Kamala: $5 Trillion in New Taxes
Kamala Harris’ economic plan is taking shape, starting with $5 trillion in new taxes—because Washington clearly does not have enough money to spend
In the past fortnight alone, Harris has promised to hike taxes on small businesses to 39.6% and hike taxes on capital gains and dividends to a top rate of 44.6%—the highest in history, even beating the communist-adjacent Jimmy Carter.
Since taxing half your life savings doesn’t come close to keeping Washington fed, she also wants to hike the corporate rate by a third to 28%. That would take us from one of the best places in the world to do business to one of the worst. We’d be worse than China, Canada, Britain, Russia, even the European Union.
A company would literally make money moving to Canada. And for so-called strategic sectors, our tax rate would be double the rate in China.
Note that workers are the ones who actually pay corporate income tax. A Tax Foundation study found that they pay around 70% of them in the form of lower wages. The rest is paid by shareholders in lower retirement returns and customers in higher prices. Yes, the same high prices she’s blaming on “price gouging.”
The fun doesn’t stop there.
Harris is also calling for a second death tax, something called “step-up basis” that would treat death as a taxable event. So, not only would the family business or farm have to pay estate taxes when it’s passed on, it would be taxed as if all the assets were sold, with up to 44.6% going to the government on top of the death tax.
Finally, the big one: Harris’ handlers are pushing for something we’ve never taxed in this country: unrealized gains. As in a bureaucrat pretends you sold all your stock and the family farm when you didn’t and sends you a bill anyway.
Like all new taxes, this one is being sold as only hitting the rich, but in reality, it will hit family businesses and farms. Moreover, I mentioned in a recent video how the income tax itself started by only hitting the top 1% at a top rate of 7%—and yet here we are today, with more tax returns than people in this country and a top rate of—if Harris gets her way—44.6%.
Incidentally, Americans overwhelmingly oppose taxes on unrealized gains by a factor of 3 to 1. Seventy-six percent of independents oppose it.
It’s also worth noting Europeans have tried this kind of wealth tax over and over, and every time, it’s failed. The actual rich just move their money and hire better tax lawyers, while small business gets wiped out. Norway, for example, expected to collect $150 million per year from its wealth tax, but instead $54 billion fled the country, taking $600 million of taxes with it.
So, what’s next?
Barely a month into Harris’ presidential candidacy, she’s already far to the left of even President Joe Biden. And keep in mind, this is before the election, when they try not to sound crazy.
We can only imagine what’s coming after the election.
Like drinking radiator coolant, government spending always tastes sweet in the beginning. The stimulus checks, the trillion dollars for green energy, and this week’s war are all painless blips on a debt chart.
Then comes the payback: First, the inflation; then, the taxes that amount to wholesale confiscation of your retirement, of a financial future for the young—all while gutting what’s left of the productive economy.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/28/kamala-trillion-new-taxes/
********************************************************CNN’s Softball Interview of Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris’ very first interview of her campaign aired on CNN Thursday night.
We waited a month and a half for this and Harris’ much anticipated debut ended up containing barely more substance than the policy section of her website. (Don’t search too long for that section; it doesn’t exist.)
The interview began with a glowing montage resembling a movie trailer, settled in with a few tough questions, and ended with a whole lot of meaningless fluff. There were a few word salads mixed in for flavor.
CNN anchor Dana Bash did press Harris on a handful of her long list of flip flops.
She asked Harris why she changed her policy on fracking. In 2019, Harris said that she was in favor of banning fracking. Here she is saying so.
Now she says she no longer backs the ban on fracking. What changed?
Harris couldn’t articulate a particular reason. She said that climate change is real and that the current administration is doing a good job of hitting climate goals, so she won’t do it.
“What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” she said.
The vice president was also asked about the record illegal border crossings since she and President Joe Biden ascended to the White House. Bash noted that she was tasked with solving the “root causes” of illegal immigration from Central America.
This is when Harris was the border czar, a phrase the media has desperately attempted to erase from history.
Harris answered that what she did to address the root causes of illegal immigration has “resulted in a number of benefits, including historic investments by American businesses in that region. The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we’ve began that work.”
She then said it was actually former President Donald Trump who was against border security and that she and Biden were all for the Senate border bill that failed to pass in February.
That bill would have done little to stop the flow of illegal immigration and was largely stuffed with funding for the war in Ukraine to boot.
Bash later followed up with a softball question—asked in the form of a wink, wink answer—about how voters should respond to her shifting sands policy positions.
“How should voters look at some of the changes you’ve made that you explained some of here in your policy?” Bash asked before giving Harris multiple-choice options to respond with. “Because you’ve had more experience now and you have learned more about the information? Is it running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you say now is going to be your policy moving forward?”
Harris fumbled her response anyway with a meandering non-answer but insisted that her values have stayed the same. Take a listen.
Ah, so we’re supposed to believe that while Harris’ policy positions have largely changed in just a few years, her principles remain timeless. But are those values left-wing, moderate, populist, or what? She didn’t explain.
Those were the high points of the interview. There’s little else to say about the policy substance. I suggest you read my colleague Virginia Allen’s fact check of the handful of substantial questions Harris was asked.
Harris notably brought her dad, I mean her running mate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., along with her. He didn’t do much and just kind of sat there like a chaperone.
Walz was asked a question about his alleged stolen valor and why he made false statements about being a war veteran.
“You said that you carried weapons in war, but you have never deployed actually in a war zone. A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you?” Bash asked.
The Minnesota governor didn’t really answer. Walz just said that he’s proud of his service, and that he has poor grammar.
After that there really isn’t much to tell in this edited, 27-minute performance.
Harris was asked about the day Biden dropped out of the race which gave her the chance to tell a whimsical story about puzzles and making bacon when she got the phone call. Walz and Harris were questioned about what enchanted them about the DNC. And Harris was given a moment to talk about a picture of her niece watching her accept the nomination.
These are clearly the issues voters care about.
What we learned from this is that the Harris campaign clearly intends to test the outer limits of how much the media and this regime can simply manufacture a presidency.
Harris’ performance Thursday night wasn’t awful. It was just flat and shallow. She gave cookie cutter, not particularly clarifying. answers to serious questions about governing philosophy.
And it’s hard to say that the American people learned much at all other than that Harris held some policies, then she didn’t, she thinks Biden is a great and wonderful president, but she’s new and fresh.
The question Harris was never really asked and generally didn’t answer was this: Why should she be the president? What does she think she will bring to the White House that would make her an effective commander-in-chief? Why should we think she will be anything more than a lifeless caretaker president like her predecessor?
Harris may be more lucid than Biden at this point, but mere lucidity shouldn’t be the only qualification to be president.
The closest Harris got to answering this question of why she should be president is when she said in her talk about her niece, “I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans.”
That’s not a bad answer for someone running to be class president, but doesn’t really explain to the American people why a candidate who simply got dropped into this race at the last second should become the leader of the free world.
CNN asked a handful of tough questions, but failed to follow up, and left the American people without answers about what Harris actually stands for.
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UK: Here’s an opinion poll you might have missed.
A few days ago, YouGov asked British people whether they would support or oppose increasing deportations of illegal migrants. The results speak for themselves.
More than two-thirds of the country, 67%, would support increasing deportations, rising to 92% among Conservatives and 96% among Reformers.
It’s a reminder of how ordinary people are thinking and feeling, and how the ‘pro-immigration position’ is routinely only represented by 15-20%.
Why am I showing you this?
Because this issue also lies at the heart of something else in British politics that is about to heat up dramatically: the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party, a party that at the general election last month was very nearly destroyed.
Put simply, if there’s one issue more than any other that will determine whether the Conservative Party comes off life support and recovers then it is immigration.
This was the primary reason why millions of disillusioned conservatives abandoned the party for Nigel Farage and Reform’s tougher measures, and has since become the most important issue for ALL people in the country, eclipsing the economy.
And make no mistake: this is also the most important leadership election in the modern history of the Conservative Party.
Why? Because if they get this right they could, perhaps, fend off Nigel Farage and Reform. But if they get this wrong then they will continue their death spiral.
If the Tories elect somebody who is credible and competent on immigration then they might at least stand a chance of survival; but if they elect somebody who is weak and deferential to the status-quo then they will essentially be creating the biggest opening for Nigel Farage that the leader of Reform has ever had.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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