It’s About Making Babies!

OK, let me try it this way.

No one ever got rich working with their hands.

I was told this, in one form or other, in school, in the Navy, and since in various times and places. You get rich by having people work for you (you provide jobs) or by selling stuff, or both.

Now riddle me this. You raise taxes on a rich guy, one that provides jobs or sells stuff. You take money out of his take-home pocket. What happens then?

My guess is, he has less money to pay workers – cuts jobs. Or he raises the price for the stuff he sells.

The point is, that the only one that you can tax and *not* cost someone else, is the wage-earner.

You don’t like the way the rich guy takes home lots of money? You don’t think it is ‘fair’ for someone to inherit wealth, or flip houses or businesses or whatever and gain a big net worth? The solution is to look at laws that prevent Joe the Plumber and his kids and their cousins from doing well, too.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was *right* in what it did. It removed artificial restrictions, removed barriers to people living and achieving better than they had. Laws that prevent companies from rejecting applicants because of prejudice and bigotry are great. Laws and regulations that punish companies and individuals that succeed – could be biting your kid in 10 years. Or putting you out of work, or raise your utility bill too high to pay.

Obama promises to bankrupt utility companies that burn coal. Wow. That sounds like a recipe for really high utility bills. Or no electricity available. In winter. That doesn’t make sense at all.

You can’t tax a utility company or any other company – they pass the tax on to their customers as increased cost of doing business. So all their customers pay higher bills, those that can afford the increase. Or they choose to stop selling. Or make the product elsewhere to avoid being punished for being successful.

Suppose Obama concludes that Christmas isn’t a Muslim holiday, and decides to impose a 50% tax on Christmas and year end bonuses. Seems reasonable, right? Only people that are rich get sizable bonuses – and it is a bonus, not what they need to live on. Or to pay for extra holiday gifts. Or higher heating bills. But for wage-earners and those on fixed incomes, that stuff doesn’t make sense.

There is nothing more wasteful, more draining on the economy – on the jobs that employ American’s workforce – than the money taken for taxes. Taxes are needed for the defense budget. There is a certain amount needed for regulating business and imports and exports. Most of the rest of the budget – including all direct-to-citizen payments – are add-ons. Partly we as citizens agree, that our representatives in Congress voted in our interest to create the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Sciences Institude, the Natural History Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Parks, the Department of Education, etc. But arguably, these are all expendable as expenses to the government. We may not like it – Various groups have been trying to dismantle the Department of Education for more than three presidencies now, for one example of a bureaucracy that is no longer needed.

If you want to boost the economy, increase job availability, ease the credit crunch among industry – cut corporate taxes, and punitive taxes for larger incomes. A simple flat tax – same tax rate for everyone – with very few loopholes and exemptions, would give the economy a real boost.

Jimmy Carter during his Presidency proved that in a couple of years, raising taxes cripples the economy and revenues drop. President Reagan then showed that it takes five (5) to ten (10) years to drop taxes, to re-grow the economy. Rebuilding takes longer than tearing down the economy. It just works that way. Which is why the spectre of Obama’s vote-buying agenda scares those of us that remember, or remember part of their American history.

You can’t tax money, take money away from, the well-to-do. It cannot be done. They can conceal, they can use big-money tax dodges and strategies, they can move their money to other countries, where their wealth builds other economies. Same with corporations. You cannot tax a corporation and expect the tax revenue to be a simple cost to the company. You will either cause them to fail, to cut back – and eliminate jobs – or increase the cost of what they sell – and take money away from every customer – or both.

Anyone that tells you that you will be better off by taxing someone else – is a damned liar.

I recall days when people were concerned that the national debt – many times larger than the recent ‘bailout’ plan – was considered to be a threat to the US economy, and a serious threat to national security (as in, provoke an international war or other costly international aggression).

I recall that there hasn’t been an effective whisper about a Balanced Budget amendment proposal since Democrats won majority in Congress. A Balanced Budget plan means that Congress and the rest of the US Government is prevented from spending more than is taken in as tax revenue. Implied is that in good time – with higher revenues, Congress would pay down the national debt. [Begin sarcastic rant] Something about keeping the economy robust, people employed, food available, etc. Minor stuff, really. Hopefully the language would be tight enough, that Congress would no longer be able raid monies collected for Social Security – thus ‘saving’ Social Security for another 40 years or more. [End sarcastic rant]

But a liberal, Democrat-controlled Congress, won’t contemplate limiting themselves like that. Being honest and responsible with our tax money doesn’t let them buy votes with special interest programs.

What reminded me of this distinction between Obama and McCain was reading a LookingForLissa simple summary . Lissa caught the message “Even I could figure this one out” from the Bookworm Room, who caught today’s Wall Street Journal article “Obama and the Tax Tipping Point – How long before taxpayers are pushed too far? by Adam Lerrick.”

Other nations have tried the ideology of fairness in the place of incentives and found that reward without work is a recipe for decline. …

The sequence is always the same. High-tax, big-spending policies force the economy to lose momentum. Then growth in government spending outstrips revenues. Fiscal and trade deficits soar. Public debt, excessive taxation and unemployment follow. The central bank tries to solve the problem by printing money. International competitiveness is lost and the currency depreciates. The system stagnates. And then a frightened electorate returns conservatives to power.

Adam Lerrick, author of the WSJ article, concludes with:

Our trademark competitive advantage will be lost, and once lost, it will be hard to regain. There are too many emerging economies focused on prosperity and not redistribution for the U.S. to easily recapture its role of global economic leader.

Tomorrow’s children may come to question why their parents sold their birthright for a mess of “fairness” — whatever that will signify when jobs are scarce and American opportunity is no longer the envy of the world.

If you want to read a more light-hearted treatment of what runaway tax-and-spend leads to (disaster novels), try Maureen F. McHugh’s “China Mountain Zhang
“. CMZ is an important science fiction novel for several reasons – exploring concepts in architecture, Chinese social mores, future of competitive sports, survival of the individual in a communist-purchased America. And, oh yeah – the premise is that Communist China buys the US when it goes bankrupt from a bloated national debt.

Another about an economic-driven government meltdown is Generals President
by John Dalmas. David Brin’s “The Postman (Bantam Classics)
” and Gordon R. Dickson’s “Wolf And Iron
” are about survival, but don’t clarify the details of how the meltdown occurs.