Tag: Wealthy

Rapid Death Of A Tax Plan

Recently Obama proposed that the money in college funds, hencewith called “529”, be taxed at time of withdrawal……and the Right sphere of politics exploded with negativity…..pundits from all persuasions started pissing and moaning……and claiming that it would be devastating to the average American to have their savings for their children taxed.

The typical GOP attack was that it will hurt the Middle Class…..which is their typical smoke screen when taxes are proposed……but there is a hole in their theory………

In reality 97% of us mere mortals have NO such savings account and the 3% that do include those that were the loudest critics like the anchors from MSNBC morning shows…….in essence only the wealthy have these plans.  The rest of us have to depend on grants and scholarship and massive student debt for our children to go to college.

For days the relentless attacks on the manhood of the president was just mind numbing…..and then the news broke………

President Obama has backed away from a plan to end a tax break for “529” college saving plans after meeting a backlash from lawmakers from both parties. The White House, which had presented the plan as a way to end a tax break mainly enjoyed by the wealthy and replace it with a fairer—and much larger—tuition tax credit, now says the issue has become a “distraction” and it will focus on “education tax relief that has bipartisan support,” reports the New York Times. House Speaker John Boehner had urged the president to drop what he called a tax hike, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was among the Democrats calling for Obama to reconsider the move.

The 529 plan, which is sponsored by all 50 states, is “a pretty good deal, and one that’s been around since 2001,” says NPR‘s Tamara Keith. “But the White House says fewer than 3% of families use these accounts—and 70% of the money in them comes from families earning more than $200,000 a year.” The Wall Street Journal, however, accuses Obama of trying to squeeze middle-class taxpayers, noting that as of last June, there were 11.8 million 529 accounts and the average balance was $20,671.

As usual the wealthy gets their way…….that is how we roll here in the good old US of A……..screw everyone but the wealthy.

Not The Perfect Way To Wealth

(Heavy sigh)…….the weekend and my brain needs a break…….battling gun nuts, immigration toads and foreign affairs novices is just too tiring…..so today I can step back and breathe……

We are always looking for ways to increase our wealth……and I recently read a report, an old report, that is just spooky……..

Sure, nuclear attacks on the US could level populated areas—but two papers conclude that Americans would see an economic upside, Medium reports. The first, a 1969 report by the Institute for Defense Analyses, looks at a possible nuclear strike on Houston, Texas. It says that Americans would be “relatively” wealthier after a nuclear strike. How so? Buildings would be vaporized at a lower rate than people, so survivors would have their choice of domicile. “In a macabre sense, the surviving population would be individually ‘wealthier’ than before the attack,” says the report.

And the bigger the bomb, the bigger the boom: A 10-megaton blast would nearly double property values, while a nuclear strike ten times that size would multiply values by four. A 1979 report by the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment came to another morbid conclusion, that a limited Soviet nuclear strike on America’s petroleum reserves and oil refineries would decimate transportation industries and force people to live in dense cities—thereby boosting urban real estate prices. Both papers note, however, that cities might not be too livable after such an attack. And not all such reports have rosy upsides: one by the Cato Institute in 1987 notes that a nuclear strike would send painful ripples across the economy at the same time people tapped the government for disaster loans. “Business insurance would certainly not cover this type of catastrophe,” it notes.

Would that be the Big bang that everybody is always going on about?