Homelessness and the Trump tax cuts

My friend Susan, my cousin Ralph, and George Clooney Their lives torn asunder by the cruel tax cuts of a heartless president, 58,000 homeless proletariats are living in taxpayer-provided tents on the streets of the People’s Paradise of Los Angeles

If you’re ever hungry for an absurdly delicious plate of food, you need to drop by the home of my long-time friend, Susan. A few years ago, Susan and her husband served my wife and me one of the finest home cooked meals we ever had—South Carolina Lowcountry Shrimp & Grits. To refer to Susan as a ‘good’ cook is like referring to Einstein as a ‘good’ scientist. Susan is not just a cook—she’s world class. She’s also a Democrat. To put it mildly, she doesn’t like President Trump or his tax cuts. She told me last month that the only reason he signed the new tax law is to help his rich friends. (I think she really believes that.) Susan thinks it’s not fair that rich people will get bigger tax cut savings than people who struggle to make ends meet. There’s a reason for that wide disparity, and it doesn’t take an economics professor to figure it out. Tax cut savings are not welfare. They’re a vehicle through which government takes less money from industrious people who work and pay taxes. People who pay the most in taxes get higher dollar amounts in tax cut savings. Similarly, people who pay meager taxes get far less. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic. To understand why the rich get bigger tax cut savings, consider two cases at opposite ends of the income scale. Let’s compare the tax savings of the Joe Sixpack family of four, which earns the typical household income of $59,000, with the tax savings of Hollywood mega-star George Clooney, who earns $10 million per picture. (Actually, he makes double that, but let’s just say $10 million to be on the safe side). And let’s not bother to calculate the amount of the Sixpack’s tax cut savings. Instead, let’s just describe the nearly $1,000 of annual savings they’ll get as “crumbs”—that’s what the multi-millionaire House minority leader calls the tax cut savings of people for whom an extra thou can help pay for braces for the kids or a vacation for the family. Now, let’s look at George Clooney’s tax savings. Since the income tax rate for high earners went down by 4.6 percent, the silver screen heartthrob will save $450,000 from the Trump tax cuts—check the math if you like. George vs. the Sixpack family. $450,000 vs. crumbs. The only way to equalize that disparity is for taxpayers (you and me) to give $450,000 to Joe and his wife and every other non-rich wage earner in America. Do that and the Sixpack’s and their ilk wouldn’t be getting tax cut savings. What they’d be getting is public money they didn’t earn, otherwise known as government welfare. (In socialist countries, excessive welfare is known by the name given it in The Communist Manifesto: wealth redistribution.)

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Anyway, Susan thinks America’s free-enterprise system is unfair for people at the low end of the income scale. She didn’t say so, but I’m sure she loses sleep because the bourgeois class in America lives in mansions, while millions of the proletariat class struggle to afford a decent place to live. I have an idea of how she can help fix that problem in a way that will fit like a glove with her politics. Susan doesn’t live in a mansion, but she and her husband do live in a very nice upper middle class home in a rural area of upstate South Carolina. I have no idea what it’s worth, so I’m just going to pull a number out of the air and say, maybe $500,000? To be on the extra safe side, I’ll cut that number in half, all the way down to $250,000. I’m sure it’s worth at least that. Returning now to the matter of fairness, I know Susan would join me in wondering how is it fair that some people get to live in a $250,00 home, while others are forced by our unfair capitalist country to live in tents. Let’s say that in the interest of all that is right and just, Susan decided to sell her $250,000 home. She then could buy a VERY nice double wide mobile home for say, $100,000. That would leave her with $150,000, enough to buy $25,000 single wides for six (6) homeless proletariats who would love to have a decent place to live. I bet Susan is kicking herself that she didn’t think of that idea first. Susan’s not the only financially flush Democrat I know who could make a difference. A retired award-winning photographer in the motion picture industry, my cousin Ralph has worked on many of the biggest box office hits ever made, and is on first-name basis with Hollywood’s top stars. When it comes to politics, Ralph agrees with Susan that the Trump tax cuts only help the rich—he told me so just last week. Like Susan, I think he really believes that. If my memory’s right, he said a couple of years ago that the condo he and his wife own is worth a million dollars, give or take. Returning again to the matter of fairness, if he sold his condo and downsized to a $100,000 double wide, enough would be left over for him to buy $25,000 single wides for thirty-six (36) of the 58,000 hard-working homeless proletariats who have no choice but to overnight in publically provided tents.

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Like Susan, Ralph is a compassionate person. I don’t see how either of them will be able to resist taking the idea and running with it. Six gifted $25,000 single wides from Susan and another 36 from Ralph. Keep that snowball rolling and America’s days of being an oppressive capitalist hellhole will be numbered. Now, if Ralph could get his fellow Hollywood Democrat, George Clooney—the couple worked together on Ocean’s Twelve—to sell his $131 million, 40-foot ceilings, gazillion-rooms mega-mansion, and downsize to a more modest, but still comfortable, $100,000 double-wide, enough would be left over to buy $25,000 single wides for—sit down for this—5,240 homeless tent people in LA. Now we’re getting somewhere. By choosing action over apathy, compassion over conspicuous consumption, financially comfortable Democrats have the collective ability to prove they are morally superior once and for all by eliminating homelessness in America. All they need do is obey the foremost command of their party’s most revered economist: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Susan, Ralph and George have a chance to make a difference. I’ll let you know if they do. Of course they won’t, because doing so would require genuine sacrifice, and that’s not the way Democrats play the compassion game. Given the realities of charitable giving by party affiliation—as a group, conservatives are demonstrably more generous than liberals—it’s beyond ironic that so many liberals cast their ballots with an unfounded air of moral superiority. The right is routinely portrayed as greedy and uncaring, yet liberals do exactly the same as conservatives when it comes to personal charity: give only as much as it takes to make them feel warm inside, while selfishly hoarding the lion’s share for the benefit of themselves and their family. Neither liberals nor conservatives give until it hurts, but not because no one cares about human suffering. People of all political stripes have simply observed that continually giving money to people whose hands are always up does little to help them turn their lives around, which makes it hard to understand why anyone would support giving an endless stream of government money to the able-bodied poor.

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More about my cousin Ralph…

When he was in Atlanta nine years ago working in his professional capacity as a still photographer on a new movie, Ralph complained to me about what he saw as grossly unfair salary differentials in the motion picture industry. I think the example he cited was the $17 million paid to Hollywood superstar Reece Witherspoon for a single movie. He pointed out, correctly, that he worked just as many hours on the set each day as she did, but was paid only a microscopic fraction as much. Had he spent more time learning about basic economics and less time listening to politicians who preach class envy, he would know there’s a valid reason some workers are paid a truckload more than others. Under the equal-outcomes economic model in communist countries, wide income disparities among workers do not exist. But since America is not a communist country (at least not quite), people here are rewarded not by how hard they work, but by what they contribute to their employer’s bottom line. Reece Witherspoon’s name on the marquee packs theaters with millions of paying customers. As charming as my cousin is, his name on the marquee wouldn’t sell a single ticket. If their roles were reversed—he a $17 million star and she a far lesser compensated photographer—he wouldn’t see anything wrong with the canyon-wide disparity. Looking out for No. 1—also known at the desire to prosper to the greatest extent of one’s ability—is an inborn trait all humans share. Yes, looking out for No. 1 is greed, but greed is why none of us tell the boss to cut our pay in half and give the difference to the janitor. Under capitalism, the normal human desire for personal enrichment is encouraged; under communism, it’s officially snuffed out. As citizens of the greatest land of opportunity the world has ever known, we should all drop to our knees and thank God that American workers are paid based on their relative contributions to their employer’s ability to prosper. Without the small handful of franchise stars like Reece Witherspoon, the movie industry would dry up. Then, nobody would have a job, including my cousin. Capitalism: -- an economic system where trade & industry are controlled by privately-owned entities, rather than by the state Communism: -- a system designed by Karl Marx in which all economic & social activity is controlled by a self-perpetuating totalitarian state