GUY'S GOT STYLE

Just got finished listening to The Leader from the Rose Garden. The guy has style. Apparently, the upcoming campaign is going to be a redo of 2008 focusing on the battle of the classes...at least as far as he's concerned...and class means taxes. Quote of the speech: "The Republicans in Congress are standing in the way of a tax cut for the middle class." Try as I might, I haven't found anyone anywhere who is proposing a middle class tax cut. To stand in the way of one, somebody has to propose one. Right? Not in D.C. and not in the mind of The Leader. All the discussion is about not letting the so-called Bush tax cuts expire next year and in the mind of The Leader, not letting them expire equates to cutting taxes which is going to happen unless the Repubs fold and agree to let the cuts for the "rich" expire and God knows what else. They learn different at Columbia and harvard Law I guess.To us out here in the fly over zone keeping what you got and not having it raised aint a cut. I guess he really must be smarter than all of us.

All of this caused me to think about the bigger philosophical piece. I once had a friend named Stanley. Stanley has passed on but in the time he was around Stanley was the World's Smartest Man. He often reminded me of his status and despite that I really liked Stanley and he was very smart. We were once off together visiting Hungarian clients when Stanley got into a discussion of Hungarian history. There was some disagreement (disagreement and Stanley were inseperable) as to the origin of the Magyars which Stanley settled by the simple ploy of telling them not to disagree because he was a history major at Harvard---that school again. The disagreement ended; the Hungarians were rendered speechless.

Anyway, I once asked Stanley if the concept of progressive taxation didn't cause him some difficulty as it seemed strange to me that the greater the success one achieved the greated one was taxed (penalized). It seemed to go against the old Protestant ethic and the Jewish concept (Stanley was Jewish) that hard work and good deeds would be rewarded. "Not at all," said Stanley. "Why," said I? "Because we weren't taught to think that way"...at Harvard. The discussion ended much like in Hungary.

Despite Stanley, I still have a lingering problem with the concept. Oh I don't mean that we should not be taxed for the services the government performs on our behalf, but is one works like hell, plays by the rules, creates value for his fellow citizens and one's country, why should that person be taxed more than one whose success is not as great for any reason? To refer to one of The Leader's favorite sayings, we should all have some skin in the game but why should the percentage of one person's skin be far greater than that of another? Shouldn't we all have the same percentage of skin removed? To engage in the rituals in which we engage every four or so years seems to be ridiculous when at the present time, under out tax code, more than FIFTY PER CENT of our citizens and residents have NO skin in the game at all. Think about it as will I. You can be sure The Leader will not. He wasn't taught that way