In the scramble to find something, anything, to generate more revenue, states are considering new taxes on virtually everything: garbage pickup, dating services, bowling night, haircuts, even clowns.To what is the world coming?
“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.“Look, I’m not a crazy tax guy,” Mr. Rendell said, reflecting on recent trims to the budget. “I know what we’ve cut the last two years, and I know how deep and painful the cuts have been. So I know that in the future there’s going to have to be a revenue increase, and this is the best of the alternatives, obviously none of which we’re happy about.”
Michigan’s revenues, adjusted for inflation, have sunk to a level last seen in the 1960s. And that may be exactly what at long last pushes through wide acceptance for taxes on more services, according to supporters of the idea, who say it makes sense in an economy that has long been service-based. In the past, such taxes have never quite been able to survive the political tussle.
(courtesy NYTimes.com)
Of course politicians would rather tax the working stiffs than the corporate stiffs. I didn't hear any suggestion that Michigan should repeal the excessively generous entertainment-industry tax credit, for example, because it creates jobs! But they will tax the people who take those jobs, as well as the barbers and line cooks that service those workers.
Ah, trickle right down my ass, I say.
Working stiffs may seem to have strength in numbers, but too many of us would switch allegiance for a few shekels--hence the imbalanced power of the uber-rich.
We all know The Rich are little more than the pride-and-joy descendants of Roman Senator types--rich enough to have private armies, smart enough to cloak them in corporate legitimacy, inbred enough to be ugly.
They are constantly pacing their sun-drenched downtown offices, plotting the future, playing puppeteer in Warshington, London, Tokyo, Beijing--when they aren't snorting coke off the ass of a $5000/hr call girl in a suite they keep at the St. Regis to help alleviate such cravings.
But what are we doing about it?
We are presenting the rump and pretending we're okay with it.
Are we?
_
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