You’ll shoot your eye out kid

So the tax cut is law. I will not take sides on the merits of the actual act itself, but I would lik to discuss the underlying merits of the argument for tax cuts. Paul Ryan cited the corporate tax rate of Ireland and other countries when he said we need to cut corporate taxes to remain competitive. Ireland is a nation of less than 5,000,000. Their military has just over 9,000 members. About 0.2% of their nation is in the Defence Forces of Ireland (of course defense has a c in it...). The United States is about 70x bigger than Ireland. And the United States military is more than 140x bigger than Ireland’s in terms of personnel. When it comes to the cost, the US spends about $600billion on the military (3.3% of the GDP). Ireland spends about $1.2billion on their defense forces (about 0.3% of the GDP).

I say this not to denegrate the Irish Army, but to point out that we can have low taxes or the worlds largest military. It is not possible to do both without either going broke or changing how we operate.  Ireland does not have foreign bases and nuclear submarines. They also chose to use their tax revenue for things like national health care and a government owned national railway. In America we chose to have tanks and stealth bombers. Ireland also taxes capital gains at 32% and with their VAT the tax rate on highest earners is about 52%. So they make up for a low corporate tax rate by a higher personal tax. We lie to ourselves and lower both.

As Steve Bannon said, the goal of the administration is the deconstruction of the administrative state. Take away corporate tax revenue and you take away funding from organizations. Take away funding from government organizations and the service degrades. When the service is finally so poor they privatize the industry and rich bankers get more money.

So while we’ll all enjoy the tax cut, we won’t enjoy the new 12 month wait for a passport and the cut to your social security benefits. I believe most government employees and managers want to do well. Stripping them of funding will only cause them to leave or provide poor service. Regardless of how the manager performs, the deconstruction of the administrative state is a real concept and it is really dangerous to the belief our country will continue to be compassionate.  We can joke all we want about lazy feds, but when those feds are gone, good luck getting service from a private company responsible for providing your Medicare benefits while being motivated by profit.

Torpor

I have been unsure if I wanted to continue with my blog after the 2016 election.  The blog was not meant to be political.  But in mid to late 2016, it was hard not to connect politics to nearly everything.  So for a while, I've left the blog dormant.  Well, I have awoke from hibernation and I'll try my best not to be partisan.  (Torpor, for those of you like me who had not heard that word before today, is like hibernation, but not quite). 

Federal employees are limited in their political statements during an election by the Hatch Act.  The Hatch Act is more than 75 years old and is supposed to prevent federal employees from using their positions to influence elections.  The election is over.  Politicians are fair game, even for those of us covered by the Hatch Act.  So federal workers are free to wake from your slumber and spring into action like this:

 

I worked with some people that were pro-Clinton, some that were anti-Clinton, and one that was pro-Trump.  Those last two are not necessarily the same thing.  As a talented instigator, I could join either crowd and get them easily riled up, before they got frustrated and walked away insisting that they could no longer discuss the election due to the Hatch Act.  The only person who refused to engage was the one Trump supporter. 

While I used to enjoy reading about politics and keeping up-to-date on politics, the 2016 election cycle sapped me of any cynical enjoyment I got out of thinking one candidate or another might destroy our political system.  Because we elected a guy who actually said he is going to do that.  And sometimes when chaos meets reality, it is not pretty. 

So I'm going to start posting frequently and avoid politics as much as possible. 

(*This is what the news feels like when you're trying to avoid politics!)