I will go on the record right now to state that I am rich. No, I am not anywhere near being in the 1%. My wealth did not come from an accumulation of money and property. My wife and I live very comfortably but there is not a chance we'd be confused with any of the small number of Americans who have financial assets in excess of seven figures.
I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice because I have three of the best children in the world; all college educated, all successful in their careers, all still wanting, and looking forward to, spending time with my wife and me at any time. I have three wonderful, well-adjusted, very intelligent grandchildren. All three grandkids go wild with happiness when my wife and I visit their homes, or when they come to see us. I am their gymnasium. They love when my wife reads and sings to them - and they love everything that comes out of her kitchen. They make the two of us feel richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), I have a wonderful wife who I have been married to for 38 ½ years. I live in a modern, desirable southeastern US city with nice weather, close to the ocean. I recently retired from a highly successful career in broadcasting. I am an award-winning author and perform with a local band. So I am quite content.
But I have never pursued money. I saw my father engage in that as I was growing up, but for all his pursuit, he never seemed to be happy about it. He was grouchy, distant, self-centered, devious…but never happy. Money accumulation only gave him a dour look as he sought a way to get more.
I took a cue from that and decided whatever he did I wasn’t going to do…so I never chased the almighty dollar. I have had a successful career and by any measure I have done well, contributed to my savings account along the way, lived frugally, and invested in my wife’s and my retirement. But I did not try to rake in as much cash as I possibly could. I was far more interested in spending time with my family, watching the kids grow, teaching them, being with them, being the best father and husband that I could. I turned down dozens of lucrative opportunities to make substantial additions to our bank account…because of how I saw my father’s accumulations did nothing for his well-being, but generally it was because what those opportunities required of me…far too many nights, weekends, even months away from my family. My family was, is, and always will be, tremendously more important than money. But I apparently got it all wrong.
The GOP is going to punish me for NOT pursuing the almighty dollar to make myself a millionaire - by making sure my taxes will go up while providing an enormous wealth redistribution to the very well-off, uber-wealthy, and filthy rich. People making over a million dollars a year will get a massive tax cut from the Republican tax plan by taking that money away from people like me to give to someone who’s net worth is ten to a hundred times what mine is.
The poor will just waste that money, anyway.
Why do I deserve to have my taxes raised and my financial wealth diminished? Because, as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa explained in a November 29th interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel, part of the reason for repealing, say, the estate tax is “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
So my tax burden will have to go up substantially because I'm not throwing my money at the stock market, plus, to make up the difference from the government's loss of Estate Tax revenue. I am not deserving of a huge tax cut because Grassley has imagined I spent most of my "pennies" on a house, college funds for my kids, day-to-day living expenses, utility bills and the like...which Grassley equates with booze, women and going to the movies. As my wife, children and friends will all attest, I rarely drink any alcohol, the only women I’ve spent money on the past 40 years are my wife and daughter, and when we go to the movies, we almost always go to the dollar theater, if we don’t just wait for the edited version to air for free on TV. So I don’t know where Grassley got his information. He is implying I’d be a millionaire now and could look forward to getting some of that GOP wealth transfer from poor and middle-class people to fatten my own bank account if I had just pursued a hell of a lot more money the past 50 years.
Put simply, the GOP tax plan has been written to favor asset-based incomes, passive business investments and inherited wealth (like Trump’s, so Trump is lying when he says this tax plan is going to hurt him), and it penalizes those foolish enough to actually work for a paycheck. Hey, if your income is obtained from your stock portfolio or you were born into a rich family, you’re going to love this plan. Otherwise, tough sh*t.
Grassley let the cat out of the bag in that same interview. Siegel asked him “…you agree that before you begin to do that [paying down the $20 Trillion National Debt], this bill would increase deficits and the debt by at least $1.5 trillion...unless you really do take away middle-income tax cuts, $2 trillion, right? Are those numbers about right?” Grassley’s response? “Yeah, if you look at it on paper the way the Congressional Budget Office does, that is right.”
He went on to claim that since Trump SAYS the economy is going gangbusters and IF we can boost our economic growth, up from 2 to around 3%, then the $1.5 trillion additional debt will be made up.
Not one economist thinks that is realistic. They say that is something Grassley "made up."
Except for a few years doing factory work and then teaching for a short duration, Grassley has spent his career in Congress where he voted in favor of almost every pay raise Senators and Representatives could give themselves, helped to run up the National Debt (while blaming it exclusively on the Democrats), gave the military Carte Blanche for whatever it wanted, and fleeced American taxpayers. He is fleecing us again…only bigger, badder and bolder than ever before. But by the time the worst of the wealth transfer…uh, I mean the fair and equitable tax policy...is implemented, Chuck Grassley will be well into his own retirement. So he won’t need to make any pretense that those “tax cuts” in the GOP bill were aimed at the middle class.
Grassley claims the massive tax cuts (like eliminating the Estate Tax which only affects .2% [that's point two percent] of Americans) is really just a question of “basic fairness.” Yes, but fairness to whom? It damn sure isn't fair to people like me who are not millionaires.
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