A Liberal Champions the Struggling Super-Rich

  

IT MUST BE TOUGH to be a billionaire or a loose-change kind of multi-millionaire in America today.

For that reason, I feel it is my duty as a card-carrying liberal who has seen the error of his fiscal ways, to convince others that we should all get behind the GOP tax reform plan now wending its way through Congress.

It has to sad to be super-rich.

If you are one of the aggrieved, you pay (in theory) 39.6% of all the money you make in federal taxes. If you are a leading hedge fund manager and earned $1.6 billion by the sweat of your brow in 2016, as did James Simons, you would have left only $966.4 million to spend on your next family vacation.

It can’t be much fun to be a billionaire at Christmas, either. Please, Daddy, can we finally buy a real boat, you hear your daughter say. If you are Paul Allen, you have been paying exorbitant taxes all your life. This has nearly destroyed your incentive to work. But you soldier on. What choice do you have? You have to provide the necessities for your loved ones.

Luckily, you have scrimped and saved and have a bit left over in the form of the NFL team you own, the Seattle Seahawks, and a total of $17.8 billion in assets, and this crummy little scow (see below).

OF COURSE, IN A PERFECT capitalist society, which is exactly what we have in America today, as every Fox News viewer knows, the typical super-rich individual makes more money than the average worker because the typical super-individual simply works harder. He or she never bends rules or asks for government handouts, not even free football or baseball stadiums. In fact, these people create bazillions of jobs through their wealth for the average worker. Why, if we give them a tax break, they will create jobs for more lobbyists, to cite one irrefutable totally free market example. They will send fresh lobbyists to the nation’s capital, to help the 12,000 already there and those lobbyists will work only for the good of the American people.

For example, lobbyists from the drug companies will work tirelessly to see that drug prices come crashing down.

See how perfectly the free market works? The super-rich also create jobs for right-wing pundits, who sell the unwitting the bill of goods that anyone who says the system needs to be altered in even the slightest is actually a communist and wants to take away all their guns and make them stop saying, “Merry Christmas.” So, yes, this is absolutely the case. You deserve, if you are a company CEO, to make as much, on average, as what 335 of your employees makes every year.

If your workers don’t like it, this is capitalism, my friends, and you, the hard-working CEO, can ship a few jobs to Bangladesh, where workers know better than to expect pensions and health benefits.

Or paid vacations.

ALSO, YOU DON’T HEAR workers in Bangladesh complaining about a need for government safety regulations just because a factory collapsed on their heads and mashed 1,100 contented workers.

Government safety regulations stifle job creation!

And it may be even worse for the super-rich in America today, because I have also seen a shocking estimate that indicates top CEO’s make only 204 times as much as their average worker.

That would be tragedy atop catastrophe—making only as much, year in, year out, as your typical worker is going to earn over the next two centuries (assuming, of course, said typical worker doesn’t retire early).

We should also remember that with great wealth comes great responsibility. You have to decide, for example: Do I hide some of my multi-millions in the Cayman Islands. Or would a secret Swiss bank account be a better option?

Fortunately, the people of the Cayman Islands (population 61,559) know how hard you work. They’re not trying to reach in your wallet every day and steal a wad of your Benjamin  Franklins. So you can go down on your yacht and lounge around in the sun and talk to your Cayman Islands trust fund manager or visit one of the 200 international banking institutions located in this tropical land. You can also visit, perhaps, your company headquarters, or any of the other 95,000 headquarters located in the Caymans, which, if I do the math correctly, means your average corporate headquarters is producing 1 ½ jobs for every human being in the area. In other words, the people of the Caymans understand how a free market works and that is why they help guard $3.5 trillion in assets that you and other over-taxed, members of the top 1% have parked on the premises.

Be honest, now, my fellow liberal Americans!

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY to Alice Walton, the threadbare sister of the Walton clan, if you chanced to meet her? It can’t be easy for her, sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner and asking her snooty brothers to pass the mashed potatoes, knowing they look down on her because she’s a veritable pauper.

Don’t be obtuse! Alice Walton clearly needs a tax cut. And if she gets it she will rush out and create more good jobs for WalMart greeters. Her net worth, after all the crippling taxes, is a minuscule $38.2 billion.

By comparison, S. Robson Walton is worth $38.3 billion and Jim Walton is worth $38.4 billion.

In other words, Alice is hurting. If she spends $1 million every day she’ll be flat broke by the summer of 2121.

Do you want that? Do you really relish seeing Alice living in a cardboard box in some urine-soaked alley?

And think of Sheldon Adelson! He’s still slaving away at age 84 and donating wads of cash to GOP politicians. Buying politicians by the shopping cart full isn’t cheap and if you have to pay for politicians as a business expense, yes, you deserve a tax cut! A guy like Adelson donates $150 million in 2012 to defeat Barack Obama and gets nothing for his investment! So he has to donate $45 million to elect Donald J. Trump and assorted Republicans, exactly the type of men and women who are going to look out for the average blue collar worker. Plus Adelson has to chip in $5 million to help fund the Trump Inauguration and all he has left is a measly $35.4 billion.

THINK OF THE POOR Koch brothers, Charles and David, who got both literally and figuratively killed while Commie Obama was in office. In 2008 each brother was worth $19 billion and by the time Commie Obama left Washington their fortunes had dwindled to…$48.5 billion.

Each.

Come to think of it, I am often reminded by my dear conservative friends that I should thank President Trump because he is foregoing the $400,000 annual salary he is owed as Tweeter-in-Chief.

And that saves taxpayers plenty.

Fortunately, he has made ends meet since the election by ordering a modest increase in membership fees at Mar-a-Lago. With 500 members, and a doubling of the fee to $200,000, you can see why Mr. Trump and all his friends at this exclusive golf club can’t survive without a tax cut.

By now, I trust all my readers are weeping profusely. So let’s finish with a few quick examples to show why the super-rich need relief. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (estimated worth: $2 billion) needs a cut so he can hire a good accountant and hide even more wealth in offshore tax havens. Martin Shkreli needs a break so he can keep the single recorded copy in the world of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by the Wu-Tang Clan, for which he paid millions. This will allow him to focus on his work and stick to raising drug prices by 5,000%, which he did do.

Yes, my liberals, it is time to eat some delicious crow.

IT IS TIME TO ADMIT the GOP tax reform plan will make America great again. Call it: The Revenge of the Robber Barons!

The CEO of General Electric will get the tax cut he needs and be able to make the hard decisions with a clear head, decisions like laying off 12,000 more workers. Or contacting suppliers in China—where, for some odd reason, all GE light bulbs are now made.

If Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gets a tax cut he and his wife will be better able to afford the cottage they bought recently in the nation’s capital. Also, she will be able to afford more $15,735 clothing ensembles.

The humble Mnuchin abode on Massachusetts Avenue: a bargain at $12.6 million.

Last, but not least, economically speaking, if the GOP tax plan passes as currently written President Trump himself will save an estimated $1 billion dollars.

Or to put it in perspective: his tax cut, which he will have earned by draining the swamp and filling it with gold bars for billionaires, will be equal to what 20,558 ordinary workers make annually in America.

And that, my friends, is exactly how we make America great again. 

That and by electing Judge Roy Moore, an accused sexual predator, to the United States Senate!