Krugman: "Tax bills look like attempts to entrench a hereditary plutocracy."

[Hortensis]

It's also, just as important, looking like the 0.1% has decided to do without us, without an educated or healthy populace. The coincidence of the rise of the Banana Republicans with an impending "end of work," as we know it anyway, is no coincidence.

This will almost certainly be the beginning of the greatest period of wellbeing the human race has ever known. These jumped-up weasels have clearly chosen to turn We the People into third world discards.

Republican Class Warfare: The Next Generation

But focusing on how many would face tax increases gets at only a small part of what’s going on here.

Top-down class warfare, coupled with false claims to be cutting taxes on the middle class, has been standard G.O.P. operating procedure for a long time. ...

But there are also some new aspects to this latest money grab. This time around, much more clearly than before, the goal seems to be to favor wealth, especially inherited wealth, over work. And buried in the legislation are multiple measures that would make it much harder for the children of the middle and working classes to work their way up.

We’re still waiting for detailed analysis of the Senate bill, but the House bill doesn’t just raise taxes on many middle-class families: It selectively raises taxes on families with children. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in. ...

(He includes a number examples of how high education would be far more difficult and expensive in future due to this year's tax and budget bills alone.)

So this isn’t just ordinary class warfare; it’s class warfare aimed at perpetuating inequality into the next generation. Taken together, the elements of both the House and the Senate bills amount to a more or less systematic attempt to lavish benefits on the children of the ultra-wealthy while making it harder for less fortunate young people to achieve upward social mobility.

Or to put it differently, the tax legislation Republicans are trying to ram through Congress with indecent haste, without hearings or time for any kind of serious study, looks an awful lot like an attempt not simply to reinforce plutocracy, but to entrench a hereditary plutocracy.

[Fred Sanders]

1. The equal massive shame is how this massive change in tax law is being rammed through

with little debate or full analysis in a manner that would make any tin pot dictatorship proud. That is also being ignored by the conflicted corporate media and the ultra rich owners of same. They will never dare tell the whole truth.

They have become strangers to the to truth and friends to lies.

[olegramps]

11. The only solution is to forcefully take back the money they stole from the workers. No exceptions.

We effectively have a plutocracy. They control the ballot box and the working class people are literally screwed. I don't discount the fact that many of the working class brought about their own destruction when they swallowed the corporate propaganda that unions were their enemy and so-called right-to-work laws were to their benefit. I saw it happen in my industry when younger workers refused to join the union, yet wanted to have the hard won benefits that unions had won often with great sacrifice. The corps took great care of them, got rid of pensions, cut their health insurance and then shipped out their jobs.

[oasis]

2. "Third world discards". Got that Orrin Hatch?

You worked your whole "stinking" life to bring that about for America.

[CousinIT]

3. LINK

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/republican-taxes-next-generation.html

[Hortensis]

5. Thanks, CousinIT. Only now noticed the link's missing.

[marybourg]

4. This has been their key policy goal

since Reagan's war on unions.

In higher education, they've convinced their base - and beyond- that minorities are being benefited at the price of their own children. And so support for same is eroding. The plutocracy doesn't want any more Barack Obamas or Michelle Robinsons.

[Hortensis]

7. I just quarreled with a law student who calls the ACA

"CommieCare." Unbelievable. I told her that in the future super-computer world people with law degrees are going to be a dime a dozen, reviewing computer product in cubicles and treated like the people she imagines she'll be leaving behind. If she has a job at all.

You're right about the bigotry component, of course, but I think you're missing the bigger point. We now have a billionaire class that looks down on centimillionaire classes. The guy who goes to congress today with nothing but a family with 5 car dealerships in his backround finds he's a peasant.

From the viewpoint of small, callous people (like that student) in the uberwealthy classes, everyone else, ALL working people, are peasants, either useful or sponges on society, from the lowest paid to cardiothoracic surgeons, to congressmen.

I am completely sure the goal of those in control of the GOP right now is continued transfer of political power and wealth from us to them, including whatever degrees of healthcare- and Medicaid-withdrawal genocide they can pull off in the interim, with the ultimate goal an authoritarian government that does not allow dissension from lower classes. Third-world tyrant mentality in people whose new wealth dwarfs anything seen before.

[maddiemom]

21. Excellent points!

That law student does need a super rich family. Already people with law degrees are not only becoming a dime a dozen, but are probably the first formerly "prestigious" profession on the way to becoming just what you said-drones in cubicles. We can't count educators because they've never had that much prestige, but do have ever more increasing and expensive post graduate education required. Let's not start on the debt most of those in the medical profession are increasingly saddled with. In the non too distant future, skilled surgeons may be the only group with skills so critical that they could strike and be of concern. If that sounds outrageous, so is what is beginning to happen in a society where only disgustingly huge piles of accumulated money and the ability to use it to acquire more huge piles of money is the only way to wealth and security. Those of us earlier baby boomers and some of our G.I. Bill educated parents were able to become educated and secure without unreasonable student debt. Not so for our children: student loan debt would be laughable if it weren't so crippling.

[wiggs]

10. so why has it been so difficult for dem leaders to make the case? Are dems just hard to

organize? Are dems bad at coming up with memes that stick? Are some dem congressional leaders really from the same economic strata as congressional goprs and not as motivated as we are to protect the lower 95%?

Just as Trumps sleezy presidency may have contributed to the recent backlash against misogyny and against racist comments, will his billionaire sleeziness cause a backlash against the gaming of the system for the rich as they have done for decades? Is this waking up dems and some goprs so that the middle class will be recognized as protected as the true economic engine of the country?

Maybe we'll see in the coming weeks as the tax cut discussion happens...

[bucolic_frolic]

6. I may live an austere life

but I don't feed their greed to the extent I am able. It's all about keeping what I have and can hold, right here, at home.

[Achilleaze]

8. republicans pissing on Americans

deplorable

[Hortensis]

9. Most Republicans have no idea they're pissing on themselves,

though, and their children and grandchildren. Deplorable that they don't, that they are electing politicians who are only on the ballot because they've already agreed to serve malignant enemies of us all. But they've been suckered for a very long time now and don't know.

Some may be starting to wake up right now. But the dark powers who've committed for decades to seizing power know that revealing their agenda through congress's actions is an especially dangerous point for them and have planned for it.

David Frum of The Atlantic understated the situation, but spoke very seriously, with words to the effect that we risk underestimating just how fierce the battle for power is going to be.

The Kochs and all the rest, including I believe religious extremists who overlap with them, have no intention of losing in 2018 or 2020 just because the electorate decides to put a stop to their ambitions.

[Honeycombe8]

12. That's what I think, too. Thanks, Krugman, for articulating that! An aristocracy.

An aristocracy like the one that Great Britain got rid of. An aristocracy is anti-government because it gains so much wealth and power that IT can control the government, not the other way around. IT controls wages, who works at what jobs, who owns what land, what judges are put in what courts, what the taxes are. All the while, the wealth and land pass without restraint to the next generation, to build on and gain even more wealth and power.

That is precisely what the estate tax is designed to prevent. That is WHY it is aimed at the top rich people in the country. Because although people should be able to keep what they have earned, on the one hand, beyond all else is the government's policy to protect the country and the government, and "we, the people."

[WinkyDink]

15. The House of Lords? The royal family, soon to add an American duchess?

When did the UK get rid of its aristocracy?

[Honeycombe8]

20. Early 20th Century. The POWERFUL aristocracy.

The aristocracy was so powerful that IT controlled the country. It was more powerful than the monarchy.

There are still rich people, of course.

What is left of the British aristocracy today is, with a handful of exceptions, a mere echo of what many successive generations saw as the fabulously wealthy, intensely powerful, outrageously glamorous class that rose with the British Empire but hit the rocks a generation before imperial disintegration.

There were repeated hammer blows, with the British aristocracy forced to morph and contract from its final peak, in the late 1870s. Then 80 percent of the country’s acreage was owned by 7,000 families, principally those of the 431 hereditary members of the House of Lords—the dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons of the United Kingdom. Beginning in the 1880s, the export of grain from the Americas, followed by the arrival in Europe of refrigerated meat, halved agricultural income in Britain. What had been the lifeblood of the great estates for hundreds of years was cut off suddenly, and unexpectedly, with devastating effect, in both the short and the long term: agricultural rents were the same in 1936 as they had been in 1800.

In a grim pincer movement, taxation increased at the same time. Death duties were introduced in 1894 at 8 percent. By 1939 these had reached 60 percent. In 1948 they were levied at 75 percent on estates worth more than £1 million (an equivalent, at the time, of $4 million). Socialist leaders had no time for deference, and they ridiculed the dukes and lords, who were viewed with hatred as withering as that recently reserved for the most venal hedge-fund managers.

WWI was the nail in the coffin for the ruling aristocracy.

As a political observer wrote at the time, “The Feudal System vanished in blood and fire, and the landed classes were consumed.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/01/english-aristocracy-201001

[Beartracks]

13. In words Republican voters can understand: ...

...... Hereditary plutocracy is Royalty.


=======

[Puzzledtraveller]

14. Don't we have that already?

[Hortensis]

17. Kind of like the difference between having to spray

when you discover roaches have moved in--or at least when you're ready to say "enough"--and having no choice but to live with overwhelming infestation, and what it does to you.

Or to put it another way, between having a real democracy that needs some tweaking and having a fake "democracy" that is not in the people's power to vote out.

[zentrum]

16. K&R

[maxrandb]

18. My daughter is in a PHD program at a major university

As an Research Assistant, she gets a stipend of $28K a year. Her taxes on this last year was $1,242. That's fairly reasonable for a $28K salary.

She gets a tuition waiver for out of state tuition. She never sees that money. It never touches her hands.

Under the Retrumplican Tax Scam, her tax bill will increase to $12,368.00 because they count her tuition waiver as income.

Her tax rate under the Retrumplicans will be 44%.

This is so shortsighted. If we're lucky, my daughter is going to work in her field and pay taxes for 40+ years.

What do you think the difference in what she makes will be between a PHD or a BA degree. Not to mention she might actually develop stuff that will benefit us all.

So, here's what I'm gonna do. I will not allow the Retrumplicans to harm my child

I am lucky to have the means to do so. I was going to retire, but fuck them! I'm going to work and I'm going to pay my daughters fucking 44% tax rate, and then I ain't buying shit.

I'm cutting out my donations to my church. Some who attend voted for Trump so fuck them.

I was going to have someone fix my deck, but I'll just do what I can on the weekends myself...fuck them!!

I need a new car, but will drive what I have until the wheels fall off...fuck them!!

Like I said, I'm fortunate to have options. I rage for the millions that don't have the option that I do.

For all the Retrumplicans out there, I have a message...GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!

[Alice11111]

23. Yes, and student loan intetest is no longer deductable, but

Prep School tuition for rich parents is. Fucked upside down!!

[Moostache]

24. Amen!!!

The evil of this power grab and the facile nature of the GOP lemmings is enough to make me vomit...

[Hekate]

25. You must be so proud of your daughter -- as she should be of you...

Reading this, I feel sick for the prospects of my grandchildren, and for the country.

[Hortensis]

19. Good for you! The tax plan isn't settled yet, of course,

but at best just less bad news for your daughter is likely.

If you need to do this, please explain to your church, and your acquaintances, why you will no longer be donating and are going to work to make sure your daughter's future survives this unconscionable tax burden. Apolitically?

After all, that 40% of the electorate didn't vote in 2016 means enormous opportunity for GOTV, and of those who voted for Trump, demoralization means some might skip voting in 2018.

[Alice11111]

22. Well stated, Krugman. Now, if only "they" would listen.

Not a chance.

[procon]

26. The return of the 19th century Robber Barons.

Back then, the wealth and power of the Robber Barons gave them a monopoly that allowed them to exploit workers. Today's Robber Barons also exploit workers by denying benefit and repressing wages in order to push up stock prices. Its less effort to finagle a corporate takeover or leveraged buyouts than build factories.

[Hortensis]

27. Far more sophisticated now, tho. They brought in goons to shoot down

people on strike, and at times federal and state troops. And a lot of other nasty tactics.

Today, they use media to deceive and distract attention, like telling a toddler a new food is a cracker or waving a new toy at a baby while the keys to the nation are slipped out of the other hand.