Golf is in the headlines and in the deep thoughts of one Vermont Tiger. On what should have been a carefree charity golf tournament at the local country club one golf playing Vermont Tiger-blogger was suddenly seized by fear of a tax. It seems that “while riding from tee to tee,” he noticed that 16 of the 19 event sponsors were financial firms. Storm clouds of worry over burdensome regulations and related horrors rapidly formed. Troubling imaginary scenarios appeared on the horizon.
This begs the question: If these firms, and their owners, are the ones that continue to step forward to support their communities, even in a truly lousy economy, why would Vermont work so aggressively to penalize their success through onerous taxation, burdensome regulation, and constant muckraking?
More importantly, to what extent does every additional dollar of taxation, or page of regulation reduce their ability to make important community donations? How many actual cents of that taxation comes back directly to our communities after it has worked its way through the Vermont government bureaucracy?
Poor man, a good ride from tee to tee spoiled by fevered concerns. Concerns of constant muckraking? Can this chronic whining perhaps reach a peak?
Nationally at least the call may be going out to stop the whining. None other than Former Bush speechwriter David Frum went so far recently as to chide whining Wall Streeters and this week The Washington Post writes that mega level executive pay is reaching unexpected places. Frum said this:
By the numbers, you may wonder what the rich have to complain about. Corporate profits are up, and the S&P 500 has surpassed 2008 levels. President Obama has signed a renewal of the Bush tax cuts. …Millions of Americans have lost jobs, homes, and savings in a financial crisis and recession caused by the recklessness and incompetence of some of this country’s most eminent and best-compensated financiers.
Maybe awareness of the growing gap between the very wealthy and the un-wealthy is at last drawing some needed attention. One indicator of economic inequality puts the US behind Cameroon and Ivory Coast and just ahead of Uganda and Jamaica. The Washington Post says that as the income gap widens it isn’t just executives in Wall Street firms that are getting rich but lesser ones from companies in even relatively mundane fields such as the milk business.
Over the period from the ’70s until today, while pay for Dean Foods chief executives was rising 10 times over, wages for the unionized workers actually declined slightly. The hourly wage rate for the people who process, pasteurize and package the milk at the company’s dairies declined by 9 percent in real terms, according to union contract records.
I hate it when we beat up on the wealthy. Like when Bush cut their taxes. And when Obama agreed to extend those tax cuts.
http://www.ctj.org/bushtaxcuts…
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/irstop4…
Or when taxpayers bailed out Wall Street. That had to hurt.
Or when giant financial companies like GE and Wells Fargo pay no taxes.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5680…
Or when the legislature created the 40% capital gains exclusion in 2002 (that saved the wealthy $150 million and cost us that much in foregone revenue).
Or when the legislature created the Financial Services tax credit program in 1996 (which wasted almost $10 million in handouts).
Or when Vermont eliminated the top tax rate for C corporations in 2007.
http://www.state.vt.us/tax/maj…
Or when the legislature lowered the top marginal tax rates for individual filers in 2009 (stop! you’re hurting them).
Right. You can always count on Vermont Tiger for well-informed objective reporting.
Snelling.
That is all.
Ahem.
fetches glass of water
Note that the tigress was riding in a cart. No walking for those moneyed folks. I am surparised that all 19 sponsors were not financial outfits. Financial services make money when things go up and when they go down. It is a recession proof business as long as they don’t make foolish deals.
… tax-deductible “charity” golf tournaments? Not to mention tax-deductible club memberships and “business meetings” on the 19th Hole? Yeah, it’d be a sad day for American freedom if the golf industry has to depend solely on the free market for its financial health, instead of sucking on the public teat.
to find something to make up for the proposal to remove contributions to your IRA/DC account from pre tax exempt status
That is what you get when you replace a war hero with a stuffed shirt.
Thanks Georgia for sending Saxby to the Senate to participate in the gang of 4,5,6 or whatever…
The Tigress is correct. No wealthy corporation should have to pay one thin dime for the cost of having a First-World nation! And the poor rich people, if We, The People make them pay their fair share of taxes, they might not buy a second yacht – and think of the devastation of the yacht industry!
No, siree. The Republican/Conservative/Libertarians are correct: America must be forced into total poverty and converted to a third-world nation in order to prevent any obscenely wealthy person/corporation from having to spend a cent on the cost of having a First-World nation.
Only when the bottom 97% of America is in total poverty, with no job, no income and no food, will the American wealthy finally be free – according to VT Tiger.
Our Tiger friend neglects facts to support his oppressed rich people talking points.
Par for the course, so to speak.
If he did, perhaps he might also understand the difference between “begging the question” and “raising an issue.”
Not to be picky, but that paragraph does just the opposite of address any of the questions that it actually “begs.”
His conclusory statements “raise the issue” or “causes this gentleman to wonder” whether these firms are being “penalized.” Answer Hint: They’re not. But it hardly begs any question.
The naked statement about these firms involvement with golf tournaments does, however, beg the question whether it’s financial firms “are the ones that . . . step forward to support [our] communities?” Another Hint: No they are not.
What questions are truly “begged” by these conclusions presented as facts? Well —
It begs the question whether it is the communities that are supporting the financial firms, not the other way around.
It begs the question whether these firms are reaping greater rewards from the communities they serve than the communities are receiving in return for supporting them.
It also begs the question – and this is the critical one – whether these firms are actually being penalized (Ha!) by regulations or whether they are actually being subsidized by tax policy, employment laws and their insider access to government?
This last question (who’s penalized?) raises the issue of whether it is the average voter who is being “penalized” (fucked over really) by carrying a disproportionate burden when it comes to (1) paying for the infrastructure and (2) supporting the institutions that (3) benefit these firms. It raises the issue whether the burdens on the typical middle class worker is what truly gives advantages to these firms, particularly financial ones, so they can splash that extra money around marketing themselves under the guise of country club noblesse oblige.