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There is considerable nonsense coming from the political right on all things. Consider the now-world-famous unfairness explosion by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who recently ranted on national television: "How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors' mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?"In a Washington Post column, Steven Pearlstein questioned the argument about fairness that emanates from the right when he wrote:
"... as The Great Santelli has declare'd on CNBC, that homeowners who have paid their bills and have been careful not to take on too much credit are now being asked to provide relief to homeowners who have not."
Many man-on-the-street interviews with Americans nationwide show the same ignorance and contempt for rescuing the home-mortgage industry because "I don't want to pay for someone else's mistakes," the same argument long used to oppose universal healthcare for all Americans; until the present healthcare situation got out of control.
Let's consider the income Santelli likely has. He is in an industry that has paid Katie Couric tens of millions of dollars just for being adorable ~ tens of thousands of other journalists could do as well as she on TV but few, if any, are as scrumptious ~ so its likely that Santelli is overpaid and might have an annual income of six figures, maybe the high six figures or even seven figures. With that kind of income it is likely that he has a mortgage on a "palace" that is also possibly in the high six figures or into seven figures, of which the majority, early in the mortgage, was interest payments which he could deduct from his taxable income saving himself thousands of dollars from taxation.
There is also the matter of health insurance that Santelli likely gets from employment. The money paid to insurance companies is money "earned" by the employee but is never treated as "earnings" of the employee, thus is untaxed. It is considered "diverted income"; that is diverted to a third party, an insurance company in this case, rather than going to the one who supposedly "earned" it. Again, Santelli gets a free ride around taxation on the thousands of dollars going toward his health insurance. Then his employer can write off the expense of insuring all its employees, again escaping taxation that could have been levied on CNBC.
In fact, all deductions for anything are items that escape taxation from the federal government. And home buyers who use standard deductions because their incomes and mortgages are too low to benefit from tax write-offs are helping to subsidize well-to-do who can benefit from huge write-offs.
All these escapes from taxation have to be made up by someone else. At present, those paying what Santelli and his ilk don't pay is covered by borrowing from China, the Middle East or other sources and that borrowing must be paid interest. And that interest is paid for by US taxpayers. Those taxpayers are indirectly subsidizing Santelli and other whiners who have major routes around taxation. Eventually that borrowing has to be paid back by someone, sometime. This leaves us with the conclusion that Santelli and others like him are being subsidized by Americans as yet unborn.
Elite Americans, it seems, have an almost unrealistic view of how reality works but will always see that they are taken care of by others while whining that they may have to kick in a nickel or dime to take care of others. Santelli and other overpaid "stars" may have received tax avoidance of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions of dollars over their lifetime but whine and scream if their share of the cost to stabilize the housing-finance market that their political philosophy helped destroy should amount to a few dollars that they still won't have to pay because they will retain their massive tax write-offs while the real final cost is passed on to Americans still unborn. Santelli is like the man who adds one plus two and gets 12 then adds two plus one to get 21, and never sees the error if his ways.
Republicans have been calling the latest federal budget "generational theft" because the deficit it contains will have to be paid back in some manner at some time. But there was no concern about "generational theft" when one Ronald Reagan and two George Bushes were adding $10 trillion to the national debt over 20 years of economic incompetence. At that time, then-Vice President Dick Cheney was assuring us that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." There is no Republican whine about 'generational theft" when the likes of Santelli can avoid taxation on himself while pushing the cost of plugging the hole created by what taxes he avoids onto future generations.
So it is evident that those Americans who have no, or few, methods of avoiding taxation have already been subsidizing millions of Americans buying homes on credit as well as subsidizing corporations and businesses of all sizes while many of them pay no taxes. And people who pay for their health insurance out of pocket or have no health insurance for themselves have been subsidizing for decades people who get health coverage through employment.
This author, who has no mortgage, has never had a mortgage and never will have a mortgage but owns his $350,000 home (before the real-estate-market crash) free and clear, who paid for his health insurance out of pocket for decades and has never financed an automobile to claim tax deductions has been subsidizing the likes of Santelli and all other Republicans of his ilk and will continue doing so as long as such conservatives sponge off the society they scorn while whining all the time about the "burden" or "punishment" taxation places on them.
