Not Worse Than Hitler. Not at All.
January 27, 2010
It’s a great day for common sense here in Oregon. Measures 66 & 67 passed, raising taxes on the top 2% of invididual income-earners and top-grossing businesses. Had these tax increases not passed, huge cuts to education and state services would had to have been made. Small businesses in Oregon surprisingly used their brain bones to figure out that they had children in public schools and that their work force depended on student loans and other services bound to be impacted by potential budget cuts and endorsed the increase. They were quoted as saying that the benefits of the tax increase outweighed the disadvantages. Hooray for brain bones!
But wait. Not everyone’s brains have bones. Nope. There are still idiotic Republicans who can’t think right. One of them was quoted in the NYT saying that “labor” bought the measures, raising the specter of fat, overpaid, corrupt unions fixing elections and taxing the poor rich guys so much that they can’t afford new monocles or whatever it is they buy with their huge piles of money. He also said that businesses were bound to leave Oregon for cheaper pastures now that they have been taxed into oblivion. In fact, one of the tax increases raised a $10 cost for businesses to $150. It has been $10 since 1930 so it’s easy to see why businesses might spend millions of dollars to pull up stakes here in Oregon – $140 is a lot of money!
No, the fact is that all of the idiotic flailing done by corporations and Republicans (can we just call these entities “Recorpricans”?) amounted to nothing at all. Businesses will compete here as they always have. Jobs will be increased, not decreased and unions don’t own jack shit. Businesses profit from society and so need to contribute to society. If bosses want an educated work force, they have an interest in making sure student loans are available. State services help everyone, not just those who slip through the cracks. Common sense won out today and I’m happy as hell about it. Thank you, Oregon.
I’m still baffled by all the ridiculous support for these measures. A lot of people voted to raise taxes on a few people. Is that supposed to be shocking? A moral victory? Fair? Sustainable?
Most of the people who supported these measures would not have voted to raise their own taxes. But you’ll always be able to rally people around the idea of taxing someone else to pay for free stuff for themselves. And it’s especially easy if you demonize the opposition – maybe by calling them Recorpricans?
A $10 corporate tax sure sounds like a valid point – but corporations aren’t people, and don’t really have income. The profit they make is split up and disbursed as salaries (taxed!) or to the shareholders (higher taxes!). There’s no Mr. Starbucks rolling around in his dough, or whatever – a corporation is just a group of people, and we already tax all the people. Adding another tax before the money is split up is just taxing the same money twice – and the only justification for that is because it’s easy to make the ignorant hate ‘evil corporations who hardly pay any taxes.’