The Choice Is Yours - Part 2 - Understanding Gods Laws

Good day to each of your as I wish to thank you for reading this column.

Yes, America is facing the very looming possibility of a civil war between conservatism and liberalism, MAGA or making America great again and those on the other side saying that MAGA is filled with extremists, Nazism, threat to American democracy. Is this the country that our leaders are trying to unite or tear apart this election? Consider the great giveaways that one party proposes along with massive taxes on the middle and poor classes.

The sad part is that we take it and do nothing about it! Our founding fathers dropped tea bags in the river and did something about the issues at that time and now we have politicians pointing the fingers at the other party.

Where are the statesmen who stand for something instead of the politician who is constantly running to get re-elected? Can you name 10 senators or congressmen who are genuinely working for the people and not for their interests? In fact, can you name 10 Christian Senators and Congressmen who are promoting the 10 Commandments, Bible Reading in the classroom and not ashamed to take a stand against the evils in today’s society?

Backbone and fortitude are those who stand with God—the silent majority is just that, a silent majority who is afraid to speak for fear that the Government may silence them.

Silence, not for me—I will take my stand with Jesus and if something happens to me then I know what my reward will be. Turn to 2 Peter 2:1-3 (Smith & Good Speed) There were false prophets too among the people, just as there are will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive sects and deny the Master who has bought them, thus bringing on themselves swift destruction. Many people will follow their immoral ways, and they will cause the true way to be maligned. In their greed they will exploit you with pretended arguments. From of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction has not slumbered.

Please read the above verses for these same verses fit in today’s time with today’s leaders and teachers who are causing all so many people to be maligned or to utter injuriously misleading or false reports. Sounds familiar in today’s political arena?

Let’s turn to Reader’s Digest:

Meet the Dumbest Criminals of All Time

Courtesy of Reader’s Digest

Scottish shoplifter Aron Morrison was picked up after pinching a bottle of vodka from a liquor store. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find Morrison, though. His name and phone number were left with the clerk—after asking her out on a date.

For a trio of drug thieves, it was their lucky day. They broke into a home in Silver Springs, Florida, and discovered three jars of cocaine. They took it home and snorted the contents. That’s when they discovered that the jars were in fact urns and that they were snorting the cremains of the victim’s husband and two dogs.

As two men waited in line at the coffee shop to pay their bill, a third cut in front of them. He threw a drink at the clerk and demanded all the money from the till. Temporarily surprised, the men quickly recovered and handcuffed the crook. Apparently, in his rush the criminal didn’t notice they were police officers—in full uniform.

When an attempted robbery at a Lowes Home Improvement store went awry, Milton J. Hodges fled across the street and jumped a fence … right into the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort & Spa. As the Orlando Sentinel pointed out, “As one of the only folks wearing clothing,” Hodges was easily spotted by police.

And, Graham Price of South Wales ripped off the bank where he worked, but he wasn’t completely duplicitous. He left a note in the safe: “Borrowed, seven million pounds”—signed “Graham Price.”

I hope you enjoyed the Reader’s Digest dumbest criminals of all time—I will have more in the future.

It is time to tackle taxes and the IRS, the abortion issue, the LGBTQ issue, student loans, stimulus checks, electric cars, the Ukraine and Israel conflicts under Mr. Biden. I can’t emphasize enough of Deuteronomy 28 and how each verse gives us what we are currently experiencing which is the blessings and curses. Here is an article from the tax foundation dated 3/22/2024.

Details and analysis of president biden’s fiscal year 2025 budge proposal

Courtesy of Tax Foundation

President Biden’s State of the Union address presented a vision of higher taxes for American businesses and high earners combined with carveouts, credits, and more complex rules for taxpayers at all income levels. Soon after, the president released his FY 2025 budget outlining how the White House would implement the president’s tax vision, indicating a gross tax hike of about $5.3 trillion from 2024 to 2034.

On a gross basis, we estimate Biden’s FY 2025 budget would increase taxes by about $4.4 trillion over that period. After taking various credits into account, the increase would be about $3.4 trillion. The tax increases would substantially increase marginal tax rates on investment, saving, and work, reducing economic output by 2.2 percent in the long run, wages by 1.6 percent, and employment by 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

The tax changes Biden proposes fall under three main categories: additional taxes on high earners, higher taxes on U.S. businesses—including increasing taxes that Biden enacted with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—and more tax credits for a variety of taxpayers and activities. The combination of policies would move the tax code further away from simplicity, transparency, and neutrality, while making the U.S. economy less competitive. The increase in the corporate tax rate and the additional taxes on top earners would result in U.S. top marginal tax rates on income that are among the highest in the developed world.

The budget would include the following major changes, beginning in 2025, unless otherwise noted.

Major business provisions modeled:

Increase the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent (effective 2024)
Increase the corporate alternative minimum tax introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act from 15 percent to 21 percent (effective 2024)
Quadruple the stock buyback tax implemented in the Inflation Reduction Act from 1 percent to 4 percent (effective 2024)
Make permanent the excess business loss limitation for pass-through businesses
Further limit the deductibility of employee compensation under Section 162(m)
Increase the global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) tax rate from 10.5 percent to 21 percent, calculate the tax on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis, and revise related rules (some provisions effective 2024)
Repeal the reduced tax rate on foreign-derived intangible income (FDII)

Major individual, capital gains, and estate tax provisions modeled:

Expand the base of the net investment income tax (NIIT) to include nonpassive business income and increase the rates for the NIIT and the additional Medicare tax to reach 5 percent on income above $400,000 (effective 2024)
Increase top individual income tax rate to 39.6 percent on income above $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for joint filers (effective 2024)
Tax long-term capital gains and qualified dividends at ordinary income tax rates for taxable income above $1 million and tax unrealized capital gains at death above a $5 million exemption ($10 million for joint filers)
Limit retirement account contributions for high-income taxpayers with large individual retirement account (IRA) balances
Tighten rules related to the estate tax
Tax carried interest as ordinary income for people earning more than $400,000
Limit 1031 like-kind exchanges to $500,000 in gains

Major tax credit provisions modeled:

Extend the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) child tax credit (CTC) through 2025 and make the CTC fully refundable on a permanent basis (effective 2024)
Permanently extend the ARPA earned income tax credit (EITC) expansion for workers without qualifying children (effective 2024)

We also modeled various miscellaneous provisions for corporations, pass-through businesses, and individuals, including several energy-related tax hikes largely pertaining to fossil fuel production. While the budget improperly characterizes fossil fuel provisions as subsidies, many are deductions for costs (or approximations of costs) incurred.

Major provisions not modeled:

Repeal the base erosion and anti-abuse tax (BEAT) and replace it with an undertaxed profits rule (UTPR) consistent with the OECD/G20 global minimum tax model rules
Replace FDII with unspecified R&D incentives
Create a 25 percent “billionaire minimum tax” to tax unrealized capital gains of high-net-worth taxpayers
Permanently extend the ARPA premium tax credits (PTCs) expansion (we do include PTCs in our distributional analysis)
Expand federal rules on drug pricing provisions
Spending program changes
Provide additional Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding

Wow, we have a good bit to cover:

Raising the corporate income tax rates from 21 percent to 28 percent, a policy Biden has pushed for since the 2020 campaign, would significantly worsen the competitive position of US businesses and reduce prospects for business investment and workers. Including the average of state rates, the top combined marginal rate on corporate income under current law is 25.6 percent, and Biden’s proposal would increase it to 32.2 percent—the second highest corporate tax rate in the OECD (behind Colombia at 35 percent).

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a unique forum where the governments of 38 democracies with market-based economies collaborate to develop policy standards to promote sustainable economic growth.

The corporate income tax is the most harmful tax for economic growth and its many problems have led countries around the world to reduce corporate tax rates considerably over the last 40 years to an average of about 23 percent as of 2023. The U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD prior to the TCJA, which lowered the U.S. corporate tax rate to be roughly average among OECD countries. Recent studies have determined that lowering the corporate tax rate significantly boosted investment in the United States, a long-term process that continues to yield economic benefits, including gains in workers’ wages.

According to the IRS dated 12/19/23:

Details and analysis of president biden’s fiscal year 2025 budge proposal

Courtesy of Tax Foundation

On top of a higher statutory corporate tax rate, Biden has proposed increasing the rate of the new corporate alternative minimum tax on book income from 15 percent to 21 percent. The tax was enacted in August 2022 as part of the IRA and scheduled to go into effect starting in 2023, but the IRS postponed its implementation because of the complexity of enforcing it. Taxpayers are still awaiting guidance on several significant questions related to the CAMT, and it remains questionable whether the tax is even feasible. It has certainly failed thus far as an effective minimum tax.

On personal income taxes, too, the Biden budget proposals would further push up marginal tax rates. Under current law, the top combined marginal tax rate on individual income is 42.5 percent, consisting of the top federal rate (37 percent) and the average of state and local income tax rates. Biden’s proposal would raise it to 45.1 percent by increasing the top rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. The rate ignores the 5 percent additional Medicare tax, half of which falls on the employer, in order to make comparisons to the personal income tax regimes in the OECD database. Including the employee-side portion of this tax would raise the top rate to 47.6 percent.

In the case of capital gains taxes in particular, the changes would push the United States beyond international norms. The top combined marginal tax rate on capital gains income under current law is 29.1 percent, consisting of the 20 percent capital gains tax rate, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax (NIIT), and the average of state and local income tax rates on capital gains. By taxing high earners’ capitals gains as ordinary income and raising the NIIT to 5 percent, Biden’s proposals would raise the top tax rate on capital gains to 49.9 percent—the highest in the OECD.

The combined integrated rate on corporate income reflects the two layers of tax corporate income faces: first at the entity level through corporate taxes and again at the shareholder level through capital gains and dividends taxes. Under current law, the top combined integrated tax rate on corporate income distributed as capital gains is 47.2 percent. Under Biden’s proposals, it would rise to a jaw-dropping 66 percent—the highest in the OECD…

Additionally, President Biden reintroduced his proposal to raise the effective tax rates paid by households with net worth over $100 million. The proposal requires high net worth households to pay a 25 percent minimum tax rate on an expanded definition of income that includes unrealized capital gains. Under the minimum tax, households would pay tax on capital gains even if the underlying asset has not yet been sold, operating as a prepayment for future capital gains tax liability.

The billionaire minimum tax, as it is commonly known, would increase the complexity of the tax code by using a non-traditional and difficult-to-measure definition of income. It would require formulaic rules for valuing different types of assets, payment periods that vary by asset type, and a separate tax system to deal with illiquid assets. This tax design goes well beyond international norms, where capital gains are taxed when realized and at lower rates than the U.S. in many cases.

Biden would also expand the disallowance of deductions for employee compensation above $1 million (Section 162m) to cover all employees of C corporations. The cap currently applies to the CEO, CFO, and the next three highest-paid employees of a corporation, and due to ARPA is already scheduled to expand to the next five additional highest-paid employees beginning after 2026.

Expanding the disallowance makes it costlier for corporations to attract and retain top talent. It would mean both the corporate and individual top tax rates would apply to wages, resulting in top tax rates of 70 percent or more including state taxes. If the $1 million threshold is not indexed to inflation, over time the tax would hit more than just the C-suite.

Seeking to address the very real problem of housing affordability, Biden has called for several proposals to subsidize home purchases and boost the low-income housing tax credit, including a tax credit worth $5,000 per year for two years for middle-class, first-time homebuyers. The president would also offer a one-year tax credit worth up to $10,000 for middle-class households who sell a starter home to help improve starter home availability. Finally, the president proposes to provide up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-generation homebuyers.

Boosting demand through subsidies is likely to cause housing prices to increase further. What is needed is a greater supply of housing, which would be best accomplished at the state and local level by reforming zoning rules and at the federal level by reforming tax depreciation rules for residential structures.

For developers, the president would expand the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) and create a new neighborhood homes tax credit to build or renovate affordable houses. This approach would be an inefficient way to build new homes as the existing LIHTC is expensive for the homes produced, with much of the credit value going to developers and financing agencies.

President Biden would renew the expanded child tax credit from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, which would raise the CTC value from $2,000 to a maximum value of $3,600 while removing work and income requirements. This CTC expansion would have major fiscal costs totaling over $1 trillion over 10 years above the current-policy CTC. If we include the underlying CTC expansion from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that expires at the end of 2025, the cost approaches $2 trillion over 10 years.

The US dollar has taken another major hit this past week for the petrodollar which has been in place since 1974 has expired. Per:

After 50 Years, Death of the Petrodollar Signals End of U.S. Hegemony

Courtesy of TheStreet PRO

This was a deal that was put in place to bring Arab nations and the U.S. closer together. It was designed to circulate dollars between the two regions in exchange for oil sales. As a result, oil has been a commodity that has been priced and traded in dollars. Now, as this deal has not been renewed, Saudi Arabia can trade or deal in currencies outside of the U.S. dollar; they can now trade in yen, euros, Chinese yuan and even the highly-contentious Russian ruble.

Truth be told, this has been happening in the background since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the Western world subsequently placing sanctions on Russia to limit its exports. The sanctions never worked, as all they did was form new trading alliances and change the partnership agreements for good. As a result, the world has forever changed.

The Ukraine war to whom the US is backing the Ukraine has backfired and the US is pouring billions of dollars in debt that the US people do not have. The Russians have formed their trade alliance and currency with the Chinese, India and the Middle East.

Straight from the internet: How much money has the United States provided Ukraine? Since the war began, the U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with ongoing aid, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills—the “headline” figure often cited by news media—is $175 billion.

Did you get that? 175 billion per the council on foreign relations article as of 5/9/24.

After 50 Years, Death of the Petrodollar Signals End of U.S. Hegemony

Courtesy of TheStreet PRO

This also has a huge impact on the bond markets. As the global alliances change, there are fewer buyers of U.S. treasury. We know that China and Russia have been selling down UST, leaving only Japan and some others as the buyers. Given the way that the U.S. is spending, they will end up being the biggest buyers of their own debt. Sound familiar? This comes at a time when U.S. national debt is on course to reach $37 trillion, about $8 trillion to be refinanced this year at even higher rates. Seeing the U.S. 10-year yield trading at 4.4% is astonishing when there is just so much debt to come still as the Biden administration knows no other way to keep the U.S. economy and consumers afloat than to boost and print even more.

As we started the year, most had been pricing in rate cuts with no landing. They, along with the Fed, have magically convinced themselves that because a recession did not occur last year, it never will. Things work in time lags; one has to remove the inordinate amount of fiscal spending that distorted the true state of the U.S. economy blurred by the U.S. monetary policy.

Who are we kidding? The American public knows that we are paying with monopoly money or “fiat currency” so the Feds can print more money to keep the economy afloat. Great, but who is buying up the US debt? This is the classic “dog chasing the tail” and eventually the dog will catch its tail, and then what?

After 50 Years, Death of the Petrodollar Signals End of U.S. Hegemony

Courtesy of TheStreet PRO

We are moving from a window of softening growth and accommodative policy to one of recession and restrictive policy. With more trade wars and higher tariffs, inflation is going to take time to come down but growth globally is already showing signs of fatigue.

Everyone is hiding in a few stocks as the S&P 500 makes new highs, but how much can Nvidia or Microsoft hold up the index? Its fate is inevitable as Chinese and EU indices start rolling over, it is only a matter of time until this one does too. The wheels of change are in motion and the U.S. knows it. Perhaps that is why we are sleepwalking into a state of world war.

The street says we are seeing growth and that the stock market is reaching new heights—False indicators for the bubble is so very near—why do I say that? Folks, it’s the debt market that we need to watch—Mark my words and think of this logically—the debt market affects everyone of us for each taxpayer has been given a yoke and that yoke has been placed on their neck to be enslaved by debt.

All indicators point to debt and not the stock market where we are talking about paper to buy and sell—debt is real as it mounts each minute and compounds each one of us.

What can we do? Personally, get out of debt, stay out of debt and own whatever you have debt-free. If you have some land, debt free and am in good health, what more do you need to be self-sustainable?

The other choice is to be under the thumb of the government and to be subservient to the government—this is your choice and your choice will matter in the next 150 less days to the national election.

As for the Biden budget, here is the bottom line—tax the rich—Ok, Joe fine—The rich will move their money to another country that provides incentives for the rich and move their manufacturing to Asia so they can make more profits because the Biden plan provides NO INCENTIVES to keep manufacturing in the USA—See steel mills in the USA versus China.

By the way, how are we going to build back our roads and steel infrastructure if we have only a few domestic steel mills? Answer: we will use import steel to fill the need.

Folks, look at what we import in the way of goods and tell me who is the head and who is the tail? We grumble, we rant, we preach, buy American and yet so very little is made in America.

Again, the Biden plan is to give away money to provide housing, healthcare, and hand outs to people who could work and beat the system by not working.

You and I are the ones paying for many of the deadbeats and immigrants coming into the USA illegally. Those who are billionaires have started to move their assets to safer havens for they know the outcome of this president.

Yes, it looks good on paper and that is what it is – Paper, just like the money we have. Biden’s economic plans is a house of cards where he plays the joker and the Feds playing their Aces. This is the classic golden rule—He who owns the gold rules and they are the ones ruling.

As a Christian, we are told that we bring nothing into this world and leave with nothing—Let us be thankful for Salvation and the gift of eternal life for the day is coming and very soon when Mystery Babylon and the economic empire will fall and they we shall debt no more.

Stay tuned and as always:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

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