george, i'm not passing judgement on the man, forbes. just passing on some observations of what his proposal will actually do. say the guy has $500 mil invested. say he gets 30% like everyone else has these past couple of years. his gain from choosing his parents well is $150 mil a year. no cap gains tax and no $30-$50 mil in taxes each year.
who will have to pay more to make up forbes' reduced tax? especially considering that forbes says you will also pay less tax. the math doesn't work. not even close. if someone pays less than someone else must pay more - UNLESS GOVT IS CHANGED FIRST, which is what i've proposed (and no politician has the guts to b/c the public doesn't want their sweet programs taken away).
we haven't even begin to discuss the inflationary aspects of everyone having more money... if we "simplify" and "reduce" everyones taxes w/o dealing with spending then we 1. marginally create a more negative inflationary environment (more money chasing the same goods) and and balloon the deficit even more. as the debt increases and interest rates stay above what they would have been (probably going up) we dig our children into deeper and deeper debt. forbes doesn't have to care. one year of tax savings alone will fund all of his kids for life. say 3 kids, $10 mil each at 5%. that's $500k per year for the rest of their life w/o doing anything. oh, and they wouldn't have to pay a dime in tax under forbes' plan. how quaint ;-)
look what are elected officials are doing now - already planning 101 ways to spend a surplus we don't even have...
any responsible politician looks at reducing uncle sugar - the big pieces that everyone likes, not the smaller pieces that affect other people and not us - before they mention anything close to a tax cut. forbes has the cart before the horse, imho. most accuse welfare recipients as being our worst enemy. welfare to the poor is a small, small percentage of all welfare. you could eliminate welfare entirely and only make a tiny dent in our fiscal problems. i'm talking social security, medicaid, defense, corporate welfare, etc. when they closed down the bases in the bay area nobody cried about our national security. they said, "but what about the jobs and the impact on the economy?" that is when i realized that much of military spending was welfare based, too. the purpose of the military isn't to create work fare. somehow that was lost.
but, i'm sure forbes would be happy if you voted to save him $30 mil in cap gains taxes every year and tack it onto the debt it would create and then obligate your kids to pay it for him ;-) |
