Firetime Chat

---If you Google "things 'you would do' dictator," Yours Truly is the first result that pops up. Remember that come election time.

---Caguas Mayor "Willie" Miranda suggests that Our fecal-filled legislature should work only part-time. Fool! He's asking them to actually work! To be functional! To be responsible! To make a difference! That's like asking a toadstool to sing "Il Pagliacci" while flying a stealth fighter.

Sillie Willie, your gubernatorial campaign is off to a bad start. (He's running, folks. He's just not admitting it.) Instead of focusing on what you have some say over, like your city's plans and achievements, you go populist on Us and try to curry favor by slamming the eminently slammable. (Yeah, The Jenius slams the same offal, but I ain't running for office: I'm just calling crap crap.) Suggestion, Willie Nillie: If you want to stay populist, slam the economy. It can't hit you back (yet), everyone hates it (except for The Fools who keep taxing Our asses, although if they really taxed asses, only The Fools would have to pay) and any theory you toss out is just as valid as what any economist blows in the wind.

--- For weeks, I've been saying that the sales tax was not in place of the import tax, but in addition to the import tax. Earlier this week, the press finally picked up on that point, because for some reason, the Fecal-Filled Fools didn't--uh--get around to--writing that leeeetle bit of legislation. You know, what with the crisis and everything...And now, economists are predicting a "serious, even dire impact" of the sales tax on the local economy.

Duh. And while I'm here, DUH.

On a local radio show, senate president Kenneth "Any Idea is Good Because I Don't Have Any of My Own" McClintock said that the sales tax would reduce overall prices. He described the impact of the import tax as coming at the beginning of the import-wholesale-retail chain, using a 50% markup from one step to another, as follows:


1) Product arrives in Puerto Rico, priced at 30 cents.
2) Import tax adds 6.6%, or roughly 2 cents.
3) Importer "buys" at 32 cents, sells at 48 cents (50% markup.)
4) Wholeseller buys at 48 cents, sells at 72 cents.
5) Retailer buys at 72 cents, sells at $1.08.
6) Tax "impact" equals 15 cents (additional monies to cover initial taxing.)

Under the sales tax, set at 7% and now going UP (sneaky point there, Kenny-boy), the "chain of logic" goes:

1) Product arrives in Puerto Rico, priced at 30 cents.
2) Importer sells at 45 cents.
3) Wholeseller sells at 68 cents.
4) Retailer adds 50% markup, sells at $1.02.
5) Tax "impact" equals 7 cents.

WRONG.

At $1.08, yes, the price is higher, but the original tax is 2 cents and the rest is negotiable "cost". Think I'm wrong? Ask Wal-Mart how much they pay in import taxes a year (actual transfers of money, not "accounting reports.") Better yet, ask the pharmaceuticals, who are supposed to pay, but are given pretty much carte blanche.

Once the sales tax is imposed, prices go UP. They have to: the cost of doing business is no longer negotiable. (That was one of the arguments FOR the sales tax: to get the money that was "slipping away.") Think I'm wrong? Prices for many "optional" products have already started rising because "optional" is harder to buy and selling them costs more. It doesn't take a fifth-grade education to see that, which means The Fools don't get it because they can barely think above nursery school level ("Me want!! Me want!!")

And another thing: Where the hell is the logic that a 6.6% import tax on some goods is less expensive to the consumer than a 7% sales tax on most goods? The bottom line here is that the import tax was applied willy-nilly (I read that somewhere...), had so many holes in its application that a sizeable minority of local companies paid little or no money ever and The Fools dropped a sales tax on Our heads because they have screwed Us badly and baldly for years with their mismanagement, fake crises, politicking and greed.

Now We have to pay for electing these vermin.

I say We flambé 7% of them for every month they are incompetent and stupid--which means, of course, e-v-e-r-y month. Rounding up, We can get rid of all of them in 42 months.

But!!

If We add 6.6% to the flambé rate, like they want to do to Us, We can barbecue the whole lot in only 24 months. Just in time for the elections!!

The Jenius Has Spoken.