There's more than one way to get a tax cut. If your wealthy enough, you can buy off enough politicians and, with the help of enough like minded people, elect a government that will lower your taxes. Here's a story of a man who through gluttony, incompetence, stupidity and unfaithfulness, managed to reduce his tax rate to zero. He should have been a banker.
I had a job many years ago with a company that made things. Long before the entire industry was packed up and shipping to place where people would do the work for even less, companies like this one did well enough.
My boss enjoyed playing tennis and golf. He'd come in several hours after the workday had started, worn out by a grueling tennis match, wander around the shop and say hi to everybody, then go into his office, put his feet up on his desk and listen to Rush Limbaugh. After the Limbaugh show was over, he'd head out to the golf coarse. Despite all the excercise he managed to maintain ample body weight.
He'd inherited the company from his father. His father, a good man, worked his ass off to build the company from scratch. I never met the old man. He'd died of a heart attach before I went to work for the company. My co-workers said that he'd worked himself to death. They all missed him very much.
My boss liked to talk to me. He said that I was lucky. I had no responsibilities. He would complain about the pressure from all the taxes that he had to pay. He said it was unfair that he should be required to pay so much while others paid little or nothing. I always made certain that I kept working while we talked. He didn't think much of lazy people.
The boss had a beautiful house overlooking the valley. His wife was attractive and adored him. She told me once that he was a good man because he had married her even though she had two children from a former marriage. She was a good person. She'd come in everyday and run the office. She always made sure that orders where shipped on time.
I was working late one night pulling a double shift. I needed the money. I heard a knock on the door so I opened it. I figured it was my brother as he often came by when I was working late, but it was my boss. He was naked. He'd been beaten badly and was missing some hair. He was crying. He came in and I found a tarp to cover him with. I asked him what had happened.
He said that his wife was out of town but had come home early. She'd caught him in bed with his girlfriend. She had beaten him with a telephone and pulled out his hair. Then she took the gun from the nightstand and forced him to leave the house naked. She opened a window, threw the car key at him and told him to leave.
After the divorce and the lawyers, my boss didn't have enough money to float the business and went bankrupt. I opened up a small shop making similar things hoping to fill some of the demand that he had relinquished. He came by one day, told me that he was living in his car and needed a job. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he could do for me, so I declined. I felt like asking him if he was still having trouble paying his taxes, but I didn't.
When I hear the sad stories of bankers pay being cut in return for a bailout and the difficulties their mistresses face, I think of my old boss. Sure he was lazy, incompetent, licentious, massively stupid with an out-sized sense of entitlement but, he had not destroyed the livelihood and savings of millions of people through greed, malice and utter contempt for good business practice. Given the fact that my boss had done nothing of real value in his life aside from being born into a little money, my guess is his tax cut was permanent.
When President Obama proposed a limit one executive pay until taxpayers money is returned, it went without saying that he was also sweetening the deal with a nice tax cut. It could be worse. Ask my old boss.