Since We Are Calling Names: Harvard's James Kwak (Lady MacBeth's Enabler) Calls The Donald A Bad Name

Harvard's James Kwak loves to sit in his office, survey the wreckage he and his have wrought for the past forty years, and call people names if they dare disagree.

It's nice work,  if you can get it. You get to call people who actually build businesses and take risks names like Man-Muppet.

Fair enough--OS has read his Shakespeare over the years, and the Bard did create one memorable character to describe Hillary Clinton--Lady MacBeth. Go ahead, hit that link--only about 1:40, and the punch line at the end tells all.

OS wins--both on accuracy and class.

OS never ceases to marvel at the Academic Left: Publishing books such as found on the left side of Kwak's page, and yet advocating for a Lady MacBeth(since we are calling names...) such as The Hillary, who proposes doubling down and accelerating the government/bankster approach that have crushed so much of our culture and economy.

OS also marvels at the sniffing assumptions that 1. Wealth is baaaad, unless it's stowed away in the Harvard endowment and supports People Like Us, and 2. Taxes are goooood, especially imposed upon those who actually go produce, and save, and wish to pass on their life's work to their families.

To quote Kwak, the pundit:
'As I discuss in my latest Atlantic column, income tax is basically optional for the wealthiest families. (So is the estate tax, for the most part.)'

Sniff. All those little little people, working and saving...sending their kids to the (sniff) local state universities or (sniff, sniff) working with their hands!! Eew, gross!

Well, why is it optional for the wealthiest families? Because since WWII, generations of Congresses (usually Democrat majorities, controlling the crafting of tax law) have so ordained.  A lot of that law drafted by Harvard Law grads no doubt, upheld by the Harvard Law Good Ole' Boys Club on the Supreme Court. This foundation, that tax shelter, that offshore account, etc., and let's save our real vitriol for those who actually attempt to start businesses that make stuff, hire people, and sometimes incur losses.

As for inheritance tax: Money is earned, and then the government takes its slice (at every level, from the county to the Feds). Money is saved and invested, and the government takes its slice along the way from that, the most egregious being capital gains tax. The person whose earnings were taxed all along (with the requisite lost investment/interest income, never realized because those dollars were lost to taxes) dies. And here comes the tax man, once again, to confiscate wealth from the family. In the case of agricultural holdings, or capital-intensive small businesses, that could mean a liquidation, if the poor chap dies without the most sophisticated legal eagles at his side (billing him at 300+ hourly, another 'tax' imposed by our system--but a bonanza for the law school grads of your august institution).

Lady Hillary MacBeth (since we are calling names) has spent the past forty years creating chaos, gathering and spending vast sums of Other People's Money, a good deal of it  harvested from taxpayers; and when not engaged in that, busied herself in cleaning up Bill's messes. (She wasn't able to get that blue dress away from one of his bimbos, so she settled on attempting to ruin the kid.) The Man-Muppet Donald, on the other hand, with all his many pecadillos, actually can look at a piece of disused and often unusable real estate and create a golf course, hotel and convention center, or an office building, or renovate an abandoned building into a facility that generates business, and more taxes for people like Lady MacBeth and her minions to spend.

Sniff away all you wish on Harvard Square. Call us deplorables and worse. Go for it. Win or lose, nothing is ever the same after this year. The Man-Muppet is drawing crowds of multiple thousands, filling arenas, with more waiting to get in, while Lady MacBeth gathers a few hundred into high school gyms. Those thousands turning out to cheer the Man-Muppet will not simply melt away -- they are just getting revved up.

James Kwak On Why Social Security Is Not A Ponzi Scheme

Kwak is a bright man, and this is (on the whole) a reasoned discussion.

OS lost his temper in the comments. Ignore that bit, at least the temper part.

Worth reading and considering, especially with the rise of the Rick Perry phenomenon.