By Hunter Wallace
After months of hype, Donald Trump has finally released his tax plan:
“Donald Trump’s apparent ability to get conservatives on board with tax hikes was among the biggest shocks of his summer surge. The billionaire unashamedly told crowds — bigger crowds than any Republican rival could muster — that “the hedge fund guys” needed to pay higher taxes, and that the rich could afford to pay more generally. The pro-Jeb Bush super PAC Right to Rise literally flew a banner over one of those rallies, in Alabama, warning about tax hikes. Trump kept on talking taxes, and didn’t suffer at all.
Yet today, upon the release of his tax reform white paper, the Republican front-runner won over the GOP’s unofficial pope of tax cuts. “Trump’s plan is certainly consistent with the Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, in a statement. “Trump has said he opposes net tax hikes and has made clear that the real problem is spending. This plan is a reform, not a tax hike.” …”
Within minutes, Trump’s tax plan was endorsed by Grover Norquist and The Wall Street Journal this morning. By then, I had already read the whole thing on his campaign website.
As it was advertised, the plan does close some notorious tax loopholes for the very wealthy, but it dramatically slashes corporate taxes while reducing the top rate from the current 39.6 percent to 25 percent. Contrary to the hype, it does not raise taxes on the very wealthy at all. Instead, Trump’s tax plan is such a massive giveaway to the rich that Jeb Bush’s tax plan is more “populist” in comparison.
It’s a very pro-growth, pro-employment plan. The numbers don’t add up, but that hasn’t happened for decades. More debt or less spending are the only way to square the circle. But does any of this matter if we don’t build the wall?
The so called wealthy of the plan start in the middle class. Real rich people and corporations don’t pay taxes anyway.
I’m just not able to get upset by any of this. Trump is the American Putin. With our shields or on them.
What “massive giveaway to the rich?” People earn money so they should keep it. I would rather for money to stay with the people who have the agency to earn it than for DC bureaucrats.
Capital gains should be adjusted for either inflation or for time. If you have a 100% capital gain it makes a big difference whether it took 6 months or 10 years to double your money.
39.6 percent to 25 percent for top earners.
That’s a huge tax cut for the wealthy. It won’t be paid for by getting rid of the loopholes he is talking about either. Basically, rich people get to keep a lot more of their money, the budget deficit will explode, and it will be used to cut spending in other areas. In other words, it is the same old libertarian economics bullshit we always hear from Republicans.
The knock on Republicans is always that their only purpose is to make life easier for the wealthy. Unfortunately, Trump has caved to Grover Norquist and his ilk, and that will definitely come back to haunt him in the general election.
More here:
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/09/on-taxes-not-so-populist-000258
@Hunter
Why should we care about deficits? We have no vested interest in the long term fiscal viability of the Fed Gov. In the long term it’s bankrupt anyway. These tax cuts may help speed things up.
Tell me something … why do we want to make life easier for the Wall Street Journal plutocrats who control the GOP and who support every single policy that is destroying this country?
This is an economic plan? What’s the plan then? Is it to cut Sheldon Adelson’s taxes and hope that generates record economic growth? Trump’s greatest selling point was that he doesn’t have to depend on donors and their armies of lobbyists, but his tax plan is actually a bigger gift to the Republican donor class than Jeb Bush’s tax plan.
The Bush tax cuts, for example, didn’t speed up the collapse of the system. They did make the rich even richer. They made the oligarchy that controls the country even more powerful.
One has to remember with candidate white papers is that they’re more for displaying the propensities of a candidate rather than listing things that will actually get passed.
Oh Donald.
Yikes.
Hunter Wallace wrote:
I would like for the Federal tax rate to be 0%. I guess that means I want for the oligarchs to have 10x more power than they do now (sarcasm)
The basis for your question is flawed. It presumes that there is a correlation between tax rates and political power. From observing history I don’t see any correlation. For example, were the oligarchs more powerful in 1980s when the top rate was 28% than they are now that it’s 39.6% + Obamacare taxes? How about prior to 1913 when there was no income tax? Under those HUGE Bush tax cuts, the top rate was reduced from 39.6% to 35%. Do you think that a 4.6% difference in tax rates made that significant of a difference in the political power of the oligarchs? Tax rates have increased on top income earners since 2013. Has Sheldon Adelson’s power diminished since then? It doesn’t look like it to me. In fact, it looks the Donor Class is even more powerful than ever. As far as I can tell, the oligarchs gain power despite the variation in taxes over the last 30+ years.
Any system that involves concentration of wealth and power benefits the oligarchs. If the Federal government had little taxing, money creation, and regulatory power there would be no oligarchs. The most important of those (in my opinion) is money creation, which comes from the central bank that’s privately owned by the oligarchs. I am willing to bet that more of the oligarch’s wealth comes directly or indirectly from the Fed than it does from variations in tax rates. Most of the wars the USG has fought of the last 20-25 years has been directly or indirectly tied to dollar hegemony. I know, just more libertarian RawPaw bullshit but don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the Grand Pappy of all of the West’s oligarchs, Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
I wouldn’t focus too much on tax rates. This is not the source of the oligarch’s power.
I’m sure those great friends of ours – The Wall Street Journal, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Rountable, Wall Street hedge fund managers, Sheldon Adelson, and Mark Zuckerburg – would love to pay 0 percent of their income in federal income taxes too.
I would argue that there is definitely a correlation between low tax rates and oligarchs corrupting democratic elections. I would point to Europe where billionaires don’t have nearly the influence – see, for example, Jewish donors and fealty to Israel – over public policy that they do in the United States.
If you want, we can go back to the Gilded Age before the income tax when the American oligarchy was at the pinnacle of its power and workers had no rights at all, but this would make my point.
As for the 1980s, you are forgetting a few things:
1.) First, the Soviet Empire was keeping capitalism at bay in much the world at the time.
2.) Second, the demise of the Soviet Union eliminated that obstacle, which is why we had the onset of globalization in the 1990s and all its associated institutions.
3.) Both the memory and legacy of Depression-era reforms were far more salient in the 1980s than they are
now. A lot of that has been dismantled over the past 20 years.
4.) Republicans didn’t win control of Congress until the 1990s because they were blamed for the Great Depression.
.
I could care less if they do or not. People paid the exact same tax rate in 1912 and the South seemed to be doing much better in many regards than it does today. With a 0% direct income taxes, the Feds probably don’t have any welfare state to incentivize 3rd world immigrants to come here. There’s probably no EPA to run good jobs out of our country, no ATF to steal our guns, no NSA to spy on us, nor a Department of Education to indoctrinate (i.e. corrupt) our children. The Feds can’t afford much of a warfare state with 0% direct income taxes. That means young Southern men aren’t dying in foreign wars to protect the interest of the oligarchs. I doubt the Feds can afford much a bureaucracy with a 0% tax rate.
I am willing to bet you that The Wall Street Journal, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Rountable, Wall Street hedge fund managers, Sheldon Adelson, and Mark Zuckerburg would gladly pay a Federal income tax in exchange for the Fed Gov having levers of powers that they can manipulate. Without this power, they may have to earn an honest living. Even with the income tax, they can still make far more money by having access to the levers from a strong Federal government.
I don’t know all the details of Trump’s tax plan but I heard some talking heads discussing it. Overall, it seems pretty good. It’s designed to bring the big money back to the US for job creation.
Who cares what tax rates are if manufacturing and well paying jobs all disappear and everything is outsourced to other countries?
I love huge corporations like Rockwell, for example. Employs many people making good salaries with benefits and pension plans and provides needed products and services.
You can discuss tax policies and rates to doomsday. Doesn’t mean a thing if all our great paying jobs are overseas and most people are working at McDonalds, Dollar Store, Costco and Quicktrip.
He eliminates the inheritance tax.
Yes!!!!!!!
Pay confiscatory rates your entire life, manage to save some cash to leave to your kids and Uncle Samstein swoops in to take half of it in order to give it to niggers and wetbacks.
This may have more to do with the differences between the political systems. In Europe they have a proportional representation system where there are numerous parties. If the oligarchs corrupt one political party to the detriment of that party’s base, votes will move to one of the other parties or even a new party can be created. This type of political system is harder to subvert than the US two party/winner take all system. Since we only have two choices, the oligarchs subvert both. Ideally, if the Republican enacts policies against the interest of White Southerners, those votes would go to a Southern Nationalist Party. And that party would not need 50% + 1 in an election to obtain power. There would be some proportional representation in Congress. The two party system forces White Southerners to vote Republican, even though Republican politicians hate their base. As much as I hate this political system, things could be a lot worse than they are if White Southerners sat out and gave Democrats total power with no push back (even if it is just for partisan reasons).
I can’t make any correlation between there being an income tax and worker’s rights. An income tax just gives money to a government. The government doesn’t improve worker’s rights. The government can pass laws strengthening worker’s rights but that doesn’t require an income tax. A Southern workers have done well working in right to work states.
I think you made some good points on globalization. But I don’t think income tax rates are the main drivers on oligarch power.
If you make an honest mistake on your tax returns, particularly if you file quarterly, and the IRS catches it, the IRS will use hot irons and tongs on you. Well, maybe not that bad, but, I guarantee you they will get their pound of flesh.
If Trump doesn’t watch it, we could end up in the same old borrow and spend routine that we have been in for decades. This is unsustainable, and I’m sure he is smart enough to know it.
As far as the inheritance tax goes, you would have to have one hell of a big inheritance to pay anything at all, and where you do get caught is by State inheritance taxes, which you can’t escape from.
I would really like to see the federal tax system simplified, so you don’t have to pay a CPA or a tax preparation agency to do your taxes, or help do your taxes. That’s a tax in and of itself. Once again gawd help you if you do your own taxes and make a mistake and it gets noticed.
I have a hypothesis that control of the media may have more to do with the oligarch’s power than taxes. 100 years ago there was no mass media (TV/radio/internet) and there were hundreds of newspapers across the US. Major cities had at least two or more major newspapers. Today, there has been a major consolidation of media power. Like or not, the media decides what is and what isn’t up for debate. With control of the media in relatively few hand, the oligarchs effectively control all political debate around a pre-scripted Hegelian dialectic. A president that would breakup all of the media companies would do a lot more to defang the oligarchs than raising taxes.
Hmmmm. I wonder?is this an attempt by the Donald to appeal to the superrich of whom he is a part, to broaden his voter base? Is this a shrewd campaign move that will not necessarily translate into reality, come the election?
ny system that involves concentration of wealth and power benefits the oligarchs. If the Federal government had little taxing, money creation, and regulatory power there would be no oligarchs.”
Just the opposite is true.
During the Gilded Age, there was no income tax, little regulation, and no Federal Reserve and the result was an oligarchy of Robber Barons that had a tighter grip on the federal government than at any point before or since.
The Gilded Age shows that an oligarchy can flourish without a central bank.
Pretty much.
The US Empire had already expanded across the Pacific and into the Caribbean long before there was a Fed.
Once upon a time, there was no income tax and workers had no rights. There was no big government around to break monopolies, outlaw child labor, mandate a minimum wage, provide healthcare, social security, and education and all those other awful things that have come about since the Gilded Age.
The South has done very well since the New Deal, but the darkest economic period in our history was the Gilded Age.
But how much control did the Federal government have over the lives of the average citizens? The oligarchs had a grip over a relatively (by today’s standard) weak entity.
Not like they do today.
Today the US has client states all over the world including wealthy European countries and not just poor Caribbean and east Asian countries. Today, the US has unrivaled power throughout the world. That couldn’t happen without a central bank and direct taxation.
Then the Federal government used its massive powers to strike down all of our social laws, used our National Guard to integrate Black children into White schools, struck down our miscegenation laws, and struck down our abortion laws. It’s Social Security and Medicare programs, although helpful, actually disincentivized having large families which in turn severely affected our birthrates. And although Social Security and Medicare taxed trillions of dollars, they don’t have a single penny in savings causes massive unfunded liabilities for future generations that can never be paid. The Federal government later took over our schools making them dumber. Then for a period of 20 years the Federal government has used our tax dollars to conquer the world’s resources on behalf of the oligarchy. The awesome power of the Federal government has recently struck down state marriage and immigration laws. Now the Feds are working on demographically displacing those who built our society.
But at least it wasn’t the bad old Gilded Age
We all lived happily ever after
The End
Uncle Samstein, lol.
I like the no federal inheritance tax bit.
I would prefer a flat tax on everybody. All should have to pay even if it’s just a small amount. Everybody contributes. Everybody has a stake in it.
Russia, I think, has a 13% tax on income and 9% on capital gains and no inheritance taxes.
William H McCarty
‘I like the no federal inheritance tax bit.’
Amen.
Every dollar and asset has been taxed six ways from Sunday before becoming a part of one’s estate. Whether it’s $100.00 or $100,000.000.00 should not matter. Why should the government be allowed to take any of it?
William H McCarty: All should have to pay even if it’s just a small amount. Everybody contributes. Everybody has a stake in it.
I agree.
A weak entity that catered exclusively to the interests of a corporate oligarchy.
Yes, the oligarchy was much more powerful in the Gilded Age, and the working class was much worse off than it is today.
As I pointed out above, the US Empire conquered the Confederacy and continued to expand into the Caribbean, Latin America, the Pacific and East Asia before the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Its actions since then are consistent with a long established pattern of behavior.
The US has the highest statutory corporate tax rate of any industrialized country. This tax rate is rarely paid by largely corporations, who pay an effective tax rate under 10%.
Instead it is paid by medium sized corporations who have outgrown the ability to organize as S-corporations and thereby pay the individual rate, but are too small to use the sophisticated income sheltering schemes the biggest corporations use to pay little to no taxes.
Even if cutting taxes is supposedly libertarian, is that bad?
I certainly have no objection to lowering the top individual rate either. What exactly does Washington use our tax money for that’s so wonderful?
It may have something to do with the Crime of 1873 when silver was demonetized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD8SNgnL2FM
This was a case of the oligarchs hurting the common man. But the solution to this problem wasn’t enacting an income tax. It was to re-monetize. But note that the oligarchs focus was the control on the creation of money just as it is today.
Hunter, Jeff:
A friend of the Abbeville Institute, Jon Remington Grahm wrote a short book on the pernicious influence of American CW & Reconstruction bond holders. Since that R.B. Hayes to 2nd G. Cleveland period was the lowest inflation period since Jackson, awful people outside and inside America were able to profit off Americans while they paid the bonds’ interest in a low inflation environment. If it were possible to talk to Charles A. Lindburgh today he might say 30 yrs into that process the Federal Reserve was created to ensure that neo-feudal arrangement didn’t end.
Your’re both gifted individuals. Good luck and thanks for the sharp commentary.
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Money-Civil-Federal-Reserve/dp/1589803981/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1443495026&sr=8-1&keywords=blood+money+and+the+federal+reserve
Burn this Bitch down! Trump appears to say…
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Lenin
“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” – Vladimir Lenin
1913. Jekyll Island. Up for the rich down for everybody else.
“Once upon a time, there was no income tax and workers had no rights. There was no big government around to break monopolies, outlaw child labor, mandate a minimum wage, provide healthcare, social security, and education and all those other awful things that have come about since the Gilded Age.”
Hunter you’re referring to the end result of a war of conquest. That is not a rational basis to discuss government power. We took back our States through our own collective force. An out of control Government is attempting to destroy the base which erected it. A war between people’s is just that. Of course there was no Government to enforce child labor laws or any other modern legislation. The community was the basis of morality and following the Lord. The treatment of children and the good of the community fell to each community and not some distant oligarchy of which a Government by definition is comprised of. An oligarchy is naturally emergent but it is not detached from the society in which it emerges as is the case with a government. The Yankee Oligarchy destroyed our Aristocratic Oligarchy and enslaved our land. Looking at that and correlating what occured at that time and seeing a free society as evil is incorrect and the same as TV celebrities which do the same proclaiming Government the size of the moon is necessary to combat the evils of a free society. In Europe the Governments operate with more of a grassroots approach and function not as an absolute system to coin a term from John C Calhoun as we have but as a plethora of different parties with any free to come in and have a real chance at success representing the districts they win. Our present system can only result in it’s inevitable collapse as followers of each see themselves as the perceived “nation” as they splinter and break apart within’ upon the continual degradation and rot of the system. We are at the point where we are taking our leave as is the natural result of such a system.
“But note that the oligarchs focus was the control on the creation of money just as it is today.”
That control was removed from the Federal Government and hence the Federal Government became a tool of Federal Reserve Bank and in a greater since the Bank of England. If the Government was still comprised of truly sovereign communities such an act could never happen. The Northern Elites destroying our land and using the monopoly on Force which was completed with the ratification of the 14th amendment is the cause of all of our problems. As Woodrow Wilson put it “The Federal Government has declared through it’s courts that it is the judge of it’s own limitations” There would have been no Guilded age if freedom had been retained and the wealthy did not seize control of an area that they can be nothing but detached from.The wealthy of each State naturally gravitated towards each State Government of which they were limited to control of the people they directly represented whom had granted certain powers to be in line with the lord’s will and be in line with the creator as close as possible with the right of alteration or abolishment as they saw fit. That is essential in order to keep the Government uplifted to a higher standard as is force equal to what is possessed by those in the granted positions of power.
who cares. The only “tax plan” we need is No More IRS. Trump’s decline and fall goes back to him dropping the 3rd Party option. He gave up a ton of leverage over the Republiscam oligarchs, and got nothing in return. See also: Ron Paul, 2012. At a wild guess, since the Republiscam whatsit is daily a tighter clone of the Demoncrats than the day before, the cuckservative ticket will be a double group-entitlement pair: Magic Negro (Carson)+ Pussy (Fiorina). Might slip the Dead Elephants into the WH one last time…but I doubt it
Income taxes and Capital gains taxes should be exactly the same, with Capital gains indexed to inflation.
Example a guy programs a piece of software all by himself. A venture capitalist does the same software. The VC gets lower taxes.
Notice he lowered the taxes on money stored overseas. What he’s trying to do is bring that back at a lower tax rate. It will help…for a short period of time but won’t help long term.
One of the problems we have now is companies have LOTS of cash now but don’t feel like investing any of it. Will this change? I don’t know. Apple has hundreds of billions. What are they investing it in? Mostly nothing. They’re just hanging on to it.
Hunter’s comment on the fall of the Soviet Union kicking the capitalist into high gear is very good. This was predicted by James Dale Davidson and Sir Rees-Mogg in the book “The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression” and “The Sovereign Individual”. They said since the capitalist had no further competition they would drive wages to nothing.
It would be great if we could all have the same tax rates but the power differential between the average guy and the Oligarchs is too high. They make all the money not because they are virtuous but because they monopolize the economy and the politicians.
American companies have given up product after product to the Asians because they want bigger short term profits. Soon we will make nothing, the CEO’s will ride off into the sunset with their short term profits and leave us with harvesting trees to send to China where they’ll make furniture which we will be too poor to buy.
Before the junk bond buy outs of the 80’s profits were lower but we still made stuff here. How much you want to bet most of those are now owned by the Junk Bond Jews?
What would a populist tax system look like and why would it be preferable?
Anything that results in the government taking less of my money is ok with me.
Let’s remember that you have to inherit more than 5 1/2 Million Dollars before you pay any taxes at all on your inheritance. Then you pay 35%, of you unsheltered inheritance. How many people inherit that kind of money? Or don’t have the taxable part in a tax
shelter?
There was at least one positive in Trump’s wsj article on his tax plan:
“In particular, I am proposing ending the current treatment of carried interest for hedge funds and other speculative partnerships that do not grow businesses or create jobs”
I like that he’s pointing out that a lot of these speculative dealings don’t create jobs and are not the kind of capitalism that we need.
Washington is controlled by the billionaires is Hunter’s point. All the policy that seems so awful to us is made by them and for them. DC and the billionaires are one – they are not disconnected. Something has to be done to break that control.
The idea that business and government are separate and are at odds with one another is a libertarian idea that is not true in the real world – especially at the top level.
I think HW”s beef is that it’s not the anarchistic, pre-Civil War form of government he’s longing for, but hasn’t yet created in the ‘New South’ even for all his articles, and marches, and ‘show the flag’ photo ops.
Incrementalism, gentlemen. One step at a time. The elimination of the Death tax is by far, the greatest concession to the belief that one’s inheritance should not be stolen from one’s descendants. That’s actually rather Biblical. Just sayin’….
The threat posed by the Soviet Union and the memory and legacy of the Great Depression moderated capitalism for generations in the United States. When the USSR collapsed, global capitalism was unleashed like a kid in a candy store again, conveniently forgetting its own history.
Fr. John,
Antebellum Southerners were fierce critics of the North’s “free society” and accurately predicted its course.
The carried interest loophole is the bright shiny object meant to distract cutting the top rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent.
I know everyone here cares much less about taxes than racial and cultural issues, but just the opposite is true in the GOP, which builds the rest of its platform around the core of libertarian economics.
1.) What was the average life expectancy in the US during the Gilded Age?
2.) Should we strive to return to the libertarian paradise of mass illiteracy when only the wealthy could afford private education? The South of hookworms and pellagra?
3.) The Jewish oligarchy that controls the federal government wants gay marriage and open borders. Should we cut their taxes to make them even more wealthy and powerful than they are today?
1.) The American system is an outlier in the West in the sway that the oligarchs in the name of “liberty” are allowed to have over our political system.
2.) The South of 1915 was close to its lowest point ever relative to the rest of the country.
Ok
You are obviously of the position that the FedGov has been a boon to humanity. If this is the case. why secede? Southerners are clearly better off with the FedGov than without it. There is no valid case for secession if Southerners will be relegated to living hand to mouth without the FedGov bestowing its blessings to the people. It looks like to me like the Southern Nationalist movement should pack up, close shop, and go home.
Hunter, most of what you know about the age of Robber Barons you learned from Howard Zinn and Saul Alinsky. Try asking Revilo Oliver instead.
“Soak the rich” is phony, equalist, static populism. Dynamic populism means examining how individuals choose and how the government chooses who does what. Less money from “the rich” to the federal government to spend on special loans for minorities is a great idea.
What I want from a tax plant is to stop hiding taxes Whites pay as social security and medicare so it shows up as three lines on your pay stub, and also the practice of telling Whites that they pay taxes to build roads and inspect food and then using that money to buy Barkevious a city bus pass so he can rape your wife while you’re at work. Kill public education. Lie and say that White taxpayers don’t have the money for it.
But wait, killing public education wouldn’t be populist, would it? White kids need to go to school to compete due to Griggs v. Duke Power Co., and at school they learn to worship Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, and then have the option of spending a few years as an indentured servant of some NGO resettling refugees of genetic poverty if they can’t pay back their student loans directly.
I like to think that if I’d always had the money the Mitt Romney’s of the world have, I wouldn’t be this Goddamn cheap. They have every material thing imaginable, and all they can think about is not paying taxes. Bill Clinton seems more normal than they do.