SORE LOSERS
Democrats supposedly believe in taxing those who are better off. So why do they hate the new tax bill so much?
LIBERALS have some reservations about this tax bill that just passed Congress. And when I say reservations, I mean reservations for a heavy-duty rubber room at the nearest lunatic asylum.
For tinkering around with some details of the tax code and decreasing the bill many Americans pay to Washington each year, “The GOP is monstrous; their policies kill, starve & maim,” wrote actorcomedian Rob Delaney. Josh Gad, that cuddly snowman from “Frozen” turned tax wonk, tweeted, “If you are not a billionaire, today should very well be marked as one of the most disgraceful acts in modern political history. Madness won.”
Madness certainly won over Delaney, who is now urging people to join the “Democratic socialists.” Like the folks who are doing such a great job in Venezuela? Sounding a similar note, Michael Moore said the bill amounted to “Capitalism and Fascism. The coup is underway.” MSNBC and Vanity Fair contributor Kurt Eichenwald tweeted, “America died tonight. Economic suicide . . . Millennials, move away if you can. USA is over. We killed it.” Comedian Patton Oswalt agreed: “There’s no America now . . . sorry, feeling real despair this morning.” A more optimistic take came from political pundit Bill Palmer, who tweeted that the bill didn’t kill the whole country, but only “Millions of Americans died tonight . . . This was mass murder. They all belong in prison.” California Gov. Jerry Brown was still more upbeat, saying only, “This day will live in infamy,” a reference to Pearl Harbor, which started a war that killed a mere few hundred thousand Americans.
Why do all these liberals have longer faces than Secretariat? The Trump tax plan was ingeniously designed to cut taxes on many Americans — but raise them on liberals. These people are always begging to pay more taxes. They finally got their wish!
All of those I’ve quoted presumably voted for Barack Obama, who once said (actually, he was pretty much always saying something like this), “At a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more.” People like Patton Oswalt and Josh Gad, I guess.
Look at the end of federal deductions for state and local tax (SALT). That won’t affect most Americans much. But in the high-tax places where liberals cluster — places like Chicago, Beverly Hills and New York City (which gave Hillary Clinton 74, 72 and 79 percent of their votes), this means you get to fork over more taxes to the feds, your city and your state to pay for all those wonderful government services you can’t get enough of. Putting a cap on the deductibility of property taxes means people who live in mansions, or who live in the most expensive coastal areas, will get hit. Surely that’s good news for Democrats who believe in taxing the rich.
Don’t liberals hate tax “loopholes?” SALT is a special carve-out that is squarely aimed at helping the well-off dodge the consequences of living in the most affluent areas of the country. For instance, Massachusetts is trying to push through a 4 percent “millionaire’s tax.” The kind of thing Democrats love. But it’s less tax than it appears because you get a lot of it right back. It is projected to raise $2 billion for the Bay State but reduce its residents’ contributions to DC by $600,000. Get rid of SALT, and affluent chowderheads (69 percent of Americans don’t itemize their deductions in the first place) get to fork over to Washington that extra $600,000 the loophole was saving them.
Universities with staggering amounts of wealth — Stanford has a $22 billion endowment, Yale $25 billion, Harvard $35 billion — are going to find themselves “asked to give a little something back to their communities,” as lib- erals usually phrase it.
It’s only a teensy 1.4 percent tax on the annual investment income of some of the most mind-bogglingly wealthy institutions on the planet. So what’s not to like, libs?
The non-rich universities (those with less than $250,000 worth of endowment per student in the House bill, $500,000 in the Senate bill) would be exempt. What, you don’t consider Yale, Stanford and Harvard to be “the most fortunate among us?”
Despite efforts by hysterics like Moore to frame the tax reform as an increase, the big majority of Americans will see their taxes go down. The upper-middle classes of Berkeley and Brooklyn and Boston should be happy they’re getting a chance to “invest more in the socialsafety net,” as they normally put it. Instead, this looks suspiciously like yet another instance of the well-heeled talking about community while being disingenuous about their true motives. Kind of like how the same people love widespread illegal immigration, which may drive down the wages of working-class Americans but sure brings in lots of cheap nannies and cleaners. Or how they back strict zoning laws while opposing new construction in liberal enclaves like San Francisco, which keeps home prices high for the uppermiddle-class professionals who already live there. In gentrifying neighborhoods, incoming professionals first push for development until the area becomes desirable, then turn on a dime and start opposing new building because suddenly they’re worried about “traffic” and “noise.”
Maybe high-income bluestate elites really do worry it’s the end of America. But it kind of smells like what they’re worried about is themselves.