First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are The Dance of Escalation and Reacti…

Sorry, but I sit on the board of two huge ones. If you need an idiot’s guide to foundation law, I can probably round one up.

Let’s talk Bill Gates. $30Billion foundation before Buffet. Funds invested with Buffet direction that yield nearly $10Billion per year. Operation overhead permits a safe $1Billion per year for operating overhead. Daddy Gates, Bill and Melinda are board members. They can add their three minor children under tax law.

I suspect they can manage just fine on that type of income from a tax exempt source. If you have an income of (just) $1Million (a huge drop from $1Billion) a year and if you work 50 hour weeks for 52 weeks a year, your hourly income is $385. And you think that Bill and Melinda Gates go to the airport and scrounge for seats on Southwest? Their need for bodyguards and efficiency alone preclude it.

I was alive and attending to business during the Johnson administration when old Lyndon promised “guns and butter” (read: no war tax) and a “great society” (read: increased welfare/entitlements) simultaneously. It was Nixon who followed Teddy Kennedy’s advice for price controls, froze salary increases and introduced medicare which threw the country into a spiral of inflation that Carter was able to fuel into interest rates above 20%.

Reagan’s supply side tax cuts crushed the inflation and led to the longest period of sustained economic growth and prosperity in the history of the nation. George Bush (1) raised taxes to try to get along with the Democratic Congress and …poof!…the growth stopped and Clinton and friends turned him out of the White House. Republicans reversed the 40 year control of Congress two years later and put the “Contract With America” into effect. No new big tax program was enacted. Welfare was cut and signed by Clinton. The budget started to come into “balance.” Then the dot.com bubble burst and NASDAQ and the stock markets went south. The fall out was first felt in the summer of 2000, just in time for G.W. Bush to preside over the downturn. It was neither caused by Clinton or Bush and neither Clinton nor Bush could have done much to prevent it.

Wars cost money. I agree. I have a thesis for you to read on the subject that is still well regarded, even after 40 years.

Name one instance in the history of any country anywhere in the world at any time in history that taxed itself into prosperity.

I certainly don’t mind being called a fool. I have had some high powered folks toss the epithet at me. But I have never lost an argument of economics based on the facts of mathematics. I don’t make the rules, I just do the numbers. (And unlike the professional politicians, I don’t depend the mystic predictions of Madam Rosy Scenario.)

For years, Social Security was a separate fund that was “off-budget.” When it was reworked in the early 1980’s, it was accumulating huge surpluses that were to be placed “in trust” for the time when payouts would exceed income. (At the time, that was thought to be about 2025.) Congress mandated that the funds be “invested” in government bonds. Therefore, by slight of hand, the surplus became part of the national debt through bonded indebtedness. In the late 1980’s, Congress decided to skip the “bonded indebtedness” step and moved the social security fund to the general income fund and used the surplus to fund current costs of government. It was a windfall of cash that the porkers in Congress tossed around like the proverbial drunken sailor.

I could go on, but why? Your fealty to socialism and the Democrat politburo is secure and you are not about to be confused by the facts. I can certainly absorb the pelting of your confused charges, but it is not particularly informing.

Have a good day.

There are already special estate tax breaks for family farms and family businesses. Consequently, despite the endless bleating of the Republicans, there are no family farms that had to be sold in order to pay estate taxes. It’s a complete myth.

America has been at war many times. We fought the British twice, first for independence and then in the War of 1812. We fought the war between the states. We fought World War I and World War II. We fought in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq, and Iraq again. Get this: wars cost money. And in all these wars, we never had an administration promoting tax cuts, or a Congress voting for tax cuts — until the Republican George W. Bush administration and the Republican Congress of now. That’s why it’s time to put the grownups in charge. Vote Democrat!

Do it in public, on the town green, and I might believe you are.

Until people who are tired of it, speak out in the manner I state, not much will be done.

I personally think, that for me, it’s getting REALLY close to that time.

Dan

Warren Buffet’s plan to leave his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation takes that money out of the inheritance tax’ path.

Similar tactics allow these people to avoid all manner of taxation–while simultaneously advocating for higher taxes.

They can afford to pay to set up the various shelters and loopholes that keep them–perfectly legally–almost tax-free.

But people who don’t live at their rarified level of income can’t. So Teddy easily passes the Kennedy fortune to the assorted Kenedites that will succeed him with little or no damage from the taxman while the mildly sucessful farmer cannot pass on his farm to his children without incurring a massive tax bill.

The farmer can’t afford to set up ofshore trusts, his capital is largely land. Teddy can.

Because the very rich can afford to legally avoid taxes, the burden falls on less well paid taxpayers. The recent Minnesota ad suggests that people making as little as 45.000 be taxed more.