In one hand and out the other

Hey, reader! There is a good chance that you are an idiot. Luckily, I have a simple test to let you know for certain. Do you believe that you got a tax cut in the last few years? If you answered “yes” to this question, it’s confirmed. You are an idiot. Your government loves you.

Pretty good explanation follows at Metro Pulse.

This is a point I can never seem to make with the people at work who bitch about tax increases. Maybe because of the way I put it. As I keep trying to point out to them, there is a balance that government/companies strike. It's an economic one. The ratio of what they pay out to what they get is a high priority to them. I didn't understand Economics 101 all that well, but if Professor Johnson said it once, he said it a thousand times (per lecture): "Supplyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...Demaaand!" Two words illustrated with two lines on his chalkboard chart. Two lines with an intersection.

Business - with a capital B - knows how much to give you in wages to maintain a profitable relationship between expenditures and income (theirs). You are never going to gain. Wages will go up only when living costs go up. And, I hate to tell you this, but it looks like the former isn't keeping up with the latter. But if the change is gradual enough, we will simply adjust to having to have a two-income family, as is commonplace these days, and complain that it's because our taxes are too high and some welfare queen isn't working.

I also want to point out that the amount of any tax "cut" you get is going to be handily gobbled up in the increase in the price of gasoline, or interest rates, or consumer products of some sort, or the things mentioned in the article linked above. Bet on it. If your taxes are higher, and you threaten not to buy so much other crap, manufacturers and retailers will keep the cost of that crap down. Government/Business is going to look at every line item and every possible calculation to keep you, the wage earner, at just the right intersection of income to expenditure to keep you from forming revolutionary mobs in the streets. I'd just as soon pay some taxes and have decent roads and schools and health care and clean air and clean water. My wages are going to fluctuate with whatever is left over after taxes. Bet on it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How's that for understanding the economy? Not too good?