Sometimes I pop into a store and buy a King Size bag of Peanut M&Ms. Calling a little 3.27 ounce handful of candy that fits in the palm of your hand "King Size" seems an insult to royalty everywhere, and I'm really surprised some monarch hasn't declared war, or at least filed a slander lawsuit, against the makers of M&Ms. Perhaps the world is starting to learn to live together.
I usually buy these M&Ms when I'm feeling a little hungry, something to tide me over between lunch and dinner. Sometimes I buy them even when I'm not feeling so much hungry as anxious or angst-ridden, and just feel the need to chew something or give myself a sugar rush. I scarf the little brightly colored spheres down half-consciously, and they usually are gone within a few minutes.
We all do this on occasion. Millions of these little snacks are consumed every day, tiny financial and caloric transactions that are barely a blip on our budgets or our diets. Sometimes, however, I think it's important to put these snacks into a broader context.
I customarily spend 99 cents on my bag of Peanut M&Ms. Around the world, there are an estimated 1.3 billion people who struggle to live on earnings of one dollar or less per day.
That bag of Peanut M&Ms that I treat as a little snack has 480 calories. That represents approximately one quarter of the minimum daily recommended caloric intake for an active adult. Yet there are billions of people around the world who suffer from malnutrition, who can't get 2000 calories worth of food per day. For the most serious cases of starvation, even that 480 calories is but a dream.
In other words, what to me is a little between-meal snack, purchased with pocket change and consumed almost without thinking, represents every bit of money and every bit of food that well over a billion people around the world have to live on. Yes, I may be struggling with a credit card debt that now stands at $25,059.51, and within the United States my earnings are well towards the lower end of the scale, but relatively speaking within the entire spectrum of human experience, I am extraordinarily wealthy.
Saturday, May 03, 2003
Monday, April 28, 2003
More on Taxes
In my previous entry I said that despite the fact that we had to add $3000 to our enormous credit card bill to pay the taxes on April 15, I opposed the Bush tax cuts. In fact, I said I'd be happy to pay more taxes, if only we had a government that believed in the social contract and believed it had a role to play in bettering society.
But no. Bush wants to slash taxes, with most of the money going to the wealthy...pandering to the greed of the rich. He compounds this shameful rewarding of greed by seeking support among average voters with appeals to their selfishness, populist pablum about how the money would be better off in your pocket than in the government's. Finally, the ultimate goal of his manipulative use of greed and selfishness is slothfulness on the part of the government. Bush only wants enough of your tax dollars to wage wars around the world, but he wants the government to have less responsibility for the things we need here at home, all those things help us work together as a society in order to create the best possible lives for ourselves. To me, it all adds up to a very short-sighted policy.
Greed, selfishness, sloth and short-sightedness...that's our government under Bush.
They try and hide the fact that their tax policy is based primarily on the greedy rewarding of the already well off by citing 'supply-side economics.' This is the same free lunch idea tried under Reagan, claiming that a cut in taxes will spur so much economic activity that government will take in even more in taxes. It didn't work then...deficits soared under Reagan...and it won't work now.
Of course, the supply-siders claim the problem back then was that the tax cuts weren't big enough. Economists who still support supply-side also claim they now have better ways of predicting the benefits through the use of something called 'dynamic scoring.' Republican Congressional leaders tapped an ardent supporter of dynamic scoring to head the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, gleefully expecting his budget analysis would strongly support tax cuts.
Oops. No such luck. Of the various scenarios crunched by the Congressional Budget Office, some forecast a slight reduction in the budget deficit, some saw the budget get larger, and not one of the scenarios predicted that Bush's tax cut would pay for itself over the next ten years.
But here's the wackiest part. According to the Wall Street Journal, of the two scenarios that forecast lower budget deficits, "both those models got their results by assuming that after 2013, taxes would be raised to eliminate the remaining deficit. The theory is that people will work harder between 2004 and 2013 because they know their taxes will be going up, and will want to earn more money before those tax increases take effect."
Let's look at that again. This is how economists think your brain works: They think you are going to sit down in 2004 and think 'damn it, I bet the government is gonna raise my taxes nine years from now, so i'll fool them. I'm gonna work real hard and make a lot of money between now and 2013, and when that damn tax increase goes into effect, I'll quit my high-paying job and switch to some low tax bracket job like maybe flipping burgers for McDonalds. Ha Ha, I'll be damned if the IRS is gonna take my money."
Yes, the whole supply-side arguement is a farce, but even worse than that, it is a smokescreen for the true intentions of the conservative Republicans currently in charge. It doesn't matter to them whether or not their tax cuts ultimately bring more revenue to the government, because they don't really want more revenue. They don't believe in government.
I find it frightening that Bush and his cronies in government are so willing to sacrifice the economy, the quality of life in our country and the prospects of future generations to feed their own narrow, selfish and greedy financial and ideological interests. And it's not only left-leaning types like me who are saying this. Stephen Roach is chief economist for the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley, and he calls Bush's tax cuts " a policy blunder of monumental proportions...[which]...could well be the tipping point that finally brings this house of cards tumbling down." (Click here to read his article)
You know you don't want to accept this. You know you don't want the government to get away with thinking you are this stupid and this selfish. Speak out against the Bush tax cuts.
But no. Bush wants to slash taxes, with most of the money going to the wealthy...pandering to the greed of the rich. He compounds this shameful rewarding of greed by seeking support among average voters with appeals to their selfishness, populist pablum about how the money would be better off in your pocket than in the government's. Finally, the ultimate goal of his manipulative use of greed and selfishness is slothfulness on the part of the government. Bush only wants enough of your tax dollars to wage wars around the world, but he wants the government to have less responsibility for the things we need here at home, all those things help us work together as a society in order to create the best possible lives for ourselves. To me, it all adds up to a very short-sighted policy.
Greed, selfishness, sloth and short-sightedness...that's our government under Bush.
They try and hide the fact that their tax policy is based primarily on the greedy rewarding of the already well off by citing 'supply-side economics.' This is the same free lunch idea tried under Reagan, claiming that a cut in taxes will spur so much economic activity that government will take in even more in taxes. It didn't work then...deficits soared under Reagan...and it won't work now.
Of course, the supply-siders claim the problem back then was that the tax cuts weren't big enough. Economists who still support supply-side also claim they now have better ways of predicting the benefits through the use of something called 'dynamic scoring.' Republican Congressional leaders tapped an ardent supporter of dynamic scoring to head the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, gleefully expecting his budget analysis would strongly support tax cuts.
Oops. No such luck. Of the various scenarios crunched by the Congressional Budget Office, some forecast a slight reduction in the budget deficit, some saw the budget get larger, and not one of the scenarios predicted that Bush's tax cut would pay for itself over the next ten years.
But here's the wackiest part. According to the Wall Street Journal, of the two scenarios that forecast lower budget deficits, "both those models got their results by assuming that after 2013, taxes would be raised to eliminate the remaining deficit. The theory is that people will work harder between 2004 and 2013 because they know their taxes will be going up, and will want to earn more money before those tax increases take effect."
Let's look at that again. This is how economists think your brain works: They think you are going to sit down in 2004 and think 'damn it, I bet the government is gonna raise my taxes nine years from now, so i'll fool them. I'm gonna work real hard and make a lot of money between now and 2013, and when that damn tax increase goes into effect, I'll quit my high-paying job and switch to some low tax bracket job like maybe flipping burgers for McDonalds. Ha Ha, I'll be damned if the IRS is gonna take my money."
Yes, the whole supply-side arguement is a farce, but even worse than that, it is a smokescreen for the true intentions of the conservative Republicans currently in charge. It doesn't matter to them whether or not their tax cuts ultimately bring more revenue to the government, because they don't really want more revenue. They don't believe in government.
I find it frightening that Bush and his cronies in government are so willing to sacrifice the economy, the quality of life in our country and the prospects of future generations to feed their own narrow, selfish and greedy financial and ideological interests. And it's not only left-leaning types like me who are saying this. Stephen Roach is chief economist for the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley, and he calls Bush's tax cuts " a policy blunder of monumental proportions...[which]...could well be the tipping point that finally brings this house of cards tumbling down." (Click here to read his article)
You know you don't want to accept this. You know you don't want the government to get away with thinking you are this stupid and this selfish. Speak out against the Bush tax cuts.
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