My favorite right now was just on the late news. A guy ran into financial trouble this last year, and he wound up selling his house short. The bank forgave about $50,000 in debt on the house. Believe it or not, the State of California considers that income, and of course they want to tax it. The guy thought he was going to get a refund of about $500; instead he owes more than $13,000 in taxes.
None of these idiots think raising taxes has any effect on the economy. All of them seem to imagine that the difficulty here is their inability to raise taxes further; everything else is irrelevant. They need the money, so everyone should pay.
The absurdity of the situation is beyond belief. Many businesses, and individuals, have left or are planning to leave the state. No one in the State Government will admit that there’s a problem. Neighboring states *openly* run advertising at business conferences, saying things like “We won’t tax you into bankruptcy”, and the State Government complains about how unfair the characterization is. Part of the difficulty, of course, is that while American corporations receive negative publicity when they ship jobs overseas, no one thinks badly of a corporation that moves from one state to another. That means that beyond moving costs, there’s no reason not to leave, if you don’t have to be someplace specific.
Further, and lastly, I’ve been contending for some time that the left has come to despise small business. Corporations can be arm-twisted into campaign contributions, and their workforces can be unionized. Small businesses can’t really be dealt with the same way in either case, and the difference works to the detriment of the liberals and their causes. I believe that while the left pays lip service to small businesses being important to our economy, they really wish to consolidate all small businesses into larger ones.
