Taxes and Jobs
Playing with the tax code generates jobs for programmers changing the payroll programs, and it’s the same amount of work whether the taxes go up or down.
The Florida legislature loves to have “sales tax holidays” during which sales taxes are not collected on specific items. Usually there’s one before the start of hurricane season for flashlights, batteries, and other “emergency supplies” and another before the start of school on school supplies and children’s clothing. This requires reprogramming the cash registers and computer systems for businesses, so, again, the people who do the programming get some extra work, and the business sector has an extra expense.
No one hires people because of the tax rate. The whole concept is a form of dementia. You hire people because your customers want more of your goods or services. A middle class tax cut is going to help people pay off their debts, but will have a minimal impact on demand. If you want to boost demand, you put more money in the hands of poor people. Poor people spend whatever they get to survive. This isn’t a matter of economic policy or theory – it is economic reality.
2 comments
Please don’t bring these “facts” thingies into the picture. This is the post-factual world, where facts don’t matter, only ideology matters. Ideology says that poor people are poor because they don’t work hard — nevermind that there’s no data to support that notion and indeed all the data show that the poor work even more hours at harder and more menial jobs than other Americans — and thus giving tax breaks to the working poor is just rewarding laziness. The notion that there are good hard-working people who are poor because of deliberate government action transferring wealth from working people to the Paris Hilton class? Class warfare! Class warfare! Well yeah. Except it’s the Paris Hilton class of leaches who are doing the warfare…
It’s all about spite, and all about hurting people. That’s the only thing that matters nowdays. Hurting people. Who can you cause pain to? We have become a nation of sadistic bastards using nonsensical ideologies to hurt other people for no reason other than that we like hurting other people, and nobody seems to notice, or give a shit if they do notice.
– Badtux the Disgusted Penguin
We end up hurting ourselves. We are shelling out billions to banks and there is absolutely no evidence that they intend to lend any of it, and a lot of evidence that they are going to hoard it to improve their balance sheet.
The markets are getting hammered by institutions trying to convert assets to cash, and every time it drops more people are pulled into the black hole of the market.
We need to get the money moving. We need people buying to generate some demand. There is no way to jobs will be created until there is a demand for goods and services. There are rumors of sales already starting in anticipation of a total lack of Christmas buying. We are in a mess, and no one wants to admit how bad it really is.