Articles Tagged As “Taxes”:
2549.\\ Confiscation of Freedom
Thomas Sowell takes a somber and sobering look at the state of freedom in the United States. It is frankly pretty depressing to read how we are incrementally being deprived of everything the nation was founded to protect.
I renew my prediction of armed insurrection if the trend continues.
Best bit:
Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against "the rich."
The distracting phrases here include "obscene" wealth and "unconscionable" profits. But, if we stop and think about it-- which politicians don't expect us to-- what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn't we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?
Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced--and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting "the rich."
You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called "unconscionable" but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Health Care, Liberals, Liberty, Taxes, Thomas Sowell, Totalitarianism
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PERMANENT LINK2539.\\ The Debt Commission
I have some libertarian leanings. I'm not overly conservative when it comes to social matters. I'm not foaming at the mouth, ranting and raving from the lunatic fringe on the right.
More importantly, I hate taxes. I think progressive income taxes are unfair and unconstitutional. Payroll taxes are simply socialist wealth redistribution in disguise. The State confiscates my property routinely and gives it away to others and spends it on some pretty dubious things.
That being said, however, I am also cognizant of the yawning crisis in our nation's finances. That the public debt problem and ongoing budget deficit is the result of outrageous spending on a multitude of things of doubtful utility is reality. Congress seems to think it has no restraint on its power, regardless of who is running the place. Since the 1960s they have spent us into financial ruin. The root of the problem is runaway spending, without a doubt.
However, and I say this wearing my realist hat, there is a zero percent chance that my libertarian idealism in fiscal matters will ever manifest itself in legislation in the current climate. Congress won't ever repeal the income tax, won't eliminate the nanny state, won't abolish the IRS and won't institute a flat tax. Without cutting spending and without increasing revenue, the nation will be bankrupt within a decade. In fact, interest on the debt alone is currently north of 20% of Federal revenue and will be greater than all Federal revenue within a few years if the trend continues. That means if we cut spending to ZERO on everything...defense, government operations, entitlements...everything, then we'd still not have enough revenue to cover the interest on what we owe.
Tell me how that is sustainable. Clearly, it isn't.
So, given that fiscal irresponsibility on the part of politicians got us here, it seems to make sense that we need to invest some other body with powers to help resolve this issue. Yes I am aware that I just made the same case that was made in Rome when Caesar was vested with dictatorial powers. It is also the same case that Napoleon and Hitler made. I'm going to follow it up with another bit of rationale that has been repeatedly used in history to justify all manner of terrible things: desperate times call for desperate measures.
In our case, however, unlike the Roman Republic we still have strong checks and balances between our branches of government. It is extremely unlikely that sufficient power could be gathered into a single place to totally rend the Republic asunder and replace it with something undemocratic. Of course, I could be wrong.
But I have faith in the people of this country. To wit, over the past few months, faced with growing absolutism and rule by fiat in Washington, the people of varying party affiliation rose up and dealt the ruling party a series of electoral blows that ended its ability to ram through its agenda without popular support. Frankly if it came right down to it, and I've mentioned this before, there is always the likelihood of armed insurrection to prevent descent into dictatorship or corrupt plutocracy. I honestly believe that would happen. It happened before in this country and it could certainly happen again.
And so this morning the Senate will vote on whether to form an independent, bipartisan commission to tackle the fiscal crisis. This panel will be composed of various private sector luminaries and former politicians. It will study spending and income at the Federal level and recommend changes with the goal of setting the nation on sounder financial footing. The far left opposes this because they fear the panel will recommend cutting entitlements. The far right opposes this because they see it as a veiled attempt to raise taxes with the cover of bipartisan support. Frankly, both are probably right and to be honest both things have to happen. Taxes must go up and entitlements must be cut.
We cannot grow our way to fiscal solvency at this point. We're so deep in the shit that even 10% annual GDP growth wouldn't pull us out. Yes taxes should be low across the board in normal times. Yes lower taxes increase Federal revenue receipts in normal times. Yes in normal times a great nation such as ours must have safeguards to help those who for whatever reason cannot help themselves. Yes in normal times there is room for a fiscally strong Republic that has world class social programs for the poor and weak. However, these are not normal times. We cannot afford to act as if they are.
We will not get out of debt to our Chinese masters and we will not remain at the top of the global order if we do not address this problem now. It has been estimated that we have 10 years to get our act together before it is beyond all hope. We cannot simply cut taxes to the bone and grow our way out. Reagan did that but at the cost of adding trillions to the debt. Barry O has tried the Keynesian way of spending our way out and it hasn't worked but it has nearly doubled the debt. The reality is that our social programs must be drastically cut and our taxes must go dramatically up.
The first order of business is to cauterize the financial hemorrhaging by ensuring that more money is coming in than is going out. This means ending the bailouts, stopping new entitlement legislation (i.e. Obamacare), instituting an across the board spending freeze, and...get ready...bringing the legions home. Defense spending has to take a hit. Wind down Iraq and get our guys out of that graveyard of empires called Afghanistan. Turn it over to NATO or the reformed Taliban or whomever. I don't care. We can't afford it anymore. Yes it will expose us to risk. Yes it will haunt us in 20 years. All true. But right now we are facing the collapse of our entire Republic and frankly that is a bit more pressing.
Secondly, get the Debt Commission into action. They need to act quickly and get us a report pronto. They must recommend tax increases across the board and major cuts to entitlements. Then they have to follow up with sets of binding recommendations that have to be taken in a yes/no, up/down series of votes in the Congress. Nobody will be happy, but they have to be bold and do the right thing.
Third, a balanced budget Constitutional Amendment and a line-item veto Constitutional Amendment must be taken up with haste. We must enshrine fiscal discipline into the fabric of our system of government and our way of life. The Bill of Rights is meaningless if those natural rights cannot be guaranteed by a solvent, functional government.
I'm not an economist. I'm sure the geniuses like Bernanke and Krugman have all sorts of smoke and mirrors trickery that in theory would make the problem go away. I simply know that we are on an unsustainable path of insane spending and illogical, complex taxation that will ruin us.
Put that in your State of the Union and smoke it.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Conservative, Constitution, Debt, Deficit, Finance, Liberals, Libertarian, Politics, Spending, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2518.\\ Hiding Data From the People
Why are our taxpayer-funded institutions deliberately hiding information from inquiring minds? More to the point, why has science become so dogmatic and overtly ideological? Scientists are supposed to be skeptics by nature, using a reliable and repeatable process to prove hypotheses. It isn't science if you simply leap from hypothesis to conclusion and then fiddle with some numbers to justify your logic. They've revealed themselves to be no better than the medieval church that kept literacy from the masses in order to preserve their all-knowing advantage. It amounts to power and control, not science.
At the very least the revelations behind climategate demand a ground up, independent reassessment of the data by all concerned parties. Eco-Crusaders are asking us to return to the stone age and submit to abject poverty for the remainder of our time on this planet. The least they can do is release the data they used.
I wonder why they won't? Doesn't the scientific method require it? Or has the climate science community decided to revel in mysticism and myths, guarding their supposed knowledge like some phony group of oracles? It seriously reminds me of the ancient priestly classes that took unto themselves the sole power to speak to the Gods. How different are modern scientists that wrap themselves in the same cloak of secrecy?
TAGGED AS: Climate Change, Enlightenment, Government, Religion, Science, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2506.\\ Easy Fix For Economic Collapse
It is simple. More Obamanomics. More Government. More socialism. More spreading the wealth around a bit. All you have to do, silly Mayors, is raise taxes to cover the budget deficit.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Finance, Socialism, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2503.\\ California Writ Large
The meltdown of the world's 7th largest economy has long roots and was long coming. California's model of socialism is the path America as a whole has decided to take. For the nation it will end the same way it is ending for California, total disaster and risk of complete dissolution. Like so many social engineering experiments before it, when human nature is written out of the equation any utopian scheme will collapse.
TAGGED AS: California, Capitalism, Socialism, Taxes, Utopia
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PERMANENT LINK2502.\\ Worse Than Taxes: The Spending
John Stossel has it right again. In an opinion piece today, he fingers the real culprit of creeping Statism in America.
The rallying bit:
"The politicians' spending schemes represent presumptuous interference in our lives. They are an assault on our autonomy."
Yes sir. Hoist the flag of protest
Many of these things have a amplifying effect. The spending, together with the taxing, together with the Orwellian paternalism of our new government, together with the systematic remaking of America into some minor European socialist utopia, will all add up to outright rejection by the people of this entire philosophy. Attempts to control the population like Obamacare, the nationalization of the transportation system, the ongoing disaster that is Government Motors, the transformation of terrorist enemy combatants into the equivalent of US Citizens, Climatofacism, thought crime laws, gun bans, religion bans, bans on free speech, the soda tax, the fat tax, the marriage tax, the death tax, the success tax, the tax tax; all of these will add up to an actual rebellion, I predict. States will simply refuse to implement these totalitarian diktats under the 10th Amendment. That is, if the citizens don't get there first.
TAGGED AS: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Climate Change, Congress, Constitution, Fascism, Freedom, Health Care, Liberty, Orwellian, Socialism, Taxes, Totalitarianism
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PERMANENT LINK2490.\\ Jobless rate tops 10 pct. for first time since '83 - Yahoo! Finance
Oh yeah. The porkulus...er...stimulus really seems to be working well. I mean, why would anyone believe the AP or the Labor Department over the White House? That just downright un-American. I'll have to report you if you believe that unemployment is at 10.2% and/or that it has anything to do with Obama. This is clearly still Bush's fault.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Finance, Propaganda, Socialism, Taxes, Unemployment
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PERMANENT LINK2486.\\ As If There Were Any Doubt...
David Harsanyi deconstructs the 2000 page omnibus health bill in an article from the Denver Post last week.
I just don't understand how something with a $1.2 Trillion price tag will reduce our deficit. I also fail to see how half a million words outlining new regulations, taxes, fees, mandates, penalties and bureaucracy could possibly make health care faster, cheaper and better (hell I'd settle for any one of those three).
Best bit:
As you flip through the pages of the House bill, you will notice the word "regulation" appears 181 times. "Tax" is there 214 times. "Fees," 103 times. As we all know, nothing says "affordability" like higher taxes and fees. The word "shall" - as in "must" or "required to" - appears over 3,000 times.
God help us. Although I suppose in the near future I'll be required to say "Government help us".
TAGGED AS: David Harsanyi, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Orwellian, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2467.\\ How's That Economic Philosophy Working Out For You?
I guess taxing the shit out of the rich and small businesses and redistributing it all to the poor isn't working out all that well. Obamanomics in action. Coming soon to a State near you.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Obamanomics, Socialism, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2446.\\ California Coming Around to Common Sense?
This article in Forbes paints a bleak picture of California's experiment with radically liberal politics. Unemployment in some areas over 20% and a host of other problems have led some to stop and think that perhaps LOWER taxes and LESS government spending might just be the ticket after all.
What is interesting is that the state has often served as a bellweather for economic and social philosophy for much of the rest of the country. If they pull it back from the brink and turn it around using a pro-business, conservative approach, I wonder if the nation will follow?
TAGGED AS: California, Economy, Environazis, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2388.\\ How Did Krugman Get It So Wrong?
In a must read article of the day, Paul Krugman, self-anointed Economic Grand Pubah of the Republic, exhaustively analyzes the current fiscal crisis and what happened at a macro level of economic theory and philosophy to get us here.
It is a great article that lays out the opposing camps of economic theorists and their general belief systems. He then proceeds to draw the total opposite conclusion from his data than I did. Now granted, I'm not a 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science, but it seems to me that a simple return to pure Keynesian theory would simply lead us down the path of rehashing the past 60 years of US economic development. My argument is that the 21st Century is a different time and place with totally different challenges than the 20th Century. Keynesian economics failed during the latter half of the 20th, so why on Earth should it work at all in the 21st? It would make sense in a manufacturing economy based on exports with Unions and farmers and goods being exchanged. It seems hopelessly antiquated when dealing with a service based economy where knowledge is bought and sold.
But hey, what do I know. Read the article anyway, cause it is very very interesting.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Keynes, Paul Krugman, Politics, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2346.\\ Outrageous!
From the AP:
"The Senate plan would rush rebates - $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples - to most taxpayers and cut business taxes in hopes of reviving the economy. Individuals making up to $75,000 a year and couples earning up to $150,000 would get rebates."
The fucking audacity of Senate Democrats to decide that I don't need a rebate! It is unacceptable and infuriating. The sheer arrogance of the players and the inherent unfairness of the stimulus package reveals it to be the politically opportunistic scam that it is.
Who the hell are they to arbitrarily decide that I make enough money that I don't need any relief? I pay taxes just like everyone else. Oh wait, no I don't. I pay more taxes than most people. The Federal government appropriates 35% of my income and gives it away to other people who faceless bureaucrats feel 'deserve' it more than I do. I work hard for my money. To see this kind of marxist wealth redistribution on a normal day really burns my ass. To compound this with the knowledge that people who contribute nothing to the gross domestic product (or indeed to American society) are going to get rebate checks when my family will not simply ENRAGES me.
Who the fuck do they think they are? They have no sovereignty over my liberty. They have dubious Constitutional authority to forcibly take away my family's livelihood and GIVE IT AWAY to other people. I can only imagine Locke, Henry, and a pantheon of founders are turning in their graves as this Republic lurches to euro-style state socialism.
TAGGED AS: Constitution, Democrats, Liberty, Senate, Socialism, Taxes, The Founders
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