Media Cheat On Tax Refunds

                I have a confession to make. I should have seen this coming. But, distracted by the Green New Deal and the Democrats sudden wholehearted embrace of all-out socialism at the very same time Venezuelans are starving and their socialist government is burning the food and relief supplies the capitalist U.S. has sent to them, I did not. I am talking about the media’s fixation on Americans who are suddenly “shocked” and “frightened” by ramifications of the new tax law recently passed by the Trump administration. I have seen no fewer than three articles on this “topic” already today (as I write this). 

                The typical article starts out by interviewing a couple who have always received a tax refund. They say something like, “We were shocked and dismayed…frightened really…when we found out that we were getting a smaller refund this year. We had no idea, no inkling. No one told us this would be the case. We had plans for that money that we will now not receive. We don’t know what to do!”

                Apparently, I.Q.s have been dropping even faster among American citizens in general than testosterone levels have been among men in particular. Here’s a helpful tip for the low-information voter and the media: when significantly less taxes are taken out of your earnings, you will get less back. In fact, in a sane society, if you didn’t pay any taxes at all, you couldn’t get a “refund.” Logically, you can’t be refunded what you never paid.

                Americans have become so dumb and docile that they utilize their own tax refund as if it was a gift from the government or alms from a charity group…that they’ve come to rely on. (This is why the government should have to wait to take "its" money until after the wage-earner receives a check for every last penny earned. Ideally, an IRS agent would have to physically knock on tax-payers doors and say, “Gimme 30% of your income in cash now, please, or I’ll have to run you in” for the message to take hold). Memo to the economically illiterate: overpaying throughout the tax year in order to get a “nice” refund the following year is foolish for two primary reasons. First, inflation averages 3%-4% a year and can be much higher. Therefore, the money you pay in is worth more than the money refunded to you later. Secondly, if instead of overpaying, you put the money you over-payed each pay period into an interest earning account and left it alone, it would accrue even more money. Imagine that!

                Of course, that would require a minimal level of discipline and even a little planning and budgeting, meaning that the vast majority of the public-education-addled, mainstream-media-imbibing, government-largess-loving sheeple will have none of it.

                Consider this analogy: you give your neighbor access to your bank account and agree to give him $1,000 a month to help him out. Instead, he takes $1,200 a month, but writes you a check for $2,400 the following year to repay you for the extra amount he took from you. Would you be thrilled? Would you come to rely on this “income?” Would you be upset, “shocked” and “frightened” if he stopped taking more than was agreed upon and returning it to you at a later date? This is insanity.

                Nearly 9 out of 10 taxpayers will pay less in taxes this year due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was passed despite the fact that not a single Democrat voted for it. Contrast this with the fact that 131 Democrats voted for President Reagan’s Economic Recovery Act of 1981 and 176 voted for the Tax Reform Act of 1986, both of which dramatically reduced tax burdens across the board, and one can see why the party is rapidly re-branding itself as the Democratic-Socialists.

                In a transparent and efficient system, no one would get a refund, as everyone would be paying what they are supposed to be paying, also known as what they “owe.” Which is the opposite of what idiots and Democrats want. Democrats want 70-90 percent top marginal tax rates obfuscated by all sorts of deductions and loopholes targeted at their friends and allies.

                So, the likes of Kamala Harris and “Sally O,” the Associated Press and the Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN, will bend over backwards to highlight those poor people who have been “robbed” of their refunds, even as they pay less in taxes overall. They are nothing more than charlatans, hucksters, purveyors of propaganda. They traffic in a soft evil by glorifying and promoting ignorance. They are Fake News. And they are an existential danger to a representative republic.

                Just ask the Venezuelans.