Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #1006
04/26/2024, 04/27/2024, 04/28/2024
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1) Our $10,000,000,000,000 Federal Government
We mentioned yesterday that Biden has been on an anti-business regulatory jihad in recent weeks. This regulatory noose is like a second tier of tax on the American economy, and the National Association of Manufacturers estimates these annual costs of slightly more than $3 trillion.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has requested a federal budget for the next fiscal year of $7.3 trillion. Add it up, and we now have a government that is sucking $10 trillion of resources out of our private economy.
2) Bet You Didn’t Know That Cutting the Capital Gains Tax Is Racist!
That’s what the Biden Treasury Department is saying.
We had to verify this was real when a reader sent it in, but alas, this report is on the Treasury Department website:
The heart of the study is this table:
Some lowlights:
Treasury found that most of the top tax expenditure categories disproportionately benefited White families relative to Black, Hispanic, and other racial/ethnic groups. One of the most salient results comes from how income from work is taxed differently than income from wealth...
Treasury estimated the benefit of this tax expenditure for preferentially lower rates on certain capital gain and qualified dividend income to be $146 billion for 2023 (U.S. Treasury, 2023) and that 92 percent of the benefits – $135 billion – accrued to White families...
The Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget proposes to increase the top marginal rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent above $400,000, and it would apply this top marginal rate to the long-term capital gains and qualified dividends of taxpayers with taxable income of more than $1 million. An additional proposal would increase the net investment income tax rate by 1.2 percentage points on income above $400,000, bringing the net investment income tax rate to 5 percent for this population. Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.
As shown in a Treasury study, preferential tax rates on long-term capital gains disproportionately benefit White taxpayers.
Give them credit for honesty. Confiscatory, growth-crushing tax hikes on capital are terrible for economic growth and for government revenue – but they might be a good way to stick it to whitey.
This elevates racial politics to a new height of absurdity. We have to raise the top income tax rate and the capital gains tax – both of which will harm the U.S. economy – because it will punish whites more than blacks.
We have a better idea. Instead of making everyone poorer, by raising tax rates, why not EXPAND ownership to all households of all races?
Why don’t we democratize stock ownership – so everyone is an owner – by allowing workers to put their social security taxes into a 401k index fund plan rather than having it swallowed up in the mythical “trust fund”? Then EVERY worker in America would benefit from a lower capital gains tax. Over a lifetime, this would more than quadruple the wealth of whites, blacks, and Hispanics.
Here's a headline of the day that will make you smile:
Apparently, the Biden campaign is annoyed that THE NEW YORK TIMES is TOO NICE TO DONALD TRUMP:
The president’s press flacks might bemoan what they see as the entitlement of Times staffers, but they themselves put the newspaper on the highest of pedestals given its history, stature and unparalleled reach. And yet, they see the Times falling short in a make-or-break moment for American democracy, stubbornly refusing to adjust its coverage as it strives for the appearance of impartial neutrality, often blurring the asymmetries between former President Donald Trump and Biden when it comes to their perceived flaws and vastly different commitments to democratic principles.
4) Judge Throws Out Alaska's Decade-Old School Choice Law
This is a dangerous court ruling that needs to be nipped in the bud.
Despite all of the progress we’ve seen in states passing laws expanding school choice, the education blob is busy trying to undermine existing choice programs.
The teacher unions won an initial success in convincing a liberal Alaskan Judge to strike down a decade-old Alaska law that allows parents of 24,000 homeschooled students to receive up to $4,500 in a school year to pay for approved expenses. (In remote areas of Alaska, homeschooling is often the only practical way to educate kids.)
Judge Adolf Zeman declared all such payments were an unconstitutional transfer of state money to private education. “Public funds are not to spent on private educations,” he ruled.
Governor Mike Dunleavy will appeal the court ruling. If the goal is to provide the best education possible, why not expand the funds to include private and Catholic schools that work best for parents and their kids.
The argument that payments to parents for their children’s education are an illegal subsidy to private or religious schools is flawed. “If the state, for example, created a program that was giving a monthly allowance to people to purchase food, no one would think that is a direct benefit for a specific grocery store, because the state doesn’t know how people are going to spend their money,” says the Institute for Justice. The people getting the “direct benefit” are parents and their kids.
It’s just more evidence that liberals prioritize the unions over the welfare of the children.
If anything good can come of the absurd three-ring circus trial of Donald Trump in New York, it has highlighted the rampant partisan corruption of our justice system under Joe Biden.
Just last month, Trump's economic advisor Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison.
Why? Allegedly, for failing to testify against President Trump before a House select committee investigating Trump's activities after the 2024 election.
Our CTUP team often worked with Navarro during policy visits to the White House. We didn't always agree with his positions, and in some cases, we had dramatically opposite views on issues like free trade.
But Peter Navarro is not a criminal. He is a political prisoner. His real “crime” was to work in the Trump White House and provide policy advice to Trump. The Biden administration has turned the Justice Department into a weapon to intimidate and bludgeon their political enemies. Any of us who are “guilty” of working for the Trump administration are at risk.
This is a Fidel Castro-system of justice.
If this “round-em-up” tactic is allowed to stand, we could be publishing the HOTLINE behind bars as enemies of the state if the Biden administration continues. Don't laugh. These people are deadly serious. And they are constructing an enemies list as we speak.
