Bob Lord

AZBlueMeanie’s post, Despite economic forecasts, Arizona Lege is drafting a bill for a flat tax that transitions into a consumption tax to eliminate the state income tax, has me wondering:

If we renamed the income tax the “wealth accumulation tax” and renamed the category “consumption taxes” as “economic activity taxes” if views would change.

Conservatives like the concept of a “consumption tax” because consumption seems like it’s the most morally appropriate activity to tax. Even Bill Gates, one of the supposedly “good billionaires” (he’s not) believes in the evils of consumption. And it’s an ugly term, right? It even used to be the name for a horrible disease, tuberculosis. Which makes it feel like a great thing to tax.

But my consumption is your income. So a consumption tax actually is an income tax, although it’s a tax on gross income rather than net income. We’ve been trained to think of it as a consumption tax because it is collected from the consumer. I buy a bicycle for $100 and the retailer collects $8.00 in tax from me. But we just as easily could charge the retailer $8.00 of tax on every $108 of gross receipts and achieve the identical economic result. In fact, in Arizona, the tax actually is imposed on retailers. They’re just permitted to collect it from consumers.

What consumption taxes really tax is economic activity. You know, the thing that makes our economy grow.

And the term “income tax”?

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Most readers here know about the top .01%. They’re the richest of the rich, the top 1% of the top 1% in America. They number about 33,000. They control over 10% of the nation’s wealth and about 6% of our income. They are responsible for the lion’s share of contributions to both political parties. Call them the lucky .01%.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the lucky .01% in my work regarding the concentration of wealth in America.

For the past few days, thought, I’ve been thinking more about a different .01% of us: the 33,000 or so Americans who will lose their lives to gun violence next year if our gun policies and our “gun culture” does not change. They’re the unlucky .01%.

Of course, the two .01 percents are not mutually exclusive. theoretically, a person could belong to both groups. Indeed, if the unlucky .01% were chosen at random from the entire population, we would expect 3 or 4 members of the lucky .01% also to be members of the unlucky .01%.

What if we  knew in advance that the lucky .01%, as a group, was destined to become next year’s unlucky .01%.

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But if I thought it would make a difference, I might consider contributing to her campaign.

Irrational? If you’re a progressive who lives in Arizona, I submit it’s not.

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I’ve written previously about the immorality of Israel declaring itself a “Jewish State.” Before even reaching the morality issue there’s the threshold question of what exactly is a Jewish State. Presumably, it’s only majority Jewish, not exclusively Jewish. But does “Jewish” here refer to race? To religion? To culture? I’ve asked the question many times, received multiple answers, and never come away feeling the person responding had given it much thought. Often, the question is met with annoyance, similar to that felt by some lawyers when clients ask for an explanation of “boilerplate” provisions in contracts.

But I digress. In questioning the morality of the Jewish State, I’ve often borrowed the logic of Ali Abunimah, who explains that if the right to have a Jewish State is morally defensible, then there must be morally acceptable remedies if that right is threatened or violated, by inter-marriage, immigration and emigration patterns, differing fertility rates, or conversion. But what would those remedies be? Deportation of non-Jewish citizens? Forced sterilization? Genocide?

The current refugee crisis brings this into sharp focus.

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We’ve all heard the old quote generally attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Well, a few days ago, I ran across this post at Salon: Donald Trump, national embarrassment: The rest of the world is gawking at his campaign — and us. The title of the post tells you all you need to know. And, if you’d pondered the matter, you wouldn’t have felt the need to research whether America is a subject of ridicule on the world stage these days, thanks to the millions of ignoramuses that support Mr. Trump.

Then the thought occurred to me: America on the world stage is channeling that old Gandhi quote, but in reverse.

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