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“The goal is ensuring the green economy benefits folks who are hurt first and worst by global warming,” says Oriana Magnera. Posted on 01/19/2020 8:46:45 AM PST by nwrep
“The goal is ensuring the green economy benefits folks who are hurt first and worst by global warming,” says Oriana Magnera.
In just a few months, the city of Portland will begin investing the proceeds from a groundbreaking new tax on large companies.
No other city in the U.S. has such a tax.
The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, or PCEF, will raise as much as $60 million a year from a new tax on big retailers. The money is supposed to supply clean, efficient energy and jobs to people the city has long slighted.
The overarching goals: to provide members of underserved communities with valuable skills while insulating, caulking and tweaking inefficient heating and cooling systems and installing rooftop solar panels at the homes of low-income Portlanders.
The new tax, and the still-developing ideas for how to spend the money, signal a sea change in Portland politics.
At its core, the concept transfers wealth from big corporations such as Walmart to low-income Portlanders of color. It's a local version of the Green New Deal proposed in 2019 by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). It's also part of a larger political effort to reshape who calls the shots—and who benefits—in America's whitest big city.
(Excerpt) Read more at wweek.com ...
“But corporate income taxes are still a far better way of collecting taxes than a tax on personal wages.”
It’s a ruse. By your assessment, theft that is done under deception is more acceptable than theft done straight forward? Yes, the government needs some revenue, but the more they can allegedly hide it, the more of it they can do. Bottom line, it is not theirs, whether it belongs to an individual or to a business.
It boils down to which modes of tax collection provide the least burden and intrusion and social engineering on individuals.
It is pretty hard to force individuals into behaviors the current government wishes to impose, when the government does not have the tax levers to do it. The personal income tax is a tool for social control.
The income tax on wages is arguably unconstitutional, whilst taxes on corporate profits and windfall earnings (such as dividends) arguably are not?
Corporations are able to deduct virtually all expenses while individuals are not. Why?
Corporate income taxes have more in common with excises and sales taxes. I can avoid paying corporate income taxes (indirectly) simply by not buying from a corporation. If I buy directly from other (unincorporated) individuals, I pay zero corporate income tax.
The biggest problems we face are spending and lack of civics education, not taxes. Even most conservatives I know don’t understand the Constitution.
Personal income taxes are a form of social control
If I want to support myself I cannot easily avoid personal income tax, whereas I can choose not to buy from a corporation (yes difficult, but still possible)
Yeah three bags. Shame on me not protecting the dog.
The retards in Portland have decided to tax the productive and give the money away to minorities.
That's actually the plan. It's essentially legalized graft, as the money will be given away as "grants". One can only imagine the inherent corruption this will engender. I predict that friends and family of the people running the granting organization will be big beneficiaries.
I can sort of understand when cities that have massive changing demographics, like Detroit did in the 1970s and 1980s when the blacks took over the city set up these sort of racial spoils systems.
Portland isn't like that. It's still the whitest big-city in the USA. It's not like there is a huge black voting block that has to be thrown a bone to keep voting for Team Donkey, as is the case in many places.
So, the impetus behind this is purely white guilt, held in the bosom of white liberals.
Or, to put it more simply:
Tards!
But solar panels generate electricity from sunlight by magic! /sarc
This is a clue that Ms Magnera, and the climate group that she belongs to, have not done their homework with respect to their indicated goals.
"The overarching goals: to provide members of underserved communities with valuable skills while insulating, caulking and tweaking inefficient heating and cooling systems and installing rooftop solar panels [??? emphasis added] at the homes of low-income Portlanders."
In other words, Magnera and her group are possibly as indoctrinated as Greta Thunberg imo.
It is all social control. What is it when they put a tax on cigarettes, or alcohol, or hotels, or yachts? Are they not deeming certain behavior bad, extravagant, inappropriate? Do they not seek to control?
And once the jobs start leaving Portland in droves, no other city will.
Almost no one can survive without a wage. If you cannot understand the difference between a tax on wages vs a tax on sales of goods, I cannot help you...
The Constitution permits taxation. The corporate income tax should be set at a level which funds the military. This would be self-regulating in that the business roundtable would be taxing themselves for overseas adventurism if they wanted government to do their dirty work (see: War is a Racket by Butler).
Tariffs, imports, excises and the wind fall taxes should fund everything else Constitutional at the federal level.
There is no need for a tax on wages
As to the story at hand, it is not the job of government to redistribute to individuals.
She is a tyrant in waiting.
Move over the line. Then Portland can convert all that unused floorspace to winter shelter for the homeless. Yeah, that’ll work!
You just know that you can’t tell her anything.
If you cannot understand that a tax on a business is a tax on you, I cannot help you.
I never denied that revenue for government was a necessity, nor did I say I supported an income tax, nor did I say income tax was moral.
Sales taxes are equally as burdensome. The ACA tax on medical devices and services to pay for medical devices and services is inane. Every year, the fire services are after us for another tax of some sort or another and everyone jumps on board because we are in a fire-prone area.
Yes, no one can survive without a wage, but payroll taxes are also a sort of tax on a wage. People think of them as a tax on business but, if my employer has to pay additional taxes on me, or a share of a “contribution,” it means that I must produce value far in excess of my wage. Put another way, if I make $15 an hour, not only must I produce in excess of $15 to justify my employment, I must now produce value to include the taxes and insurances and other mandates imposed on the business. I pay for that in the form of a lower wage and higher prices for goods and services. Like an income tax, there is no escape.
My point is, either way, we pay. Yes, I detest the income tax and most other taxes. Yes, I understand the necessity of taxes. Yes, I understand the merry go round that the current system is. Yes, I appreciate your civility in this matter.
You may like this; I was once audited. The agent was going to include my housing as income. My work requires I live on site and the IRS has an exemption for this. If they didn’t, service members, prisoners, children, could be taxed for the value of the place in which they reside. Arbitrarily, the agent said I was receiving a $2000 a month value, bumping my income by $24K a year and back taxing me from the start of my employment. Even without the back taxes, It would have required me to take another job to pay the taxes which, of course, I would have had to pay taxes on. When I asked if I was correct, the agent seemed please I understood the situation.
Obama tried this already - it Cash for Caulkers, came right after Cash for Clunkers
Nowhere have I denied that ultimately, individuals pay taxes. It is simply less burdensome to society (and less intrusive individually) to file and pay corporate income tax rather than personal income tax; excise and/or sales tax vs wage taxes; tariffs vs not. I think the Founders thought so, as well?
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