I was in the coffee shop the other day and had to endure a five -minute soliloquy by a fellow caffeine addict on the impending doom the death of the Bush tax cuts were about to wreak on his life. I couldn't help myself - I had to ask him if he earned $200,000 a year. He sheepishly replied 'no.' The good news I told him was that he wouldn't be affected by the demise of the Bush tax cuts. Of course, the bad news - he didn't make over $200,000 a year.
The hand-wringing on this weekend's talk shows about the demise of the Union due to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is a joke. Only 1 in 100 of you who read this column will be affected by rollback of the Bush Tax Cuts. In fact, a couple more bucks in the federal treasury might be a good thing, since our national debt is in excess of $13 Trillion, up from $5 Trillion in 2000.
In addition, the ongoing Afghan/Iraq combo war is the first armed conflict since the Revolutionary War that we have not paid for by raising taxes. To date it has cost us in excess of $1 Trillion dollars in the Middle East, all paid for with debt.
While we're on the tax fairness discussion, think about this..
The world's richest man - Warren Buffett - has testified that eliminating the estate tax and continuing to allow the ultra-wealthy to pay such small percentages of their income in taxes may result in America becoming a Dynastic Plutocracy. (envision the country being run by four guys smoking cigars who are a lot richer than Donald Trump). And this is a guy who benefits from today's tax structure.
In 1975, 1% of the population controlled only 13% of America's private wealth. Today 1% of America's population controls 35% of this country's private wealth. In the past 9 years, that same 1% has enjoyed 75% of the increase in private wealth, which means the rest of us (99%) split the remaining 25%.
Now those are statistics that the talking heads on the Sunday Shows should be discussing.
Have a Good Week - Dare To Be Great!
Scott Farrell, Contributor
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