Some underrepresented conservatives and libertarians in Connecticut were buoyed, momentarily, by the neo-progressive resistance to President Donald Trump’s tariff initiative.
A tariff is a tax, a political charge on incoming goods, said
the anti-Trump chorus, and taxes raise the price of goods for middle class
Americans and the American poor. This refreshing honesty burst several
neo-progressive bubbles.
There is no essential difference between a tariff and a
corporate tax. As a political Gertrude Stein mighty put it: “A tax, is a tax,
is a tax,” and what can be said of tariffs may also justly be said of corporate
taxes, or indeed any other taxes.
Corporations are not tax payers; they are tax collectors. A
“fair” corporate tax is charged upon a company by a government; the company
then collects the tax in the form of a higher price for its goods or services,
shuttles the tax to the government’s receivables, and then uses the price
difference to defray its tax costs. The customer pays the tax, the corporation
acts as a tax collector, and the customer is largely a middle class tax payer. Everyone
knows this, except for “suckers born every minute” who fall for absurd
political lines with hooks attached issued by neo-progressive politicians, most
of whom are recent graduates of Karl Marx University.
So then, hearing this sunburst from neo-progressives in
Connecticut – tariff taxes are bad because they fall most heavily upon the
middle class – right of center conservatives and Milton Friedman libertarians
welcomed the adjustment in thinking. Finally, they got it right. But, of
course, they were disappointed upon hearing prominent neo-progressive
legislators agitate for higher taxes on Connecticut’s redundantly rich
billionaires who, neo-progressives tell us, are failing to pay their “fair
share” of taxes.
We are to understand that Connecticut’s two neo-progressive
Achilles – President Pro-Tem of the
state Senate Martin Looney and Majority Leader Bob Duff – would retire to their
tents if only adjustments were made in the state’s pension guidelines or
spending caps so as to allow state employee union captured neo-progressives to increase
spending. The tax haul, it has been
intimated, will be paid by the state’s (17) billionaires, most of whom are
living in splendor in Greenwich or Connecticut’s “Gold Coast. Some Connecticut billionaires, objecting to
the fleecing and seeing no attempts reduce long-term spending, already have
moved to other less predatory states.
Socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont now refuses
to chastise redundantly wealthy “millionaires” because he has become a
millionaire, but he and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC ) of
New York, in the midst of an anti-oligarchy tour, are still tanning the fannies
of billionaires. Envy, religionists tell us, is one of the seven deadly sins, and tax greed
on the part of politicians is another.
Here is neo-progressive Democrat President Pro Tem of Connecticut’s Senate Martin
Looney, the Bernie Sanders of Connecticut, declaiming against the nation’s
billionaires: “Under the last Trump administration, Connecticut’s top 1% saved
$1.2 billion in federal taxes, while working families saw crumbs. If Washington
insists on handing billionaires another tax break, we will ensure some of that
windfall comes back to the people of Connecticut to help deal with the massive
federal cuts we anticipate.”
Looney has not told us that the most effective way to assure
that burdensome middle class taxes should be reduced is to cut spending and
taxes. That is the whole point of spending caps.
Here is some eye-popping data provided by a Hartford Courant reporter: “Recent
statistics from Lamont’s budget office show that the top 2.5% of tax filers
paid 41% of the state income tax in 2022. At the other end, the bottom 49% of
filers — representing essentially half of filers statewide — paid only 2.9% of
the income tax… Less than 3% of the state income tax is paid by 830,000 filers
who are earning less than $50,000 per year in adjusted gross income — for both
singles and couples filing jointly. Filers earning more than $100,000 per year
pay 85% of the income tax, while those under $100,000, representing 72% of
filers, pay the remaining 15%, according to the statistics.”
It would be difficult to overestimate the progressive nature
of Connecticut’s tax structure. The statistics are telling, but they are wasted
on Looney. The state’s rich already pay 85% of the income tax, while the poor
pay less than 3%, according to Lamont’s budget office. What percent of total income
taxes paid by the rich will Looney consider “a fair share?”
Neo-progressives like Looney are well aware that there are
two ways to discharge the state’s gigantic $88.3 billion accumulated debt: either by raising taxes or by cutting spending. For
neo-progressives, both options are forbidding. If you raise taxes, you lose the
middle-class tax paying vote. If, on the other hand, you cut spending, you will
lose the votes of tax consumers who pay relatively little in taxes. That is why
in Connecticut, under the stewardship of neo-progressive state Democrats,
“spending” is so little mentioned in our media. The word “spending” has become
the political sin that dare not speak its name.
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