Finally, a valuable article on the tax bill. Here are some interesting quotes:
Highly compensated attorneys, doctors, accountants, and financial-service professionals will lose tens of thousands of dollars in deductions for their heavy state and local taxes and costly coastal mortgages, without getting much in return.
And get this, in particular:
Offered a better job across the country? If your new employer tells you, “Don’t worry—we’ll cover your moving costs,” those payments will now add to your taxable income.
This is a clear attempt to put the brakes on the mobility of those who are doing well with fluidity. Please, don’t confuse them with the deterritorialized, supranational elites (known in the sloganeering media as “the super rich” or “the banksters”). Those can’t be stopped no matter what you do. That ship sailed back in 1973.
In the meanwhile, those who are not getting with the program are given a kick in the shins to get them into a more fluid state of mind:
If a plumber makes $60,000 a year as wages paid by an employer, he or she will pay 60 percent more in income taxes than if that plumber had been a sole proprietor or self-employed and takes advantage of the pass-through rate.
Even the language signals towards higher fluidity as the better choice for this category of people.
There is a growing abyss between those who are embracing fluidity and those who aren’t. The tax bill is trying to weigh down the former and speed up the latter. It also tries to coax the deterritorialized supranational elites into hanging around at least for a bit. For the bizillionth time, I don’t for a second believe it will work, so please don’t tell me it won’t. I already know it.
Yes, it stinks. Nobody said liquid capitalism is a pleasant thing. I strongly believe that the worst approach is to pretend nothing is happening and that we are still living in the solid capitalism era, so let’s tax the banksters to the gills and get free community college for everybody. The second worst approach is to pretend that fluidity is the best thing ever because look how swell it worked out for me and anybody who complains is a deplorable basket case.
By providing no actual plan of how to deal with liquid capitalism, the US Democrats paved the road for the tax plan we are now seeing. And guess what? They are still not offering anything but antiquated and meaningless slogans. Every day I wait and hope to see if finally somebody will say something. But all I get are the attempts to distract me with noisy outrage and useless memes.
Yes, the tax bill stinks. Liquid capitalism positively reeks. What are we going to do about it, though?
