If I hear another lecture from Fred Smith and his fellow billionaires on trickle-down tax cuts and the “benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners”, I’m going to lose it.
If I hear another lecture from Jay Powell and his fellow centimillionaires and decamillionaires at the Fed on trickle-down monetary policy and the “benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners”, I’m going to lose it.
OK, boomer.
What’s the boomer world?
It’s a world where our current President is an on-the-make billionaire, and our most recent former President seems hell-bent on becoming one. A world where lawyers from Citadel write our securities regulations, and VPs from Boeing run our Defense Dept. A world where corporate managers can become billionaires – not by innovation or risk-taking – but by stock-based comp at scale. A world where asset managers can become billionaires – not by invention or outperformance – but by asset-gathering at scale.
It’s a world that has been systematically hollowed out for decades, through
- narrative capture of monetary policy,
- trade policy,
- antitrust law,
- mass media and the
- tax code.
“Yay, trickle-down economics!”
It’s a bipartisan thing. It’s a Zeitgeist thing.
And the 2017 Tax Cuts and (LOL) Jobs Act was just the latest smiley-face punch in the gut.
Worried about losing your freedom to a redistributive State? I think you’ve already lost it.
Just not in the direction you thought.
Buried in the tax bill: provisions to woo social conservatives
While lawmakers are likely to give attention to key aspects of the legislation, there are some little-known provisions in the 400-plus-page bill meant to appeal to social conservatives.
One of the biggest wins – particularly for pro-life activists – is language in a provision related to college savings plans, otherwise known as 529 plans. The provision explicitly lets parents set up a plan for an “unborn child,” defined in the legislation as a “child in utero.”
“This is a concrete recognition within the U.S. tax code that a fetus is an unborn child,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
.. Another provision would get rid of the Johnson Amendment – which prohibits tax-exempt religious organizations like churches from endorsing candidates or engaging in other political activity.
“It’s almost purely political because none of it actually affects the amount of revenue raised or the amount of revenue lost,” Jones said.