The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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You’re probably, like myself, no economist. You’re happy if you’ve got money enough to pay for a roof over your head, food for the family, the monthly car payments and at least the minimum on your credit card debt. After that, well, let’s leave it to the folks who understand the intricacies of running an economy as large and complicated as the United States. After all, they did a good job … other than a few recessions and the Great Depression. Sure, a few folks fell between the cracks, but hey, we have more billionaires than ever. In fact, the President is a billionaire or so he claims. If anyone would understand how to run a complicated economy, it’s got to be a billionaire president.

We were all told as far back as grade school we have equal opportunity in the Land of the Free. If you’re white. And male. And it helps if you went to a prestigious school, say Yale or Harvard or Wharton. We all had that same chance, right? Equal opportunity, right? So if a lot more of us these days are falling behind on the mortgage, if we’re sleeping in our cars or in a tent under the freeway overpass, we had the same opportunities as the rich folks, we just didn’t play our cards right. We were dumb. We were losers. Nobody to blame but ourselves. Unless you think the game is rigged. Unless you think America is a sucker’s bet. And I know you don’t want to believe that…. You want to believe you have the same chance of becoming a billionaire, just like the former president, just like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, the folks who doubled or tripled or quadrupled their worth in the last year. And if you have to do it by playing the Lottery, well, okay, buy the ticket, take the ride. There’s always a chance. You do not win, the gaming commission will tell you, if you do not play.

2020 and the pandemic kind of lessened the odds for most people, maybe not the rich. Jobs gone, rent due, credit card maxed. The economy stalled, except maybe the stock market, times look tough. The lesson most economists not in this Administration took from the Great Depression is government needs to spend like drunken sailors to keep the pump primed. Money in the hands of the bottom percentiles is money that gets spent. Shops get customers, cars get sold, rent gets paid, the economy keeps sputtering along. The first stimulus checks that went out did just that. Course, they put the lion’s share in the hands of the wealthiest among us. Seems fair. If you’re already rich.

The latest stimulus bill stalled over how much to give the little folks. Even Trump, blowing the negotiations to bits at the 11th hour, thought the poor ought to get more money. But the Senate howled, the Senate balked, the Senate cried socialism for the rich. Why give a family making 150,000 a year more money, they cried. Course, they could cap the income levels. They could hold back the largesse for the richest corporations. They could have done that back in the first go round. But they didn’t, they don’t and they won’t. Socialism for the rich, they say, and too big a deficit, they say, even though they gave tax breaks to the corporations once they had a billionaire president and control of the Senate.

I should have gone to Harvard Bizness School, is all I can figure, because none of this makes much sense to me. Why, I guess, I’m not a billionaire.

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I’m doing my 2017 taxes today, the 1040, the Schedules B, C, and Self Employment. Crossing my fingers, but I’m hoping my quarterly payments cover what I probably owe. If they don’t, I’m trusting that the Trump Tax Cuts will, mostly because of those personal exemptions and because we never itemize. April 15th, the real Black Friday. Or Black Tuesday this year.

So it comes as a shock to read this morning that my neighbor to the south, Amazon.com, is paying less than me this year. Less than you too if you paid anything at all. Their tax bill on 5.2 billion dollars in profits is … well, zero. Zip, zilch, nada. All legal, all sanctioned, all approved by the IRS. Not that I’m picking on Amazon, they got their own problems what with the President Tweet-bullying them daily, mostly because their owner is also the owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper that prints stories unfavorable to Donald, faux news, he yells, fake news, he hollers.

But dammit, it grates to write a check to the IRS knowing that the 4th largest corporation in the world gets off scot-free. I don’t know about you, but I honestly don’t think I should pay more than Amazon. Sure, my little stained glass company is an economic engine here on the South End. And some years I’m even a Job Creator. But I didn’t get a mega tax break to open up my factory here – okay, my glass shack here — and the county didn’t have to woo me from settling up at the North End with property tax moratoriums. No, I just got treated like an ordinary individual, no special treatment.

The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are to be treated like me, like an individual, didn’t they? So why aren’t we individuals treated like corporations? The President won’t show us his taxes so we don’t know if he pays more than you or me. But I think you know he pays proportionally less. He is, after all, the Deal Master. Maybe what he hates about Amazon is they pay less than him even. Gotta grate. Gotta get under his thin skin. For once … and maybe the only time … I hafta agree with him. Meanwhile, I need to finish my taxes. Somebody’s got to pay for America.

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