Step 1: Nice,
family-friendly President praises hard-working Americans,
and gives average families a whopping tax refund of about
$400 - $600.
- Wow,
that's almost a month's rent / mortgage payment!
|
Step 2: At nice President's
bidding, nice Congress obediently lops off the top tax
bracket, giving corporate execs a "fair" tax
cut equal to nearly three times their average employee's
annual pay.
- Across
the board? Yeah—if you're on the Board
of Directors.
- Sure,
they deserve it! Besides, accountants,
lawyers, and politicians cost a bundle nowadays.
|
Step 3: Citing
"competition," corporate execs take advantage
of tax loopholes to "streamline" and
"reposition."
- "Competition"
means your small business gets bought out or
driven into bankruptcy.
- "Streamlining"
means your nice job with good pay and benefits
disappears.
- "Repositioning"
means the execs move to the Bahamas, engineering
and tech support move to India, and you find out
where your old job disappeared to—probably
Mexico or China.
|
| Step 4: Good
news! Now that you're rid of that old job, you
have a wonderful opportunity to undertake a new
career—say, as a burger-flipper. |
Step 5: Great news!
Nice President proposes reclassifying burger-flipping as
a "manufacturing" job.
- You're
really cooking now! Makes you feel so much
better about working for minimum wage, right?
|
Step 6: Congratulations!
The drastic cut in your income means your taxes have been
cut, too. Promise fulfilled!
- If you're
someone who works for a living (or used to,
before your job got "streamlined"), you
can skip to Step 8.
Happy
Labor Day!
|
Step 7: If you're an
investor, you discover that no amount of investing will
prompt sustained business growth, without a broad and
affluent consumer market to sell into. And then it dawns
on you that the consumer market is no longer as broad and
affluent as it once was, thanks to unrestrained
"competition," "streamlining," and
"repositioning." Yet thanks to staggering
capital losses under the Bush administration, your taxes
have likely fallen—along with your income. Promise
fulfilled!
- The Plan
giveth, and the Reality taketh away.
Happy
Epiphany!
|
| Step 8: Sorry, there's no
step 8. That's just a little Bush-style Fuzzy Math, for
the buckaroos who reflexively drool and cheer whenever
they hear the magic words "tax cut," and fancy
they're getting something for nothing. =SAJ=
|
