SIMPLIFICATION LEADS TO SUFFOCATION OF US ECONOMY

[Joanne98]

Periodically, I go to Seeking Alpha to dispute the editorials there. Here is a typical example of bad thinking from small, simple minds. Across the entire spectrum of writing online about this crisis we are in, I seldom see the word ‘Japan.’ Most articles focus on China. Or OPEC. Or blame Americans for the mess our internationalist ruling elites created.

Our Rube Goldberg Economy - Seeking Alpha

Rube Golbergism indeed! In fact, if you close your eyes you can easily imagine the gigantically monstrous, creaking, clacking, lurching machine that our economy has become. At its heart is an engine so strong, sleek and pure that it somehow manages to cart around all of the junk that has been bolted onto it over the years, yet as the machine wheezes and stumbles, it seems evident that the engine may be at the point of seizing. And the response in Washington is to bolt on more parts.

The evidence of misuse is everywhere. The tax code has become a cipher that men train for years to faintly understand and exploit. Farm policy rewards the rich for not producing a commodity in which we enjoy a worldwide advantage. Recoverable carbon based reserves are left in the ground as we bemoan our dependence upon foreign oil. Banks are simultaneously jawboned to lend more money into the teeth of a severe recession and to behave conservatively lest an army of newly empowered bank examiners shut them down. The list is endless.
>>>
Mr. Lindmark is like a lot of starry-eyed thinkers who are very, very naive. First of all, the entire reason the tax code is so complex is very simple: the corporations themselves, the rich themselves, make it complicated so they can evade paying taxes! Period! Every ’simplification’ of the tax code hurts the lower classes who don’t have a very complicated code and benefits the rich who demand tax cuts in exchange for removing all their complex deductions, etc.

They always pretend that the tax code is hard to figure out. But NOT for THEM! They adore this complexity! They make money off of it! So we cut their taxes more and more and for a few years, the tax code is not so complex. What happens next?

The rich and powerful sneak into DC and insert more and more complex exceptions into the code so they pay less and less taxes! Over the last 35 years, they have done so well at this, their share of the wealth is now double what it was in Nixon’s day. Today, the share of wealth at the bottom is half of what it was back then!

Continued>>>
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/simplification-leads-to-suffocation-of-us-economy/#more-495