The Biden Tax Increases

On Thursday, Real Clear Markets posted an article about the tax increase in President Biden’s proposed budget.

The article reports:

With his new budget proposing an incredible $4.7 trillion in tax increases, President Biden has secured his legacy as history’s biggest tax increaser. The size and scope of his tax increases are unprecedented, with Treasury’s explanation running 226 pages, and if ever enacted would put us on a path to long-term economic stagnation and decline.Biden’s tax increases are a perfect reflection of Washington Democrats’ philosophy of bigger government, redistributing income, and punishing success, increasing taxes to levels not seen in years.Under his budget, annual taxes collected each year would increase from  $4.8 trillion in 2022 to nearly $8 trillion in 2033, a 63% increase. Taxes as a share of the economy would increase to 20.1%, well above the 50- year average of 17.2%, and a level exceeded only once in our history in 1944.

Individual taxes as a share of the economy would increases to 10.5%, the highest level ever since the income tax began in 1913. The top individual tax rate would reach nearly 45%, the highest level since 1986.Corporate tax receipts would increase by $2.7 trillion over the next ten years, an increase of 56%. Corporate taxes as a share of the economy would increase from 1.7% to 2.6% in 2025, the highest level since 1979, and more than 50% higher than the modern average. The corporate tax rate would be raised to one of the highest in the world, higher than China and every other country in the OECD.

The article notes that the Biden tax increase is comparable to the tax increases proposed by President Hoover in 1932 as the economy was sinking into a downturn.

It is a pretty safe bet that if these tax increases are passed into law, the American economy will rapidly continue its downhill slide.

Why Does The Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) Hate Donald Trump?

Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Why Do They Hate Him So?” The article analyzes the reasons that President Trump is opposed by both the political left and the establishment right.

The article states:

Again, why the unadulterated hatred? For the small number of NeverTrumpers, of course, Trump’s crudity in speech and crassness in manner nullify his accomplishments: the unattractive messenger has fouled an otherwise tolerable message.

While they recognize in the abstract that the randy JFK, the repugnant LBJ, and the horny Bill Clinton during their White House tenures were far grosser in conduct than has been Donald Trump, they either assume presidential ethics should have evolved or they were not always around to know of past bad behavior first hand, or believe Trump’s crude language is worse than prior presidents’ crude behavior in office.

The article continues:

Had Donald Trump in his first month as president declared that he was a centrist Republican —as many suspicious Never Trumpers predicted that he would, true to past form—and promoted cap-and-trade and solar and wind federal subsidies, tabled pipeline construction and abated federal leasing for gas and oil production, stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord, appointed judges in the tradition of John Paul Stevens and David Souter, praised the “responsible” Palestinian leaders, pursued “comprehensive immigration reform” as a euphemism for blanket amnesties, then Trump would be treated largely as a George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush: hated, of course, but not obsessively so.

More importantly, had Trump just collapsed or stagnated the economy, as predicted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, he would now be roundly denounced, but again not so vilified, given his political utility for the Left in 2020 as a perceived Herbert Hoover-esque scapegoat.

Had Trump kept within the media and cultural sidelines by giving interviews to “60 Minutes,” speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bringing in a few old Republican hands to run the staff or handle media relations like a David Gergen or Andrew Card, Trump would have been written off as a nice enough dunce.

But Trump did none of that. So, the hatred of the media, the Left, the swamp, and the celebrity industry is predicated more on the successful Trump agenda. He is systematically undoing what Barack Obama wrought, in the manner Obama sought to undo with his eight years the prior eight years of George W. Bush.

But whereas the Obama economy stagnated and his foreign policy was seen by adversaries and rivals as a rare occasion to recalibrate the world order at American’s expense, Trump mostly did not fail—at least not yet. We are currently in an economic boom while most of the world economy abroad is inert. Had the economy just crashed as predicted, the Trump agenda would have been discredited and he would be written off a pitiful fool rather than an existential monster.

Again, hatred arises at what Trump did even more than what he says or how he says it.

The obvious conclusion:

The bipartisan Washington establishment? If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

And that is absolutely unforgivable.

Be prepared for a very nasty year before the election in 2020. There are a lot of very unhinged people in politics and in the media.

President Trump Seen Through The Perspective Of Common Sense

Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at Townhall.com today that pretty much sums up the political climate in America today. In his article, Mr. Hanson reminds us that Barack Obama ran for President on a moderate Democratic platform rather than a hard-left platform. Candidate Obama promised to balance the budget, oppose gay marriage, and pursue a bipartisan foreign policy. What he actually did was very different, and the media supported his actions.

The article highlights some  of President Obama’s policies:

Soon, the border effectively was left open. Pen-and-phone executive orders offered immigrant amnesties. The Senate was bypassed on a treaty with Iran and an intervention in Libya.

Political correctness under the Obama administration led to euphemisms that no longer reflected reality.

Poorly conceived reset policy with Russia and a pivot to Asia both failed. The Middle East was aflame.

The Iran deal was sold through an echo chamber of deliberate misrepresentations.

The national debt nearly doubled during Obama’s two terms. Overregulation, higher taxes, near-zero interest rates and the scapegoating of big businesses slowed economic recovery. Economic growth never reached 3 percent in any year of the Obama presidency — the first time that had happened since Herbert Hoover‘s presidency.

A revolutionary federal absorption of health care failed to fulfill Obama’s promises and soon proved unviable.

Culturally, the iconic symbols of the Obama revolution were the “you didn’t build that” approach to businesses and an assumption that race/class/gender would forever drive American politics, favorably so for the Democrats.

Those policies led to the defeat of Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign. Donald Trump won the election, much to the dismay of the media and the Democratic party.

So what did we get when we elected Donald Trump? We got a man who wants better trade deals and more jobs for Americans. We got a man who wants energy independence, secure borders, deregulation, tax reform. and traditional values. Sounds pretty basic to me.

The article continues:

Yet securing national borders seems pretty orthodox. In an age of anti-Western terrorism, placing temporary holds on would-be immigrants from war-torn zones until they can be vetted is hardly radical. Expecting “sanctuary cities” to follow federal laws rather than embrace the nullification strategies of the secessionist Old Confederacy is a return to the laws of the Constitution.

Using the term “radical Islamic terror” in place of “workplace violence” or “man-caused disasters” is sensible, not subversive.

Insisting that NATO members meet their long-ignored defense-spending obligations is not provocative but overdue. Assuming that both the European Union and the United Nations are imploding is empirical, not unhinged.

Questioning the secret side agreements of the Iran deal or failed Russian reset is facing reality.

Making the Environmental Protection Agency follow laws rather than make laws is the way it always was supposed to be.

Unapologetically siding with Israel, the only free and democratic country in the Middle East, used to be standard U.S. policy until Obama was elected.

Issuing executive orders has not been seen as revolutionary for the past few years — until now.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It applies common sense to what the media chooses to misreport.

The article concludes:

In sum, Trump seems a revolutionary, but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution.