Maybe Tips Aren't the Priority

I am, of course, a Trump supporter, and so theoretically I support most of what he advocates, and most of what he proposes as solutions to the problems we all agree are the pressing issues of the day.

And I do, even though this column is about my disagreement with the priority of some of the solutions being proposed.

So let us not rush to condemn me for what I am to say, or worse, misinterpret.

I don't see the "No Tax on Tips" campaign promise as being a hill to die on, if it comes to hills and the dying thereupon.

President Trump posited three significant reliefs from taxation when he was Candidate Trump, and we all remember them:

• Removing the Federal tax on tip income
• Removing the Federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits
• Removing the tax on overtime wages
  

Now, I need you to think of the first and third bullets as different from the second.  Whatever one thinks of tips from the perspective of the waiter or caddie or nail technician, the fact remains that their tips are indeed earned income. That is enshrined in the law in the sense that tipped employees are not obligated to be paid minimum wage, the idea being that their primary income is, in fact, their tips.

Whatever argument there may be for not taxing tips, even that argument doesn't apply to taxing overtime.  Overtime labor is labor; it is earned income, and while perhaps there could be a stretchy defense for not taxing the uplift -- i.e., taxing only the "time" part of "time-and-a-half" -- it is earned, and should be subject to taxation.

[I'll remind you -- and myself -- that there really are required functions of government, and therefore the country does indeed need to raise money through taxation to pay for them.  As long as there is an income tax, the points above are valid.]

When it comes to Social Security retirement, however, the above has no bearing.  Although we understand that Social Security is not really the government taking 7% of our income and eventually giving it back to us if we live long enough to retire, conceptually it is quite similar and OK to think of it that way for our purposes.

That money was earned by workers.  It was taken as a tax on earned income at the time of employment and used by the government for whatever it felt like.  It is not invested; not put into an interest-bearing instrument, as we would do ourselves.  Nothing was done to use the money seized from us to dedicate it to our retirement individually, let alone for it to grow.

It is already treated differently from tips and overtime, in that federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits is not done on 100% of the benefit; it is taxed at a percentage of the total amount depending on your other income -- which in itself is inappropriate, given that we're simply given back money taken from us years back and poorly invested on our behalf.

I'm not actually arguing against ceasing taxation on tips or overtime. I'm simply pointing out priorities based on the nature of the earning.

And I strongly advise President Trump, the politics notwithstanding (and understood), to prioritize removing the tax on Social Security retirement first, with the other two pledges kept on an "if possible" basis.

 Arguments welcome.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

You're Never Fooling Us Again

A decade ago, the former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was desperately trying to avoid having people read the draft bill that would implement Obamacare. You remember Obamacare, right?  That's the bill about which Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who developed it, said that Americans were too stupid, thank God, to understand that it was a gigantic wealth transfer-cum-Ponzi scheme.

Obamacare got passed and, as a result, my health insurance went from $550 monthly in December 2014 to $1,100 monthly a month later, despite no change in our health.  For that extra $550 a month, all my then-63-year-old wife and I got for health coverage that we didn't already have were maternity and pediatric dentistry, which we obviously didn't need. I'm not kidding.  We were forced to buy maternity coverage for a 63-year-old woman, and pediatric dental coverage for children we didn't have.  You can read about it here.

Mrs. Pelosi was trying to cajole hesitant House members to vote for it without reading the contents.  "You'll have to pass it to find out what's in it", she said. 

You remember.  I remember.  It was the epitome of "I know better than you do what you need.."

But more than that, it was the epitome of Swamp politics.  A few people put that bill together, and no one was given a chance to read it before a vote schedule that was given urgency that didn't exist.  There was absolutely no legitimate reason why Congress could not be given enough time to decide if there were changes that might need to be made.

Then we heard of the attempt by current Speaker Johnson to get a meeting with President Biden a few months ago. The White House delayed for weeks and weeks, and then when they finally conceded and scheduled him on the calendar, the speaker arrived only to be "ambushed", as he put it, by the House and Senate minority leaders, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and the VP, Kamala Harris, all in the room, presumably to make sure no uncomfortable questions were asked.

Ultimately, Biden told the rest to leave, whereupon Speaker Johnson asked him about a policy for which Biden had signed an Executive Order.  Biden replied that he had never signed such an order, whereupon the speaker showed him to his surprise that, indeed, he had.  Biden didn't even agree with the policy of an EO he had actually signed!

It doesn't matter if that instance was because Biden was too demented to remember something he had done, or because the cabal actually running the country was just shoving EOs in front of him and making him sign things he was unaware of.  It doesn't matter.  He was not in charge, and Speaker Johnson realized at the time just how bad it was.

We discovered that the new Secretary, who took over at the Department of Labor in the first Trump term, was told by senior officials there that certain orders could not legally be issued by the Secretary -- orders that would reflect the wishes of the President.  According to law, they most certainly could have been issued, and the Swamp types who advised otherwise knew they were lying. That was undoubtedly repeated at other Departments. 

That BS ended today with the second inauguration of Donald Trump.

I read my Best Girl that Speaker Johnson EO story a few days ago, and we both realized that this was the Wizard of Oz story all over again.  We knew who the "great and powerful Oz" was -- the shell of what once was Joe Biden, pounding his chest that yes, he is running things -- "the best Biden ever", to quote Joe Scarborough -- but with no clue what was actually going on.

What we never found out, and still don't know, was the real mystery -- who was the little guy behind the curtain pulling all the strings?  Who was writing those bills?  Who was drafting Executive Orders and shoving them under Biden's insensate nose to sign?  Schumer and Jeffries and Kamala obviously know, but the rest of us maybe ought to, don't you think?

Well, Donald Trump is president now, and there is no doubt that the visible power and the actual power are the same person.

I do not expect him to be seeking to prosecute the Swamp types; he has committed not to use the Justice Department to go after political opponents and we should believe him -- not because Biden pardoned them on his way out the door, but because Trump said he wouldn't and he is believable in that.

But sunshine is the best disinfectant. Congress has the power to hold hearings, and with no expectation of their prosecution (save for perjury in those hearings, which would not fall under the pardons), committees should drag in Biden after Biden, Swamp creature after Swamp creature, and force testimony on who exactly was in charge, what they did, and who wrote the EOs that Biden signed.

Let us let Congress do its oversight and investigative jobs. Its committees can expose who is responsible for the Biden Administration and, for that matter, the Obama Administration, for decisions that have put the country in such a precarious position.

Because the USA will then know what Democrats do when they're allowed to, and will never let them near the levers of power for a long, long time.  

They have run unethically, fixed elections unethically, run Government unethically, and put a demented old man in office.  They propped him up for four years, despite his such obvious infirmity that the special prosecutor investigating his family's sale of influence to China ruled that he couldn't stand trial because a jury would see him sympathetically as just a forgetful old man.

Our good fortune is that those mystical people running things were so committed to their leftist agenda that they put a VP in who had no qualification or accomplishments, but was the "right" color and gender to check boxes.  Our further good fortune was that her skills were so obviously negligible that she was verbally unable to do interviews or press conferences, while Trump was answering anything and everything and talking to anyone and everyone.

The Democrats have always had to use smoke and mirrors, because their policies don't work and never have.  It took no time at all for Biden to blow up the economy in an inflationary mess.  We could all see that;  Eventually it became obvious whose policies were responsible.

We can look forward to four years of the President saying what he means and doing what he says he will do. At the end of his term, we can judge Mr. Trump and the Republicans on what they have accomplished, and can decide accordingly going forward.  But they won't be trying to fool anyone. They'll be doing what they think they should do for the country. 

The Democrats have been trying to fool us for more than a decade.  Some of us saw through them then, but all of us see it now.

You're never, never fooling us again.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.