Explaining the difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

I would like to provide the service to the American people of explaining the difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

It is really quite simple. Though everyone knows that letting these tax cuts expire will in no way balance the budget by itself, everyone knows that it would help. Most Americans want the wealthiest Americans to help. The wealthiest have seen their incomes rise prodigiously as the rest have mostly seen wage stagnation, assuming they still have a job. A large percentage of the wealth in America is concentrated in the top tier wealthy and continues to flow in that direction.

So, given these facts, what is the source of the difference in opinion? It is NOT that the average American thinks that by letting the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire will balance the budget. And it is NOT that the wealthiest Americans think that tax cuts cost American jobs, because these tax cuts will hurt the “job creators” to the extent that they will reduce hiring, or worse yet lay off those that they currently employ. No, these are not the reason for the difference of opinion on the tax cut expiration issue. So, the question remains, what is the reason for the difference of opinion?

Well here it is:

The reason that congress is locked in a battle over the expiration of these tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans is because the average American is feeling like the rich are getting richer and that they are in a state of economic stagnation at best or, worse, in a state of continued decline. They want the wealthy to help the country by paying more into the country that has provided the means for them to achieve the wealth that they are enjoying. They want the wealthy to pay. They do not want the employees of the wealthy to pay. They do not want the companies that the wealthy own that employ people to pay. They want the wealthy to pay. Out of their own personal income. Yes that extravagant income which has the net worth of the wealthy growing so much over the past few decades, while the average American has been stuck in stagnation. They want them to pay, take a financial hit just like the rest of us, not pass it on to their employees (assuming they are indeed job creators).

The wealthy, meanwhile, see as an obvious reality that if their tax rates revert to what they were before the Bush era tax cuts, then they would obviously not pay those taxes in a way that would diminish their own personal income and net worth. They would obviously take it out on their employees instead. So they would reason: no employee raises this year (again) because I need to use that money to offset the increased taxes I might have to pay. I need to keep my own income growing so screw them, I'm the job creator. And if that is not the way they think, it is the way they act and the way they are seen to think. I am talking perception here.

To state it more concisely, average Americans want the wealthy who have benefited the most from the economy of the last few decades to pay more of their own income wealth in taxes to help our country's fiscal problems, while the wealthy want to continue to hold the cards and protect their wealth while blackmailing the rest of us into protecting their interests.

That, my friends, is why there is a difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

Corporate Welfare fails miserably

I have been against Corporate Welfare for as long as I can remember. I have argued against the subsidization of corporations, especially large ones, in the many ways that they are subsidized. Promoters of “free markets” tend to go silent on this issue (similar to how promoters of a meritocracy also promote the abolition of the inheritance tax). They justify subsidies as being “pro jobs” or “pro growth”, or providing synergies that provide benefits to the community overall (local, county, state, and/or federal as applicable).

Subsidies can take many forms; Tax breaks, loan guarantees, job training, etc. It can be easy to make an argument that these subsidies are beneficial. That easy argument can be severely flawed but convincing nonetheless.

The New York Times published an article by Louise Story on December 1^st that goes into detail describing the practice and the scope and scale of these “incentives”. The article is long, giving many examples of these incentives failing at providing the benefits promised to the community. There is also an impressive searchable database showing, state by state, how much public money is being spent or deprived from public coffers and the corporations that are receiving these benefits.

I will leave the details to the NYT article, but I would like to point out something that the article does not address directly. Though the article points out that these corporations are obligated to their shareholders to seek any and all incentives that could maximize their profits, the point is lost that those increased profits benefit the shareholders. So to reiterate: indirectly, the tax incentives and other public gifts to these corporations are benefiting the shareholders. And so, with around 80% of the entire stock market wealth owned by the top 10%, and only about 2-1/2% of the stock market wealth owned by the bottom 60%, these tax incentives are not only benefiting the corporations and their ridiculously high paid executives, but they also benefit the wealthy, at the expense of the taxpayers.

The wealthy (consider the Bush tax breaks now being debated to avoid the “fiscal cliff”) and large corporations share the tendency to threaten governments and the people that if they are not pandered to they will, like a playground bully, take their ball and leave. 

There are many examples of how an idea originates, and then, as it is implemented and copied, becomes nullified by that replication. In this case, for example, if a state offers incentives to a corporation to locate there, they may get the factory or whatever and benefit. But if all states offer incentives, the playing field has thus been re-leveled and the result is that the only real beneficiary is the corporation while the benefactor financing that is the taxpayer.

So, read the New York Times article, check out how your state subsidizes corporations, and think about this the next time you are asked about what should be cut in government spending.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html?hp

Hang your clothes to dry them, even indoors

Drying clothes in a dryer takes a lot of energy. You may have taken some steps to decrease your home energy usage, but if you still dry all of your clothes in a clothes dryer, you have the opportunity to save some serious energy.

Before I get too far into it, yes, I realize that there are some clothes items, due to their material and the whole wrinkle issue that are high maintenance items that beg to be dried at least partially in a dryer. If you have those types of issues, read on and at least minimize dryer time.

When it is hot or even warm out, hanging your clothes on an outdoor clothes line is a great way to save energy drying your clothes, while giving them a nice outdoor freshness. The added benefit of saving energy is compounded a bit by the fact that you are avoiding adding heat to your home in your laundry area that emanates from your dryer during a dry cycle. This added heat increases the energy usage in cooling your home if you use air conditioning or makes your warm house warmer.

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, it is getting pretty cold outside these days. I hang my clothes outside until about this time of year. They will dry even on the coldest days if there is a good wind, or you get them out early in the morning. They even have a more crisp fresh smell, too.

But, and here's the really great energy saving tip, as the outdoor drying season comes to a close, hang your clothes inside.

Yes, inside. And I don't mean one of those collapsable wooden racks, though I do use one to supplement my clotheslines. And yes I am talking indoor clotheslines. We have two indoor clotheslines in our house.

The first is right in the laundry area of our unfinished basement. I have hung a couple of crossbars from the floor joists and strung clothesline between them. This provides some great drying space right near the washer. It has enough capacity for a fair amount of laundry and is more or less out of the way.

The second indoor clothesline is in our guest room. We rarely have guests and this clothesline has the capacity for another decent load of laundry. The wooden rack takes any small strays that these two can't handle. So, how is this clothesline set up? Well, in our case, we live in a log home and I put a row of decorative hand wrought nails on two opposing beams on the ceiling and have lengths of clothesline with loops at the ends that I hang on the nails between the beams. When we have guests, it is a 10 second job to lift the lines off of the nails.

So, you don't have a log home? No problem. Just use your window frames. If you put a row of nails down through the tops of your window, or even door, frames (actually sort of behind your frames and into the stud wall framing surrounding your windows) you can string clothesline between opposing windows or even diagonally across the corner of a room.

The energy saving benefits of hanging your clothes indoors at this time of year are increased by the drying process. All of that water is evaporating into your house, humidifying your air. This time of year is tends to be very dry indoors due to the effects of running your furnace, heaters, woodstove, or whatever you do to keep your house warm. Many people use humidifiers to increase the moisture in their indoor air. These invariably use energy, adding more cost to what you already spend on winter heating. If you must use your dryer for some clothes and you have an electric dryer, you can install an exhaust diverter to reclaim the moisture. DO NOT use one of these if you have a propane or natural gas dryer as your exhaust contains combustion gases.

With the size of the average house what it is, surely you can find a location to put at least one set of clotheslines up to help save you money and save the planet.