Thursday, November 9, 2017

SALTing the Grand Old Party...









"As a conservative, I tend to side with the GOP almost exclusively. However, if my family gets hosed on this thing due to a broken promise, that can change in a heartbeat. Does that mean I will side with the DFL? Not hardly. It does mean however, I will side with neither party in the future." 



One of the benefits as you go through life is you get to learn new words or terms. Take SALT for example. I always thought it was that substance your family doctor always tells you to use less of. Or in nuclear treaty negotiations, SALT means Strategic Arms Limitations Talks. But the new one really floors me. It is the term the GOP tax writers are using to describe those dastardly high taxed states like California, New York, and (get ready for it!) ...Minnesota. In this context, SALT mean State And Local Taxes.

Some might look at this article so far and say "So what? I don't give two toots and a holler about that stuff." To that I respond, "Oh, contraire! You should!" Because we have allowed our Commie Governor, Marx Dayton (along with his merry DFL) to jack up our state tax to almost 10%, we are not going to get a tax break from this new tax bill in Washington. Instead, we are going to get to eat a huge excrement sandwich. 

I, like others I know, have looked at what has been revealed so far with this new tax bill. I have done some bunny math to see how much better I will come out once it becomes law. Surprise, surprise! I guess I fall into that 20% of the middle class which is going to have to pay more. Some $500 more. Now, how in the world can that happen when this "historic" middle class tax cut promised everyone some relief? In the tax cut of 1981, we ALL got some kind of tax relief. I don't know who is going to benefit, but it is sure not going to be me.

Now if the truth be told, if I have a healthy year (physically) and the GOP decides NOT to take the state tax deduction away, I will get a little bit of a tax break. During the Reagan years, the first tax break I received was a whopper. It was a life style changer. It allowed my wife and I to buy more, save more, and invest more.

I don't mean to go on and on about this sounding like an old grumble puss - but how in the world could the GOP have mucked this thing up so bad? How? "We can do our taxes on a post card!" Can I call "B.S.!" on that one? By the time this thing gets out of the Senate and the House and conference, while placating everyone, this thing will look like a Rubik's Cube. And who knows if anyone will be better off? What happened to the Flat Tax? The Fair Tax? Something truly historic? This thing is just a pile of goo.

The only thing which would save many of the people in this high SALT state is to follow Senator Roger Chamberlain's suggestion. Get rid of our income tax. Done, finished, gone. Be like South Dakota, Florida, Nevada or Texas. Roger continues to be a true visionary. On the other hand, this making us look like California (thanks to Marx Dayton) is killing us now, more than it ever has before.

As a conservative, I tend to side with the GOP almost exclusively. However, if my family gets hosed on this thing due to a broken promise from the GOP, that can change in a heartbeat. Does that mean I will side with the DFL? Not hardly. It does mean however, I will side with neither party in the future. 

4 comments:

  1. To early to tell, but your reaction to the "middle class" tax benefits is same as mine. Work hard, save religiously and invest wisely. What better group to hose! We will not join the protests! We will pull up our big girl panties and move on within the new rules.
    The Great Wall of China, which 45 should get the plans for (jobs) was a great success and for 2700 years and not one Mexican entered illegally!
    ps all the newscasts from Beijing show clear blue skies. China's closure of coal plants and conversion to solar should be a lesson for us (during the next administration). India is now the biggest polluter in Asia.
    87 today and low humidity in Sun City.
    David Gjerdingen

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  2. and on the dotard............
    45's visit to Beijing showed two leaders heading in very different directions. While 45 builds walls, Xi builds bridges. While 45 shuns multilateralism and global governance, Xi embraces them.
    While 45 makes quixotic and backward-looking attempts to reinvent the coal industry, even promoting the role of fossil fuels in this week’s climate-change conference in Bonn, Xi has a 30-year programme designed to ensure China dominates the global economy, including in information technology, robotics and AI.

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  3. I may point out that, thanks to Democrats, China is a more capitalist economy today than is the US. Maybe if our government would spend less, we could get there.

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  4. It is thinking like "winners and losers" that gut us into this mess. There is no way that 70,000 pages of tax code can be "fair" to anybody. The only way to improve it is to make it simpler, and all of us benefit from that. Personally, I like the FAIR tax, which gets rid of ALL of it, eliminates the $400B we spend complying with it, and givers EVERYBODY a bigger paycheck, while still being "perfectly progressive."

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