All right, I admit it. I'm outspoken. This condition can be described in scientific terms as the inability to control loud, obnoxious vocal responses to any news that is heard. So, in basic terms, when I am subjected to news stories, my mouth suddenly and without warning spews forth my own opinion on things.
As I went through my fist year of
college, I realized that I am in a major where no one has the time or the
patience to debate political ideas (it's called "architecture"...perhaps some of
you are familiar with it.) And what
political disagreements we did get ourselves into always occurred late
at night/early in the morning after several days of no sleep (not counting the
one- or two-hour naps that we managed to get each night) with our projects
running on deadline. It doesn't take a
rocket scientist to figure out the equation NO SLEEP+ POLITICAL EXTREMES +
CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES+ THREAT OF IMMINENT
FAILURE= LOTS OF ANGRY SHOUTING FRUSTRATED PEOPLE. Because of this result, many of us found it
to our advantage if we just ignored politics.
Life tended to be much happier, and on deadline we were merely angry, frustrated
people.
But, alas, I have decided I miss
talking about politics and getting into the occasional ideological
scuffle. I have willingly forsaken
discussing this matter at school. I have neither the time nor the resources to
get involved in a two-hour long debate with anybody; I have much better things to do in that time
(i.e. work on my model, work on my drawings, or at the very least, catch up on
my sleep.) But I still feel the need to
voice my educated, common-sense opinions, spiced with a little bit of my humor. So I've taken to writing them down. Perhaps someone, somewhere will be
interested in reading them. And maybe,
they might just change their minds about something. Right. Well, instead of
continuing my delusions of grandeur, I'll cut right to the chase-the very first
installment of my opinion page.
Today's Issue: Tax Cuts-An Exercise in Wooly Thinking and Fuzzy Logic (and it's less cute than it sounds)
You know, I really do consider myself a
moderate, calm, and sensible person, judging ideas not by party lines but on
the merit of the idea itself. So you
will have to excuse me for what I am about to say. WHAT SORT OF SCREWBALL,
IDIOTIC, SUICIDAL STUNT ARE THOSE REPUBLICANS PULLING????? For the first time since Eisenhower was
president, our country has pulled an actual budget surplus for two years in
a row. And what is the Republican
response? Bail out, get rid of it,
having a surplus is bad!!! So they've
proposed a tax cut, eh? Well, today I
will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that based on logic and common sense
that the tax cut bill proposed by Congress is a really, really stupid idea.
All
right, let's take a good, hard look at what exactly the Republicans are
proposing here. For simplification's
sake, we will look only at the so-called "gem" of the bill, the reduction of
personal income taxes by one percentage point.
By this plan, the lowest tax bracket would drop from 15% to 14%. So let's assume that I make $30,000 a year
(which, I assure you, is a vast exaggeration.) That would mean I would pay out $4500 a year in federal taxes. A one-percent reduction would result in me
paying only $4200. Wow. Look at that. Now I have a whole extra three hundred dollars to spend!!!! Which does what? Keeps me in groceries for an extra month or possibly allows me to
buy a new television set. Okay, I'll
admit these are good things. I'm not
going to complain about having food to eat or a new TV. And, combined with another feature of the
bill (allowing couples filing jointly to have double the deduction of
individuals) could really help some struggling families. But there are bigger details to be examined.
Other
options exist for getting rid of the vast amounts of black ink the country has
suddenly found it has. One, however
unpopular, is increased spending. This
is certainly not a good idea (few people seem to know when to stop), but in
certain cases the help could certainly be used. For example, do to the summer-long hot weather and drought
conditions, five states have recently been declared disaster areas. There are no viable crops to sell and that
means that many farmers are going to go without incomes, and very possibly go
bankrupt. To put it briefly, these
people need help. But instead of
offering relief to these unfortunates (who are, may I remind you, also the
very same people who supply us with food), the current Republican Congress
would rather save that money and give it back to the well-established
non-agrarian middle and upper classes who are in very little danger of going
bankrupt and having their lives ruined.
That makes sense, doesn't it? (Hint:
The answer is no). But there are other well-deserved places for
spending. For example, what about
taking some of that money and re-investing it in NASA, which has been left
writhing on the ground from recent budget cuts. That would be a sound investment in the country's future.
But
maybe spending isn't the best option.
After all, the AHAMFRG (that's the All-High And Mighty Federal Reserve
Guru for you uncultured saps) Alan Greenspan said himself during Congressional
Hearings on this very subject that he favored spending the least of all the
options. And this is a man who knows
his stuff.
But
here's an interesting tidbit: during
this very same hearing in front of the very same Congress who is
now trying to cut taxes, Greenspan also said that the best thing to do with the
budget surplus was to let it run and use the money to pay off The National
Debt! * Gasp * Upon repeated questioning, he said that he
favored tax cuts only next to repayment of the national debt. He was insistent. So what does Congress do? Try to pass a tax-cut bill, of course. Duh.
Isn't that what you would do after being told not to by the man in
charge of the world's largest economy? (Hint:
The answer is no again).
Here's the point-we have a national debt of $5.5 trillion
dollars. That looks like this:
5,500,000,000,000. There it is. It's big. So if both last year's surplus and this year's surplus all
went to reducing the debt (which it won't), the debt would be reduced to a mere
382 billion dollars. And then, in a
measly five years (assuming a hundred-billion dollar surplus each year)
we could have our debt paid off. Now no
one is quite sure what this would mean for the economy, but it would
mean that we wouldn't owe anybody anything and we could, as a country, do
whatever the hell we pleased (as long as its peaceful) and I'm willing to bet
we'd be extremely prosperous for a long time to come.
And generally speaking that sounds
better to me than cutting taxes now, which scratches our hopes of ever getting
out of debt and would bolster an economy that cannot possibly be bolstered any
more. Let's face it: the country's
economy is running at near capacity. It
can't get much better then this.
So this tax cut would entrench us with our current debt while
simultaneously trying to make a golden-egg economy better. It makes perfect sense to pay off the debt
now while we can, and save the tax cuts for when the economy actually needs the
help (this will inevitably happen, probably just when I graduate. "Whoops, where'd all the jobs go?" Just my luck.)
Disclaimer: What is about to be said is complete
conjecture and has no hard supporting evidence but is probably true anyway.
So if
the cut doesn't make sense, why is Congress trying to pass one? What are the Republicans thinking? Well, as some people have already claimed,
let's look at political advantage. If
the Republicans pass a tax cut bill, they will become the heroes of the Common
Man. And they are relying on
President Clinton to veto the bill.
Vetoed, the bill will be sent back to Congress where it won't matter
whether it passes or not. The
Republicans will already have their ammunition. (Republicans want you to have your money! We tried to give you money, but the
Democrats stopped us! They're bad
men! Don't vote for them!). It is important to note that several pieces
of real journalism have already commented on this tactic, I'm not making it up.
So it is revealed that this whole
tax-cut bill is nothing more than political propaganda used to get someone
elected into office. And while they're
milking the country for political advantage, they also get money out of
it. That one-percent reduction means a
lot more payback to someone who's making $200,000 a year than someone who is
making thirty- or even sixty-thousand.
In reality, the bill will probably not pass after it is vetoed; it doesn't have enough support to garner the
2/3 majority. So the country will be
saved from any financial disaster involved.
But the damage will still be
done. The sheer possibility that
someone would write a bill and pass it for purely selfish reasons, a bill that
is probably in the country's worst interest, makes me angry. It is nothing more than a mockery of the
democratic system. Sometimes I find
myself wondering who our "Representatives" in Congress are really
representing: the people or themselves? And then I find myself wondering if Congress
has secretly been replaced by a horde of suicidal commie lemming aliens
hell-bent on slowly destroying the country.
So, before Congress turns up as a sideshow on Jerry Springer, I
think I'll go have a nap.
