| Saltwater |  |
Politics |
Saltwater Politics? Watcha think? Coastal politics? Overseas tax breaks? Nope, saltwater solutions are what most voters slurp up when they thirst for relief from over-taxation and inflation. As a glass of saltwater quenches the thirsty tongue for a short while, saltwater policies temporarily relieve sufferers before the stoked fires of inflation and taxes come burning back. Saltwater policies help pay the cost of living for the rich. Saltwater policies are the opposite of luxury taxes for they stimulate and inflate the cost of luxuries. The myth of saltwater politics is like the Myth of Sisyphus: The citizen thinks he is about to solve his problem only to later find himself starting over. One difference. The rock of Sisyphus was never depicted as getting bigger. Saltwater politics yields not larger glasses but bigger dissolved rocks of salt, a greater hidden tax burden. Saltwater politics describes the various ways that wealth is transferred from the wealth creators to the "wealthfare" recipients--the money dictators in bed with the habitual politicians. Another term sometimes used is bandaids--the untreated wound is covered only to fester until life-threatening. A primary thing to realize: If you are not the biggest recipient of the political favor then your cost of l iving will rise. You will suffer inflation in the goods and services you share with the recipients of political favors: taxes, education, medicine and energy--see "Tax Credits of Dubious Values."
Below is a list of various saltwater policies. The Bush $1.6 triillion tax
plan should be known as the Dead Sea tax bill. All the measures are a refreshing
large glass of salt water. A timistic analysis reveals the same drain on
liquidity from the basic industries which Hoover's 1930's gold policies exacted
to exacerbate the Depression. If you liked the first Bush recession, you
will like the next one more. The
existential meltdown will
see the demise of the middle class
(Argentina).
Gatsby, anyone?
As a term, "saltwater policy" is not appropriate for health maintenance organization (HMOs) or electric deregulation. A more appropriate analogy for these two financial dessicants is confronting inflationary flames not with saltwater but with gasoline. (One of the funniest things to come out of California--the origin of HMO's and electricity deregulation--is the call by a California think tank to deregulate and privatize the FAA.) Political promises are the gurgling sound of a glass being filled with saltwater policies. The thirsty person who accepts a glass of saltwater is like the man who traded his eternal soul for a brief, earthly want. Minute wise, lifewise foolish. All saltwater cases show the basic inflationary principle of more money chasing the same or fewer goods and services. In all cases, a short-term gain in buying power is matched by an inflationary erosion of buying power. Mostly, the inflationary suffering falls on the lower and middle classes. Ironically, the middle class is the bulk of the voters. They keep saltwater politics raining. If it weren't for saltwater politics, most of the wealth creating middle class would be the upper class. However, they keep voting wealthfare for the upper class. The only solution to over-taxation is a universal, product transaction tax in which all transactions are tax equally. The middle class will spend less of their time working to pay taxes when they support the principle that everyone should pay a fair share. Taxes are, afterall, nothing more than the government taking and managing the time of the citizens--see Timely Function of Government. Each hour of work that you work to pay taxes is an hour of your time that the government uses to buy the time of others to do something worthwhile or something worthless. Raising wages creates inflationary losses for the minimum-wage earner as
For more details, visit Minimum Wage. Tax Cuts: Raising Everyones' Minimum Wage Why do Republican economists decry the inflationary impact of raising the minimum wage for the poor but not the inflationary impact of tax cuts that raise everyones' minimum takehome wage? Why? Because the poor don't pay the wages of these intellectual hypocrites. For the vast majority of taxpayers (95%), the buying power of the tax cut is rapidly eroded by the inflated prices engendered by those who receive bigger tax cuts. A study reports the middle-class will get nothing from the Bush tax cuts.The smaller one's tax cut, the sooner one loses it before the unavoidable price pressure of more money chasing the same goods and services. Claims that the wealthy invest in jobs is debunked by the rise and fall of the NASDAQ, an inflationary bubble funded by the 401(k) tax-exempted dollars. People speculating on the value of old paper is not the same as people investing dollars in new jobs. The course of 401(k) show how tax-exemptions sequence a bust-boom cycle of inflation and recession. Congress raised the limit on 401(k) to $15,000. How many Americans can save $15,000 a year? Who makes up the lost tax dollars? Those who take the maximum exemption? How many poor couples can benefit from a marriage tax repeal? Those in the middle class should recognize that their short-term gains wil l be wiped out as the upperclass couples use their greater tax gains to stimulate inflation that will wipe out any tax gain. Why? Because the middle class shares more common goods and services with the upper classes. With their larger tax rebates, the upper classes the middle class. Bingo, higher prices for the middle class couples who wanted a repeal of the marriage tax. If you are not the biggest recipient of the political tax favor then your cost of living will rise. If you give someone a gift of money, or its equivalent, you are giving them freedom while enslaving someone else. It is a zero-sum world. You can't give one person freedom from work without enslaving another to work enough for two people. Timistically, there is no difference between giving someone a slave (outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.) and giving someone a lifetime of cash to buy the time of a second person. Rather than end estate taxes, a new Constitutional Amendment is needed to end all forms of enslavement. Estate taxes affect only .1% of dead Americans each year. If you are not the biggest recipient of the political favor then your cost of living will rise. For a fuller presentation as well as a where how many slaves George II and his cabinet will buy if the estate tax is eliminated, visit "Estate Taxes: Emancipation or Enslavement" The Bush "No Death Tax" law is the death of the American middle class. Vouchers: Childcare, Eldercare and Education Taken together, the people who cannot afford these services pay for these services for others. For instance, if you can't afford to pay for childcare, you must make up for the taxes not paid by those who can afford childcare that receive a subsidy--see Selfish, Self-Defeating Childcare Subsidies. Education vouchers take money out of public education all the while making the parents of public school students suffer more inflation. In the end, vouchers merely raise prices, e.g., hope vouchers. This is coflation, higher prices from competition from people with buying power which they did not earn by solving problems which lowers the cost of living. The irony is the vast majority of children who will attend private schools could not by intelligence nor by motivation earn a scholarship at the schools where their parents want the poor to subsidize "class" scholarships base on discretionary disposable income. The irony is the parents who think they are buying their children a better life with educational vouchers (whatever you call them, e.g., computer credits or Section 529 edicashun). They are condemning their children to work harder to pay for the cost of others' problems who were not given a fair, good education. Like England in its days of prosperity, we are subsidizing the dumb rich kids rather than rewarding those with merit. Like inheritance, tax vouchers for those who can afford them merely dumbs down education--monetary social promotions. Like England, we will have duller leaders with credentials and C-averages: Geo. Bush, Jr.. If we can subsidize people unhappy with public education, what next? Tax-support for those who buy privately bottled water because they don't like public water? The Jim Crow laws are coming back to education founts and water fountains--see Prince Edward County. Like all the other saltwater policies, education tax-credits lets those who can afford without supports get tax-back that force up the costs for other which explains why college tuitions in Year 2002 are skyrocketing with more Americans going foreign for college enrollement. While the topic has not been reviewed for other states, the inflationary cost of Virginia's Car Tax Repeal to the lower and upper middle class no doubt applies to any other states with repeal of car taxes. Those who do not qualify for the maximum rebate are subsidised by the taxpayers that do not qualify at all or in part. The latter includes the author whose car tax rebate was $5.55. For a fuller treatment of how the no car drivers or poor car drivers subsidize the wealth car owners, see Car Tax Repeal. Regardless of his reason, the Governor of Virginia (Jim Gilmore) preferred to cut education, services, and retirements as well as tapping retirement funds. The message: The poor will suffer so the rich can drive more expensive cars. In 2002, Virginia's politicians increased the sales tax by half a cent specifically for road repairs. In other words, people who cannot afford to own a car will be taxed to make up the revenues lost when car owners were not required to pay for the cost of roads through a car tax. Tuition Programs: Tuition programs are a scheme to subsidize the tuition of wealthy people by the dollars of the lower and middle class--see Tuition Scam. Like Virginia's "no car tax" saltwater solution (see above), America's no tax on those who can save for college means fewer will go to college as colleges raises tuition by double digits because the tax base has been decreased. The saltwater policy with the greatest appeal and gravest consequences is subsidised energy consumption. At some time in the past, the time-saving value of each BTU burned from oil or coal was cancelled by the future time losses from pollution. The pump-price of a gallon of gas is only a downpayment. People today have been bankrupting the future of their children and grandchildren. The tragedy of the twentieth century will not be Holocaust, Gulags or Killing Fields but the American destruction of the environment which will last for centuries and continue to harm and kill millions ... if not humanity itself.--see Environmental Saltwater Policy. Home Interest Deductions The cost of living and housing will be less when we have a simplified tax system so that people won't think they are getting something for nothing when they deduct the interest costs of their homes. Like a glass of salt water, only the wealth really benefit from home interest rate deductions: House interest deductions. Pensions: ESOPs, NASDAQ, 401(k)s, Annuities, NoCurity Each generation of workers is titillated with new, surefire solutions for retirement: Social Security, ESOPs, Annuities, NASDAQ, 401(k)s. Most people know that Social Security is no longer a solution to security in old age. It once was. Millions of people retired comfortably and died happily on social security. People could die with out having a government lien or reverse mortgage on the homestead. Now economic apologists for the politicians who debased social security are saying that it was never intended as a retirement plan. But it was hawked as such and did do the job. But now it should renamed to reflect how it no cure for retirement: Social Nocurity. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) were the rage until it became clear how the companies used them to get tax benefits for the politically favored executives and real owners. ESOPs were a saltwater solution. The stock market, in particular the NASDAQ, was ballyhooed as the key to retirements. A lot of peoples' retirements have been delayed, or worse, derailed, with the evaporation of paper wealth. Only the paper manipulators who extracted real wealth with the blessing of the politicians have comfortable retirements with servants, maids and chauffeurs. The stock market was a saltwater solution to quenching the thirst for a high liquidity in retirement. Annuities? You don't hear the promoters of annuities listing all the failures. Another glass of salted water. The biggest and latest saltwater solution is the 401(k) plan as a replacement for a company pension. Today (2002), the average person approaching retirement has about $70,000 in a 401(k). Twenty years ago, a similar person had $200,000 in retirement. The average person has lost two-thirds of their retirement in the last twenty years. One's monthly 401(k) statement is a glass of saltwater. Each month, people drink up the symbolic dollar value unaware that the substance is only one-third of what it was. Like ESOPs, the trustees are often fiduciary farce. Even company pension plans have been changed so that new retirees have less. Many are underfunded. Companies found it cheaper to pay a few million dollars in campaign contributions to get the habitual politicians to legislate exemptions to billions of dollars in pension obligations. Or, they used merger clauses to walk away from obligations. Companies are taking advantage of lower hiring and training costs to automatically churn employees of all ages so that the companies have no pension obligations nor discrimination lawsuits. One of America's most admired companies, Microsoft, has made it a policy for plebeian employees. America's corporations are implementing a long-term hire/fire policy that creates a new class of temps unbeknownst to the temps themselves. Ultimately, the average worker is to blame for accepting saltwater solutions from the habitual politicians. All play and no politics make Jack and Jill poor taxpayers with no benefits and no retirement in a world of rising costs. The only thing worse than not voting is voting for a habitual politician.
Prescription Drugs
Bottled
Water Tax Support The poor who don't pollute the water tables will suffer worsening water while the polluters drink the tax-supported water. The water of civilized life--education--is being rationed and segregated by tax supports. Why not the water of life itself? The Jim Crow laws are coming back to education founts and water fountains. (This writer has encouraged syndicated columnists to take up the cause of tax supports for private waters and to not let this be another lost cause.)
Morality Summary In effect, any government regulation that creates a sliding scale of benefits is a continuum of water glasses varying from very salty to non-salted water. Self-defeatingly, all the drinkers incur future thirst for solutions except for the small percentage that drink salt-free water. The future thirst is in the form of inflationary suffering. Instead of solving the time-wasting problems, politicians throw money at the problems in the form of tax-cuts and tax-supports--Necronomics.The challenge for humanity's survival is how to get people to realize that they a re victims of saltwater policies. Most Saltwater Politics ends up being new variations of the tax-deduction for the 3-martini lunch. The average person cannot afford to eat out as often as the government forces the average taxpayer to underwrite the cost of a 3-martini lunch. The average worker will not be able to afford education, childcare, eldercare or a car, but saltwater politics will have the "deprivileged" subsidizing the expensive tastes of those who take 100% advantage of the tax-subsidies. The irony is that the politically over-privileged can and would buy without the tax wealthfare. Saltwater politics are short-sighted, get re-elected band-aids for serious wounds festering civilization. Saltwater solutions are Sisyphean. The 2002 Mid-Term Election Rout by the Rich Pubes was Americans emulating Sherman and lemmings by marching to the sea to quinch their thirst for fresh solutions.
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