Payroll Tax Holidays and MMT: It's a funny world: News recap on the Eve of Xmas
December 21, 2011
– Comments (12)
Good article, there is a lot in here to agree with, although I am sure many won't.
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PAYROLL TAX HOLIDAYS AND MMT: IT’S A FUNNY WORLD: NEWS RECAP ON THE EVE OF XMAS
Author: L. Randall Wray · December 21st, 2011
http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/12/21/payroll-tax-holidays-and-mmt-it%E2%80%99s-a-funny-world-news-recap-on-the-eve-of-xmas/
[excerpt]
As Mae Moore says, “It’s a Funny World” (2002). Let’s try to make sense of two news reports. Help me if you can.
1. Republicans reject the payroll tax holiday because it does not go far enough. To complicate matters, the Senate has already gone on its Xmas holiday and is refusing to come back. That leaves the Republicans in a bit of a pickle—they are going to raise taxes on the average American by $1000 per year because they refuse to support a 2 month holiday extension.
Right. Congress wants its long holiday from work, but does not want to give Americans a holiday from paying a regressive tax—the payroll tax—that for the bottom 70% of American workers takes away more income than the Federal Income tax. It is a job killer, too—as it raises the cost of employing Americans over the cost of employing workers just about anywhere on earth (few other countries tax work and employment the way we do—our payroll tax makes American workers more than 12% more expensive). So Republicans want to take away the payroll tax holiday and kill jobs.
That is a rather nice election strategy. And it is bad enough that they’re mainly running clowns for President. With the exception of Ron Paul, is there any serious candidate in the running? No, I didn’t think so. What, they actually WANT President Obama for 4 more years? Why? To continue to bail-out Wall Street? To continue to look the other way while banksters trash the economy?
Apparently the Republicans are hold-outs because they want two noxious additions to the payroll tax holiday legislation. First, they want an environment-killing Keystone pipeline—so they want that linked to the extension of the payroll tax holiday. The wording they prefer forces the President to forego any reasoned analysis of the wisdom of the pipeline by rushing a decision within 60 days. Second, they want to end the extended unemployment compensation benefits—to kill any jobs that the payroll tax holiday created. Right. We’ve been too kind to the environment and to the workers who lost their jobs because of Wall Street’s excesses, so let’s take away the payroll tax holiday and kill as many jobs as we can.
... continued
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