Me: Uncle Eddy! Good to hear you. What’s up!
Uncle Eddy: For one thing, kid, the damned taxes will be up. Yeh, yeh, yeh – them senate guys say giving businesses a big tax break is good cause they’ll start hiring again. And start moving back here again. Bullcrap, Charlie. That’s just bullcrap. Even an old steel mill hand like me knows it ain’t going to happen.
Me: I know you’re right, Uncle Eddy. I never expected the Senate to do anything for working-class people, even though they say they will. You know what they say: “Figures don’t lie, but liars get elected.”.
Uncle Eddy: Ain’t funny, kid. But let me tell you – all them poor out-of-work mill hands what elected Trump will probably believe it. For a while anyhow.
Me: For a while?
Uncle Eddy: Sure. We got 4 months before we pays our this year’s tax bill. Then the new rules take over but ain’t nobody gonna notice it until April in 2018. By then they’s gonna forget all the lies they was told. Then they’ll go to one of them tax guys and “Yow!” They’ll find out how bad it is.
Me: Politicians always count on that, Ed. It’s called collective memory.
Uncle Eddy: See, guys like me used to get 3 big deduction things. One was them mortgage payments, but Thank God your Aunt Marge and I got our place paid off. Then there’s your property taxes, and in Mahoning County they’re pretty damned big. And then there’s them medical bills. Let me tell you, though I’m sure you knows it, the older you get the bigger them expenses get. And them 3 things they’re gone, just disappeared. But seems like them ignorant dopes that swallowed Mr. Trump’s bullcrap ain’t figured it out yet. Well, in about 14 months when they go down to the Walmart to get them taxes figured they’ll find out just how far them senate guys have shoved it up their butt. It don’t take no college degrees to figure out that the companies is going to get richer and us little guys are just plain screwed.
Me: Well, the Senate party line is “business will grow jobs”.
Uncle Eddy: Yeh, and I’ll grow mushrooms on all the bullcrap. Look, kid, what’s bull crap is — giving business a big old tax cut. You think some company’s gonna give up making their whiz bangs in one of them Far East countries for a buck an hour, and come back here and start over again and pay decent wages? Bullcrap! Why the hell would they? Now they gonna have it all – low taxes and still paying some kid in a faraway place a buck an hour. Look, Charlie, you know I ain’t no math wizard – didn’t take no degree to work an open hearth. But even I can figure this out. Look, they give business a 15 percent tax cut. That sounds good, right? But like I said, it ain’t gonna bring back jobs. A guy in the US wants $20 bucks an hour for assembly line work – minimum. But that kid in Wazzastan still just wants a buck an hour. That’s 20 to 1. Hell, I’ve bet horse races with shorter odds. How much percent is that – 20 to 1?
Me: Hey, Ed, I’m on your side. But I didn’t vote for him – or any of those other greedy liars.
Uncle Eddy: Well then the joke’s on me, Charlie. And next time you better believe I’ll be smarter. All them GOP people talks about how great Reagan was, and his “trickle down” horse crap. Hell, the only thing ever trickled down out of Reagan was that free cheese you and me wrote about a few months back.