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LMV: Welcome to another edition of Liberty Watch. I am your host Liberty Man Van. Today we will discuss the tax reform bill just passed by the Republican controlled congress and signed by President Trump. Then we will look at a funny, yet sad story to end the episode.
First up, the Republican tax reform bill. This bill did contain federal tax cuts for individuals in all income brackets and it cut corporate taxes dramatically. As a liberty minded person I am happy to see tax cuts because they allow people to keep more of the money THEY earned. You know my position on the subject of taxation: taxation is theft. The government is the mafia posing as a human rights organization; less funding of the mafia is better. However, I would like to have seen the tax cuts coupled with spending cuts but this bill does nothing to cut spending and will continue to explode the federal debt. Oh, did I mention the federal debt?
Video clip: Federal debt clock ticking.
LMV: The proponents of this bill claim it will not have an adverse effect on the debt because the corporate tax cuts will stimulate the economy. While this true, it will not be enough to offset the revenue losses. The bill contains a budgetary sleight of hand to make it appear more fiscally responsible. The trick is to include a sunset provision; the tax cuts are set to expire in 2025. This make the long term budgetary analysis of the bill look more favorable. However, when provisions in bill are set to expire they are more often than not just extended by a future congress.
This bill also eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate that requires people to have health insurance. This means people have more freedom to choose, a positive feature.
In summary, the good news is many of us will get to keep more of the money we earned. The bad news is that the Rebublicans continue to be totally fiscally irresponsible.
Next, we will look at some of the media coverage surrounding this legislation. Democrat Larry Summers went on TV to explain how allowing people to make their own decisions regarding health insurance coverage will cause 10,000 people to die. Here he is.
Video clip: Larry Summers.
LMV: To thinkers like Mr. Summers, we are all babies that have to be coddled. He added the following comments in an article on CNBC.com:
“You have to look at the data of what the patterns are all across the country,” he said. “I don’t see how you can believe that if 10 million or 13 million, whatever exactly the number is, of people are going to lose health insurance, that’s not going to have health consequences.”
LMV: His wording here is tricky when he says “people are going to lose health insurance.” Nobody is going to be forced to drop their health insurance by this legislation. Furthermore, a government study disputes his death claims. The article continues:
Also, a National Institutes of Health Study from 2009, pre-Obamacare, found no relationship between the mortality risk of the insured and uninsured.
Video Graphic: “It is not possible to draw firm causal inferences from the results of observational analyses, but there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the United States,” the study said.
LMV: Any time you have a tax cut proposal the big spenders are sure to be opposed to it. Enter the Grinch. That’s right. Remember the Grinch pretends to be Santa Claus giving stuff away but his love of big spending will have to be coupled with big borrowing and big debt. Who will have to ultimately pay that debt? Not him, but our children and grandchildren. Thus, he is stealing from the children, just like the Grinch. Here’s a clip of the Grinch attacking the tax cut bill.
Video clip: Bernie Sanders.
LMV: Whenever there is a tax cut proposal you will always the socialists coming out of the woodwork to explain how it will help the rich more than other groups. What they never mention is that upper income taxpayers pay the lion’s share of taxes. That’s why even if everyone got a 3% tax cut 3% of 5 million dollars will always be more than 3% of $20,000. Let’s consider who pays the most taxes according to taxfoundation.org data.
Graphic:
- The share of income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers rose to 20.6 percent in 2014. Their share of federal individual income taxes also rose, to 39.5 percent.
- In 2014, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.3 percent of all individual income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.7 percent.
- The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (39.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.1 percent).
- The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 27.1 percent individual income tax rate, which is more than seven times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.5 percent).
LMV: This data shows you why a tax cut will “help the rich” more, because they pay more then their share in taxes in the first place. But those who claim this bill will only help the rich are full of baloney. Tax rates for all brackets are reduced in the bill. And how about those who claim the bill will not help the poor? Baloney. Consider the following from fee.org:
Graphic: Despite all their talk about death and destruction, Democrats have overlooked the ways this tax bill could help the lower class. They’ve painted this cut as a handout to the top one percent, but the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, found that if the Senate bill gets signed into law, all income groups will see an increase in their after-tax incomes in 2018. Per their analysis, this reform would also create 925,000 new jobs, boost economic growth, and lift wages by 2.9 percent. That sounds like it would help the working class, not threaten their livelihood.
LMV: Will higher wages and economic growth help the poor? You betcha! As a matter of fact, some businesses made announcements after the bill was signed into law:
Graphic:
Some of the announcements include:
- AT&T will see a tax reduction from a 32.7% rate down to a 21% rate. This prompted them to announce that all 200,000 employees will receive a $1,000 bonus.
- Third Fifth Bankcorp announced that 13,500 employees will be receiving a bonus and minimum wage will be raised companywide to $15 per hour.
- Wells Fargo also announced that they will be raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour and that they will donate $400 million to charities and non-profits in the coming year.
- Comcast announced it would be giving $1,000 bonuses to more than 100,000 employees and will be investing over $50 billion in broadband and network infrastructure.
LMV: So let’s celebrate tax cuts. They increase freedom by allowing us to keep more of the money we earn.
And finally, we will cover a news story that most will consider funny, but I think it is kind of sad. The title of this article is really all you need to know.
Graphic: Pennsylvania Inmate Loses Appeal After Trying to Argue Drugs in His Buttocks Were Not His.
A Pennsylvania inmate who tried to convince the court that the drugs in his rear end did not belong to him lost his appeal last week.
The Pennsylvania judicial panel remained unphased when they ruled that the bag of drugs in Edwin Wylie-Biggs’ buttocks were his, upholding a court ruling that sentenced him to three to six additional years behind bars for the incident, the New York Daily News reported.
Graphic: When the inmate bent over to be searched for contraband, the corrections officer found “a clear plastic bag containing a small blue balloon could be seen sticking out of his rectum,” according to the court document.
LMV: This sad part of this story is that what this man did was illegal. If a man wants to stick a bag of weed up his ass it is none of the state’s business. After all, whose ass is it? And if this man wants to pull that weed out of his ass and smoke it whose lungs is it? Laws that prohibit what you can put into your own body are a violation of personal sovereignty; the begin with the premise that you do not own your own body.
And that’s the show for today. Thanks for tuning in and be sure to join us next time on Liberty Watch where we don’t believe you need some guy with a bullhorn to tell you what to do.