President Bush’s continued efforts to give tax cuts to the rich are just about as ridiculous as violent Islamic protest against the portrayal of Mohammad as a belligerent suicide bomber in a Danish newspaper. That is to say, trickle down economics is a wonderful theory, but it simply does not work. Let me give you a for instance, here. [Editor’s Note: As a general rule, anything involving numbers is too highbrow for Features. If you so desire, you may wish to skip this paragraph altogether.] Consider the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Mr. Goodenrich, making $10 million a year. With this exorbitant salary, he is more than capable of buying that new Ferrari regardless of whether his income tax amounts to $3,474,062.50 or $3,957,740. And I think it’s important to note that I actually did the math out to get those numbers, using a base tax of $88,320 plus 35% and 40%, respectively, of every dollar earned over a bracket-minimum of $326,450. Thank God for the TI-83+. Anyways, back to my point: the fact is that lowering taxes for the upper echelon of high society is far from a good thing. One might argue, as I referred to briefly, that doing so allows the upper class to further stimulate the American economy. However the truth of the matter is that rich people do not purchase American goods. Instead, they drive around in German-made automobiles, wear Italian-made suits, drink French champagne, and invite Thai women over for dinner while their wives are out of town. Furthermore, if stimulating the economy truly is Mr. Bush’s intention, then cutting taxes for the poor would have much the same result. If the President were to give tax breaks to the poor, he could be sure that they would spend their money on real American products, like liquor, cigarettes and lottery tickets. Or, at the very least, they would purchase cheap Chinese imitations of American products that, thanks to the miracle of globalization, would benefit the American economy anyways by way of the higher income taxes paid by those American-companies-turned-multinational-conglomerates that choose to outsource their labor. Yet our President chooses to ignore this simple paradigm. Perhaps Mr. Bush feels that keeping the lower classes on the verge of starvation will keep them from recognizing their own plight. Perhaps he believes that, until the aforementioned anagnorisis takes place, a Republican will always grace the Oval Office with his presence. Or perhaps he just really, really likes driving his Hummer and feels the need to give tax breaks to the oily hand that feeds his insatiable penchant. Regardless of his motivation, it seems clear that the wealthy will not be paying more in terms of income taxes at least until 2008. That is, unless a Republican wins the election. Fortunately, although I do not have a ouija-board on hand, I think it’s safe to say that that’s just about as likely as Dick Cheney shooting one of his hunting buddies by mistake. Again. Notably, there is a far simpler solution to the issue at hand. If the proletariat were to rise up against his bourgeois opressor, all preconceived concepts of “class” would be abolished. We could start over in a far more equal and much happier communistic world. Of course, this assumes that the American people would be willing to put aside their own selfish interests in favor of the good of the nation as a whole. But that, Comrade Reader, is a question of human nature. [Editor’s Note: We’re at least pretty sure that David isn’t actually a Marxist. We decided he just draws no distinction between Democrats and Communists, and thought it would be funny to represent a communist representing a Democrat’s point of view.
