires like Trump is beyond me. But the cold hard facts are that if you have no political power you will be crushed and since the conservative Supreme Court ruled that money is free speech and the billionaires could contribute unlimited amounts of money what can we expect? This is what is wrong with world today when the rich use their vast wealth as a weapon to take from others. The important part is that Trump can use the money he saved on taxes to buy another golf course. This Republican tax scam is worse than any robbery in history as the ungodly greedy robbed the middle class.

The Republicans loudly proclaimed that they doubled the standard deduction it turns out that was also a lie. The standard deduction was $12,700 so if it were doubled it would be $25,700 instead of $24,000. That would change yesterday calculations and it looks like purchasing a meal a week at McDonalds is out but maybe you could buy some bologna with your tax cut.

One big change by the Republican tax scam that will cost everyone sooner or later is the change in how inflation is calculated. The tax brackets are indexed to inflation. Currently it is the Consumer Price Index. If it went up by 10% the tax brackets would be adjusted by 10%. So the 10% bracket of $19050 would be adjusted by $1,905 making the 10% bracket $20,955. The Republican tax scam changes the way inflation is calculated to what is called the "chained" index. Is the chained index higher or lower than the CPI? If you guessed lower your correct. This is one of the accounting tricks that helped lowered the $1.5 trillion cost. The chained inflation index is based on substitution in other words if beef gets to expensive to purchase they believe people will buy chicken instead so the cost increase of beef is not factored into the calculation of chained inflation index. This is simply away of cheating the public. The Republicans want to use the chained inflation for social security also. If electricity went up people could substitute lanterns for lighting their homes. When Regan solved the inflation problem he didn't solve the problem he simply changed the way inflation was calculated. At the time most union contracts had cost of living clauses in their contracts. If the official inflation figures didn't reflect the real cost of living the cost of living clauses didn't kick in. Now the Republicans are up to their old tricks again.

Why is change to the chained inflation index so important? If the difference between the CPI and the chained index is 5% over 10 years. The tax bracket is 5% lower than what is should be. The extra 5% will be taxed at the next higher tax bracket. This will make a big difference over time in effect lowering the bracket and making the public pays more in taxes. In effect aborting the original intent of the law that adjusted the tax brackets to inflation.

I don't know what happens when chicken goes up do the Republicans substitute eating out of dumpsters? The Republicans are not your friends they will screw you and your family out of your last dollar.

The best article on the Internet about the Republican tax scam is entitled "26 Ways the Republican Tax Reform Will Effect You" I have only got through the first four slides so far.

Today on the Internet they ran an article that listed the worst city in every state to live. Huntington was listed as the worst city in West Virginia and one of the reason was that it had a household income of under $30,000. The Trump tax scam will certainly be a lump of coal in their stocking this Christmas and those with children will pay even more in taxes than past years. Since the figures have now stabilized let's take a look at the difference in taxes a typically family of four will have to pay. Their standard deduction will be raised from $12,700 to $24,000 meaning they will gain $11,300 on deductions but the will lose all four of their personal exemptions so they will lose $16,200 in deductions. The child care credit was increased from $1,000 to $2,000 so the family gets a $2,000 increase from the child credit deductions. When the increase in deductions are added up $11,300 + $2,000 = $13,300. The lose in deductions from the lose of personal exemptions is $16,200. So this family finds itself with another $3,200 in taxable income $16,200 - $$13,000 = $3,200. This income will be taxed at the 10% tax rate meaning they will owe an additional $320 in taxes. This equation gets far worse for each child you have. In this bracket you will have to pay taxes on an additional $3,000 for every child. There is no cut in the 10% tax bracket so there is no savings there.

Trump's explanation is that giving the wealth to those who are rich beyond imagination more money will spur the economy. This is the top down theory that if you build it someone will buy it. Bloomberg said only politicians think this way not businessmen. In reality an economy is built from the bottom up. If you have widget factory and we give you a coupe million in tax savings and you can use that to make a $100,000 more widgets but if there is no one to purchase your widgets they will just sit on a shelf. The money in tax savings should have went to the middle class and working poor. This tax cut will hurt the economy because there are going to be many people who can not afford to purchase widgets because their taxes were raised. Supply does not drive an economy. Demand drives an economy no matter how many widgets are built if there is no demand or the public can't afford to buy the widgets just sit on a shelf. When you give tax cuts to rich much of it is spent out of country or saved. Much will be spent on stock artificially driving the price up but not the actual value. At some time in the future reality sets in and the stocks price falls to the actual value. When the tax cuts goes to the middle class the money is spent and turns over several times in the local economy. Soon the widgets are flying of the shelf. It is easy to see what you want to see and the Republican congressmen want to see their rich contributors get more, more because elections are coming up and they need the money.

A few years ago gas stations discovered a way to cheat the public. When I was in college I worked in a few gas stations and our pumps had to be certified by the state Bureau of Weights and Measures. This was done by pumping gas into a certified five gallon container. The pump had to register 5 gallon. Those pumps were mechanical the new pumps now are controlled by a computer. The crooked gas station owners found that they could change the software where the pump would shortchange the customers but would pump the right amount when it reached the 5 gallon mark for the certification but the pump would continue to shortchange after the $5 mark. The pump would certify correctly at the 5 gallon mark all the while the public was being cheated. That is what the Republican tax scam did to the brackets look like.

The Republicans had to keep their tax cuts from adding any more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit so the tax tables had to be played with every time they added tax breaks for other groups. The tax cuts are much like the gas pumps there are cuts but there are also tax increases. The tax bracket percentage is only half of the story. The bracket themselves have changed. Take the 35% bracket in 2017 it went from $416,701 to $418,400 in the new tax bill a single person will have to pay 35% on any income between $200,001 and $500,000. This means that that the single taxpayer will have to pay an additional 2% tax on $216,700 of his income. The taxpayer will have to come up with another $4,334 to pay his taxes. This will be offset somewhat by the cuts in lower tax brackets but he will be lucky to break even.

The original House bill originally raised the first tax bracket from 10% t0 12% but it was cut back to 10% in the final bill. When that was cut they had to increase taxes somewhere else by widening the bracket from $416,400 back to $200,000. Just like the gas pumps few will notice the brackets changing by over $200,000 they will just notice the percentage not the big change. This tax package was thrown together at the speed of light and few people will pay any attention just as the gas station customers never noticed they were shortchanged.

It was as easy for the Republicans to rig the tax tables as it was for the crooked gas station operators to rig the gas pumps. One Internet article showed that people would get thousands in tax cuts. They used very specific amounts and avoid the question of children because of the elimination of the personal exemptions of $4,050 each. It is easy to see how fast the loss of the of many $4,050 personal exemption would overcome any tax savings. The crooked gas stations had to make sure their pumps were correct on the 5 gallon intervals. So the program made sure they delivered correctly at 5, 10, 15, and 20 gallon marks but they could cheat plenty on the increments in between.

The Republicans will lower the amount of taxes withheld from everyone's check but many will get a very unpleasant surprise in 2019 when they file their 2018 taxes and find they find they owe several hundred dollars in additional taxes. Since the personal exemption are gone you may not want to claim any dependents on your W2 form. The W2 with holdings statements were based on those personal exemptions that have been taken away by the Republicans.

The Republicans believe that they bought the next election by cutting the amount of taxes that come out of everyone's check and by the time the public realizes how badly they were taken advantage it will be after the 2018 election. In other words they believe the public is stupid not to realize if Trump increases the standard deduction by $11,300 and takes four personal exemptions from a family of four that is $16,200. The 10% tax bracket is not lowered so those folks will pay more taxes. Even when the increase in the child care tax credit are rolled in. The child care tax credit is currently $1,000 and is being raised to $2,000. But under the current tax system each child care credit plus the standard deduction amounts to $5,000. Under the Republican scam it is only $2,000. So you are trading $5,000 for $2,000 for each child.

The Republicans are like short change artists they give you $2,000 and end up with 5,000 in their pockets when they walk away and they think the public is to lazy or stupid to know what is happening and the sad part is they are probably right.

One of the interesting things about the current 35% tax bracket for singles is that spans between $416,701 - $418,400. It is odd in that the bracket is so small only spanning only $1,699. The current 35% tax bracket for joint tax payers is between $416,700 - $470,700 meaning that both a single payer and married couple were taxed at 35% at the same beginning income level. Most tax brackets for couples are double the income level for singles. It looks like whoever created the 35% made it so narrow to keep very few people from landing in that 35% tax bracket.

This is an anomaly because the bracket is so small but it is changed in the Republican tax scam and the 35% bracket spans between $200,001 -$500,000 for singles and $40o,001 to $600,000 still not quite fair to married couples who should be able to make a million before they moved up to the next bracket.

The next change was punishment for the states that didn't vote for Trump. States like New York and California where the home prices are high and state income taxes are also high. The Republicans hope that the citizen of those state will stage a tax revolt led by Republicans. The original bill would have eliminated both the deduction for home mortgages and state and local taxes. The final bill did allow a interest deduction on mortgages of $750,000 and a $10,000 limit on deductions for state and local taxes. But the big change that did not receive any press coverage was that there will no longer allow tax deductions for home equity loans on either the primary dwelling or second homes.

There is still a lot of misinformation about the Republican tax scam on the internet some of it intentional misinformation and some of it just sloppy journalism for instance: "And, note whatever new bracket you fall in, more of your income will be hit with lower rates." This appears on the same page with the actual rate schedule which clearly shows that the rate remains at 10% for couples with household incomes of less than $43,050. In Huntington the average household income is less than $30,000 so the majority will not see a cut in their tax rate. Since the author says, "more of your income will be hit with lower rates." The author can not possible imagine that anyone makes less than $43,050 and therefore could take advantage of the cuts in higher brackets.

The Republican tax scam intended to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes but in conference they placed a $10.000 limit on state and local taxes instead. I didn't realize that this also included sales tax. The purchase of car alone gives you a four figure deduction for title tax. But there is a silver lining Trump can still fully deduct all interest, state and local taxes on his rental property and there is no limit. Since Trump lives in Trump Towers and most of it is rental property Trump won't be limited even on his personal residence. After all that is Republican fair.

There are new tax rules for alimony as it stands now the person paying alimony can now deduct that alimony from their taxable income and the person receiving the alimony had to list it as income. The Republican tax scam reverses that and the person paying alimony will no longer be able to deduct alimony payment but the person receiving will no longer need to pay taxes on the alimony. This would start on divorces on or after December 31, 2018. This would be a tax increase because the person paying the alimony has a bigger income than the person receiving the alimony.

In the blue states, those that voted against Trump, taxpayers rushed to pay next year's property taxes before the Republican tax scam goes into effect but the IRS said not so fast. They cautioned those that paid their 2018 property taxes early that they may not be able to claim a deduction for paying their property tax early after all. It seems that it has something to do with when the property is accessed and evidently many of the states have not accessed their property yet. One county had already taken in over $6 million in early property taxes. Other counties were so busy they were letting people pay their taxes at Well Fargo by taking a copy of last year's property tax in and paying the same amount.

The problem here is that 96% of the people losing their property tax deduction are in the top 20% by creating a $10,000 cap on property taxes saved most of the middle class from losing their deduction. Not many of us owe $10,000 in property and the loose goes to those who owe more than $10,000 in property tax.

The Republicans had intended to do away with another tax deduction used by the middle class, the deduction for medical expenses but that one got left on the cutting room floor. In one year we had a $100,000 in medical expenses we was fortunate we had good health insurance A knee replacement for my wife and stay in the hospital for me after a bike crash getting ready for a Tri-Athlon. If we had not had insurance we would have still had those expenses but they would at least be tax deductible if they were over 10% of adjusted gross income. The cost of health insurance is also deductible and with health insurance is going higher and higher it is strange that the Republican would want to eliminate this deduction. Don't worry though the Republicans will get it next time.

The Republicans are already beginning to have buyers remorse about their tax scam. Rubio said, "We probably went to far on (helping) corporations. " Rubio now says that corporations are sitting on a historic levels of cash and that the tax cuts will not likely to have much of an effect on the economy. By the way that was exactly what Bloomberg said before the tax scam was passed. Now Rubio now believes the money will be used by the corporations to buy back their stock and drive the price up. It will only make the rich even richer. This will be third time in thirty years that trickle down economics was tried and failed. Rubio is trying to put some distance between him and the Republican tax scam. The fact is Rubio knew this before he voted for the tax scam and he voted for it anyway. But he wants to run for office again and he wants to be the first to say it was just a scam to put more money in the Republican political donors pockets.

Why did the Republicans target all of the middle tax deductions while leaving all of the business deductions in place while they why they were simplifying the tax code? They simplified tax code by adding another 500 pages to the tax code. One of the import tax deductions goes to those who have been hit by a disaster like a flood or a tornado. Currently if you are hit by a disaster you are allowed to deduct the cost from your taxes in the amount that your loss is over a $100 and exceeds 10% of your adjusted gross income. The Republicans eliminated that tax deduction and now the only time you can claim a disaster deduction is if you happen to be in a presidentially declared disaster area. We all know that most floods and other disaster do not fall in presidentially declared disaster areas. I got a call one Memorial Day and the neighbor asked if I knew that my rental problem had flooded. I had no idea because the property had not flooded before. Let me tell you it is a mess to clean up and repair. Because it was rental property the cost could be deducted from my taxes. The people hit by disaster will not be able to deduct it from their taxes but the corporate big wigs can deduct their corporate jets from their taxes.

The country is upside down and the ungodly greedy have the America public by the feet upside down shaking every penny out of them.

When Rubio was asked if he was worried about how unpopular the Republican tax scam was he replied that as soon as the public (idiots) got a little more change in their weekly pay envelop it would become popular. The sad fact is the American got a far worse deal than the Indians got for New York at least Indians still have something to show for it. The American public never realized what they lost for the Republican tax scams. Every time taxes are cut expenses must also be cut and the easiest target is our secondary education system. When I went to college you could mow a few lawns and easily pay your tuition now you could own a large lawn cutting service and not come close to paying your tuition. Education is such a good target because the cost of government cuts is shifted to the students who it seems can borrow any amount of money because uncle Sam is the debt collector. If one of those 18 years olds without a job went into a bank to borrow $300,000 they would lock them up for being nuts. The bank wouldn't loan them a $100 without a job.

The more I thought about the Republicans taking away the disaster deduction the madder it made me. Of all the deductions that is the one that is the most important to those who are affected. The Catholic church taught that there was a difference in the severity of sins. If you took a dollar from a rich man it was a minor sin but if you took a dollar from a poor man who had very few dollars that was a major sin. That is exactly what the Republicans are doing. A flood, even a local flood that affects few people often takes everything they own leaving them with nothing. The community comes together to help out but the Republicans decided to rob these victims of their tax deduction for what reason? To give another $100,000,000 million to Trump and friends. There was a flood in WV in the summer of 2016 and by December some of the victims were still living in tents and these are the type of people the Republicans took their tax deduction. The money is nothing to Trump but for someone who has lost everything a few extra thousand is extremely important.

The Republicans made a big deal about telling the public that they doubled the standard deduction for a married couple which is lie the standard deduction was $12,700 and if it were doubled it would be #25,400 but they hardly mention that they took the personal exemption away. For a family of four that amounts to $16,200. They increased the child care credit a $1000 but that still means that the family has to pay taxes on another $2,900 of their income. Even for a couple the increase in the standard deduction is $11,300 but the lose $8,100 in their personal deduction meaning that they only net only $3,200 or a saving of $320 in income tax or $6.15 a week in taxes. Rubio thinks you will be so impressed with this $6.15 a week that you will be all for the Republican tax scam and vote the Republicans back in office. The Indians got a much better deal those beads they would be worth a fortune today if they could be found.

Contrast is psychological principal used to influence people. To demonstrate this principal they use an experiment involving three buckets of water. One with hot water, one with cold water, and one with room temperature water. Subjects are asked to put one hand in the bucket with hot water the other hand in the bucket with cold water. After a few minutes they are told to put both hands in the bucket with room temperature. They can't believe what they feel. The room temperature water feels hot to the hand that was in the cold water and cold to the hand that was in the hot water. Retailers use this principal all the time. I can remember when the Ford dealer would get a new base model Chevrolet and show it with the more upscale Ford models and Chevrolet would do the same. I was at Walmart last week looking at a display of televisions going from 72" to 50" the 50" looked so small in comparison but when I got home my 50" TV looked good sized.

Now lets compare the $3,200 net increase in the tax deduction for a couple to the increased tax deduction for the Trump family estate tax. The exemption was $5,490,000 this year next year it is $22 million so you got a $3,200 increase in your deduction if you don't have children but the Trump family got an increase in their tax deduction of $16,510,000. That is only a difference of $16,5o6,800. They can keep my $6.15 a week if they will keep the Trump family from robbing America blind.

Another deduction that the House wanted to eliminate was the one where school teachers are allowed to deduct $500 when they buy school supplies out of their own pocket for their class room. My sister is a teacher so I know that it is quite common for teachers to buy school supplies for their class room. The Senate wanted to double the exemption to a $1,000 but they compromised on $250 in the final bill. This does not look like a compromise if the Senate wanted a $1,000 and the House the compromise would be $500 instead it looks like they started with the $500 figure and compromised on $250. Year after funding for schools have been cut as Republicans slashed the funding for schools to provide big and better tax cuts for the ungodly rich. The fact is that most teachers will use their own money to see that their classroom has at least the bare necessities for their students. They should get at least get tax deduction because they are providing what the schools no longer provide.

Again you have to contrast this with the carried interest deduction that allows billionaires to treat the salary they are paid to be taxed at the capital gains rate instead of the personal income rate which is much higher. This is a favorite tax deduction of "magic under ware" Romney and billionaire hedge fund managers. Trump campaigned on eliminate the carried interest loop hole but this is one campaign promise he didn't keep. However he did eliminate the disaster deduction for those who are not in presidential declared disaster.

I had a dispute with the IRS over how to calculate the purchase price of stock that was bought in small fractions over several years. They called me in and we began to argue over how the purchase would be determined and she told me I would have to use the lowest purchase price over the 8 year period even though I had paid much more for a good portion of stock that was purchased. I ended the argument when I pointed out that capital gains was taxed at 0% on incomes of $50,000 0r less. Once I pointed that out that ended the argument. I fought IRS and I won. If I could have used the carried interest loop hole I would not have had to pay a penny in taxes on my income. But that loop hole is not available to working man only to the ultra rich.

I must admit the Republican tax scam does away with deductions I never even heard of such as a $260 a month deduction for transportation to the job and parking. This is not a big deduction in this area but in big cities it is very expensive to park a car. This deduction also applied to transit passes in New York many have to use the subway to get to work. Even a special rate for parking for a single night in New York city is $28. The Republicans also eliminated a federal bike commuter benefit of $20 a month tax free.

The Republican continued their war on education they want to make America the most ignorant country on the face of the earth. After all that is the people who vote Republican. The less education you have the more likely you are to vote Republican. The anti education House tried to eliminate the deduction for interest paid on a student loan. This $2,500 deduction could be claimed even when using the standard deduction. The House also wanted to make tuition paid for graduate students a taxable just as it were income. The Senate blocked the House from implementing their plan this time but as the deficit get worse look for the House to bring it back up.

The House also tried to eliminate a deduction that allowed parents to set up a pre tax in dependent flexible saving account to pay for child care costs. You could put up to $5,000 in the account. The Senate blocked this also but it shows where the Republican party is headed. This would help many parents if they took advantage but there is a draw back. The trouble with pre tax is that social security tax is not taken out and it lowers your social security when you retire. It as if you never made that money for social security purposes. Many things can now be taken pre tax and one of the most popular is health insurance. When we first had to start paying for part of the health insurance. I pointed out in negotiation that it would be better for all concerned if the city paid the cost because if the employees paid they paid out of taxed dollars and it would be more expensive. After a few years the finance director sent a memo out saying our portion of the health insurance would be deducted pre tax. I went to his office and told him not to take mine out pre tax because it would lower my social security and I only had a few years to go before I retired. This was a huge savings to the city because the city had to match the social security and income tax deducted from the employees. We had a rather loud argument and I said it was up to me whether the health insurance was taken pre tax. The problem was I failed to follow up and a year later I found out he did it anyway. The result was my social security was lower than my mother's who retired a generation earlier.

Under the old law you could convert a 401K to a Roth account as long as you did it by Oct 15. The Republican tax scam eliminated that option. You have to pay taxes on a 401K when you draw it out after you retire. Contributions to a 401K are tax free up to a certain amount. You pay taxes on your contributions to your Roth account now but it is tax free when you retire. I don’t know how the conversion was made since one is tax free and the other taxed. One thing for sure there must have been a tax saving for the Republicans so they could give bigger and better tax cuts for billionaires for them to make the change.

The Senate wanted to do away with the loop hole that allows big investors to decide which shares of their stock are sold. Under the Senate proposal when stock was sold that had been acquired over a period of time for tax purposes it would be assumed the first stock bought would be the first stock sold. The first stock bought would likely be bought much cheaper than the stock acquired later making for more tax liability. The current law allows you to decide which shares are being sold so you can minimize your taxes. If the first stock you bought at a $100 a share and a later purchase of stock was for a $150 a share and you sold some of it for a $175 a share by claiming the $150 purchase price saves you taxes on the capital gain. It is the same with a loss say the stock went down to $125 by claiming the $150 purchase price you could use the $150 purchase price to claim a $25 a share loss for tax purposes. The House keep the old law saving big investors billions in taxes. You can see the difference there is a pattern there eliminate personal exemptions for families and keep the big tax deductions for billionaires.

Much was made about raising the standard deduction from $6350 to $12,000 for an individual that sounds like a lot of money but the Republican tax scam gives some $200,000 of their income tax free. That sort of makes the $5650 increase in the standard deduction look like small change. Business income being passed through to personal income can exempt 20% of that income from taxes. The $200,000 tax free is at the lower end of the spectrum for many the tax scam will let them get millions tax free as many of businesses using this "deduction" are multi-million dollar operations and the tax saving will be in the millions. Trump of course uses this type of pass through operation for many of his businesses. If Trump's businesses passed through a billion dollars to his personal income under the Republican tax scam Trump would get $200 million tax free. That figure is not unreasonable with his vast holdings. Let's see you got $5,650 Trump got $200 million. That is the way the Republicans count $1 for you $200 million for me. Bob Corker was going to vote against the Republican tax scam because it blow up the national debt. This is what changed his mind. Corker is in the real estate business like Trump and no doubt stands to get at the very least a million tax free. So much for the national debt.

Here we go again with trickle down economics a term the Republicans no longer like to use because it was a huge failure. The idea that by giving business owners more money they will invest it in their businesses is ridiculous this tax deduction for pass through is given for taking the money out of the business. Once you took the money out of the business why would you or your partners put it back into the business where you would have to pay taxes again on the same money? If you were going to grow your business you would leave the money in the business and not take it out. The Republican tax scam gives businesses owners an incentive to take the money out of the business and use if for personal uses such as yachts, airplanes and European vacations. Economies can't be built from the top down for the very same reason you can't build a sky scraper from the top down, with out a good foundation you are just building dream castles in the sky.

In November 2016 when the Republican tax scam was being considered by congress four hundred millionaires and billionaires sent letter to Congress asking them not to cut their taxes and further exacerbate the inequality of wealth in America.

“We urge you to oppose any legislation that further exacerbates inequality, the letter states. “Tax reform should at best be revenue neutral—without using gimmicks like dynamic scoring. We are deeply concerned that revenue loss would lead to deep cuts in critical services such as education, Medicare and Medicaid, and would hamper our nation’s ability to restore investment in our people and our communities.”

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“Repealing the estate tax alone would lose an estimated $269 billion over 10 years, more than we would spend on the Food and Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control, and the Environmental Protection Agency combined,” the letter states.

From an Internet article entitled: “George Soros and Hundreds of Other Wealthy Americans: Don’t Cut Our Taxes”
Site Posted on: “Market Watch”
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When the rich begin to complain that the tax cuts are unnecessary and unwanted and that in fact they will damage the country people should listen. The fact that 400 of the richest people in America signed this letter says a lot. The rich are a small group and 400 would be a good percentage of the super wealthy. Are there members of the super-rich who feel the other way? Sure, there is a group of the ungodly greedy that wants to destroy the American government like Grover Norquist they want to shrink government till it is small enough to drown in the bathtub. At least one of the Koch brothers was a John Bircher basically an anarchist who don’t want any government. I have news for him if he succeeded in destroying the government he will be the next one gone. With no government to defend him he would not survive long.

Warren Buffet says the real problem with the US Economy is people like him, those in the richest 1%. Warren Buffet knows what he is talking about and the trouble is that 1% is in total control of our political system. When they are in control of our political system they will use it to benefit themselves and the recent Republican tax scam is a good example where Trump and friends will get millions in all kinds of tax cuts and people with several children will pay even higher taxes. The conservative Supreme Court Decision that allowed the rich to contribute unlimited amounts of money in an election damaged America far more than people realize.
I have seen politicians say that they can take the money from the rich and it will not affect how they vote when bills come before them that affect the bottom line of one of their contributors but we all know that is a lie. The law of reciprocation has been with us since the earliest civilizations began. It is so deeply ingrained in all of us it is almost an instinct. Most of the basic instinct in human being are there because they provided some survival advantages. Reciprocation was necessary even in primitive societies where one hunter had been successful and other not successful the successful hunter would share with others who were not so lucky that day with the expectation that the others would be obligated to return the favor.

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“It is the future orientation inherent in a sense of obligation that is critical to its ability to produce social advantages of the sort described by Tiger and Fox. A widely shared and strongly feeling of future obligation made an enormous difference in human social evolution, because it meant that one person could give something (for example, food, energy, care) to another with confidence that it was not being lost. For the first time in evolutionary history one individual could give away any of a variety of resources with actually giving them away. The result was a lowering of natural inhibitions that must begun by one person’s providing personal resources to another. Sophisticated and coordinated systems of aid, gift giving, defense, and trade became possible, bringing immense benefits to the societies that possessed them. With such clearly adaptive consequences for the culture, it is not surprising that the rule of reciprocation is so deeply implanted in us by socialization we all undergo.

From the book: Influence: “The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.

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To believe that mega money is not determining the course of the country is like believing gravity doesn’t exist. Our country will not long survive if money is allowed to continue to corrupt our political system

“The U.S. has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world.” It used to be that the countries with the highest levels of inequality were the banana Republics where the dictators could simply use force to take the wealth of their country.

“The wealth of the top 400 richest Americans has increased 29-fold since 1982, from $93 billion to $2.7 trillion,” according to the Forbes 400. “Meanwhile, the wealth of many millions of hard working remained stuck on an economic treadmill,” Buffet says.

Anyone that has lived through this will recognize that this mess started under Reagan. The conservative revolution was responsible for vastly increasing the inequality of wealth in America. The given reason for Reagan drastically increasing the inequality of wealth in America is that the wealth would then “trickle down” to the common man. Did that happen? No.

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“During this period, the tsunami of wealth did not trickle down. It surged upwards”

Warren Buffet
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Why keep trying the very things that we know don’t work? Somebody benefits even if it is a tiny segment of the population.

Trump has started his “Lie to the Fools” tour to convince the public that his tax giveaway to billionaires is a good deal for the general-public. Trump is now claiming that the tax cut is not $1.5 trillion but it is actually a $5.5 trillion tax cut. Since all the news articles have listed the tax cut at $1.5 trillion how can Trump now claim it to be $5.5 trillion? This appears to be a case of those alternative White House facts. “Figures never lie but liars do.” Now the undisputed king of liars is showing you how it is done. The Senate rules only allowed the Republicans to raise the deficit by $1.5 trillion this is why the tax bill settled on that figure. But to arrive at this figure some taxes were cut, the tremendous tax cuts for corporations from 35% to 21% far exceeds the $1.5 trillion. The taxes were indeed cut by $5.5 trillion but other taxes were raised by $4 trillion. Trump and the White House are flaunting the massive amount of tax cuts to corporations as cuts to the middle class. The Republican tax scam raises taxes by $4 trillion nearly three times the amount the Republican cut taxes.

The beauty of the Republican tax scam is the is that one group is getting massive tax cuts while the vast-majority will see little if any of the tax cuts. While the majority of the tax deductions were eliminated for middle class they gave the businesses 20% of their income tax free in the pass-through loop hole. While most tax deductions were eliminated for individuals the very same tax deductions remained for businesses. Why do the figures work? Because you have the 400 richest Americans on one side of the equation and the other 330 million on the other side of the equation. A few dollars from the 330 million can and did provide a tremendous tax cut for the richest. Know this tax scam for what it actually is a $4 trillion tax increase on the majority to pay for a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the 400 richest Americans. What the Republicans are counting on is that the middle class will not know how this actually affects them until 2019 when they fill out their taxes fort 2018.