Saturday, December 4, 2010

BloggeRhythms 12/4/2010

I think that the more that Democrats talk about refusing to keep the "Bush" tax cuts in place for the "rich" the more damage they're doing to themselves. Because, I assume, more and more folks like myself are paying more attention today to how these laws really work, and more than that, who they really affect.

And as I mentioned yesterday, roughly half of the folks designated as "rich," under the law, are actually owners of small businesses that are backbone of the nation. These are operations that employ people, buy raw materials and inventory, pay all kinds of other taxes and help keep the economy humming. What's more, it's still quite likely that in one way or another tax hike protection will be granted to them.

Yet, low-life politicians can't just go out and do the right thing, they've got to turn it into some kind of one-upsmanship game. The only problem the politicos are going to have this time around though, is that they're all going to lose their jobs.

Next on the list is the wage freeze proposed by the president for non-military federal employees. And here's another one where the facts blow you away if you're unfamiliar with the numbers. According to an article last August in USA Today, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, "federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation." Additionally the average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000.

So that means that in the government business, where you need three or four employees to do most jobs that in the private sector you'd need only one, not only are the employees incompetent, each one's getting twice as much income. Thus, my arithmetic tells me that if you have to pay three folks to get the same result as from one, because most government employees I've ever met are certainly dumber than stones, the labor cost for most tasks is six times greater than if done in the real world. That means, on average, the government's paying $369,147.00 to get $61,051.00 worth of labor results.

And if that isn't enough damage done by the thieves supposedly running our nation, the federal estate tax is scheduled to return Jan. 1, 2011. That imposes a levy of up to 55% on estates valued at more than $1 million. In this case, aside from the fact that the dollars in question have already been taxed once as income or gains when they were earned, there's simply no real justification for the levy at all, except that the government's run out of money due to incompetence.

But here again, this is one of those things that might just slip by because average folks aren't likely affected. But, then again, maybe they are. Because families who live in areas with high property values are particularly vulnerable, according to Clint Stretch, tax principal for Deloitte Tax who lives outside Washington, D.C. He uses the example: "People in my neighborhood bought a house for $32,000 in the '60s, and now it's worth $1 million, if they've got anything else, they would be paying an estate tax."

In a nutshell, what this all seems to add up to is a bunch of incompetents insulating each other and spending all their time and effort looking for ways to empower and enrich themselves from everybody else's smarts and labor. But, I keep getting a stronger sense that that isn't going to work anymore for them. And, the luckiest thing for our population is that these folks are so smug, complacent and arrogant, they don't see the broadside coming. Or, if they do, they don't seem too worried. And that's the best kind of adversary to have. Because as each day goes by, these bozos are doing one more stupid thing to help defeat themselves.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

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