CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-The great advantage of Lies and Myths is that they dispense with unpleasant reality. In the realm of make-belief, where Americans prefer to live, everything they believe is true and there is no need for introspection because they think everything they believe is true. Trying to think can give you a brain freeze faster than a Slurpee at 7 Eleven.
The Great American Tax Debate that Never Occurred
Americans did a superb job of passing a significant tax bill without having any discussion of its actual contents. Discussion would have required people to find out what was in it use their reason since thinking is the act of applying reason to facts.
For Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi, the horror of the tax bill is that a significant number of Democrats supported the core of the GOP’s bill. Thus, the Pelosi-Dem strategy was simple: divert attention with extreme emotion based on lies. It has worked for Trump.
In a land where mythology is king, it’s blasphemous to admit that for years almost all Democrats in the House and the Senate supported the key aspect of the tax bill. The media went along with the Pelosi-Dem plan of mass deception like a bunch of mean girls in high school deciding they don’t like the new girl with braces on her teeth.
What Was the Core of the Tax Bill?
For years the U.S. has used a tax system that is at odds with what is used by most of the industrialized world. Ours is a worldwide tax system in which the U.S. government taxes corporations based on their worldwide profits without regard to where those profits were generated. The rest of the world follows a territorial tax system in which only profits made within their own borders are taxed. Guess where businesses prefer to manufacture stuff? The enormous tax liability created when a company’s worldwide profits are taxed is easy to avoid by staying out of the United States.
On the other hand, if a company knew that it could do business inside the U.S. without being taxed on its worldwide profits, then it would not shun the United States. Consequently, we reduced the amount of manufacturing inside the U.S. by erecting barriers to corporations’ opening manufacturing operations here. Also, we lost 100% of the territorial tax we would have gained had we limited our taxes to the profits generated within the U.S. territory.
The way a territorial system helps American manufacturers is a tad convoluted. To over simplify, if an American corporation manufactures something overseas, that foreign country’s taxes are limited to profits generated in that country (which are between 20% and 22%) and the American corporation does not have to pay its additional American taxes under our worldwide system until those profits are brought back to the United States. This is called “repatriation” which is a misnomer since the money was never here in the first place. Needless to say, American corporations refuse to repatriate their foreign profits. Thus, the greedy worldwide tax system fails to tax the profits American corporations make overseas. These corporations cannot invest money they earn overseas in the U.S. because such an investment would repatriate that money, kicking in American taxes in addition to the foreign taxes it already paid.
Thus, we have an idiotic system that reduces the amount of manufacturing in the United States and correspondingly reduces employment while lowering our tax revenues. (This helped create the Rust Belt and elect Trump.)
Any sane economist, be he or she Democrat or Republican, has wanted the United States to move away from the worldwide tax system and adopt the territorial tax system like the rest of the world.
The Worse Is Yet to Come
Nancy Pelosi brought us the unnecessary nightmare we will need to endure with the GOP tax bill. Thanks to her, the right wing inserted a bunch doo-doo. The untold story is that Nancy Pelosi wants to be Speaker of the House again and presently her power is rooted in her ability to raise and dole out money for the November 2018 elections. The more outraged the Democrats become, the more money she can raise.
Nancy Pelosi is not the only Democrat who is placing party over country. Generally, Democrats believe that they can regain control of the House of Representatives in the November 2018 elections provided people are still angry.
If Americans were to see moderate Dems and moderate Republicans work together to forge a better tax bill, it would be a dagger in Pelosi’s fundraising heart. Instead, the Democrats have undertaken a campaign of disinformation reminding us of the orange buffoon himself.
Reduction in Corporate Tax Rate Was Not to Make Rich People Wealthier
Changing from a worldwide tax system to a territorial tax system required us to lower our corporate tax rate to about 20%, the tax rate used by the rest of the world. No company would move its manufacturing from a country that taxes profits at 20% to a nation that taxes profits at 35%. Nonetheless, we’ve been bombarded with the big lie that cutting the corporate tax rate was solely to make rich people wealthier when its purpose was to allow more manufacturing in the U.S.
How Pelosi Handed Power to the Ultra Right Wing
In her obsession to keep Americans ignorant and angry and not allow a single Democrat to support the GOP tax bill, the moderate GOP had no choice but to cater to the lunatic, tea bagger wing of their party. If the Dems had admitted that they too wanted to change the tax system, the GOP would have been freed from their Know-Nothing faction. Seventy to a hundred Dem votes in the House and 35 to 40 Democratic votes in the Senate would have deprived the right wing of its power.
With the tea baggers neutralized, the ACA (Obamacare) Mandate would not have been repealed. Rather, the Democrats could have negotiated increased support for healthcare. Pelosi is a good politician but a poor American. She caused the moderate GOP to cave to the right wing in order to pass the tax reform. Now, she has a campaign issue to help her regain the Speakership in November 2018. Pelosi’s ambition will cost an additional 13 million Americans their healthcare coverage.
Americans Have Come to Value Emoting over Thinking
A majority of Americans once had a sixth sense called a Bull Sh*t Detector. Without knowing what was being omitted or which statements were lies, we knew in our bones when something wasn’t right. That’s how we remained on a centrist track for decades and prospered. Since those bygone days, both parties have contorted themselves into quasi-religious institutions in which faith in myths rules the day. Democrat voters should have known better than to ignore the actual details of the GOP tax bill and succumb to rants about the evil wealthy.
By allowing ourselves to be manipulated by charlatans like Trump, Bannon, and Pelosi, we enabled a mentally ill buffoon to become President. We have done this to ourselves. The route out of this mess in the future is to demand facts and reason from our own parties. The GOP rejected Roy Moore; now, it’s the Dem’s turn.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
