Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, November 27, 2017

I'll retire to bedlam






The minus signs in the above might confuse you so let me make this clear -- a negative number means you pay less in taxes, a positive number means you pay more -- except for the poor, for whom the calculus also accounts for reduced federal subsidies for health care. The Cut Cut Cut! act also adds $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. So if you make less than $75,000 a year, the Republicans -- the party of small government and fiscal responsibility -- want to raise your taxes to partially pay for a massive tax cut for rich people.

Why do they want to do this? They claim that it will boost economic growth and wages, but that is a lie. The reason for this is because Republican politicians are beholden to obscenely rich donors, not voters.

Speaking now for the academic community, the House bill does the following:

  • Imposes a 1.4% tax on income from university endowments. This income is used to provide financial aid, graduate student fellowships, summer internships and research awards for students, and faculty research.
  • Taxes tuition waivers for graduate students as income. Since the students will be taxed on income that they never actually see in the form of money, it will be impossible for them to pay it. That means only people with rich parents will be able to get doctorates.
  • Eliminates the tax deduction for student loan interest, further restricting educational opportunity for low and moderate income people.
Of course, Republicans don't like universities or people with advanced degrees because they don't like truth and knowledge. They prefer a world in which they can spout lies and nobody will sort out truth from falsehood. Maybe they'll get their wish.

5 comments:

Gay Boy Bob said...


"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that man behind that tree!"

Cervantes said...

Tax the rich.

Gay Boy Bob said...


'Rich' is the guy that makes more money than you do.

Don Quixote said...

I've said before that Gay Boy Bob is an infiltrator. But clearly he's not bright enough for that; he's just an annoying idiot. If you don't mind keeping him on your blog site, well, he doesn't ever say anything logical. Fuck it.

Gay Boy Bob said...


Cervantes,

I'm not sure why you think that academia should continue their exemption from income tax. Those that get a waiver gain over those that don't get waivers. Those who's loans were forgiven, also gained and are taxed. Anytime you receive benefit, whether monetary or not, you GAINED...and the default is that it's a taxable event.

Then there's the income off of endowments that you think should continue to be exempted from tax. Doing good stuff and helping the few that already have bachelors degrees at the expense of the taxpayers is not a great answer.

Liberal academics really like government when it's others that pay the bill. But when someone suggests that rich private universities with 3.5 BILLION endowments raking in over 13% annually(45.5 MILLION a year) pay 1.4% in income tax, somehow it's different and horrible!

If your industry depends on massive tax breaks, then there's something wrong with your industry. Maybe $6,500 per graduate course might be part of the problem or perhaps it's profs that are paid deep into six figures plus retirement and benefits that might be driving the boat.