LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

Several decades ago, it was discovered that sixteen people with incomes over one million dollars paid no tax on it. The result of this discovery was that the Congress created the "Alternative Minimum Tax." People in the highest tax bracket had to hire an accountant to calculate their taxes under the regular tax code, and the AMT code, and pay whichever amount was greater. The only problem was that the AMT was not pegged to inflation. This has forced successive congresses to pass "patches" to keep it from affecting millions of current-day middle class taxpayers. For some reason, they've never gotten rid of it. Recently, I read that over one thousand people who earned over one million dollars in income paid no tax on it. I guess that not pegging the AMT to inflation wasn't the only problem with it, after all, if the number of million-dollar earners who paid no tax grew by around 7,000%. I don't know what percentage of all US million-dollar earners those 1...

Jimmy Hoffa Jr. claims to represent "working families," but unions represent around 6% of the private workforce, and less than 25% of public employees. If this is his "army," it's dwarfed by the majority of working people, who have to compete for employment based on competence, not seniority in a union. Public sector unions have even less claim to represent "all working people," since they are paid by the much larger group of taxpaying citizens, who don't receive anywhere near the generous benefits they provide for unionized, and elected public employees. The federal government follows the unions' lead blindly. The Department of Labor has little impact on the majority of Americans who work for small businesses. Most of their policies don't affect companies with less than 50 employees. The Department of Labor has become little more than the unions' enforcement agency. A perfect example is the Boeing situation. Boeing wants to expand US e...